How to help
To contribute to the museum and marker fund, checks made payable to Mt. Enon (with a memo "Historical Ministry") can be mailed to the church at 1501 W. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Way, Dayton, OH 45402. Or donations can be made online at www.gofundme.com/uhjqac4.
On Aug. 16 Mount Enon Missionary Baptist Church will celebrate a milestone.
The church is marking its 90th anniversary and hopes to receive the Dayton City Commission’s designation as a Dayton Historic Landmark on Aug. 12, so the congregation can move forward on plans for a museum and historic marker for tourists.
“Our historic committee’s worked with Ohio Connections, gone back and forth to confirm our research, then through the Dayton Landmark Commission, and now the city commission has to make it official at its August meeting,” said Trotwood resident Johnnie Freeman, the church’s Historic Ministry Committee’s chairman.
The church is at the corner of West Third Street (Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Way) and Euclid Street.
The building that now houses Mount Enon was originally a United Brethren Church with a rich history that included aviation pioneer Orville Wright and his sister Katharine Wright and their father, Bishop Milton Wright. That church was the site of the first relief effort of the 1913 flood.
Freeman said, “We heard from old members that the Wrights were connected to this building when it was a U.B. church, but it wasn’t until we read Bishop Wright’s diary that we found he was here for the laying of the cornerstone in 1910.
“We found directories that showed Orville and Katharine as members at our church building from 1910-13,” Freeman said. “Their father and Wilbur were never members. This building broke from the Summit Street U.B. church, established in 1870, to house a liberal branch of the U.B.; the liberals and radicals had split, and Bishop Wright was still a radical.”
Mount Enon, which formed in 1925, bought the building in 1962, “when African-Americans were moving into the neighborhood, and the U.B. congregation here merged with First United Brethren.”
Mount Enon began as a small group that came together for regular prayer services at a house at Home Avenue and Hawthorne Street.
“The group grew and had to move into a building on Summit Street,” Freeman said. “Members decided to move into a church on Germantown and Bank streets in 1926, then purchased a larger church at College and Mercer streets and, finally, bought the current building.”
Freeman’s historic committee has collected numerous artifacts, papers, programs, photos and other memorabilia of their church building. Once it’s been added to Dayton’s historic landmark tour, members want to create a museum within the church, with museum-quality floor and wall display cases, and informational boards.
“This was a pillar of the community when it was a United Brethren church, and it still is,” Freeman said. “We picked up where they left off. And, we still have the original memorial stained-glass windows. It’s pretty much the same church it was in 1910.”
As a Dayton Landmark site, Freeman’s committee, which has already begun fundraising for the museum, will fund a marker that will showcase Mount Enon’s history on one side, and its United Brethren history on the other.
“We want to pay homage to the heritage that built the church and had a wonderful history here; along with our history, this church reflects Dayton’s history,” Freeman said.
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