Remembering our Heritage

Dr. Milton Loyer, Conference Archivist

May – 100 years ago 
St. Paul’s Chapel, Red Lion, dedicated a new frame church building May 2, 1920. The congregation grew out of a fall 1858 United Brethren revival meeting in the barn of George Musser, three miles northeast of the present site, that resulted in 80 conversions. Following that great revival, Mr. Musser built a large spring house, with a second floor to be used for regular religious meetings. In 1880, John Stabley donated land for a chapel – predecessor of the 1920 structure.
The 1920 frame building was replaced by a brick structure in 1936, which was added to in 1950 and 1982. Rev. M.B. Heiland (1885-1979), pastor for both the 1920 and 1936 projects, served the congregation for 23 years and is the namesake of its Heiland Cemetery. The present congregation is known as Chapel UMC.

June – 50 years ago 
The United Methodist Nursing Home at Lewisburg admitted its first patient June 26, 1970. Plans for the new home began in 1966 as a cooperative effort between the former Methodist and Evangelical United Brethren denominations. While the United Evangelical Church had begun operating the Evangelical Home on the site in 1916, that facility was not intended to provide its residents with on-site medical care. Soon a clinic emerged to care for the Home’s orphans and elderly guests, which developed into a community hospital that opened on the grounds in 1926.

The Home transferred 8.8 acres of land to the Evangelical Community Hospital, which opened in 1953, and 7 acres of land to the United Methodist Nursing Home which opened in 1970. Today the Evangelical Community Hospital is a completely separate entity, while the Evangelical Home and United Methodist Nursing Home properties are part of the Riverwoods Senior Living Community operated, along with Normandie Ridge in York, by Albright Care Services – a faith-based non-profit organization strongly affiliated with the Susquehanna Conference.