Wikipedia tells, “The United Brethren took a strong stand against slavery, beginning around 1820. After 1837, slave owners were no longer allowed to remain as members of the United Brethren Church. . . . In 1853, the Home, Frontier, and Foreign Missionary Society was organized. Expansion occurred into the western United States, but the church’s stance against slavery limited expansion to the south.”
James Kelly had furnished bricks and made a loan to Wilkins Township for Wilkinsburg’s first public school. It was a one-room school built in 1840 at the northwest corner of Center Street and Wallace Avenue. The United Brethren first met there.
The Annals record,
Though it is one of the oldest congregations in Wilkinsburg, there seems to be no existing record of the earliest history of the United Brethren Church. Services were held in the school house as early as 1844, and desire created for a church building through the efforts of the Rev. J. S. Holmes.
A church building was erected on Ross Street. Mrs. Daniel Double, now (1895) living on South Avenue, laid the cornerstone.
The Christ United Brethren Church One Hundredth Anniversary historical description of 1950 is based on a founding date of 1850 for when Rev. Jonathan Holmes organized a church class of twenty-five members.
The first church building was constructed in 1851, and the edifice was dedicated by the Rev. W. B. Dick. The first Wilkinsburg minister was the Rev. David Speck.
For a number of years the work at Wilkinsburg grew, being at different times part of what was known as the Pittsburgh Mission, the Wilkinsburg Circuit, and various other circuits. However, during the days of the Civil War and for some time thereafter, the strength of the church declined drastically, and it appears that its doors were closed, almost all of the men having been called to the service of their country. The late Rev. T. W. Burgess told how the roof of the church was blown off in a storm during this period of its comparative inactivity. Finally, in 1873, the Rev. Burgess, as a young man, made a house to house canvass of the community and saw the membership increase from four to twenty-nine. The Wilkinsburg appointment was saved to the work of Allegheny conference and the United Brethren denomination. The church house was repaired in 1875, during the pastorate of the Rev. J. Medsger, and rededicated by the Rev. David Speck.
