OpenStreetMap (new tab)

Google Map (new tab)

Reverend Daniel Bagley (1818-1905), the founder of the 1st Methodist Protestant Church #1, was born in Hayfield, PA, and spent most of his first twenty years there, aside from a year working near Caledonia Springs, NY, and teaching school for four months at Covington, KY. Bagley, whose parents operated a farm at Hayfield, studied at local public schools, and attended school only in the winter when farm work subsided. In 1840, he married the daughter of a neighboring family, Susannah R. Whipple (1819-1913), and soon thereafter, moved to IL, where he first farmed and then taught school. Bagley was ordained in the Methodist Protestant church in 1842, and he traveled the state speaking and organizing new congregations. He settled in Princeton, IL, a bastion of anti-slavery support frequently at odds with neighboring pro-slavery towns. Anti-slavery supporters were frequently subjected to vandalism and threats from pro-slavery hooligans. In 1852, the Methodist Protestant Church' s Board of Missions directed Bagley to set up the first Pacific Coast congregation in the newly-formed Oregon Territory. Stress and tension due to the slavery debate probably made Bagley's decision to leave IL easier, and a wagon train of like-minded progressive Midwesterners, the so-called "Bethel Party," left Princeton on 04/20/1852 arriving in Salem, OR, on 09/21/1852. The Bagleys settled in Salem, where he set up his church. Some of the other Bethel Party members stayed in Salem, but many drifted north, settling in the more sparsely populated Washington Territory (established in 1853) where there was ample unoccupied land. Relations continued between Bagley in Salem and other Bethel Party members settling in Seattle, most notably Thomas Mercer (1813-1898). Sussanah's health deteriorated during the eight years in Salem, and by 1860, the Bagleys were ready for a change of scenery; with connections in Seattle, they decided to resettle there. At the time of their arrival, 19 families existed in the tiny Puget Sound settlement. The village had only one church, built by the local Methodist Episcopal flock, known popularly as the "Little White Church." By about 1865, Bagley established his Methodist Protestant church, with a congregation of eleven, erecting for it a small building known as the "Little Brown Church" to distinguish it from the white one. This first Gothic Revival church operated from about 1865-1883, when it was demolished for a second, larger edifice in the same style. The second church took the place of the first on a site at 2nd Avenue and Madison Street. The second burned in the Seattle Fire of 06/06/1889.

Demolished.

PCAD id: 18804