“Within a few years of the building of the present edifice a parsonage was erected. Every year additional money was laid out on the property; principally in 1869 in the pastorate of the Rev. W. R. Webster, and in 1891, when the church was remodeled and enlarged, at a cost of several thousand dollars, in the pastorate of the Rev. R. T. Cooper.... In the long line of preachers, whose counsel and administration have cheered and molded many lives, was the Rev. William T. Gilbert, one of a great class graduated from Yale University, who, with earnest manner and finely wrought sermon, built deeply and broad; and, after laying aside his pastoral duties, he re-entered the ranks, working faithfully along different ways in the activities of the laymen. The Rev. George Lansing Taylor, D. D., L. H. D., ended a life of great intellectual power and moral grandeur, while your pastor. For breadth in learning, strength of thought, independence for truth, tenacity to purpose, and conscientious following after his Master, he was notable. His pastorate will long be memorable in the history of this church, and be felt in the lives of its members, among the younger especially, as they were marked by his striking personality.” BY REV. ORVILLE VAN KEUREN IN THE GAYLORDSVILLE METHODIST EPISCOPAL CHURCH “Methodism was established in Gaylordsville in 1825, under the following circumstances: “Rev. Cyrus Silliman, of the New York Conference, came to visit a cousin, Mrs. David Sterling, who lived one and a half miles below the village, in the town of Sherman. While there, he made an appointment for a week-evening service at the Strait district schoolhouse. The attendance was so large and the interest so marked that he continued the meetings four evenings, and then returned to his charge in the State of New York. “The people, however, continued the meetings for several weeks, holding them in private houses. Rev. Andrew Elliot, the pastor of the Congregational Church at New Milford, learning of the revival, came up several times and visited the families. “The following year, as a result of these meetings, twenty-six persons joined the Congregational Church, nineteen formed a Methodist class at Gaylordsville, and others joined the Baptist Church. A subscription was started to build a union church at Gaylordsville, which was built in 1826. Rev. Aaron Hunt, a Methodist preacher from the State of New York, preached the first sermon in the new church, which was used jointly by the Methodists, Congregationalists, and Baptists up to about 1854. This church stood on the east side of the river, just back of the store now occupied by A. H. Barlow. It was afterward sold to Peter Gaylord, who removed it to his premises and converted it into a barn. At a quarterly meeting, held in that church, Rev. Edmund Storer Janes, D. D., LL. D., afterward a bishop of the Methodist Episcopal Church, received his license as a local preacher.