The Historical Society of Avon ParkAVON PARK, FL · EST. 1886
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The churches of Avon Park

Eight congregations are recorded as founded at Avon Park between 1890 and 1920 — a ninth, a Presbyterian body, turns up in the wider press below — in a town whose census population was 64 in 1890 and 890 in 1920. Taken together they are the closest thing the town has to a continuous social record across the freezes, the railway and the boom, and they include two of the earliest institutions of Black Avon Park.

Nearly everything below comes from one newspaper article, illustrated from the Historical Society of Avon Park’s own photographs.[newssun-churches]

The founding sequence

Founded Church Address
1890-1892 Union Evangelical Church, later Union Congregational Church 106 N. Butler Ave.
1894 Episcopal Church of the Redeemer 20 E. Pleasant St.
pre-1920 Arbuckle Baptist Church (Active until approx. 1920–1921)[wpa-church-archives]
1919 or 1920 New Mount Olive A.M.E. Church 818 S. Delaney Ave. (a 1940 building; the congregation dates its founding to 1919,[newssun-mtolive-105] while the Florida Black Heritage Trail cites 1920[florida-black-heritage-trail])
1913 First Baptist Church 100 N. Lake Ave.
1914–1916 First United Methodist Church 200 S. Lake Ave. / S. Forest Ave.
1916 St. Mark Missionary Baptist Church 251 E. Green St.
1917 (meeting from 1913) Avon Park Church of Christ 200 S. Forest Ave.
1920 Sanctuary Church of God 107 N. Florida Ave.

The first church: Union, 1890-1892

Oliver M. Crosby and his wife donated the land for the Union Evangelical Church in 1890, and construction began at once. The newspaper account says there were about a hundred people in the town; the 1890 census counted 64 in the Avon Park precinct, so the round hundred is a recollection rather than a count. The first services were held in the not-quite-finished building on 11 September 1892, and the first minister was Rev. Francis Dwight Rood. The name changed to Union Congregational Church in 1926. The original crenellated bell tower was later replaced by a steeple.[newssun-churches][wiki-union-congregational]

This is the “Congregational church” whose pulpit Rev. Henry J. Hayter occupied on a Sunday morning in January 1906, and where an ice cream social cleared about seven dollars in August 1905, both recorded in the Avon Park column of The De Soto County News.[dsc-1906-01-26]

Crosby’s own middle name was Marvin; some popular accounts give it incorrectly as “Martin.”

The Episcopal church, 1894 — and the Kings

The Church of the Redeemer at 20 East Pleasant Street was built in 1894, a Carpenter Gothic frame building. It is no longer in use but still stands; the congregation is active in the Episcopal Diocese of Central Florida and meets at 910 West Martin Road.[wiki-redeemer]

One detail is easy to overlook:

“Founding members included Mr. and Mrs. King, who obtained the deed for the land for $1.”[newssun-churches]

William and Mary King were English. An Episcopal congregation is the American branch of the Church of England. A frontier Florida citrus settlement of a few hundred people that raises a Carpenter Gothic Episcopal church in 1894, founded by an English couple who bought the lot for a dollar, is real evidence of English churchmanship at the center of the town’s founding families — though it does not prove there was an organized English colony. It also means there is a deed, dated about 1894, with William King’s name on it, the earliest documentary trace of King’s landholding.

In January 1916, the mission called its earliest named resident clergyman, Rev. Richard Bolton, who moved his family from Lakeland—where he had served as rector of All Saints’ Episcopal Church—to take pastoral charge of the Church of the Redeemer.[lakeland-1916-01-21]

Black congregations: 1919, 1916, and seven more recorded in 1938

A federal survey of Black churches, conducted in 1938, records nine Black congregations at Avon Park, with their streets, buildings, ministers and record books, set out in full at Report: The Black churches of Avon Park in 1938. Two details from that survey confirm the account below. St. Mark’s founding in 1916 under G. W. Epps matches the survey card exactly: “Earliest known clergyman G. W. Epps, 1916, organizer of church.” And the survey’s addresses — Avenue “C” for St. Mark, Fairfield Avenue, Carolina Street, Castle Avenue, Second Street and the Mill Quarters for the rest — sit in the same southern quarter of the town described below, though under street names that have since changed. New Mount Olive A.M.E. has no card in that survey.

New Mount Olive A.M.E. Church, 818 South Delaney Avenue, is dated to 1900 by a modern newspaper listing,[newssun-churches] though historical documentation does not support that date. The congregation’s own centennial history dates its founding to 1919, when it met in “a type of mobile building” on the same site; the Delaney Avenue church “on the hill” was built later, under Rev. Willie E. Johnson, to replace that earlier building.[newssun-mtolive-105] The Florida Black Heritage Trail guidebook, meanwhile, dates the church’s organization to 1920 under the Reverend A. M. Wadell, and the construction of the present one-story masonry vernacular building with Neo-Gothic elements to circa 1940.[florida-black-heritage-trail] In any case, the African Methodist Episcopal Church is a historically Black denomination, and its Avon Park congregation is older than Hopewell School, the town’s first public school for Black children. It is the earliest institution of Black Avon Park recorded here, and it is still there.

St. Mark Missionary Baptist Church, 251 East Green Street, began serving its congregation in 1916 under Rev. G. W. Epps. (Early twentieth-century journals of the Baptist Convention of America record the congregation at 922 Woodrow Avenue, with the Reverend J. W. Daughtry serving as pastor).[baptist-convention-journals] And then this:

“When the school at Hagan’s Turpentine Still closed, classes for Black children were held at St. Mark for several months.”[newssun-churches]

That one sentence carries three facts. There was a turpentine still at Avon Park operated by someone named Hagan. That still had a school attached to it, which is characteristic of the Florida naval stores camps, where the workforce lived on site and was overwhelmingly Black. And when the camp school closed, the Black church took over the schooling until something else could be arranged — which is how Black education worked across the segregated South, and which puts St. Mark in the direct line of descent that ends at Hopewell School in 1926.

The southern part of town is where both churches are: Delaney Avenue and Green Street. That matches the recorded color line, with the white population north and the Black quarters in the southern section voting in Precinct 2.

The boom-era churches

First Baptist Church was established in 1913 and held its first services in September 1914 in the old schoolhouse on South Forest Avenue — which incidentally dates a school building on South Forest Avenue to before 1914.

First United Methodist Church traces its earliest informal gatherings to 1914, when eleven charter members—including Charles Harris, B. H. Starkey, E. L. Hockersmith, J. H. Dutton, Leila Hagan, J. W. Frazier, and C. E. Lanier—met for prayer and class study.[maxwell-1976] Formal denominational organization took place in the spring of 1916 under the Reverend George H. York, pastor of the Florida Conference’s Frostproof circuit, who announced in March that he was organizing the church and would soon establish weekly Sunday services.[dsc-1916-03-23] York followed with an evangelistic tent revival campaign beginning Sunday, 23 April 1916, assisted by visiting Evangelist E. D. Hobson.[dsc-1916-04-20] At the December 1916 Florida Conference, York was formally assigned to the “Frostproof and Avon Park Mission.”[lakeland-1916-12-12] By 1918 the growing congregation met in “an old tin building that also served as a skating rink.”[newssun-churches][maxwell-1976] In 1919, C. E. Lanier and Chesley Skipper donated building lots at South Lake and South Forest avenues, where contractor William L. Smith erected a permanent cream-brick sanctuary that was dedicated in May 1921, later enlarged in 1951 with Wesley Hall and Sunday school classrooms.[maxwell-1976]

Avon Park Church of Christ had been meeting in the town since 1913 and opened a building at 200 South Forest Avenue in 1917. The building was blown down in the 1926 hurricane. The congregation bought the lot from the city, salvaged what it could, and built again.[newssun-churches] This is the only known physical damage at Avon Park from the 1926 hurricane; the storm that broke the Florida land boom is otherwise recorded here only as a financial event.

Sanctuary Church of God, 107 North Florida Avenue, was established in June 1920.

Ministers and a tenth congregation, from the wider press

The digitized Florida press names clergy the church survey does not, and points to one denomination the survey omits altogether.

  • Rev. Ren Stock, pastor of the Avon Park Congregational church, was back at his home in Interlachen for a vacation in September 1912. The same note records that “Avon Park used to have two nice societies, and probably is the only town which, in one church, once owned three state officers in its own society” — Christian Endeavor societies, the interdenominational young people’s movement. For a town of a few hundred people to have supplied three state officers of the Florida union from a single church is a real measure of how organized its religious life was.[ocala-1912-09-05]
  • Rev. Richard Bolton and his family left Lakeland for Avon Park in January 1916, “Rev. Bolton having been appointed priest in charge of the Episcopal church” — the first named clergyman of the Church of the Redeemer on record.[lakeland-1916-01-21]
  • Rev. George H. York, appointed pastor of the Frostproof and Ridge circuit by the Florida Annual Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South, served Avon Park from late 1915 through late 1917, formally organizing the local Methodist congregation in March 1916 and conducting tent revival meetings in April 1916 before his reappointment to the Frostproof and Avon Park Mission.[dsc-1916-03-23][dsc-1916-04-20][lakeland-1916-12-12]
  • Rev. David Lander of Avon Park attended the sessions of the St. Johns Presbytery in October 1919, alongside Presbyterian ministers from Lakeland and Wauchula. While this establishes a Presbyterian minister at Avon Park by 1919, there is no widely documented evidence of a formal Presbyterian congregation operating under that name prior to 1920; worshippers of that denomination likely attended the Union Evangelical Church during those early decades.[lakeland-1919-10-22]

Catholic, Lutheran, and Jewish presence before 1920

There was no Catholic church, Lutheran church, or Jewish congregation in Avon Park before 1920.[wpa-church-archives]

The early Catholic population in the settlement was small, and residents traveled to neighboring towns like Wauchula or Sebring for Mass. The Catholic presence was not formalized locally until much later, initially celebrating Mass at the Tourist Club and the Brickel Building before plans began in 1956 for Our Lady of Grace Catholic Church, dedicated in 1957.

Similarly, there is no record of a Lutheran congregation before 1920. Resurrection Evangelical Lutheran Church, the town’s earliest, was organized on 18 April 1959.

Jewish religious life in Highlands County developed not in Avon Park, but in neighboring Sebring. While merchant Michael Kahn visited Avon Park in 1921, he chose to settle in Sebring, where founder George Sebring encouraged Jewish merchants and offered land for a synagogue. A formal Jewish congregation did not form in Avon Park before 1920, as the rural interior lacked the quorum required to establish a synagogue.[mosaic-jewish-life-florida]

The November 1920 Sanborn fire insurance sheets draw both the Church of the Redeemer (Episcopal) and First Congregational Church on sheet 3.[sanborn-1920] The index of “specials” on sheet 1 lists every named building the surveyors drew, and among them exactly five churches: the Church of the Redeemer (Episcopal) and the First Congregational Church on sheet 3, the First Baptist Church on sheet 2, and the First Christian Church and the Methodist Episcopal Church (South) on sheet 1, the last two standing on Forest Avenue near the graded and high schools.[sanborn-1920] No church of the town’s Black congregations, New Mount Olive A.M.E. or St. Mark Missionary Baptist, appears in the index or on the four sheets, so the map does not show where either met in 1920.[sanborn-1920] During this period, these diverse denominations established permanent church facilities and civic organizations, providing the spiritual and educational foundation for the expanding community.

1920s and 1930s expansions

The Works Progress Administration (WPA) Church Archives Inventory (1938–1940) provides founding dates for additional congregations. Mount Zion Christian Methodist Episcopal (C.M.E.) Church was founded in 1922. For the Black community, the WPA survey documented Testerina Baptist Church, established in 1871 (a date that suggests roots predating the town’s formal platting) and pastored in the 1930s by J.C. Hilliard; Saint Matthew’s Primitive Baptist, established in 1925 and pastored by C. Robinson; and St. Mary Primitive Baptist Church, established in 1929 with Rev. E.W. Williams as pastor. The Assembly of God Church was established in 1931.[wpa-church-archives] The WPA records also confirm the Avon Park Church of Christ was established in 1917, pastored by H.C. Winnett.[wpa-church-archives]

References

Where this comes from

Evidence
corroborated — More than one independent source agrees.
Review
unverified — Drafted from sources but not yet checked by a volunteer.
Rights
society

Sources

  1. Florida Department of State, Division of Historical Resources, Florida Black Heritage Trail
  2. Highlands Sun / Highlands News-Sun, New Mt. Olive AME Church celebrates 105th anniversary (2024)
  3. Robert Miller, Highlands News-Sun, 29 January 2023, 100-year-old churches in Avon Park (2023)
  4. Wikipedia, Union Congregational Church (Avon Park, Florida) (2026)
  5. Wikipedia, Episcopal Church of the Redeemer (Avon Park, Florida) (2026)
  6. O. R. Thacher (department editor), The De Soto County News, Arcadia, Fla., The De Soto County News, 26 January 1906, page 8: Avon Park department (1906)
  7. The Ocala Evening Star, The Ocala Evening Star, 5 September 1912, page 1: Christian Endeavor notes (1912)
  8. The Lakeland Evening Telegram, The Lakeland Evening Telegram, 21 January 1916: Lakeland Laconics (1916)
  9. The Lakeland Evening Telegram, The Lakeland Evening Telegram, 22 October 1919: St. Johns Presbytery (1919)
  10. Sanborn Map Company, Sanborn Fire Insurance Map from Avon Park, Highlands County, Florida, November 1920 (1920)
  11. The De Soto County News, The De Soto County News, 23 March 1916, page 5: Avon Park Column (1916) · newspaper
  12. The De Soto County News, The De Soto County News, 20 April 1916, page 5: Avon Park Column (1916) · newspaper
  13. The Lakeland Evening Telegram, The Lakeland Evening Telegram, 12 December 1916, page 5: Florida Conference Appointments (1916) · newspaper
  14. Leoma Bradshaw Maxwell, The First Hundred Years of Avon Park, Florida (../documents/the-first-hundred-years-of-avon-park_leoma-bradshaw-maxwell_1976.md) (1976) · book
  15. State Library and Archives of Florida, Works Progress Administration (WPA) Church Records for Avon Park, 1938-1940 (1940) · archival
  16. Baptist Convention of America, Baptist Convention of America Journals / Religious Documents (offline) · archival
  17. Jewish Museum of Florida, Mosaic: Jewish Life in Florida (exhibition and historical survey) (offline) · secondary

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