First United Methodist Church, one of the oldest congregations in Genesee County, began with services held in Lewis Buckingham’s home in 1836. The Reverend Luther D. Whitney, a Flint circuit rider, and nine other people organized the congregation in 1838. Its first church, built in 1850, was moved to Genesee Street in 1865-66. The Reverend Seth Reed, a patriarch of Michigan Methodism, dedicated the congregation’s present Gothic Revival church on January 31, 1886.