The first Methodist class in Delaware was organized in 1818 and later became William Street United Methodist Church. Its first church building was dedicated in 1824 directly across N. Franklin Street from the present location, and three other church buildings followed on the site of the present church. Adam Poe, the first pastor of William Street Church in the early 1840’s, played a leading role in the founding of Ohio Wesleyan University in 1842, and the university’s first commencements were held in William Street Church. All other United Methodist churches in Delaware derive from William Street Church. This corner of N. Franklin and W. William Streets was the boyhood home of Rutherford B. Hayes, who later became President of the United States in the 1870’s. Hayes remembered living in a new two-story brick house on the northeast corner of William and Franklin Streets opposite the old brick Methodist meeting house, the first William Street Church. In 1846, the trustees of William Street Church bought this lot from Hayes’s mother for a new church structure, and the former Hayes home became the church’s first parsonage. Three church buildings have occupied this site.