Methodism came to Jasper with the city’s founder, Dr. Edward Gordon Musgrove, who donated land for the courthouse and most of downtown Jasper. In 1826, he and others built a large hewn-log structure that served as both a Methodist church and a school. Around 1858, a two-story frame church was constructed. Unsubstantiated local accounts hold that General James H. Wilson’s cavalry corps burned it in March 1865. Another frame building, shared with the Masons, was erected here in 1869, and in 1888 it was replaced by a brick church with a steeple. When a new church was planned in 1915, Lycurgus B. Musgrove, grandson of Dr. Edward Musgrove, funded the white marble exterior and donated the stained glass dome in memory of his mother, Elizabeth Cain Musgrove. First United Methodist Church Jasper was dedicated debt-free in 1927. With white marble from Georgia, a mahogany wood interior, stained glass windows, and an art glass interior dome, it is among Alabama’s most outstanding examples of beaux arts neoclassical architecture. It was listed in the Alabama Register of Landmarks and Heritage in 1983 and in the National Register of Historic Places in 1985. On Tuesday, September 17, 1940, the funeral of William Brockman Bankhead, Speaker of the United States House of Representatives, was held at the church. Bankhead, born in 1874, was elected to the House in 1917 and served as Speaker from 1936 until his death in 1940. A political ally of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt and his New Deal policies, Bankhead drew an estimated 40,000 mourners to Jasper, including Alabama notables, President Roosevelt, members of his Cabinet, and state and congressional representatives and senators, among them Harry S. Truman. They arrived by special train from Washington D.C., and a wooden ramp was built at the church so the official car carrying the President could drive up to the main door.