Rockville was an early center of Methodism in Montgomery County, where Methodists first met in private homes and were visited occasionally by a circuit rider minister. In 1835, the trustees of the Methodist Episcopal Church purchased lot 82 in the Original Town of Rockville for $40 as a place to erect a house of worship. The Rockville Circuit was established in 1845 to serve 715 white and 527 Negro Methodists, and the Rockville Methodist Episcopal Church incorporated in 1852 and erected a brick house of worship about 1858. In 1845, a doctrinal dispute over slavery split the Methodist Episcopal Church into northern and southern factions. In Rockville, the southern faction left the congregation and built a new church on West Montgomery Avenue in 1868, while the old church remained with the northern, non-slavery Methodists and became a predominantly black congregation. In 1892, the church, then named Jerusalem Methodist Episcopal Church, was dismantled and enlarged. It housed black students in 1912 after the Rockville Negro Elementary School burned and served as the site of graduation ceremonies through the 1950s. It merged with Mount Pleasant Methodist Church in 1989, and the building had its belfry removed, its stairs expanded, and its exterior stuccoed in 1954.