John William Love Mayhew, a descendant of Governor Thomas Mayhew of the Elizabeth Island chain including Martha's Vineyard and Nantucket, served in the Continental Army in 1777 while living in Virginia under Captains Speer and Lewis, Colonels Coleman and Capum, and General George Washington. In 1791 he came into North Carolina to the banks of the Catawba and purchased at public auction all of the lands east of the Catawba River then owned by the Long and Alley families. There he cleared ground, built a brush arbor, and began to preach, on the site where McKendree Chapel Church now stands. In 1793 he brought his family and his two brothers, Reason Lucus and Aaron, to south Iredell County. As the first Methodist preacher in south Iredell County, he first preached under the brush arbor and then in 1793 erected a log building known as Mayhew Meeting House. A plank structure was built in 1804 and organized as McKendree Chapel Church, named for William McKendree, the first native born American Methodist Episcopal bishop, who according to tradition later visited the church. Mayhew ministered McKendree Chapel Church until 1837 and then by deed and will gave the church and cemetery to the Methodist Episcopal church, and he and his family are buried in the church cemetery. Mayhew and his family carved the Mayhewtown community out of the wilderness across most of the land now known as the Lake Norman or Mayhew Peninsula, and the community eventually had its own school, post office, and country physician, Dr. John T. Moore, with mail dispatched from Statesville by the old Statesville Road pony express and a stage coach line from Statesville crossing the Catawba River at Beatties Ford on its way to Charleston, S.C.