A congregation has met at Trinity United Methodist Church continuously since 1873. It was the first church organized in today’s Charlotte County, and its members have been an integral part of local history. In the 1860s, Joel and Jesse Knight, James McKay, and Jacob Summerlin built a dock to ship cattle and fish, followed by the Knights’ store and post office, T.S. Morgan’s sugar mill, and Nathan DeCoster’s saw mill. In 1881, about a dozen families, cow hunters, and fishermen lived in Charlotte Harbor, and Trinity United Methodist Church represented civilization in a frontier wilderness. The first church building, a box frame with a palmetto thatch roof near today’s Melbourne Street, served as both a church and a school until a second structure was built there in 1889 on land donated by Mathieu and Mary E. Knight Giddens. That wood-framed, shingled-roof building was dedicated in 1890 and was later destroyed by the 1910 hurricane. A third church survived the hurricane of 1926 but swayed during services in 1944. Men, women, and children then razed it and constructed the fourth church building over six years. Dedicated in November 1950, the current masonry church has stained glass windows, restored pews from 1890, and a tower with a church bell that rings for services every Sunday.