This site long served the religious, educational, and public interests of Mechanicsburg residents. A local Methodist congregation built its first church here in 1820, and townspeople also used the structure as the village school. The Methodists replaced that building in 1837 with a brick church, then erected the Mechanicsburg First Methodist Church here in 1858 as a larger, more permanent home for the growing congregation. In 1894 an African American based Second Baptist congregation purchased the building for $2,850 and prospered there. In 1895 the Baptist Association of Ohio organized a Baptist State Convention that met here the following year. In 1897 the Reverend Elmer W. B. Curry, believing racial issues in America could only be settled gradually, established the Curry Institute here in the Tuskegee tradition before it later moved to Urbana. The site had also been used as Mechanicsburg's first cemetery until Maple Grove Cemetery was established and the burials were relocated there. In 1936 a fire sparked by flames from the neighboring Culbertson Buggy Works damaged the church steeple, forcing removal of the 1859 800-pound bell to the Mechanicsburg School Building, and the smaller school bell was given to the church in its place. The building is the oldest church in Mechanicsburg and is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.