Mount Salem U. M. Church

In 1854, a Methodist Society was organized in the African American community in New Castle. Not long after the society’s inception, the group adopted the name Mount Salem Methodist Church and purchased land on which to build a church. Mount Salem’s first members helped build the first church in 1878, carrying bricks and other building materials by hand to the site. The adjacent graveyard was expanded from the original church property through land acquisitions in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The Mount Salem congregation opened their first community center in the basement of the church during the Great Depression. For more than 150 years the Mount Salem United Methodist Church and its congregation supported the community through fellowship and service.