Guess what today is.

Church Sweet Home turns 127 years old today.

Imagine life 127 years ago!

A Republican from Indiana was president of the United States (yes, that would be Benjamin Harrison, an attorney perhaps best known for the McKinley Tariff and the Sherman Antitrust Act).

Horsepower had real meaning then because horses were a common form of transportation for most people; some also had the privilege of traveling by rail.

News came by word of mouth, Western Union telegrams and newspapers. No radio. No TV. No internet.

Author Laura Ingalls Wilder was 24 and had been married to Almanzo Wilder for six years in 1891.

The Wrigley Company had been founded earlier in the year and was about to launch a new product: Chewing gum.

The U.S. flag had only 44 stars. Utah, Oklahoma, New Mexico, Arizona, Alaska and Hawaii were not yet states.

Functional airplanes hadn’t yet been invented, in-home refrigerators were decades away and American women did not yet have the right to vote.

That was the year our church, now residence, was built. After many years of meeting in people’s homes, the Methodists secured a piece of property in September 1891. Here’s what happened next, according to one newspaper account:

On Nov. 29, 1891, the first church was dedicated by Rev. Smith, who planned the building and worked with his son for nine weeks to complete it. On the day of dedications, the following was received: cash $39; two stoves; one pulpit; two chairs and some lamps donated by the J.M. Carey family.

For more than a dozen decades, parishioners celebrated Christmas and Easter, baptized babies, married couples, buried the dead, sang, learned, prayed, cried and dined in this little church.

As a reader of this blog, you know the status of this building today: It’s our home, born of the structure left by the Methodist congregation when they vacated in 2016.

Happy birthday, Church Sweet Home. May you still be standing in 127 years.