"The Countrey about the mouth of this river is verry fine” wrote William Clark on June 26, 1804 as he and others arrived at the present site of Kansas City. There, at the junction of the Missouri and Kansas rivers, members of the Lewis and Clark expedition, commissioned by President Thomas Jefferson, spent nearly four days making observations before moving up the Missouri river to explore the Pacific Northwest. When they returned two years later, a flurry of interest erupted to move to the newly opening area.
Forty years later, many people coming in search of a new destiny, would leave the southwestern edges of Kansas City from a site called Westport, heading for Santa Fe in oxen drawn Conestoga wagons. Their first day out usually ended at Gum Springs, but a short distance from the present site of our church. Gum Springs was a natural watering hole surrounded by sweet gum trees. Accompanying those settlers were copies of John Wesley’s Practical Physic steeped with his medical advice and remedies. Some settlers decided to stay in the area rather than venture any further. Naturally, they were inclined to support and expand the early Methodist expansion west.
Our church stems from those settlers. In June of 1863, Franklin Coggeshall, Lydia Johnson and Henry Larsen called a few children of the early town of Shawnee together in a small building about one-half mile south of our present City Hall and adjacent to Gum Springs. There they held their first Sunday school class, making our Sunday school system at Shawnee United Methodist Church the oldest continually operating Sunday school in Kansas. Charter application for Shawnee Methodist Episcopal Church occurred on August 14, 1878. Thus our history began.
While the first building associated with our church dates to 1840 on land adjacent to 59th and Bluejacket, the initial building was erected by Shawnee Indians who were associated with the Shawnee Indian Methodist Episcopal Church. By 1880 the church was moved to its current site with construction of a brick building at the corner of Johnson Drive and Ballentine. By 1922 the City of Gum Springs Kansas was reincorporated as Shawnee, KS and the first of our current buildings was dedicated. Since then the church has had three expansion projects with construction of the current sanctuary in 1953.