Mentz Church

Mentz Church is a historic community church located at Montezuma in Cayuga County, New York, about seven miles northwest of the city of Auburn. The church was organized by an extended family of Scotch-Irish immigrant farmers, named Gilmore and Bell, who had been farming nearby since 1810. John and Jane Gilmore then began hosting Methodist camp meetings in their barn, attended by members of their extended family and neighbors. The nascent congregation then acquired a triangle of land from the Weston family at the intersection of what are now McDonald Road and Old Mentz Church Road, and erected the one-room, 30'x 38', single-story building. They gathered stones from their fields for the foundation and milled timbers and boards from their woods for the 30'x38' one-story building with a peaked roof. On May 10, 1825, the Rev. Samuel Bibbins of nearby Weedsport led a service dedicating the new structure as “First Methodist Episcopal Church”. The State of New York granted the congregation's incorporation a year later, with John Gilmore, William Bell, and James Weston serving as the first trustees. Area residents soon came to refer to the building as the "Mentz Church", due to its location in the Town of Mentz. In 1859, the County divided Mentz into three separate towns, Mentz, Montezuma and Throop, with the church in the newly formed Town of Montezuma. Area residents, however, continu

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