Brother Wagner made a statement of the business part of the new enterprise, and four hundred dollars was pledged towards the same. The trustees then came forward, and in the disciplinary form presented the building for dedication. The declaration thereof was made by Dr. Sherman, and the dedicatory prayer by the pastor, Brother Wagner.
An anthem (by the choir of the First Church, who, with their organist, kindly volunteered) was followed by the Doxology and Benediction, and the public worship of Almighty God according to Methodist Episcopal usage was thus begun in West Medford eighteen months after the organization of the Second Church, which, by the incorporation of its trustees in January following, assumed the present name of Trinity.
It is doubtful if such a case as this has a parallel. For a church to organize with ten members, find no public meeting place, lose one of its most energetic ones by death, reorganize with seven (but two men), build a house of worship (that the press styled ‘a marvel of neatness and beauty’), furnish the same complete for occupancy, during that time gather seven more members while holding no public service (for lack of place) until its dedication, was certainly in itself a novel situation. But this is just what was done.
The entire cost of the property was between eight and nine thousand dollars. Four thousand five hundred dollars was raised by mortgage, and for a time two hundred and fifty dollars was floated. While the chapel was in construction came the great tidal wave of financial depression that followed the Wall street panic known as Black Friday. The Boston City Missionary Society, that had given encouragement to the enterprise and promise of financial help, in the stringency was unable to redeem its promise and we were left to our own resources. Nevertheless, the work went on and the chapel was completed on time, and the prophecy of the tenement house still remains unfulfilled, though in its reconstructed
