I encountered some interesting problems in researching Methodist churches here in Maryland. I am an active member of the Archaeological Society of Maryland and our local Mid-Potomac Chapter. I volunteer with our county's Archaeological department. About a year ago a question was raised about a one-time Methodist Episcopal Church in a local village. Doing some basic research I learned that the church, founded in the 1840s, had burned in 1890. Several of us visited the site and found a field stone foundation and what appeared to have been a basement, now partly filled in with modern trash. A short examination found charcoal and some old nails confirming the burning story. The church was never rebuilt. Why not? At that point we decided there would not be much physical evidence to find but continued the archival research to compile a short history. At the time this congregation was founded, less than a half mile away in the same village another Methodist church was founded. The obvious question was: Why? The Methodist Church in the US has divided and recombined many times. The original split was over the question of episcopy, that is : Do we need Bishops? Later there were the Southern Methodists who supported slavery and left the main body, and a split off of the African-American members founding the African Methodist Episcopal Church. Eventually all except the AME were reunited in the United Methodist Church. We were interested in obtaining a picture or drawing and perhaps locating some families whose grandparents had been members of the congregation. That is when the fun started. I contacted the Maryland dioscese to see what info they had. Essentialy nothing. There is a file, or rather boxes of old pictures stored in various houses but no index. Very few records existed before 1900. Visiting indidvidual churches I found their records to be incomplete. There was also a problem I had not expected,. The pastors for these churches were responsible for as many as four different congregations. There were frequent changes in those ministers' home church where they lived and normally had a house provided by the congregations, but the congregations were shifted from one charge to another over time. There was apparently no shift of the records. I did find Sunday School and adult Bible Study Classes with lists of members but then there would not be a record for several years and then some leader would resume the record keeping. I was able to learn that a few members of the Methodist Episcopal Church had joined two exixting churches, that is after 1890 they appeared on the rolls without explanation. I also found a report by two brothers who had been paid to recover the stones use to build the church and, with their horse drawn wagons, move them to a nearby farm. The family who owned the farm used the stones to build a wall around the family cemetery on the property. It is still there as is the residence. Oh, and the family made a large donation to a local Episopal Church to maintain the cemetery in perpetuity. Jim Owens