The Bell Tower @ Otterbein Chapel - Middletown, MD - Bell Towers on Waymarking.com

This old-fashioned country church is a throwback to the days of the country-style churches. This building was constructed and erected in the heyday of this town. I called Peter Kurtze from the Maryland Historical Trust who confirmed for me the historical nature and NRHP contributing status of this building. Although post-Civil War by about two decades, the building is in harmony with the rest of the streetscape and I think contributes nicely to the overall integrity of this part of The National Road. It is a very interesting building that makes one stop to notice, especially if you are waymarker. The number 2 is featured prominently on the building as it is the second top in the walking tour of the historic, Civil War town. All the more prominent contributing structures like this church and the Central Maryland Heritage League bear these over-sized numbers on the front of their buildings.

The first thing I noticed (and looked for) was of course the cornerstone which I found on the front right corner of the building, a few inches from the ground, painted white like the rest of the brick building and hard to notice. The large stone dwarfs the surrounding brick in which it is embedded. The stone block simply reads:

The stone is at the northwest corner of the building.

I also liked the small bell tower at the top of the building, sitting on the center of the roof, where the two sides angle up and meet. The tower is a rectangular prism, open on all four ends, half circle openings, long at the bottom, with wooden balustrades so obviously you can walk around up there. The wood-constructed pediment, which really hangs far over the tower is eroded on the southwest corner. Victorian era brackets are under the cornice. Horizontal wood siding makes up all four faces. The bottom of the tower also has a cornice with identical matching brackets found at the top. As far as I could see (and I could not get the entire full view) the tower is currently devoid of a bell).

I found an obscure reference to the church in an old book called Landmark history of the United brethren church by Daniel Eberly and Isaiah H. Albright and Commodore I. Berton Brane (1911), pages 244-245. SOURCE. The same exact excerpt can be found in another, more recent book, History of Frederick County Maryland with a Biographical Record of Representative Families in Two Volumes by T.J.C. With Folger McKinsey Williams (1979). The charter for the United Brethren Church was granted May 11, 1854; and on July 29, 1854, a deed was made to Rev. John Ruebush, Jacob Young, Enos Doub and Jonathan Perry, trustees of the church, for half an acre of land, by Christian Remsberg. This property was sold by the trustees to the school board of the town in 1882. They then bought a lot on Main Street, and thereon erected the present church, "Otterbein Chapel." It was erected in 1882, and dedicated that fall by Rev. J. W. Hott. The trustees were C. H. Crowell, Enos Doub, Jacob Willhide, Lewis P. Doub and Benjamin Remsberg. As to the pastors in Middletown, the conference of 1802 placed the appointments on Frederick Circuit, which included Middletown, in the care of George Adam Geeing, who supplied the needs of the work as well as he could.