You’ve probably driven by the small white church on a knoll overlooking Rockville Pike on your way to downtown Bethesda and may have wondered how it came to be and who occupies it now.

This is the Bethesda Meeting House, built in 1850, where Abraham Lincoln is said to have spoken or worshiped, where Confederate soldiers briefly camped before a skirmish with Union soldiers, and which became the “church that named Bethesda” 153 years ago.

Over the years, the site was occupied by a Presbyterian congregation, a wealthy DC socialite who gained some renown as an artist, a Catholic missionary order, and finally a small Baptist group that died out a few years ago and left the church and its adjacent parsonage abandoned and in sad decay. The site is listed in the National Register of Historic Places and was one of the original sites on the 1979 Montgomery County Master Plan for Historic Preservation.

Last December, the Bethesda Historical Society purchased the three-acre site, thanks to a generous donation from a Bethesda couple who prefer to remain anonymous. Since then, the Society has worked, with extraordinary help from the community, to clean up the property, secure the premises, make urgent repairs, and arrange for the surveys necessary before restoration can begin and the eventual use of the property decided.

The Bethesda Meeting House site is a unique historical treasure that deserves to be preserved for future generations. Offers to help us are welcome.
Contact us at bethesdahistory@gmail.com

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