Roots of Faith
Our journey began on a bright Sunday morning, October 28, 1849, when Isaac Owen, our first pastor, preached beneath a large oak tree at 3rd and L streets. The very next Sunday, over 70 people gathered in the newly assembled Baltimore Chapel, a prefabricated building on a lot generously donated by John Sutter. As Sacramento’s third Protestant church, following St. Paul’s Episcopal and Pioneer Congregational, First United Methodist Church quickly became a place of faith, fellowship, and community.
In 2024, we joyfully celebrated 175 years of coming together in faith, service, and love.
First United Methodist Church was one of the first churches built in the Sacramento area in the mid-1800s, when California was seeking statehood. The illustration to the left is a watercolor painted in 1984 by lifelong Methodist Frances Riemer Burt, offering an artist’s rendition of the church’s buildings.
About the Artist
Frances Riemer Burt moved to Sacramento from a southern Wisconsin farming community in 1954 and brought her family to worship at the largest Methodist church in the city at the time. Over the years, she taught Sunday School, organized art shows and displays, served on or chaired various commissions, wrote and produced plays, and was an active member of the United Methodist Women.
