Our earliest known records tell us that Free Methodists in the Washington metropolitan area held a camp meeting in Falls Church, Virginia, in 1889, ten years after the first churches were founded in Washington and Virginia. Christian family camping was a popular social activity, becoming for a time a national phenomenon, often drawing enormous crowds as people came from far and near to be with friends and family, receive spiritual renewal, and escape the summer heat. Through the years as crowds increased and situations changed, new locations had to be found. By the end of the 1920’s, the Washington Free Methodist Church sought to establish a permanent campground, where they could have cottages instead of having to pitch tents. New city fire regulations called for masonry structures. Finding this too costly, Free Methodists went to the countryside of Maryland renting farmland and continuing to camp in tents for some years. In 1931, they were able to purchase land in Spencerville, and, as they say, the rest is history.

Our museum is named “The Dr. Gene R. Alston Memorial Camp Museum.” Our “Serenity Garden” is named for Julia Arnold Shelhamer: one an accomplished black man and one an ambitious white woman. They were two ordinary people who did extraordinary things.