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Archive for March 16th, 2009

Curlew church is one of Pinellas County’s oldest

Curlew Methodist Church in Palm Harbor

I’m from New England, a place where communities often stretch back several hundred years. It’s not like that here in North Pinellas County.

The area where I live, made up of Palm Harbor, Dunedin, Tarpon Springs and even much of Clearwater, was little more than orange groves just 20 or 30 years ago. There are many wonderful assets in this region, but the local history is a bit thin.

But that’s not true of everything. A case in point is Curlew United Methodist Church, located in a little corner of Palm Harbor just north of Curlew Road.

Most churches in this area are not very old, but Curlew United Methodist Church was founded 140 years ago, in 1869. John Sutton, a local resident, decided that this part of North Pinellas County, a near-frontier area back then, needed a place of worship. He called together 22 of his friends and neighbors, and he then provided six acres of land for the church and an adjoining cemetery.

Sutton wasn’t done at that point; he also provided logs from the property, which were rafted down to a saw mill in Clearwater, cut into boards, and then rafted back up the coast.

The church members agreed to help build the church, which Sutton named Curlew after the pink birds that flocked nearby. Actually, Sutton thought the birds were curlew birds, but he was incorrect; they actually were pink spoonbills. No matter; the name “Curlew” stuck, and that’s the name of the church today.

About 12 years later, the church was destroyed by fire. The members held their services under a big oak tree on the property for a couple of years, then built a new building. However, that building wasn’t very well put together, and members tore it down in 1902 and built a new one.

That building was remodeled in 1942, and it still stands on the site and serves the members of the congregation, but not as the main church building; that structure was erected in 1969.

The cemetary that Sutton founded surrounds the church on two sides, and its gravestones provide a fascinating record of life and death in North Pinellas County from the late 1800s until the present day.

Today, the Curlew United Methodist Church still counts descendants of John Sutton among its worshippers. It is the oldest church in Pinellas County to still occupy its original site.

Tags: church, Curlew, history, north pinellas, Palm Harbpr