 The congregation constructed a chapel by 1787, the first house of worship to be built by the Methodist Episcopal Church on the Eastern Shore.The present church was erected in 1855 and was the scene of the establishment of the Independent Convention of Accomack, a group of Methodist Churches that left the northern church in 1860 and, at the close of the war, joined the Methodist Episcopal Church, South.By the turn of the 20th century, as the population continued to shift from Mappsburg to Painter and other new towns, the church erected a second building in Painter in 1906.