Our History

Older Than Methodism

Dumbarton United Methodist Church, has been a part of Georgetown continuously since 1772, meeting first in a cooper's shop, then on Montgomery Street (now 28th Street), and finally at the present site on Dumbarton Avenue in 1850.  When the church was remodeled in 1897, the present Romanesque front was added.  The stained glass windows were installed from 1898 to 1900. Inaugurated before the official creation of the Methodist Church, Dumbarton UMC is one of the oldest continuing Methodist congregations in the world.
 

Other Methodist churches that branched off from Dumbarton include Capitol Hill, Foundry, Mt. Zion and St. Luke's campus, which is now part of Metropolitan UMC. In the late 1960s, Dumbarton began transforming itself from a strictly neighborhood church to a beacon of inclusiveness and a force for social action, drawing from the entire Washington Metropolitan Area.