Bradford's Chapel was also known as Green Swamp Church
Reflections revisits the writings of Thomas Stubbs as relevant to the arrival of Methodists into the Sumter community. Information and photos were taken from The Sumter Item archives. The writings of Thomas McAlpin Stubbs and Dr. Anne King Gregorie were also consulted.
According to Stubbs, "Two years after the close of the Revolution the Methodists were organized as a district and separate church. It was at their Conference in Baltimore, Maryland, during Christmas week of 1784, that this step was taken. Their outstanding leader, who was to prove the greatest influence in the establishment and spread of Methodism in America, was Bishop Francis Asbury. For some 30 years until his death in 1816, this tireless itinerant minister had for his circuit the vast area from Northern New Hampshire to South Georgia, a distance he covered on horseback sometimes twice in a single year."
Richard Bradford was a large landowner and an Episcopalian who lived a little west of what is known as "Second Mill." He had obtained a grant of land in this area as early as 1774. His home was about a good day's ride on horseback for Bishop Asbury to the home of Col. James Rembert.
Tradition holds that it was at Bradford's home that Bishop Asbury would stop for the night en route from Camden to Charleston and that the first Methodist prayer meeting ever held in this immediate vicinity took place at Bradford's property.
Bradford soon provided a site for a chapel and perhaps gave Asbury material for the building as well. This building stood on the north side of the highway between First and Second Mills. At this location, the Methodists worshipped from about 1786 until 1827. Both Rembert Church and Bradford Chapel were part of the Santee Circuit, which covered a considerable area and portions of several counties. They were served at that time not by "stationed" preachers but by itinerant ministers or circuit riders.
By 1827, population growth on John Gayle's farm two miles to the east called for the construction of a church in Sumterville, and Bradford Chapel, or Meetinghouse, was abandoned.