Zion Methodist Church burns near Milton in 1943

Just an hour before weekly Sunday service Oct. 10, 1943, Zion Methodist Church two miles east of Milton caught fire due to a defective heater. According to the Oct. 11 edition of the Morning News, there was no one in the one-story frame building that was built in 1874. The fire was noticed by a motorist driving by who saw smoke coming from the building. “Fanned by high winds, the flames spread rapidly, and the structure was doomed when firemen from Milton, Lewes, Ellendale and Georgetown arrived,” the newspaper account reads. “They confined their efforts to preventing the blaze from spreading to nearby woods.” By December, work had begun to replace the church. Nearly two years to the day after the fire, the brick church was completed. The church still stands today along Route 16 at the corner of the aptly named Zion Church Road near Delmarva Christian’s Milton Campus. A historic marker was erected in front of the church in 2003.