Twelve years before the town of Oriental was incorporated (May 10, 1899), a Methodist congregation was established in 1887. At first the Methodist congregation was primarily a Sunday school, with worship services – generally called “preaching” – about once a month. Eventually the Oriental Methodist Church was added to the Pamlico Circuit of the New Bern District.
Pamlico County was created in 1873 out of the northeastern part of Craven County. The population was sparse, and the transportation was probably more by water than by land. Fishing, lumbering, and farming were the main occupations. A few churches, then called “meeting houses,” and schools were spread throughout the county. Stonewall was the first county seat, then Vandemere, and a little later, Bayboro. The first Methodist Church in the area of what is now Pamlico County was at Kershaw, and the second, in 1848, was at Stonewall, named in the year 1865, and incorporated in 1870. Oriental Methodist Church came into being as an expression of the missionary, evangelistic, educational concern of the Methodist Episcopal Church organized in America in Baltimore on Christmas Day 1784. Through the efforts of the first bishops, Thomas Coke whose mission focused primarily on the West Indies and Africa, and Francis Asbury who traveled throughout the thirteen colonies, Methodism was becoming one of the two or three most numerous churches in the United States. In the year Oriental Methodist Church was founded, 1887, Louisburg College was 100 years old. North Carolina had three Methodist colleges, about 700 churches, and approximately 60,000 members. At this time the denomination was called The Methodist Episcopal Church, South, reflecting the division that occurred in 1845-1846 over the issue of slavery.
Before 1887 the few people who were around what is now Oriental traveled by horse and buggy to the only Methodist Church within eight miles, the Kershaw Methodist Church. From its beginning the Delamar and Harris families were among its faithful. Land for this church was donated by Paul C. Delamar in 1882 with the deed being recorded in 1899. The Church building as it stands today is actually the second erected on that site. The first stood parallel to the road and contained a galley in which slaves sat. The Kershaw Methodist Church continued in operation until July 9, 1955 with the last service being a funeral held that day. The Annual Conference officially discontinued the Kershaw Methodist Church on July 1, 1958, and the remaining members were transferred into the Oriental Methodist Church.