The Universalist message was first preached in Kinston, North Carolina, by the Rev. Dr. Daniel Bragg Clayton, and later by the Rev. Thomas Chapman, who came to North Carolina in 1903. A Mission Circle history found in the church cornerstone states that the Kinston Universalist Church was officially organized on April 3, 1910, under the direction of Willard Bodell, the church's first minister. A church profile history from 1985 states that the church was organized in 1908, and that the Rev. Bodell was hired by the congregation in 1910. On June 13, 1913, ground for the church was broken on a lot at the corner of McLewean and Lenoir streets. The cornerstone was laid on February 2, 1914, and the church was completed in September of the same year.
Beginning in 1920, the church began collecting books, and opened Kinston's first free library with a collection of over three thousand books. On September 2, 1941, a fire caused considerable damage to the church, which was repaired over the course of the next year. In 1947, a three-room annex to the church was built, and a parsonage followed in 1956. The original church served until 1981, when the congregation decided that the space was too large and expenses were too high for their dwindling membership. The church was sold to the McLewean Street Church of Christ, Inc., and from 1981 to 1983 the congregation met in local restaurants. In 1983, the congregation bought a church in a residential neighborhood at 1517 West Road. By 1994, the congregation had fallen to twelve members, and the church officially closed on November 12, 1995. The church was sold, and all assets were placed in a trust with the Thomas Jefferson District of the Unitarian Universalist Association.
From the guide to the Records, 1914-1996., (Andover-Harvard Theological Library, Harvard Divinity School)
