| Five small Methodist Protestant churches, four in northern Howard County, constitute the Lisbon Circuit of the Maryland Annual Conference in 1899. These bore the names of Poplar Springs, Jennings Chapel, Union Chapel, Howard Chapel, and Ridgeville. Lisbon Circuit, according to notes in the Register, 1886-1897, was separated as an independent charge from the Howard Circuit in the spring of 1886. Ridgeville, located on the border of Howard and Carroll counties, was initially within the circuit boundaries as was a place called Mt. Pleasant in Montgomery County. But the congregation in the tiny village of Ridgeville, which lay south of the B & O Railroad tracts, was at various times placed on other circuits.
In 1928 when the circuit parsonage was moved to poplar Springs, two miles from Lisbon, the Lisbon Circuit was renamed Poplar Springs Circuit with only three of the original churches in it: Union, Jennings, and Poplar Springs. At this juncture membership at Union Chapel was small.
Poplar Springs remained a charge on the new Baltimore Annual Conference of the Methodist Church after union in 1939-1940 and continued part of the West Washington District when the United Methodist Church was forged in 1965.
Union Chapel was removed from the Poplar Springs Charge in 1955. Thereafter it disappeared from the Conference Directory. lisbon rejoined Poplar Springs for a time and by 1980 was a separate charge. Poplar Springs Charge itself has only two churches, Jennings Chapel and the church at Poplar Springs. Mount Airy Charge has Howard Chapel and Ridgeville, the remainder of the former Methodist Protestant and Methodist Episcopal congregations. |
