As early as 1883 and as late as the 1930s, the Advent Chapel was in use at Cash Corner, located at 368-370 Main St., near the corner of Skillings Street. The fire station now covers the site. Back in 2005, I talked with resident Waverly Hammond who remembered peeking through the windows of the chapel when he was a young boy, watching the people inside “shaking” during the service. Before we look more closely at this chapel, let’s start by looking at the history of the Adventist movement.

The Advent religions are linked to William Miller, a farmer born in Massachusetts in 1782, who began preaching his beliefs in 1831. He had studied the Bible and came to believe that the second coming of Christ, and the end of the world, was going to happen around the year 1843. His followers became known as Millerites. When 1843 came near, Miller further predicted the timing, saying that Christ would return sometime between March 21, 1843, and March 21, 1844. When that didn’t happen, he came up with a new date, April 18. When that day came and went, he admitted his mistake, but stated that he still felt the second coming was imminent. His followers settled on a new date, Oct. 22, 1844, which also came and went. After the “Great Disappointment” of Oct. 22, most of the former Millerites gave up their beliefs, but there were still others who continued to believe in the idea of a second coming and continued with their meetings and Bible study.

While there are multiple variations of Advent faiths today, all of whom point to William Miller as part of their history, two major branches include the Advent Christian Church, founded in 1860, and the Seventh-day Adventists, founded in 1863. Some also point to the Jehovah’s Witnesses as another denomination that descended from the Millerites.

The Adventists are Protestant Christians who share a belief that the second coming of Christ is imminent. The Seventh-day Adventists are named that because they hold the belief that they should worship on the “seventh day,” meaning on Saturday, instead of on the traditional Sunday that most other Christian faiths follow.

In South Portland, we have some interesting ties to the Adventist faiths. One is Ellen Gould Harmon White who, with her husband, was one of the founders of the Seventh-day Adventists. Ellen was born in Gorham in 1827 and followed William Miller’s preachings. After the second coming didn’t arrive in 1844, she remained a believer and had the first of her visions in December of 1844. In our Knightville neighborhood, she was at a prayer meeting with four other women on the second floor of a building on the corner of Ocean and C Street (where the Griffin Club would later be located at 62 Ocean St.) when she had a vision of the Advent people ascending to heaven and of the second coming of Christ. She was a prolific author during her lifetime; among the many things she wrote about was her vision in Knightville. She married another former Millerite, the Adventist minister the Rev. James White, in 1846. She and her husband, along with a few other leaders in the movement, were the founders of the Seventh-day Adventist faith. Members of the faith were guided by her visions and prophecies; she claimed to have had about 2,000 visions.

The Advent Christian faith, also called Second Advent, was founded in 1860. In a history of the Advent Christian Church of Portland  that appeared in the Evening Express on Jan. 17, 1925, it was stated that William Miller “came to Portland and held services in the Free Baptist Church on Casco Street … it was there that the apostle delivered a series of lectures on the second coming of Christ between March 11 and 23, 1840. In 1842 Mr. Miller gave another course of lectures on the subject, and a sufficient number of converts had accepted his view to warrant the formation of a society, and it was not long before there were enough attendants to call for meetings in two different places, one being held in a hall on Congress Street and the other at Union Hall, in the ‘heater’ building at the corner of Congress and Free streets, at which meeting place both societies finally united and for a number of years held services.”

After the Great Disappointment, followers in Portland continued to meet, calling themselves the Portland Advent Society. They met and worshipped in various halls until they decided to build their own church in 1890. Portland’s first Advent Christian Church was constructed at Congress Place, 305 Cumberland Ave. in Portland, and dedicated on March 27, 1891.

Here in South Portland (known then as Cape Elizabeth), however, Second Adventists from both Cape Elizabeth and Scarborough were already worshipping together in their own building. As early as 1883, there was already a chapel built on Main Street near Cash Corner. On an 1883 deed, the Rev. J.B. Thornton, his brother Col. Charles C.G. Thornton and other Thornton family members deeded the land, with the chapel on it, to the “First 2nd Advent Church of Cape Elizabeth.” In 1891, the members from Cape Elizabeth separated from Scarborough and formed their own society.

Commonly known as the “Advent Chapel,” the 100-seat church at 368-370 Main St. was listed in the 1891 Portland Directory with “Mrs. Roberts” as its first clerk. Within a year, however, Charles G. Phinney was the chapel clerk and he would serve in that capacity for nearly a decade. We’ve written previously about Charles Phinney, who was born in 1852 in Cape Elizabeth, the son of Major Crockett Phinney and Rebecca Roberts. Charles, with his brother Thomas, operated an ice cutting and delivery business known as Phinney Bros. The Phinney family lived in a house in western South Portland near Crockett’s Corner (the intersection of Broadway and Westbrook Street). Several of the Phinneys were Advent Christians.

The Advent Chapel at Cash Corner sometimes didn’t have an assigned minister. Over the years, there were frequently traveling preachers and ministers from other churches who would preach there. In 1903, however, the Rev. L. Alfreda Brewster was the minister there. An article in the Bangor Daily News in 1905 described her: “The evangelist, Rev. L. Alfreda Brewster, is a preacher of unusual ability. The silver tones of her voice, the intellectual grasp of truth, the strong spiritual tone and the very evident earnestness and sincerity are among the reasons why the people listen to her with so much satisfaction and profit.”

From 1904 to 1915, the Rev. Charles King, who served as the pastor of the Portland Advent Christian Church, would often also serve as acting pastor at the Cash Corner chapel.

Perhaps the minister with the greatest ties to the chapel would be the Rev. Hiram Mains, who was a South Portland resident for 57 years. Mains was one of the leading people involved in the founding of the chapel. His daughter Miriam was married to Charles G. Phinney’s son, Charles W. Phinney. Hiram Mains was a member and past president of the Southwestern Conference of the Advent Christian Church, and he preached at churches throughout southern Maine. Cash Corner was a frequent pulpit for him, perhaps because of its proximity to his home at 12 Westbrook St. (formerly numbered 823 Westbrook St.) on the corner of Main Street.

From its start through roughly 1920, the chapel was active with regular services, a Sunday School, annual picnics and other activities. In the early 1920s, the Advent Chapel closed for two or three years, then reopened in July 1925 with Mains conducting the service. The chapel failed to have a comeback to its earlier level of activity, however. The building was used in 1931 for a series of religious lectures, and sporadic services were held there through the early 1930s.

In the fall of 1938, the South Portland City Council gave orders for the abandoned chapel to be either repaired or removed, but Mains had died in 1937 and the city was having difficulty determining the ownership of the building. In January 1939, a permit was given to Clifford J. Welch to demolish the old chapel. The city would later acquire the property for non-payment of taxes from the J.B. Thornton heirs. The former Cash Corner fire station opened on the site in 1970.

South Portland Historical Society would like to find a photograph of the Advent Chapel at 368-370 Main St. If you have information or photographs to share about the chapel, or any other interesting aspect of South Portland’s past, please reach out to the South Portland Historical Society by email at sphistory04106@gmail.com, by phone at (207) 767-7299, or by mail at 55 Bug Light Park, South Portland, ME 04106.

Kathryn Onos DiPhilippo is the executive director of the South Portland Historical Society.