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Safety Harbor Church

Introduction

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The community of Safety Harbor, once known as Green Springs, represented an early settlement site along the Pinellas Peninsula, near the Odet Philippe homestead and the Bay View community. Early church services in the area were held at Sylvan Abbey Methodist Episcopal Church by 1886, but gatherings ended at the Abbey after 1900. The 1888 pulpit was brought from the Abbey to this structure. The wood for the church came from E. H. Coachman’s sawmill, once located on a site within present-day Philippe Park.

Images

  • A trail at Philippe Park in Safety Harbor, Florida, undated. Wood for the Safety Harbor Church came from E.H. Coachman’s sawmill, which was located on property that is now within Philippe Park.
  • Dr. Byrd and Lula McMullen, circa 1912. Dr. Bryd McMullen, son of Bethel McMullen and grandson of James Paramore and Elizabeth Campbell McMullen, became the second superintendent of the Sunday school at Green Springs Episcopal Church South (now known as the Safety Harbor Church) when the first superintendent, Odett William Booth, stepped down, around 1911.
  • The Tampa Bay (or Tarpon Springs) Hurricane of 1921 in St. Petersburg, Florida. The Tampa Bay Hurricane of 1921 was the last time a hurricane made a direct hit in Pinellas County. This hurricane blew the Safety Harbor Church off of it’s foundation. Fourteen years later, the Labor Day Hurricane of 1935, which skirted Pinellas County between landfalls on the Florida Keys and Northwest Florida, blew off the church’s roof.