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There were no churches in Ozark, Arkansas. There were no electric lights in Ozark. There were no concrete walks, no pavements, no telephones, no bridge across the Arkansas River, nor a railroad. Ozark was still suffering from the ravages of the Civil War. Coal oil lamps and tallow candles provided light for the citizens. Transportation was by steamboats and stagecoaches. A ferryboat took people across the river, and mail came by stagecoach. Downtown Ozark consisted of a collection of wooden buildings wrapped around a courthouse square. Those buildings housed various merchants and an assortment of saloons. The year was 1871.

This was the setting when the Rev. Hastings Puckett came to Ozark to serve the charge as its first pastor since Civil War days. The church had forty-eight members. They had neither church building nor land to build on, so the members met in the Franklin County Courthouse.

Sunday school was also held at the courthouse. It was a union Sunday school, combining all of the Protestant denominations in Ozark. Rev. Puckett felt that the Methodists should have their own Sunday School, so on the first Sunday in May, 1873, in the living room of his home, Rev. Puckett, his wife, and ten others began the Sunday School of the Ozark Methodist Church. Meetings were later moved to the little schoolhouse about three blocks from the square. This Sunday school is now the oldest Methodist Sunday school in Franklin County. The founding twelve have been immortalized in countless Anniversary Day celebrations of the Ozark church. Their names can be found today on a marble tablet in the basement of the church.

Rev. Puckett was serving Ozark as the first pastor since Civil War days. Prior to the war, various circuit-riding Methodist preachers served the little town. The records do not show any pastors assigned to Ozark until 1852, when Rev. James P. Hulse was assigned to the Ozark charge of the Clarksville District. He came to a church that had 284 members. Records of the time show that 277 of the members were white and seven were Negroes. By 1961 the war had begun, and the war years took many pastors and members away. The town was virtually burned to the ground during the war. For five years following the war, Ozark was once again a circuit church.

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