St. Peter's Church traces its earliest history to congregations and class meetings which met on sites between Mountain Road on the south and Old Ridge Road (near the Ashland Berry Farm) on the north. Few records remain of these 18th and early 19th century Methodists.

In the 1780s, Bishop Francis Asbury established what many historians believe to have been the first Sunday School in America, in the home of Thomas Crenshaw, on Mountain Road not far from the present site of St. Peter's.

In 1850, remnants of the earlier congregations moved to property on Route 611 (now St. Peter's Church Road), a scant ½ mile south of the present church. At first an arbor of trees served as a church, but a white frame building reached completion by 1852. The builder was Peter Massie, a charter member and trustee. After its completion, the church was named St. Peter's, partly for the fisherman-disciple and partly for the man who helped establish the congregation.