Jesse Walker (June 9, 1766 - October 5, 1835) was the Buckingham County, Virginia-born Methodist minister who built Missouri's first Methodist church in the predominantly French-Catholic city of St. Louis, Missouri in 1819, and the first Methodist church in Chicago, Illinois in 1831.[1] He organized this first permanent Methodist group in Missouri at St. Louis on January 7, 1821, after previously finding 20 members in 1807. On August 10, 1821, Missouri entered the Union as the 24th state. In 1822, the Methodists held their annual conference in St. Louis.