#6 on Map

Helen Case Gilmore, third daughter of Des Moines pioneers Rollin A. Case, Jr. and Marion Wilcox Case, wife of Alexander Gilmore, and lifelong Des Moines resident, received the Camp Fire Girls Wakan leadership award in 1962 and the Farnsworth leadership award in 1966. A leader in the Des Moines Methodist Church, she organized the church’s Food Bank in 1970 and ran it for many years. Helen made the quilt square depicting the Christian Science Church of 1918.

Christian Science Church - 1918

The Christian Science Society, organized in 1916, was the second church group to begin meeting in Des Moines. The members met first in a small house on Sixth Avenue S. near S. 223rd Street, then at a private home on Marine View Drive S. near S. 218th Street. R. W. Gay donated a small parcel of land north of what’s now the QFC grocery store near S. 218th Street, and the cornerstone was laid in 1920.

—paraphrased from One Hundred Years of the “Waterland” Community: A History of Des Moines, Washington