Information Sheet

 

 

R         Laramore, Edmond, collector.

394                  Baptist associations, minutes of annual sessions, 1912‑1980.

                                    Seventeen folders.

 

MICROFILM

 

 

 

This collection consists largely of printed minutes of annual meet­ings of United or Mis­sion­ary Baptist associations in southern Missouri.  The minutes include the records of annual ses­sions, committee reports, and statistical information on the associations and their constitu­ent churches.  Also included are a few miscellaneous Baptist publications.

 

Baptist associations are voluntary organizations of local churches on a district or regional ba­sis.  Local churches are autonomous, and are represented at annual meetings of the asso­ciation by means of dele­gates who are often the officials and elders of the churches.  The an­nual sessions are hosted in turn by member churches.  The associations and churches repre­sented in the collec­tion were affiliated with the North American Baptist Association.

 

Contributions taken at the annual association funded printing of the minutes of sessions for distribution to local churches.  The minutes usually include the constitution and rules of decorum of the associations, statistical and financial information, death notices of members, and rosters of ministers and church officials with postal addresses.  The latter are helpful in determining the lo­cations of churches, which are not always stated.  Committee reports reca­pitu­late associational work for the preceding year, most of which involved foreign and home missions, financial sup­port of Baptist institutions, and recommendations on Baptist belief and practice.

 

This collection of minutes of various associations came from the papers of Edmond Lara­more of Courtois in Washington County, Missouri.  Laramore was minister of the Emmaus Bap­tist Church and a regular at­tendee of the annual sessions of the Cane Creek Baptist Asso­ciation, of which the Emmaus Church was a member.  Not surprisingly, the minutes of the Cane Creek As­so­ciation and the Washington County Baptist As­sociation outnumber those of other associa­tions in­cluded in the col­lection.  The minutes from other Missouri associations were brought back by delegates, or were received on an exchange basis.  The minutes have been arranged alphabeti­cally by association, and chronologically by each association.

 

The collection also includes a few miscellaneous Baptist publica­tions, 1928‑1944.  A pam­phlet by C. A. Darst, Origin, Work, and Practices of Association Baptists and Convention Bap­tists, (St. Louis, ca. 1951), is useful in understanding the distinction between the North American Baptist Association and the Southern Baptist Convention.

 

 

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