Information Sheet

 

 

R         Pleasant Grove United Baptist Church (Iron County, Mo.).

400                  Records, 1856‑1972.

                                    Three volumes.

 

MICROFILM

 

 

 

These are record books of the Pleasant Grove Baptist Church near Viburnum in Iron County, Missouri.  The records include minutes of meetings and membership rolls beginning with the organi­zation of the church on 12 April 1856 and continuing through its dissolution on 15 Octo­ber 1972.

 

The Pleasant Grove Church was formed in 1856 by fourteen indi­viduals living in what was then Washington County.  The area became part of Iron County in 1857.  The Faulkner, Finison, and Mason families were prominent among the charter members of the church.  Nel­son Adams was elected pastor and Joshua Mason church clerk, positions which they held for many years.  Pleasant Grove Church was affiliated with the Bethel Baptist Association until 1859, when it was dismissed to be­come a charter member of the Central Missouri Association of United Baptists.  The young church managed to survive the Civil War, although no services were held from Sep­tember through December 1864, the period of Sterling Price’s Missouri raid.  The minutes note the suspension of services “due to the troubles of the War.”  In the postwar period, the church was active in organiz­ing Baptist churches in Crawford, Dent, Iron, and Washington counties.  The church reached its greatest membership in the 1920s, but there was a gradual decline there­after.  By the time of the last meeting of the church on 15 October 1972, only six members re­mained.

 

The records of Pleasant Grove Baptist Church consist of three record books containing the minutes of monthly church business meet­ings and membership records.  The records are com­plete with the ex­ception of an unexplained gap from May 1930 to September 1931.  The minutes include routine business matters such as the admission and transfer of members, ap­pointments of church officials and of delegates to associational meetings, and the administra­tion of church property.  The records also include notations regarding disruptions of “the peace of the church” and doctrinal dis­putes, some of which led to the ex­pulsion of members.  Although most of the in­cidents occurred in the early period of the church, there was an in­stance in 1972 in which six members were excluded for heresy.  The expulsions took place only two weeks before the church was discontinued due to a lack of members.

 

 

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