Information Sheet

 

 

R         First United Methodist Church (Rolla, Mo.).

570                  Records, 1899-1969.

                                    Five volumes and eight folders.

 

MICROFILM

 

 

 

These are historical records of the First United Methodist Church of Rolla, Missouri.  In­cluded are a general history of the church, membership rolls and vital records, and records of the Official Board and Quarterly Conferences.

 

The Methodist Episcopal Church, or “Northern” wing of Methodism, came to Rolla in the form of circuit riders soon after the founding of the town in the late 1850s.  During the Civil War, with the help of Union troops quartered in the community, an official congregation was formed and a brick church was built on the southwest corner of Main and Ninth streets, on land donated by Edmund Ward Bishop.  By the turn of the century, this church had outlasted and ab­sorbed the town’s “Southern” Methodist congregation.  Unfortunately, the early church records for both groups have been lost.

 

This collection begins with “Volume 1,” a “centennial” (1861-1961) history of Methodism in Rolla writ­ten by Clair V. and Bonita H. Mann, and updated by Winona Roberts in 1976.  This history provides a basic account of the founding and achievements of the congregation.

 

The earliest records preserved here are in “Volume 2,” a general record book that includes membership and vital (baptisms, marriages, etc.) records from late 1899 to the early 1920s.  “Vol­ume 3” continues these records to the middle 1940s.  “Volume 4” is a “Membership Roll” in loose-leaf format, filed alphabetically by surname in family groups.  This volume appears to have been maintained into the 1960s.

 

“Volume 5” is a record book for the “Friendly Sunday School Class,” 1943-1952.

 

The administrative records of the church are contained in eight folders.  Folders 1 through 5 are minutes and associated papers of the monthly meetings of the Official Board from its estab­lishment in 1943 through 1969.  The Official Board, made up of stewards and members of ad­min­istrative and program committees, was the principal governing body of the local church.  Folders 6 through 8 contain the records of the Quarterly Conference from 1944 through 1969.  The Quarterly Conference was the official reporting body of the congregation to the larger con­nec­tional structure of Methodism, of which the most immediate was the local District and its Su­per­intendent.  Gener­ally here only the fourth, and most important, Quarterly Conference record has been preserved.  This “annual report” summarized the membership statistics, financial rec­ords, and all church ac­tivities for the previous twelve months.

 

 

 

 

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