Information Sheet

 

 

R         Zion United Church of Christ (Lawrence County, Mo.).

714                  Records, 1880-2001.

                                    Eight volumes and four folders.

 

MICROFILM

 

 

 

These are records of the Zion United Church of Christ near Freistatt in Lawrence County, Missouri.  Included are minutes of church council meetings, registers of members, officers, pas­tors, baptisms, confirmations, marriages, deaths, and miscellaneous items.  Some of the records are in German.  Included is one volume of records from Union United Church of Christ, 1947-1998.

 

Zion United Church of Christ was founded in 1879 by a group of Germans who came to Lawrence County, Missouri, via Washington County, Illinois.  Originally, it was known as Zion Evangelical Church.  By the time of adoption of a new constitution in 1938, it was called Zion Evangelical and Reformed Church.  In 1967, the denomination voted to merge with the Congre­gational Christian Church.  The new church is known as Zion United Church of Christ.

 

Originally, services at Zion were entirely in German.  As time passed, however, there was a move toward using English as the official language of the assembly to accommodate second and third generation families no longer using German as their primary language.  The congregation voted to alternate the two languages in their services on 3 January 1937.  The first and third ser­v­ices of each month were in German, the others were in English.  On 1 January 1942, the congre­gation decided to hold services solely in English.  The move was intended only as temporary war­time measure, but the congregation never returned to German language services.

 

The records of the church consist of minutes of meetings, registers, and miscellaneous pa­pers.  Four of the volumes are entirely in German; another two are partly in German.  Volumes 1-4 contain minutes of meetings of the church council and special meetings of the congregation.  Vol­umes 5-7 contain lists of the officers of the church, registers of members, baptisms, confirmations, marriages, and deaths.  Among the most prominent families noted in the volumes are Fieker, Kleeman, Kleine, Kramme, Meyer, Rahmoeller, Rathmann, Vieth, and Wiehe.

 

Volume 8 is a record book for Union United Church of Christ of Lawrence County, Mis­souri, 1947-1998.  This congregation split from the Zion congregation in 1947.

 

Folders 1-4 con­tain miscellaneous papers from Zion Church, including an undated, early version of the church constitution (in German), as well as the version (in English) adopted in 1938.

 

 

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