Information Sheet

 

 

R         First Baptist Church of Edgar Springs (Phelps County, Mo.).

1227                Record book, 1886-1954.

Two folders; original and typescript.

 

 

 

This is the record book and accompanying transcript of the First Baptist Church of Edgar Springs in Phelps County, Missouri, containing minutes of business meetings and membership re­cords, ca. 1894-1954.  Also in the volume are earlier records of the Corn Creek Baptist Church in Phelps County, 1886-1887.

 

The volume begins with the records of the Baptist church on Corn Creek, a tributary of the Little Piney Creek in southwestern Phelps County.  The records begin with the organizational meeting of the Corn Creek Baptist Church on 28 April 1886 at the home of Rev. John Earp.  The first mem­bers were Nathan J. Brookshire, Mary Brookshire, John Earp, Lydia Earp, G. C. Phelps, and Sara Ann Fore.  Rev. John J. Watts moderated the meeting and the adoption of the church’s articles of faith, convention, and rules of decorum, which followed those adopted by the Dry Fork Associa­tion and the Zion Hill Church.  John Earp and R. A. Dillard moderated subsequent meet­ings, held at the Brookshire schoolhouse.  A “protracted meeting” conducted 19 September 1886 by Revs. John Earp, Joseph Brown, and J. T. Weavers resulted in the reception of five new mem­bers: C. T. Chaney, Charles Brookshire, Barney Arthur, Jane Chaney, and Emily Arthur, after which the church applied to join the Dixon Baptist Association.

 

In July and August 1887, members of the Corn Creek Church began applying for letters of dis­missal to join a Baptist congregation at Edgar Springs.  At a business meeting on 3 September 1887, the Corn Creek congregation voted to “letter” all its members and the church dissolved.

 

According to the Goodspeed history of Phelps County (1889), the Baptist Church at Edgar Springs was formed in February 1887 by Rev. J. G. Moss or Rev. J. S. Rice, both of whom were active in church founding in this period.  It is assumed that one of these men was the first pastor of the congrega­tion at Edgar Springs.  The Edgar Springs church became a member of the Dry Fork Baptist Association.

 

The first records of the Edgar Springs church occur immediately after those of the Corn Creek church, and consist of a record of donations toward construction of a church house in Edgar Springs in 1894 and 1895.  Nathan J. Brookshire was the major donor, giving two lots with a well and 8,000 feet of lumber for the building, completed in 1895.  The connection with Brookshire probably explains why Corn Creek and Edgar Springs records appear in the volume, even though the First Baptist Church of Edgar Springs is not a lineal descendant of the Corn Creek Baptist Church.

 

The earliest minutes of business meetings of the Edgar Springs Baptist Church are those of 19 November 1904.  At that time, E. A. Shoemaker was the moderator and E. D. Brookshire was the clerk.  The minutes continue through 7 April 1954.  In the fifty years covered by the minutes, the church was destroyed by fire in the 1930s or 1940s and was rebuilt in the same location in 1945.  On 7 April 1951, the church adopted the name “First Baptist Church of Edgar Springs.”  An undated membership list occurs between the minutes June and October 1921.

 

Accompanying the record book is a complete typescript made by Thomas C. Miller, a member and deacon of the First Baptist Church of Edgar Springs.

   

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