When you love sifting through history, you never know when you'll find an odd handful of photographs or a long lost letter. So I was thrilled when
sometime back I came across an odd collection of folders and notebooks tucked into a spot in the church. Turned out to be the church minutes and membership logs from the late 1800s to early 1900s. Not too long later, my parents found a spiral bound book that someone thought to toss out. Thank goodness they didn't - it collected all those same notes into a single place and had an introduction that had been written by an earlier member, Wallace Gunn. Wallace had actually organized out all the previous pastors and head deacons, leaving his work for another church member to continue. I guess that's where I came in.
Wallace left a note in his collection that reads: "This compilation of the history of Eastabuchie Baptist Church is done by Wallace Gunn and given by him to the church. The history of the church as recorded in this book begins in 1893 and ends in 1963. Further additions to this record will probably be made by later members of the church."
I'm looking into a little more on who this Wallace was and what his own role was in the church.
Since I had already been organizing notes on church and community history, I have been integrating what's in this collection into what I already have. It's amazing how things were so connected in the past. The small town of Eastabuchie had a mayor in those early years, and the laws of the town are also in this collection.
The image on the left shows one of the pages where memberships were recorded. In this one, the first record is Edna Lewis who joined the church by baptism in June of 1895. The next column records how and when a member leaves the church, such as requesting a letter to move to another congregation or for some reason being dismissed from the church for some misconduct. In Edna's case she was simply "gone long while." Others show the receipt of a letter, meaning the person had chosen to move to a different congregation and had requested a letter of good standing to present to their new church.
On the other hand someone could also join Eastabuchie by letter, and you can see that noted in some cases as well.
Why would people be dismissed from the church? Well, if they committed some sort of infraction - even dancing - they might be seen as immoral enough to need to cut ties. Wallace notes that the minutes record that a committee of members went to visit a woman in the community to confront her on charges of dancing. She "did not receive them or their investigation too kindly", and the church decided to break fellowship with her. At the same meeting, Wallace also reads that a male member of the church had charges brought against him for profanity. A committee of members also visited him but after his request for forgiveness, they gave him time to ask forgiveness of God. Sometime later the church minutes show that he returned to the congregation to report that "he was sorry he had used preface language and had asked for and felt he had received forgiveness from God." The congregation was satisfied, and he was allowed to return.
The laws of Eastabuchie that appear in the book are also interesting, reflecting a lot of concerns you would expect from a sawmill town on a busy railroad. For example Sec. 4.4 Ord 4.5 presents the law related to "Stealing a Ride." Signed by C.W. Campbell, Clerk, and J.M. Wesson, Mayer, the law says: Be it ordained by the Mayor and alderman of the won of Eastabuchie Miss in regular session Dec 2nd 1903 that any person who shall ride on any engine tender car or train of any railroad company without authority or permission of the proper officers or employees of the company or the person in charge of said engine tender car or trains in the corporate limited of the town of Eastabuchie shall be deemed guilty of a misdemeanor and on conviction shall be fined not more than ten dollars or be imprisoned not more than thirty days or both at the discretion of the Mayor. Be it further ordained that this ordinance be enforced from and immediately after its passing to discourage dishonesty. Be it further ordained that any ordinance conflicting herewith is hereby repealed. "
I'll be posting the findings here and sharing them with appropriate genealogy groups in the region.