Preserving a piece of history

Published 12:00 am Sunday, December 19, 2010

Church members compile history of Union Missionary Baptist

A church in Chesapeake has made history, simply by retelling history itself.

Union Missionary Baptist Church, located on Township Road 1490, finally has a published history, thanks to three devoted members.

Email newsletter signup

Janet Mayenchein, Phyllis Barbour and Judy Thacker Kuhner worked on a project to compile a complete history of the 167-year old church that has seen 34 different pastors and four different structures built on two separate sites.

Their labor of love, which took two years to complete, is a book called “The Meeting House at Low Gap: The History of Union Missionary Baptist Church.”

Mayenchein, 59, who has been a member of Union since 1978, said she was intrigued by the long history of the church that was formed in 1843. She said her background in family research and genealogy prompted her begin the long process of digging for and compiling information.

“I asked (the pastor) if there were any record books and low and behold there were some in an old file cabinet,” she said. “As I looked into the books, I realized that our church has never had a history written.”

Mayenchein said she found minute books all the way back to 1843 to help chronicle the church’s history. She also said she used a books from the 1970s that was written about the 150-year history of the Ohio Baptist Association, which Union was a member of.

Despite the records that were kept for all those years, Mayenchein said she and her crew still had quite a task on their hands.

“Although we had the minutes of the business meetings, a lot of times the minutes might be vague on some important things that we think happened but wasn’t elaborated on,” she said. “Getting information from other people was really hard. We used the Ironton library, the genealogy department there, looked at old newspaper writings, things like that. It’s usually you dig and dig and dig and you might end up with one sentence worth of fact, so that makes it difficult, but nevertheless important.”

The title of the book also has significance to the findings in the minute books, said Mayenchein. According to the first minute book from 1843, the writing said that Union Missionary Baptist Church was situated at the Low Gap in Lawrence County.

“That area at one time was called Low Gap,” Mayenchein said about the church’s site. “Very few people know that now. The meeting house, as you read through the church minutes, it’s very distinct in those early years, which the congregation referred to the church building as the meeting house. The church is referred to as the body of believers.”

Also from the minute books, Mayenchein transcribed the volumes into another publication, “Union Missionary Baptist Church Minute Book 1843-1878.”

“I felt that is was very necessary to preserve this history,” she said. “Most of the records, the ink is fading to the point where you wont be able to read it once of these days.”

Mayenchein said that compiling the history of Union Missionary Baptist and preserving its history is important so future and current members of the church will know where they came from.

“But most of all, that God is in control and has had His hand upon this congregation for a long time.”