Muhlenberg County Kentucky
Churches
Hazel Creek Baptist Church
Centennial, Hazel Creek Church Celebrates Its One Hundredth Anniversary.
Three Thousand People Gather to Participate in the Historic Event.
Interestiing Story of an Old Baptistery that was Lost for Years.
A Big Crowd in Attendance.
At Belton, a little station on the O and N railroad, today is being celebrated the one hundredth anniversary of the organization of Hazel Creek Baptist church. An immense crowd is in attendance, and the occasion is the most notable that has occurred in religious circles in that locality for a long time.
The church was organized August 19, 1797, and originally contained fourteen members. It met at the houses of the principal members for a year, when, with the help of the pioneers for many miles around, a substantial house of worship was built. This house answered all the purposes of the congregation until 1859 when it was torn away and the present house built on the same site.
The preparation for the celebration has been under way for a year past, for at the meeting of the association in 1896, it was decided to meet with Hazel Creek this year on account of the anniversary. The association accordingly met Tuesday and finished up its business Wednesday evening. All the ministers and messengers remained over to tak e part in today's exercises, and thus the crowd was swelled. It is estimated that 3,000 people are present. An interesting feature of the proceedings was a grouping of all those who had been members for 25 years or more. There were two in the list who had belonged to the church for more than fifty years and four whose names had been on the rolls for more than forty years. A sermon was preached at 11 o'clock, after which on immense tables that had been built for the occasion, dinner was spread for the entire crowd. A history of the church was read covering every year from its organization to the present, and many interesting extracts from the minutes were read, which threw much light on the early history and customs of the locality in which the church was built. It is understood that the paper will be published and it will prove very interesting to the denomination throughout Western Kentucky.
For many years the first minute book of the church was lost, and as time went on the loss was more and more regretted, but sometime last year the book was found. It contained the account of the organization of the church, the list of members and the constitution and rules of decorum among its time-stained pages was the account of the building of a baptistery on the church lot “of hewn rock and plastered with well burnte lyme for the use of the church.” The existence of a baptistery in a country church was exceedingly rare in those days, the neighboring streams being made use of in almost all cases. The oldest member could recollect nothing of this baptistery and many doubted the evidence of the record, but after much digging and a careful examination of the soil the pool was found, built exactly as described in the records. It was cleaned out and arranged so that it cannot be filled up again except by design. It was found that the soil had banked around the original wall, and that dirt had washed in and leaves and trash blown in until the ancient and interesting landmark was obliterated.
Source: “Centennial, Hazel Creek Church Celebrates Its One Hundredth Anniversary.” Owensboro Daily Inquirer [Owensboro, KY], 19 Aug 1897, p. 1.
Updated July 24, 2022