OLD GILGAL CHURCH NOW JUST A VAGUE MEMORY
By Peggy Smith Hake

 

(Unknown publication date)

 

"Old church is now a vague memory"......The first church organized in what is now Miller County was called the United Baptist Church of Christ at Gilgal. The folks were often referred to as 'hard-shell Baptists" and sometimes called 'primitive Baptists'. Gilgal was the first church of record in Miller County but actually there was an earlier church organized in 1834 by the Methodists. It was located in the Big Richwoods of eastern Miller County and was called Smyrna, an old log structure.

 

The year was 1835 and a few pioneer families decided a church was needed for their spiritual needs. On the first Saturday in October 1835, a group of pioneer fathers met at the home of William Sarter/Sorter, who lived on the Saline creek near present-day Tuscumbia. After worship services, the men went into a business meeting and organized a church under the presbytery consisting of Elders Cornelius McLaughlin, Lewis Shelton, and Andrew Kingery. The first members of Old Gilgal were Brothers William Sarter, William Brockman, John M. Bartlett, John Brockman, Ebenezer Vernon, Andrew Salsbury, Silas (a colored man) Thomas Sarter, David W. Johnson; Sisters Delila Sarter, Lucy Brockman, Elizabeth Bartlett, Nancy Brockman, Nancy Sarter, Sally Bennett, Sarah Sarter and Mourning Johnson.

 

David Johnson was appointed as the church's first clerk and Ebenezer Vernon was the first treasurer. Deacons chosen included John Brockman and John M. Bartlett. It was agreed at this first meeting that the church's communion season would be the months of May and October. In December 1835, while meeting in the home of one of the members, the church agreed to build a meeting house at or near a well-known spring. The spot they chose was where the Gravois creek empties into the Osage River near present-day Bagnell. The building, constructed of logs, was built on a flat at the bottom of a hill where a small branch enters the Gravois at its mouth.

 

In those days, the men and women obeyed the rules of the Elders very arduously. They told the men to sit on one side of the church, the ladies on the opposite side and that is exactly the way they attended church! Guess who had care of the children??

 

The congregation began to increase in number. Among the first to place membership after organization included Elizabeth DeGraffenreid, Sims Brockman, Andrew Kingery, Peter Sarter, Zebulon Loveall, Sarah Spurlin Loveall, John Walker, Fanny Loveall Walker, George O. Morris, Sarah Vaughan, Jonathan Loveall, Obediah Vaughan, Patsy Sarter, Jesse R. Johnson, and many more.......over the years other families began attending including the Feeneys, Albertsons, McCombs, Sutleffs, Burnetts, Buchanans, Freemans, Wilcoxs, Coys, Wyricks, Burris', Carrolls, Records, Davis', and others.

 

Pastors who ministered at Old Gilgal between 1836-1863 were Andrew Kingery, Snelling Johnson, George O. Morris, John Brockman, and William B. Karr. Some of the church clerks were David W. Johnson, Sims Brockman, Joseph L. Cotten, Thomas Scott, and William C. Brown........October 1863 is the last record of attendance at Old Gilgal, twenty-eight years after its organization. Many of the old members can be traced to other churches where they helped carry on the work of the gospel in the county including Aurora Springs, Eldon, Blue Springs and others.

 

This old church has been of special interest to me because among its earliest members were some of my ancestors....the Sarter/Sorters and Lovealls. The Sarters came from South Carolina and the Lovealls from Maryland. The Sorter/Sarter family were of German descent and the Lovealls were of English ancestry. They settled as neighbors in Equality Township in the early 1830s. There were several marriages performed between the families during this era of time and the children carried the name forward to new generations.

 

The Sorter and Loveall families moved on westward just prior to the Civil War. There are a few descendants left in Miller County today and I am among those few. It has been interesting following these ancestors from England and Germany; through the Revolutionary War in Colonial America; and on into the new states of Kentucky, Tennessee, the Carolinas, and finally into Miller County in the early 1830s. Here they homesteaded, built one of the first grist mills on the Saline creek, and then helped to organize the first church of record in Miller County...Old Gilgal on the Gravois.