1986

Flemington 100th Anniversary

Musicians tuning up in the Sanctuary before the service the day of the Anniversary

In the summer 1986 the Flemington Baptist Church held a 100th anniversary celebration.  Although originally established in 1884 as The New Mount Arnow Baptist Church, it was in 1886 that it adopted the name “Flemington Baptist Church”.  The church had changed a lot since 1887 when according to the church minutes: 

“Charges were preferred against” a member for dancing and in May, was excluded from membership.  In July another member was excluded for immoral conduct.  A committed was formed to “go talk to” another member about dancing, and later charges brought against a member for “playing the violin at dances.”  After some discussion, he was expelled for “refusing to conform to the rules of the church.”  Similar cases came up over the following years with one member asking his name be erased from the church roll “as he did not consider himself a fit subject for church membership”, his request was granted.  

In 1986 had fully accepted music in the church not only having the choir at the Sunday service, but also having an organist, a pianist, and four guitars, two of which were electric.   

The celebration started with Sunday morning service in chapel that my Grandpa Junior was instrumental in building when he was minister of the church back in in 1948.  The service had the usual songs, prayers and offering taking but the sermon was mostly about the history of the church.  When the service was over there was a pot-luck “dinner on the grounds”.  Unlike times of my youth when dinner on the grounds meant outside under the shade of the old oak trees, though technically still on the church “grounds” it the dinner was no held in the fellowship hall that had been built next to the chapel.  It was well attended, two long tables for the food that people had brought, enough to fee a hundred people.  It was too bad that Grandpa Junior could not have been there having passed in ’76 but Grandma Junior was there along with Mom and Dad, and Jim and Sue who all had met in at the church back in 1948. 

My uncles, Gary Junior and Jim Mixson standing between the tables of food

Grandma Junior and Uncle Jim

Gardening