The First Church in the Township: 1843 or 1858?

1839 – 1858 · conflicts C15 and C45, carried whole

The two county histories agree that the Methodist Episcopal society in Union Township was organized about 1839, and they agree on almost nothing else about the first church. Chapman (1880), Union Township chapter, "Churches," pp. 952–953, read first-hand: "The first church was built in 1843, by the Methodists, under the pastorship of Rev. Lawson Munson. It was built of hewed logs, on section 34, one mile north of Lakeville. This served for a place of worship until the present church was erected in Lakeville. The old house is still standing, and is occupied by a family for a dwelling house. The M. E. church building in Lakeville was commenced in 1857 and finished in 1858." Chapman therefore carries two Methodist buildings: a hewed-log church of 1843 at the site one mile north of Lakeville, and a second, in-village M.E. building of 1857–58. Howard (1907), Vol. 1, Union section, pp. 280–281, carries one: "One mile north of Lakeville, in 1858, was built the first church in the township. This was built by the Methodist Episcopal Society, which had been organized about 1839." On the shared site description — one mile north of Lakeville — Chapman dates the first church 1843 and Howard dates it 1858; Howard carries no 1843 building and no separate in-village building. That is conflict C15, and it stands unmerged; its settler is the Archive.org page images of both passages read against congregational records.

LK-2's register carried a companion item, C45: in a Chapman passage as carried by the transcription, a first-church date stands illegible — the string "ISiS" — against Howard's plain 1858. This pass searched for the token in the passages re-read first-hand (Chapman's Union and Greene chapters; Howard's Union section) and did not re-locate it; every first-church date in those passages prints legibly. By the recurring substitution shape attested in other county-history transcriptions of this carrier (I = 1, S = 8, i = 5 — "IS61" for 1861, "IS4S" for 1848), "ISiS" decodes to 1858 — Howard's plain date, and Chapman's own completion year for the Lakeville building. This pass therefore finds, and prints as a finding with its caveat: C45 is the C15 event-complex restated through a corrupted copy, not a second distinct statement, and its contradiction with the 1843 log church is the C15 contradiction, carried once. The caveat: the token itself was not sighted first-hand, so the finding rests on the register's description plus the decode. The settler stands — the Archive.org page image of the Chapman passage (item historyofstjosep00chap, identified, its page images not read).