Eight Churches in 1880: Three in Town, Five in the Country

1880

Chapman's 1880 count is the baseline of this section: three churches in the town of North Liberty and five more in Liberty Township outside it. Chapman's business and institution list for the town includes "three churches and one school-house," and he names the three in his order: the Methodist church, "the first church in Liberty tp.," erected in 1851; the Seventh-Day Advent church, "built in 1868"; and the Episcopal church, built "a few years ago." Of the township outside the town he writes: "There are also five other churches outside of North Liberty,—two Dunkard churches, one Evangelical, one German Lutheran, and one United Brethren church." Howard, in 1907, corroborates the same spread in narrative form: Methodists first in 1851, Adventists in 1868, Episcopalians "a little later," the German Baptists "amongst the most numerous" with "two churches in the country," and the Evangelical, Lutheran, and United Brethren denominations each represented. One contemporary carrier disagrees with Chapman's town count, and the disagreement prints whole: Polk's Indiana State Gazetteer for 1880–81 says the village "has two churches—Methodist and Advent," and lists "Beebe O R Rev (Methodist)" among the village's professional names. No carrier explains the difference; Polk may have counted only congregations with buildings in active use, or simply missed the small Episcopal mission, but either reading is an inference and neither is printed as fact. The earliest Brethren-associated site in the township record stands beside the township's first school: Chapman records that "the first school-house in Liberty township was erected near the site of the Dunkard church, one-half mile south of the village, in 1838." Which later congregation that Dunkard site belongs to, no read carrier names; it is treated under Pine Creek below and left open there, with its settlers.