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Chapman (1880), Clay Township chapter and the Bulla reminiscences, at machine-transcription strength
The 1880 record is not a flat blank for the township's religion, and this section prints its nuance rather than a clean negative. Chapman's Clay matter, as reached, names no organized church society in the township — but the Bulla reminiscences carried in the county record remember a Quaker meeting-house in Clay used as a schoolhouse, the township's schooling and its worship sharing a roof in the pioneer pattern; and the Clay biographies print individual church memberships (Evangelical Church, Dunkard Church) for settler after settler — affiliation carried in families before it was housed in buildings. The German Baptist church of 1868 stands between those two states: the township's first housed congregation, planted twelve years before Chapman wrote and already a generation old when Howard read it whole. (The page-level confirmation of Chapman's Clay chapter stands as the people pass read it; the meeting-house item prints at snippet strength, as reached.)