The exact page text, read by your browser's voice.
REL SUPPORTING DUG · HOWARD (1907), READ WHOLE
The banked religion record tells the congregations one by one; Howard's section gives the whole field in one paragraph, and it is printed here as this section's snapshot of 1907. "There are at present five church organizations: the Presbyterian, the Catholic, the United Brethren, the Methodist and the Seventh Day Adventist. Two of these have recently built fine church edifices, one of cement stone and one of pressed brick. Another has in course of erection a fine large building of stone and concrete." The first church in town was the Methodists' (1859); the Baptists built in 1870 — and the Baptists' absence from the 1907 list of organizations, with their building housing the young Presbyterian society from 1876, is the snapshot's quiet datum: a congregation can leave the roll while its building stays on the street, which is why this build keeps a churches-as-buildings survey separate from the congregations' roll (the architecture addendum carries it). The Presbyterian society's own dates complete the paragraph: organized February 5, 1876 with sixteen members, in the old Baptist building; its present edifice dedicated June 12, 1904 — one of Howard's two "recently built," and, with the United Brethren's 1904 dedication at Michigan and Van Buren (the denomination's record), the pair that dates the town's great church-building year.
Principal sources: Howard (1907), A History of St. Joseph County, vol. 1, pp. 317–318.