Clear Creek Baptist Association

 Union County Illinois Genealogy Trails

Transcribed and submitted by Darrel Dexter

            The annual meeting of the Clear Creek Baptist Association was held at Thebes last Saturday, Sunday, and Monday, the sessions being held in the township high school building.  The attendance was fair, many being kept away on account of weather conditions, there being a general rain storm Sunday morning. At the business session Monday Rev. H. W. Karraker was reelected moderator and Dr. F. M. Agnew clerk, the latter for about the sixteenth consecutive time.  The place of the next annual meeting was not decided upon but will be announced later.

            Through the efforts of Dr. Agnew extending over a period of many years, the minutes of the association have been collected in so far as possible and assembled together in two compact, cloth-bound volumes, which are at present in the keeping of Dr. A. J. Lyerly of Jonesboro, who is enjoined to safely preserve them.  They are of priceless value now, for if they were destroyed it is highly improbable that the work ever would, or could, be duplicated.

            Dr. Agnew says in a foreword to the first volume that "Clear Creek Baptist association was organized with the Clear Creek (now Jonesboro) church November 30, 1830.  The minutes of the organization were supposed to be preserved in a common day book or journal for the first two or three years, and a complete record was kept by Captain John C. Hunsaker, but it was destroyed when his house burned in the early 60s."

            Dr. Agnew's search for copies of the early minutes extended far and wide, and the earliest one he seems to have secured was for the third annual meeting of the association in 1833.  This was furnished by the librarian of the American Baptist Historical Society of Philadelphia, and it was copied and returned in time to be destroyed in the society's great fire in 1892.  The title page stated that these minutes were printed at the Eagle office, Jackson, Mo.  From 1834 there is a skip to 1837, and from the latter year to 1841, after which they appear quite regularly, perhaps without an omission, as copies were also on file in the library of Shurtleff College at Upper Alton.

            Some of the earliest printed minutes were mere leaflets.  After attaining pamphlet size they were printed at Louisville, Ky., Memphis, Tenn., St. Louis, Mo., and one or two other places.  The minutes for 1849 were the first to bear the imprint of the Jonesboro Gazette, which was established that year.

            The church historian of the future will find these old records of a veritable mine of information.

(Jonesboro Gazette, Jonesboro, Illinois, Friday, 19 Aug 1921)