First Baptist Church

First Baptist Church. (Originally Mount Pleasant Baptist Church). , In the year 1810 a number of families emigrated, mostly from Madison County, Kentucky, and made the first permanent settlement in the Boonslick country. , Several of the number were Baptists who came with the purpose of planting the gospel in these wild regions. They were joined in 1812 by several Baptist families from Loutre Island Settlement. , In 1812, on the 8th of April, Elders William Thorpe and David McLain held a meeting in a log cabin in which school was kept, situated only a short distance from Old Franklin, in Fort Hempstead. At this meeting they organized the first Baptist Church in the “Upper Country”, Mount Pleasant. , This historic church is recognized as the first permanent Baptist church and the oldest non-Catholic church north of the Missouri River. , The first meeting house in all the territory north of the Missouri River was built on unregistered land at Mount Pleasant Cemetery in 1816. It was twenty feet square, very primitive and of unhewn logs. A second structure, of brick, erected about 1829, later burned. A new frame meeting house was built in 1857. These three church buildings were all located just across the fence of the northeast corner of Mount Pleasant Cemetery near New Franklin. , The present church was built in New Franklin and dedicated December 2, 1888. The annex to the west was added in 1926. In 1960 the basement was enlarged and the educational addition on the north was added. , In December, 1951 the name of the church was changed from Mount Pleasant Baptist Church to First Baptist Church of New Franklin. , [Captions, top to bottom] , . Mount Pleasant Baptist Church as it appeared about 1908 , . Circa 1915 after interior remodeling. , . The church as it appears in 1989.