Wasioja Baptist Church

Wasioja Baptist Church. A New Community Builds a Spiritual Home for Itself. , The Wasioja Baptist Church, erected in 1858, was built by pledges and barters during a nationwide economic recession., In Wasioja's earliest days, its first ten families organized a congregation for themselves. In the summer if 1856, they reached out to Baptist Elder W.C. Shepard, at that time Dodge County's only ordained minister. They persuaded him to become their minister, and he began a weekly, nine-mile Sunday walk between Wasioja and Ashland, where he already had a church. He even once set out on the nine-mile walk on a frigid, 40-below winter morning., The Wasioja congregation wanted the pastor full-time, and they promised to build a church if he agreed to come. In the early months of 1858, citizens eagerly pledged to support the costs of building a church. But just a few months later, the impact of the nationwide Panic of 1857 reached Minnesota. Those who had pledged money suddenly found themselves unable to pay their pledges. Undeterred, Shepard arranged and managed a complex barter system that slowly brought the necessary supplies needed to build the church. It worked - the church was raised on July 31, 1858., The church is the only wood frame building listed in the Wasioja Historic District. It was been owned and cared for by the Dodge County Historical Society since 2001.