From the church records collection at the Seventh Day Baptist Historical Society Archives housed at Janesville, Wisconsin, comes a third compilation of original membership records of 40 churches, containing over 2,500 admissions with a sprinkling of other facts.
The churches in these records were known at the time as the Western Association of Seventh Day Baptist Churches; the region comprised land from Lake Ontario south into northwestern Pennsylvania. These membership listings are from churches of 24 towns in western New York and 12 towns in northwestern Pennsylvania. The great number of churches in this area was due to both geographic factors (i.e., difficulty in traveling) and the evangelistic fervor which swept the region following the Civil War. The appendix includes a listing of Sabbath-keeping Civil War soldiers from nine New York churches and two Pennsylvania churches; a listing of Western Association ministers and missionaries from 1810-1910; a listing of churches within present bounds of the Western Association; and maps of the western New York and northwestern Pennsylvania region. A surname index makes finding people easy.
Since Seventh Day Baptists were often among the first wave of settlers, this book is a must for people tracking early Rhode Island, eastern New York and New Jersey families. Many non-traditional SDB families were caught up in the evangelistic fervor of the era and joined local churches. Some belonged for brief periods of time; others joined in the western migration into Wisconsin, Iowa and Nebraska.
Ilou M. Sanford
(1996), 2008, 8½x11, paper, index, 118 pp.
ISBN: 9780788404627
101-S0462
