Second Baptist Church (Mechanicsburg, Ohio) facts for kids
Quick facts for kids |
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Second Baptist Church
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Front and southwestern side
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 Location in Ohio
Location in the United States
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| Location | E. Sandusky St., Mechanicsburg, Ohio |
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| Area | Less than 1 acre (0.40 ha) |
| Built | 1858 |
| Architectural style | Greek Revival |
| MPS | Mechanicsburg MRA |
| NRHP reference No. | 85001891 |
| Added to NRHP | August 29, 1985 |
Second Baptist Church is an old and important church building located in Mechanicsburg, Ohio, United States. It was built in the middle of the 1800s, making it the oldest church still standing in the village. Because of its age and history, it has been named a special historic site.
History of the Church Community
Mechanicsburg was first planned out in 1814. The town quickly grew bigger and richer. By 1840, the value of all the land and buildings in the village was more than ten thousand dollars. Forty years later, this value grew to over one-third of a million dollars.
The number of people living in Mechanicsburg also grew a lot. In 1830, there were 99 people. By 1840, there were 258. This number kept growing to 682 in 1850 and 1,522 in 1880. From its early days, Mechanicsburg was a town with people of different backgrounds. In 1830, one black resident was recorded. This number slowly grew to 53 by 1870. Then, in 1880, the black population quickly jumped to 209.
By the 1880s, there were enough black residents in Mechanicsburg to have two different churches. One was a Baptist church, and the other was an African Methodist Episcopal Church. The Baptist church started in November 1872 with only eight members. Today, only this Baptist church still exists. It is called "Second Baptist Church" because a church for white Baptists had already started in 1840.
In 1917, the Second Baptist Church had seventy members. Its Sunday school had fifty students. In its first 45 years, fourteen different pastors led the church. One of these pastors, Elmer Curry, started a school called the Curry Normal and Industrial Institute at the church. He based it on the famous Tuskegee Institute. After running in Mechanicsburg for a while, the school moved to Urbana.
The Church Building Itself
The very first religious group in Goshen Township was started by Methodist missionaries. The Mechanicsburg Methodist Episcopal Church started small. But it grew very quickly because of many special church meetings called revival meetings. During these meetings, many people became Christians. Important leaders like Bishop Francis Asbury preached there.
Between 1814 and 1839, the Methodists used three small church buildings in Mechanicsburg. As their group grew, they decided to build a bigger brick church in 1858. They chose a piece of land that used to be the village's first cemetery. The bodies from that cemetery had been moved to a new one. By the late 1870s, the church had almost four hundred members. So, they did a big renovation project to improve the building.
However, the church kept growing. In 1904, they built an even larger church building a few blocks north. Because of this, the Methodist church sold their old brick building to the Second Baptist Church for $2,850. The Second Baptist Church continued to make the building better. In 1917, a local writer said, "It is nicely decorated on the interior and is fitted with electric lights."
The church used to have a tall, pointed belfry above its entrance. But in 1936, there was a fire at the Culbertson Buggy Works next door. The fire was so bad that it damaged the church's tower. The church's original bell was taken out because of the fire and put in the village school. In return, the church received the school's smaller bell.
This two-story building is made of brick with some stone parts. It is the oldest church building still standing in Mechanicsburg. Its design is very different from the other old churches in the village. Most other churches in Mechanicsburg are Gothic Revival style and were built around 1890. But the Second Baptist Church is a Greek Revival building. It was already thirty years old when the oldest of the other churches were built.
The churches show what most of Mechanicsburg's old buildings are like. Most historic buildings in the village are Gothic Revival, Italianate, or Queen Anne styles from the late 1800s. The only other important building that is a pure Greek Revival style is Lawler's Tavern, built in 1830.
Protecting This Historic Place
The Second Baptist Church was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1985. This is a special list of places in the United States that are important to history. The church was one of about twenty buildings in Mechanicsburg added to this list at the same time. These buildings were spread out across the village.
Many of the other twenty buildings were houses. But four were other historic churches in the village. These included the Mechanicsburg Baptist Church, St. Michael's Catholic Church, the Church of Our Saviour (Episcopalian), and the Methodist church built in 1904.
Like these other churches, the Second Baptist Church was added to the list because of its important architecture. It was also considered important because of the role it played in the history of Ohio. In 2005, its historic status was recognized even more. The Ohio Historical Society placed a historical marker for the church along Main Street. In the early 2000s, the Champaign County Preservation Alliance, which owned the building, also did restoration work on it.
