Centralia Baptist Association - History

History

At the annual meeting in 1880, a committee consisting of Rev. J.R. Ford, Rev. Levi Elliot, and Rev. E.A. Ince was appointed "to consider the propriety of calling a convention or a mass meeting to organize a new Association." This committee, therefore, (with Rev. Gilbert Frederick substituted for his predecessor, Rev. E.A. Ince) called a convention of the churches in the Vandalia Baptist Association to meet at Centralia on July 12, 1881. At this meeting it was recommended to the Centralia and Mount Vernon churches that they obtain letters from their Associations and unite with the Vandalia Baptist Association under the name "Centralia." These recommendations were adopted by the churches at their annual meeting in 1881 and so the name of the association changed from "Vandalia" to the "Centralia Baptist Association."

In 1883, the Centralia Baptist Association resolved to take up annual collections in January for foreign missions, in April for Ministerial Education, in July for the publication of Society and Sunday School work and in October for the general association. In 1885, Rev. Gilbert Frederick departed to "cross the great deep" on his missionary work. In 1889, the Associational Women's Home Missions Society was orgainized. In 1892, a suggestion was made that there be a committee appointed on "Young People's Work," not only for work in the association, but to confer with other associations. The moderator appointed Carrie E. Perrine, Jessie Shoupe, and H.T. Cunningham.