OCTOBER SUNLIGHT FALLS ON OLD BETHEL

In Cape Girardeau's bicentennial year the Baptists of Missouri are holding their annual Missouri Baptist Convention at the Show Me Center Oct. 26-28, starting Monday night at 7 p.m. The Baptist churches in the state will send messengers to the convention elected according to the membership of their respective congregations. This is the procedure followed annually with the convention taking place yearly in one of the state's large cities.

The messengers will consider the business of the church related to the cooperative work; the four Baptist Colleges, Southeast Baptist University, Bolivar; William Jewell College, Kansas City; Missouri Baptist College, Chesterfield; and Hannibal-LaGrange, Hannibal; the Baptist Home for the Aged, Ironton; Child Care Ministry, Bridton; Ministry Mission Work; and Language Missions.

There are 629,000 Baptists in the 1,951 Baptist Churches in Missouri. Bethel Baptist Church was organized in 1806 in Cape Girardeau County on the plantation of Thomas Bull immediately south of where later the county seat of Cape Girardeau was established in 1814. It was named "Byrdtown" and a year later renamed "Jackson."

Cape Girardeau County was the site of the first church other than the Spanish or French Catholic Church in Louisiana Territory before the United States purchased Louisiana in 1803. That church was Old Bethel Baptist Church.

The Rev. Roy Jones is the director of the Mission of Cape Girardeau County, and the Rev. Gerald Davidson, of the First Baptist Church of Arnold, is president of the Missouri Baptist Convention, who will chair the event.

At the same time the convention is meeting in Cape Girardeau, the Missouri Baptist Historical Society will convene at the First Baptist Church in Jackson at 3 p.m. Monday afternoon, Oct. 26, under the direction of Dr. Bob Hyatt of Ashland, Mo.; he is a medical doctor whose practice is in Columbia. He has chaired the Historical Society for two years. The group will congregate at the Jackson Church on South High at 3 p.m. and tour Old Bethel Cemetery, weather permitting, then return to the church where Terry Begley of Cape Girardeau, a descendant of one of the original members of Old Bethel Church, will address the group. He will give information about the first log Bethel Chapel that proved to be too small and the second larger log building that remained even after the congregation had disbanded. The meeting will conclude with an evening dinner at the church, which anyone interested in the Bethel history may attend by making a reservation, 243-8415.

This Historical Society is part of the Missouri Baptist Historical Commission under the chair~manship of Jackie Huffman of Ironton. She has been a mainstay of the Historical Mission, the Friends of Old Bethel, the restoration and upkeep of the Bethel Historic Site and Cemetery, the erection of the memorial market, and now the attention to obtaining enough financial support to rebuild a church using historic logs that will duplicate Old Bethel. If anyone has any memorabilia they want to contribute to the Bethel Museum or information about the church that should be preserved, Huffman is the person to contact.

A brief history of Old Bethel alludes to Thomas Bull of Kentucky, coming to the Lorimier settlement in 1796 and petitioning for land. He was granted 239 arpens and 40-poles in 1796 and is then to have returned to Kentucky to pack his household and bring his wife and her mother, Mrs. Lee, to the newly acquired plantation. Soon afterwards the Enose Randols and the John Abernathys arrived, all of Baptist faith. They desired a church but until the United States purchased Louisiana in 1803, no religion but that of the Spanish state Catholic Church was permitted. By 1806, the Rev. David Greene of Virginia came to Cape Girardeau by way of Kentucky from the Carolinas where he had been preaching. He organized the church July 19, 1806. Another Baptist preacher had crossed the area and preached in Bulls House, and the Rev. Thomas Greene was successful in organizing the congregation.

Because it was difficult for some Jackson families and those in the outskirts of the area to reach Old Bethel, they petitioned for a church in Jackson and one was organized and located where the First Baptist Church on High Street is today.

The first 100 years the Jackson church was served by 30 ministers. The present church building was erected in 1965. During the Civil War the church erected in 1856 served as a hospital for the Union Army and also a barracks.

When the court moved to Jackson from Cape in 1814, the first court meetings were held in Old Bethel. So the history of the church is also part of the history of Jackson.

The residents of the area welcome the missioners to their annual Baptist Convention.