Missionary Baptist Claims Regarding
Ten Mile Creek Church
History of the Franklin Association, 1880, by W. P. Throgmorton, pp. 29-32.
W. P. Throgmorton quotes the "letter of dismission, from Bankston's Fork Church, as found in the old minute book of Ten Mile Creek Church", as follows:Gallatin county, State of Illinois. Dear Brethren: We, the church of Christ at Bankston's, sitting in conference, on Saturday before the second Lord's Day in August 1820, received your petition for dismission in order that you might become a constituted body and also that we would send our ministerial help to aid in your constitution; which petition we grant and dismiss the following brethren and sisters: [names follow.] We also send Wilson Henderson and Chester Carpenter, our elders, to aid in your constitution, to attend on Saturday before the first Lord's Day in September, at the house of Jeremiah Moore in White [now Hamilton] county, and State of Illinois."
Throgmorton says, "That this church had no prejudice against 'missionism,' is manifest from the fact that at the March meeting in 1824, it appointed Brethren Jeremiah Moore and John Dale a committee to say what each member should pay to defray the expenses of the church. True, a little over a year afterward this action was repealed; but it stands on the minutes as a monument of the early missionary character of the church. The declaration of faith has never been changed. It is the same today that it was in 1820. When the "Hardshell" majority in the Bethel Association departed from the original ground upon which the association had stood, changing her name and the terms of fellowship, which had before been the rule, Ten Mile Creek was one of the churches which stood firm. There never was much division in this church. A strong effort was made to effect a "split" in it at the time of the troubles which have been referred to; but the effort came to naught.
