Documentary Information
Regarding Sugar Camp Creek Church,
Jefferson County, Illinois
Quotations showing the claims of Missionary Baptist historians regarding Sugar Camp Creek Church
The Bethel Association of United (later Regular) Baptists was organized in October 1829, by ten churches mostly in Franklin, Hamilton, and Jefferson counties. The oldest minutes known to exist are for the year 1832. These minutes show that a church called Sugar Camp Creek was already in existence, ten years before the Missionary Baptist Church by that name was organized. These minutes also prove that the Primitive Baptist church (identified with the Bethel Association) was called Sugar Camp Creek, both before and after it moved its place of meeting to Lowry Hill - near the home of John and Nancy Lowry.Instead of John Lowry being a member of the Sugar Camp Creek Missionary Baptist Church, he was a member all the time of the Primitive Baptist Church by that name, which apparently met from 1832 until 1877 in a log church on the south side of the Old Goshen road.
On the Hamilton County, Illinois website, there is an article called "Dahlgren Missionary Baptist church," and another article called "Sugar Camp Baptist Church." In BOTH of these articles, clearly describing different churches, one on the north side of the Old Goshen Road, and the other at Dahlgren, it is asserted that the Primitive Baptists met together with them until 1877 or 1878, when they withdrew and started their own church at Lowry Hill. This information should be corrected, for the sake of historical accuracy. Both articles are wrong, and very misleading.
The truth is that the Primitive Baptist Sugar Camp Creek Church was organized in 1830 or earlier as an arm of Ten Mile Creek Church of Hamilton County, and then was organized as a separate church in 1831, and joined the Bethel Association that fall (1831). When the division over missions occurred in several of the churches of the Bethel Association, in about 1839-1842, the members of Sugar Camp Church who favored missions went out, and soon built a meeting house, probably also on the north side of the old Goshen Road, and called it Sugar Camp United Baptist Church. Their published records show that they organized themselves as a new church in February 1842. But the Primitive (or Regular, as they were then called) Baptists remained in their same meeting house, apparently also on the north side of the road, where they had been for ten years. The Regular or Primitive Baptists met at this location (possibly with more than one meeting house), until 1877, when for their own convenience they moved their place of meeting to a new meeting house which they built at Lowry Hill.
We now have copies of deeds proving that both the Primitive Baptists and Missionary Baptists owned property at the site. The Missionary Baptists also moved, and built further west about two miles, in later years.
The names of those who originally organized the church, in 1831, (not 1842) is given on the Jefferson county page of our website. We of course know and do not dispute that some of the same people withdrew and organized the Missionary Baptist church in February 1842. But the Regular or Primitive Baptists continued to meet, at or near the Sugar Camp Creek Cemetery, separate from the United or Missionary Baptists, from 1831 until 1842, and after 1842 until 1877, when they moved to Lowry Hill.
The articles in the Hamilton County website give the impression that the Missionary Baptist Church called Sugar Camp Creek is older than the Primitive Baptist Church at Lowry Hill, but that is not the truth. The church at Lowry Hill never did change its name, nor was it a new organization, it simply moved its place of meeting. It was the original Sugar Camp Creek Church.
Copyright c. 2009. All rights reserved. The Primitive Baptist Library.
