Volume 4, Number 4 - Summer 1971
A SUGGESTION J.R.M.
A History of the Ashland Christian Church, 1817-1967, crossed my desk, a gift of Mrs. Herbert 0. Young, Hazel Pipes Young, of Ashland, Missouri. This small booklet of 20 pages, shows a picture the old church, lists the charter members, and members during those early years, the officers, the ministers the board members, and a picture of the church standing today.
We so need to get the history of the old churches of the White River Valley area, that I am going to quote the first few paragraphs of this ashland Church History. Perhaps these will stir memories in your minds and show you how to go about writing a history. However, if you will get the facts I will help any one of you to write the history. Will you please start tomorrow collecting material concerning the oldest church in your community, or of any church in your community. I mean start tomorrow, not next week. Tomorrow morning make that the first order of business to write down what you know about the church regardless of how simple the fact, write it down. Then start asking questions and reading old papers, letters, or books...and write down every fact you can find.
"In the pioneer days, before Missouri was a state, there settled in Howard County in a neighborhood midway between the towns of Rocheport and Fayette, many families from Virginia and Kentucky. These were fine, sturdy, God-fearing people. Settlement of the area began about 1812. Hardly had plots of ground been cleared and paths made through the virgin forest before these good people gathered together and organized Salt Creek Christian Chruch with 13 charter members. This was done under the direction of Elder Thomas McBride, a member, of the Christian (or Disciples of Christ), and the old church records say ‘The Church of Jesus Christ, on the East Fork of Salt Creek, was constituted Saturday, November 22, 1817.
"This is reputed to be the oldest Christian Church Organization west of the Mississippi River. The first church home was built of unhewn logs, the spaces between chinked with mud. Seats were split logs with no backs; heat was provided by two large sandstone fireplaces; for a time a dirt floor was used, but later a home sawed lumber floor was used. A list of members from 1817 to 1828 is available, but records from that time to 1876 are lost.
[4]
"In 1848, as the old log building was badly dilapidated, it was decided to move the church organization to the present site, and to rename it Ashland because of its location in a grove of beautiful ash tree...etc etc..."
We’re Coming Arkansas
by Merton Baltz president of the First National Bank of Millstadt, Ill.
We’re coming Arkansas
We’re coming Arkansas
Our 4-horse team will soon be seen
On the road to Arkansas
They say there’s a stream down there
Where crystal waters flow
Will cure a man of all disease
If he will only go.
I found among some papers and receipts of my mother, who passed away in 1912, a drug bill which listed a Buffalo Lithia Water.
Being curious, I searched the dictionary and found it a mineral water. I approached our local druggust, a man 85 year of age and not retired. He explained that years ago Lithia water was greatly used in treatment of calcium conditions in the human body, but is no longer a standard remedy. I then asked him the source of this kind of water and he started to sing a little song that had to do with mineral waters.
He mentioned that the old-timers living in our area back in the Civil War Days knew this song and sang it at random. He gave me to understand that the mineral waters in Arkansas were much sought after in those days, and that folks from our part of the country journeyed down there in search of the rare waters with such mystic healing powers.
The bill showed that Mrs. Phillip Baltz Sr., purchased Lithia water on August 10, 21, and September 4 and 22, each time the cost 60 cents, these from the Stemgoetters Pharmacy in Belleville, Ill.
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