Minutes of Old North Church

Collection

Identifier: B-0139

Staff Only

Scope and Contents

The record book is 139 pages long and includes a list of male and female members, the church's articles of faith, covenant, and minutes. The book is handwritten in cursive.

Dates

Creation: 1838-1872

Conditions Governing Access

Open for research. Researchers should use the photocopy (folder 2) or the scanned minutes in the East Texas Digital Archives.

Biographical / Historical

Old North Baptist Church (formerly Union Baptist Church) is the oldest active Baptist Church in Texas. Founded in 1838 under an old oak tree it stands in the oldest town in the State. The Summers family arrived in Texas in 1851 and soon joined the congregation. Thomas Summers helped lay the cornerstone of the church’s southwest corner, and his mother, Mary Anne Meals Summers McCuistion, became the oldest member of the oldest church in the oldest town in Texas.

Throughout the 1800s the minutes of Old North Church were faithfully transcribed by its clerks. Jesse Summers Sr., the son of Thomas Summers, served as clerk from 1877-1885, and again from 1889-1890. Jesse Sr. was praised by the famed Baptist pastor A. J. Holt as the last of the clerks to thoughtfully and legibly transcribe these minutes.

In 1882 a great schism arose in the church between the Missionary Baptists and the Primitive Baptists. The Missionary Baptists wanted to paint the church, while the Primitive Baptists saw this as a matter of "worldly pride" and vanity. After the church was painted the Primitive Baptists broke away and formed Bethel Baptist Church.

In the 1890s the Elders of Old North Church gave the minutes to Jesse Summers Sr. (the second longest serving clerk). He was entrusted with keeping the minutes safe from, "The Hard-Shells" or the Primitive Baptists. Jesse Sr. would keep the minutes until close to his death in 1933, at which time the minutes were passed on to his son, Jesse Summers Jr. He would keep the minutes until the 1960s when they were passed on to his sister, Sallie T. Summers. In 1971 she would entrust the minutes to her great-nephew Dr. Tom Anderson Middlebrook. These four individuals were known as, "The Guardians of the Minutes." The one provision that all the Guardians were sworn to uphold, was that these minutes were to never fall back into the hands of the Primitive Baptists. Through the years this oath became more tongue and cheek than literal. Nevertheless, over the past century, the faithful Guardians have taken great care to preserve these minutes.

This set of records is the oldest document of the church. It includes the church’s theology, covenant, membership, and disciplinary actions from the 1830s through the 1870s. It was especially fortunate that the Elders chose Jesse Summers Sr. to safeguard these minutes, as all other record books transcribed later in the nineteenth century were destroyed in a fire at the home of one of the subsequent clerks. As a result, this record is the only surviving minute book of Old North Church from the 1800s, and it is the earliest. It contains the very founding minutes of the church from 1838, when Texas was still a Republic—making it the oldest document from the oldest church in the oldest town in Texas.

Dr. Tom Middlebrook realized the significance of the book and took great care to have it transcribed by Rev. Gene Tomlin so that it could be preserved and made accessible for future generations. The Middlebrook family is honored to pass this minute book on to the East Texas Research Center, in accordance with the wishes of Dr. Tom Anderson Middlebrook, the last of the four Guardians of the Minutes of Old North Church.