Bethlehem Baptist Minutes 1866-1867

These are minutes from Bethlehem Baptist Church near Grubville and Dittmer Missouri. Double click on the photos to read the entire document.

Page 26 February 1866. . .the case of Bro. James Williams was taken up he being charged with having a ball at his house and Bro. Wesley Scaggs was appointed to cite said Bro. to attend church and answer said charge. Also, although Sister Evans was charged with dancing or giving a ball at her house. Sister Unity Evans was appointed to cite her to attend church.
Page 27 March 1866. . .case of James S. Williams was taken up. Committee report received and _____ dismissed. Bro. Williams being present answered to charge and acknowledged to and asked to be forgiven of the church for the same, promising to do so no more. The Brother was restored to fellowship. The case of Sister Malissa Evans was called. Committee report received and committee discharged. Committee repeated that Sister be sorry for the charge and tried to attend but not being present her case was referred to the next meeting. Letters of dismissal was granted to Bro. Michael Brinley and his wife Sister Brinley.

Bethlehem Baptist Minutes 1864-1865

Stone of Joseph Columbia Brown in Bethlehem Cemetery

In addition to Bethlehem Baptist (Grubville, MO) membership records, there were several hundred pages of meeting minutes dating from 1864 to 1932. I'm going to try to include everything that would be interesting to family members and genealogists without totally transcribing each document. If you are interested in reading the entire document double click to enlarge it. The passage below has information relating to the membership records on the previous page. This also mentions an earlier record book----the church was reportedly formed in the 1820's but probably needs that book to verify the date.
p. 13 Feb. 1864
Prayer by William McKay; L. H. Lee [Lewis Harrison Lee husband of Margaret Julia Graham] moderator pro temp; C.E.Frost clerk was instructed to get the church book from Newman Pounds [husband to Lucinda Graham]while being relieved from his clerkship by request and N. Pounds. Stephen Pounds being appointed and declined to accept. The new clerk was instructed to write. . . .new book. . .The church proceeded to appoint William McKay as pastor of the church.

Grimes Family

1826 Inventory of John Grimes property

Grimes Court Interrogation

I'll try to transcribe the questions (above) and answers (below), but the answers are very hard to read. I'm putting them together rather than as separate documents. [Double click the documents to enlarge and zoom in---if you interpret any of this differently from me, please let me know---I welcome corrections]

Graham--Grimes

****We are no longer certain this family is related to our family, but will keep this blog up to help other families*****
It's no surprise to genealogists when researching a name to find variations in spelling. Sometimes a name changed spelling at immigration (Ludwig Reiter became Louis Reiter), sometimes ancestors changed it themselves (William Farncombe became William Reed), sometimes the family was illiterate and didn't know how the census taker wrote the name (Sallez became Silas), sometimes the family anglicized the name (Mueller became Miller) and sometimes the family just interchanged the names for whatever reason.

We have recently found documents for the Grimes family in St. Louis 1826-1833 that sure answer a lot of questions we have about our Graham family. Here is what we know: John Graham ("Grayham" in Maryland) married Mary McGowey (McGowley, McGauley, McCauley,so many spellings on that last name including McCoy), moved to Kentucky and ultimately to St. Louis, Missouri where he had a Spanish Land Grant in 1797. John Graham witnessed the burial of Jean Baptiste Carrico. Vincent Carrico was the administrator for John, Jr.'s estate. Carricos and Grahams were neighbors, but we suspected they were related since they had both come out of Maryland. See this blog to see how close the Carricos lived to the Grahams.

The Carricos were, indeed, related to the Grimes family---there were several marriages among the families which was very common among frontier families. Being an administrator and witness of a non-family member would have been uncommon especially among the Spanish Land grant families. Before I do a blog on the Grimes-Carricos, let me cite a few people on the Grimes/Graham name. One person was concerned because they had 67 marker match with someone named Grimes but their family name was Graham. Here are the responses of two people: