First Baptist Church of Victoria members are celebrating the church’s 100th anniversary this year, but the first stirring of the spirit that led to that church may have started much earlier.
The Jefferson County Baptist Association’s minutes of 1870 state that Victoria Baptist Church applied for entrance into the association that year, but no other record of the church is available before 1914, according to the history of the church published for its 75th anniversary.
Even after the church’s official organization on January 17, 1914, the Baptists and the Methodists shared a worship space alternating Sundays for about 40 years at what was called a Union church and what is now Victoria United Methodist Church on Choteau Avenue in Victoria.
Charter members of the Baptist portion of the church included James F. Davis, Ed Wiley, Artie Wiley, Mary Carter, Ella Vineyard, Alice Vineyard, Alberta Wease, Artinieca Patton, Ella Patton, Albert Wease and F. M. McKee.
The Rev. A. P. Hamrick was the first Baptist pastor of the church and was succeeded by the Rev. Edward Manwarring who is credited with leading the effort to organize the church, the history said.
Tom McCurdy, 76, born and raised in Victoria, began attending that church when he was just a boy.
“At that time, my parents didn’t go to church. But my mother’s sister, Judy Hill Scott, came and picked up me and my two brothers and my older sister to take us to Sunday School quite often,” McCurdy said.
“The Baptists had services on two Sundays and the Methodists had services on two Sundays,” McCurdy said. “And I remember our minister John E. Williams said, ‘If no one is going to take that fifth Sunday, we will,’ and we did.”
McCurdy remembers the church with fondness, especially the Christmas programs.
“Every church had a part in the play. Little children, if they could say anything at all, would be in it. The older children would be in the Nativity. It was always on Christmas Eve, and Santa Claus would come and bring candy, nuts and oranges. It was a Christmas tradition for several years. It really involved the people,” he said.
In 1953, the Baptist congregation decided to build their own church because there was some dispute about the shared Sunday school curriculum, according to Zoe Booth Rutledge, in her book, Our Jefferson County Heritage.
“Dr. O.H. O’Rear suggested Union literature be used, but the Baptists wanted to use their own,” Rutledge said.
Work on the new church on Bogey Avenue began Dec. 23, 1953, and the building was dedicated July 11, 1954, according to an article in the Jefferson Republic dated July 15, 1954.
“The building is finished with white asbestos shingles, is heated with oil and has hardwood floors and beautiful light fixtures,” according to the article. “It is fully equipped with new furniture and has a full basement. Seating capacity, including the choir, is 180.”
The total cost of the building was approximately $13,000, the article said.
One of the church’s unique features was its chimes.
“Each noon, for five minutes they play and lend an enchanting and inspiring note to the atmosphere of this charming spot,” the Jefferson Republic reported.
Ron Scott, the son of Judy and her husband, W.T. “Tut” Scott, said a man named Herb Doughty faithfully rang the chimes (carillon) every Sunday morning for years.
During the dedication of the church, “Tut” Scott, the Sunday school superintendent, led the singing of “He Lives,” the article said.
McCurdy was in high school about the time the new church was built. He said it was at that time his aunt Judy recruited his mother to pick up kids and take them to vacation Bible school.
“My mother and father became involved in the church,” he said. “In 1956, when I went to Bolivar, my dad joined the Baptist church and became baptized.”
Ron Scott said he and his father, Tut, and brother, Colby, took the old Victoria School House and remodeled it into a parsonage after the church purchased the property. The first pastor to stay there was C.E. Nicholas.
There were decades when the church almost was a family church, Scott said. His father’s siblings and his mother’s siblings and their children accounted for most of the church members at times.
Meanwhile Scott’s cousin, Tom McCurdy, was hearing God’s call, McCurdy said. He decided to become a minister. That decision took him back to Victoria and around the world.
After serving as a minister in Blackwell, he was called back to the First Baptist Church of Victoria. He served the congregation from 1967-1970 and then again from about 1972 to 1976. From there he went to Louisiana, then Arizona where he ministered for 28 years and in between he went on a variety of mission trips to India, Korea, the Philippines, Indonesia and Kenya, he said.
Times though have changed in Victoria. The town that was a pretty important destination as a railroad town where attorneys caught the shuttle to the county seat soon began to diminish in size. Later generations moved to places where they could find work.
Members of the First Baptist Church of Victoria, however, now just 40 strong, still gather for Sunday School at 9:45 on Sundays and 10:45 for worship, and Wednesday evenings through the week at the church at 3408 Bogey Ave.
Bev Ringling, whose mom was Judy’s sister, still attends services there.
“I enjoy it, and God’s not given me another place to go, and I once heard a pastor say, ‘Go to church near where you live,” she said. “It’s a little country church where everybody knows everybody.”
In honor of the church’s anniversary, members held a picnic on Sept. 27 with games and treasure hunts for the children and then on Sept. 28, they had a guest speaker, Dr. Curtis Porter, and a meal together.
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