Jacksonville Community United Methodist Church history – an update

Jacksonville Church sanctuary, May 8, 2019

We made a trip to Upstate New York in early May to review the manuscript books and other church history items my friend Beth found and spent the winter organizing.

We met at her house where she put before me the manuscript book my great-grandmother Jessie (Tucker) Agard worked on from the handwritten notes that I have been transcribing. Through Beth’s research we learned that Jessie finished the first set of minutes dated 1842 through 1946 to the church and then took the book back to continue with the project. Jessie transcribed the minutes through 1957 when Florence Graham took over the task. Mrs. Graham transcribed the minutes from 1957 through 1979.

We then went to the church where Beth showed off its soon-to-be-open-for-the season thrift shop – beautifully arranged, and then we walked across the road to the church. After admiring the quilts on the wall, the sanctuary, and the Rose Window, we went downstairs into a back hallway where the infamous previously locked file cabinet resides. Beth showed us the files she had organized neatly into Pendaflex and manila folders. She then pulled out the drawers of the other file cabinets. So much history; so little time.

The question was: how did I want to proceed with my part of the project knowing there is all this information yet to be digitized? The answer was easy. I’m transcribing what my great-grandmother did and that will be one project done. When that is bound and distributed, we can talk about what else should be tackled and maybe someone in the community will come forward and volunteer for the job.

My dining room table is covered with the handwritten minutes, my typed copy, and ten pages of two columns of index terms that I am working through putting in page numbers. Not as easy as it sounds. The issue comes when there are two persons with the same name or just an initial, and when women in the earlier years were listed as Mrs. and in later years with their first name. I had to consult the U.S. Federal Census to determine who was the wife of Frank Mattison. Caroline is the answer, though the census listed her as “Cardine.” That census also told me that Monroe was their son. I suspect I will be spending a fair amount of time on census research before the index project is complete.