The Guardians of The Minutes

Hollis Middlebrook recently handed over a relic to Stephen F. Austin State University. 

“It’s just a really historic document,” she explained. “It dates back to the Republic of Texas.”

What she gave the university was a minute book from the Old North Baptist Church in Nacogdoches, the oldest active missionary Baptist church in Texas.

Everything is written in calligraphy, the pages are all yellow and at some point the back cover came detached. 

The book has been in the Middlebrook family’s possession for more than a century and it documents daily life and all important church business.

Church discipline was a big part of what they would write down,” said Middlebrook, “Like if someone did something that was immoral. One of my ancestors is in there for dancing.”

In the 1880s, there was a rupture at the Old North Baptist Church in Nacogdoches.

“The matter was over painting the church,” said Middlebrook.

This fight took place between a group called the Missionary Baptists, who wanted to paint the church, and another group called the Primitive Baptists, who didn’t want to paint the church.

“They thought that was prideful,” said Middlebrook.

The church was painted, the Primitive Baptists broke away, and Middlebrook’s great-great grandfather ended up with the old record book.

Preserving and passing it down each generation became a family tradition. Middlebrook’s family called themselves the Guardians of the Minutes.

“They had to all take an oath that they would never let it fall back in the hands of the Primitive Baptists,” she said. 

The reason Middlebrook donated the book to SFA is because her father passed away recently and it was his dying wish that the document be preserved.

“He dedicated his life to doing Native American archeology, but he also was just a huge lover of history and a lover of Nacogdoches,” she said. “He was such a good custodian of all the things he collected and preserved, and that included this record.”

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The book will be digitized and stored at the East Texas Research Center at SFA where historians, archivists, and local history fans will have access to its contents.

“I did not take [the oath],” said Middlebrook. “I think that’s maybe why my dad waited until he passed away, so that he didn’t violate the oath.”

Faith on the frontier

When Texas was under Mexican rule, Catholicism was the only religion allowed. 

It wasn’t until 1836, when Anglo settlers broke away to form the Republic of Texas, that Protestant churches were allowed.

This makes the Old North Baptist Church, which was organized in 1838, one of the oldest Protestant churches in the state. 

The meeting minutes donated by SFA help fill in the historical record from the early Republic of Texas.

“One of the most interesting things about this document is it shows the physical, practical, and religious struggle of these people,” said Hunter Hampton, an associate professor at Stephen F. Austin State University.

The Old North Church was started during an era historians call the Second Great Awakening.

“The Second Great Awakening is the time where the United States becomes Christian,” said Hampton. “If you look at the kind of grand scheme of religious adherence in the United States, during the American Revolution is actually the lowest point of church attendance in American history.”

Historians Roger Finke and Rodney Stark estimate that at most, 12% of Americans attended church at the time of the American Revolution. That changed in the 19th century, when religion exploded across the U.S. as the nation expanded westward.

1830s Nacogdoches would’ve been considered the frontier to Anglo settlers, who came flooding in after Texas gained its independence. 

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With them, they brought Baptism and Methodism, which were less tied to religious bureaucracy than denominations like Catholicism, where power is centralized at the Vatican.

“They were operating really outside of a really strict church hierarchy,” said Hampton.

On the frontier, churches served two main purposes: salvation and giving a sense of permanence to an area.

“People in these towns, across the south, across the west, are looking to establish a church to say that this is a place that we are going to stay,” explained Hampton.

By documenting meeting notes, construction projects, baptisms and other logistics of church life, an old minute book gives historians a snapshot of life on the frontier in the Republic of Texas.

“As historians, we’re trying to understand what motivated human action in the past,” said Hunter, “and for many people in our past, faith is the most significant part.”

A never ending quest for names

Within an hour of Hollis Middlebrook handing over the church minutes, special collections librarian Kyle Ainsworth puts them to use when he finds a page with more than 80 names on it.

“It’s an index of all the enslaved members,” he explained.

Ainsworth runs the Lone Star Slavery Project, a research effort to identify enslaved people in East Texas records.

“I’m motivated to help people explore their enslaved ancestry,” he said. “I know that I can’t finish this project in my lifetime. There’s too much to do for a single person. But I can move the needle in the right direction.”

He has around 7,000 names in his database — but those listed in the minutes book aren’t there.

One of the women listed was enslaved to Thomas J. Rusk, a Texas revolutionary who served as Secretary of War in the Republic of Texas, one of the most powerful men in the state at the time. 

Her name was Eunice.

“She was baptized in July 1848 and dismissed in November 1867,” Ainsworth explained. “So even in that, there’s some interesting things going on.”

This church record actually shows the impact of emancipation.

Enslaved Texas were often put into churches by their masters. In June 1865, they were freed in Texas and often went on to join Black churches.

“This could be the only reference to this person’s existence in a written way,” he explained.

Ainsworth looks closer at the page and sees that Eunice wasn’t the only freed person to leave. A handful of others left around the same time.

“It looks like a bunch of people kind of left in November 1867,” he noticed.

This is the value of having an old minute book. It shows what people cared about, what they fought over and, occasionally, how they exercised their autonomy.

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