Imagine a spring day, April 3, 1876, as a young minister stands on the porch of the Box Elder County Courthouse and delivers the first protestant sermon in Brigham City. Not the big porch we see now, but a two-story adobe building with a tiny porch — It was not just the courthouse at that time, but also the LDS meeting house.
A deputy sheriff steps up and asks by what authority he is there and he replies, “by the authority of the Lord Jesus Christ, and exercising the rights of an American citizen.”
Upon their return to the states, this young missionary couple was assigned to the Presbyterian church in Corinne, a railroad boomtown already experiencing a decline in 1874.
Samuel fought with union troops in the civil war, attended Princeton Theological Seminary and left in 1871 as a missionary to West Africa. There he met and married Miss Mattie H. White, a brave single lady missionary.
Rev. Gillespie began holding services in February 1878. By September, he opened a school and by the next year was assisted by his sister Miss E.F. Gillespie instructing the children. Later the Board of National Missions sent qualified teachers to the school until it closed in 1909 when public schools opened in Brigham City.
That first year was not easy – not only was there illness in the family, but an occasional rock came through the windows, the outhouse was turned over, and this was the Cooperative period in Brigham City, so they could not shop in most businesses. However, a little community of believers did grow and help support one another.
Although preaching services, Sunday school, day school and other programs carried on from 1878 to 1890 as a mission, it was not until October 18, 1890, that the church was formally organized with six members. Dr. F. A. Williamson was the church’s first elder. By this time the family was well accepted, and it is said that many gathered at the depot as they left the city in 1895 for a new parish assignment in Iowa.
Another Civil War veteran, the Rev. Arthur Tappan Rankin, begin his work here in December 1895, described as a dignified, scholarly gentleman. He was the eighth son in the leading underground railroad family of Rev. John Rankin, whose home atop a hill overlooking the Ohio River is now a national historic site – a place where a lantern in the window sent signals and hundreds of escaping slaves found refuge on their journeys to freedom – led up the steep hill from the river by those sons. I like to think of our second minister as one of those guides. There are a lot of stories about that family in this book…so I could go on and on.
Rev. Rankin remained with this church through May of 1907, but was elderly and failing in health, so returned to Indiana to retire.
The fifth pastor, Adam Frank and wife, who came to Brigham City in 1908, an energetic young couple with lots of enthusiasm. Through his efforts a new manse was erected in the fall of 1914 at a cost of $3,000, and memorial stained glass windows memorializing Rev. Gillespie and Rev. Rankin were installed in the church. Over $500 of the cost was donated by local businesses. The Franks left for an assignment in Washington in 1919.
The congregation continued to meet in the little white church into the 1950s – and it experienced the ups and downs of the community. Bushnell Army Hospital opened in 1942 serving up to 2,000 wounded servicemen at a time until 1946. Although there were chaplains and a chapel at the hospital, many of the staff attended the church.
In 1950 the hospital campus was transformed into Intermountain Indian School. Expanding membership plus a responsibility to assist in the religious life of the Navajo students meant that larger physical facilities were needed.
At that same time the Sixth LDS Ward had built a new chapel and placed the original First LDS Ward property on sale … the entire north end of a block with a stone social hall and a two-story brick church. The church wondered if they could afford the property, but an offer from the Masonic Lodge to purchase a corner of the property and the old church to use as a lodge made a difference.
Another big change began in 1959 and continued into the early 1960s as Thiokol Chemical opened a huge facility near Promontory and hundreds of families moved to Brigham City. The church and fellowship hall were bursting at the seams until Gillespie Hall was dedicated in 1964.
The church celebrated its 100th anniversary in 1978, with folks dressed in pioneer costumes. In recognition to the many people who had served the church through the years, we honored 94-year-old Marie Pohl as our oldest member and baptized our youngest, Patti Jo Goodwin, as a fourth generation baby – her great-grandmother Emma Hillam, age 87, grandmother Edna Bidlack, mother Peggy Bidlack Goodwin were all members of the church.
That old brick church was our home for over 50 years, but became more difficult to maintain, to heat, to cool, and difficult for an aging congregation to access. It was built in the 1890s, first used as a high stone basement, then a brick main story – with great faith in God and Gravity, but not in rebar! Retrofitting it for seismic safety would be prohibitive.
A five-year Fellowship Hall renovation project overseen by Elder Richard Laramee began in 1997 and was completed in time for rededication just prior to the church’s 125th anniversary celebration in 2003. The first worship service to be held in the renovated building was June 8, 2003. Appropriately the youngest member of the congregation, Paxton Wixom, was baptized at this service. This summer we had a fourth-generation baptism of Paxton and Dana’s children Grayson and Oakley.
At first we met here in the summertime, then gradually moved all services from the old church, which sat empty. It was a sad day when the unused church went down, but we felt it better to take it down while it still had integrity. Plus, three historic buildings had been set on fire and if that happened it would threaten our old manse, Gillespie Hall, and perhaps homes in the neighborhood. We are now in the process of creating a prayer garden with a pergola on the corner where the old church once stood.
So here we are – almost 150 years and six buildings – but, most importantly, hundreds of children taught about God’s love through those years, hundreds of adults who have found love and served in this Brigham City branch of the Family of God.
We are the church, we are the leaders, we are the people behind the scenes. We are today’s pioneers in an ever-changing world in a church family that has continued in faith from buggies to rockets, from lanterns to LED light bulbs, from telegraph to cell phones.
I’m so glad I am part of it.
