The Earliest Days

Charles Bigelow trudged slowly up the 2nd Street Hill toward the Log Tavern. It was a Sunday morning in 1854 and all commercial enterprise had ended when the last of the Saturday night revelers had stumbled out of the building. The place was a mess and the smell of stale beer filled his nostrils. He had a lot of work to do. The meeting was less than an hour away and he had to clean up. The agreement was, “You can have the place for free, but you have to clean it up first. That way I can sleep it off without having to get up for anything.”

Charles moved tables and picked up chairs. He swept up broken glass, took out the garbage, and then he mopped the floor with water, and scrubbed it with lye soap. He even wiped the bar and straightened the bottle displays. It actually smelled clean in there when he was through with it. He was doing this for God’s glory and that meant doing his best to make the place presentable for a group of faithful souls who were due to meet there within the hour. Soon anywhere from ten to twenty-five people would transform this tavern into a holy place.

The Reverend Edwin Cressy from Prescott, Wisconsin was making the trip to Hastings to hold services. This made the day special because the Reverend could only get to Hastings once every six to eight weeks. Hastings was barely a spot at the end of the road in those days. The railroad ended there, as did overland traffic, and river transport was just beginning to move grain from Minnesota’s rich farmland downriver. The Log Tavern doubled as an Indian trading post overlooking the Mississippi River valley below it. There were a few homes scattered around, mainly at the bottom of the hill.

But this was a day of worship, not business, and the Log Tavern was the informal meeting place of what would become the First Baptist Church. It would be another two years before the church would officially organize on August 10, 1856. By that time the group had moved to the schoolhouse for their services, but they had to meet on Sunday afternoons because the Episcopalians and Presbyterians used it in the mornings. By the end of that year this fledgling group of believers had called their first full-time pastor. The Rev. J. C. Hyde’s first Sunday was December 13th.

The First Baptist Church met in several different places for the next 16 years until finally they moved into their own building in 1872, a beautiful structure with seating for over 500 people, located on the sight of our present building. Five years earlier on October 31, 1867 the little congregation had taken a step of faith and had voted unanimously to build it. Their motto was, “In God’s strength we will do it!” And when they moved in to dedicate it, they owned it debt free.

From Wood to Brick

On the morning of Monday, October 8, 1923 the wooden church and all its contents were totally lost to fire. Robert Geiken Senior was a student at the public school a block and a half from the church. He said he “could sit in the schoolhouse and look out the window and watch it burn to the ground. It was a wooden structure and it went fast.” That same night members of the congregation met and decided that the church would be rebuilt. A committee was formed to raise sufficient funds and a mere nine months after the fire a new brick building was rapidly built.

In 2003 the church was renovated again into the building that stands here today. There have been many changes to the brick church built in 1924, all with a view towards creating a facility where effective work can be done to God’s glory. A pamphlet published to celebrate the church’s 100th anniversary put it this way:

“Each generation ought to experience the challenging vision, the sacrificial effort, the burning desire to reach out in service for God, the joy and satisfaction of leaving to a succeeding generation . . . testimony of its desire to provide not only for its own day, but for a generation to come.”

O, Church of God’s anointed,
Press on, the prize to win;
With steadfast faith and purpose
Against the hosts of sin;
’Til at His throne in glory
Where angels prostrate fall
”One Hallelujah chorus
Shall crown Him Lord of all!”

Written by Miss Mabel Erickson on the occasion of the 90th anniversary of First Baptist Church.

Many thanks to Pastor Stephen Schoenwald for use of “The Earliest Days” and to Megan Breithaupt for her historical research and the priceless interview of her great-great-grandfather, Robert Geiken Senior.