One Township's Yesterdays Chapter LI  

Church at Maxinkuckee

Information relative to the church history of the village of Maxinkuckee is fragmentary. The writer has not completed this chapter.

As has been already mentioned, the Congregation at Maxinkuckee was probably organized some time prior to 1854.

It seems that the Methodist Church at Maxinkuckee is Methodist Protestant, not Methodist Episcopal. Some doubt has been expressed that it could have been always Methodist Protestant. An old resident told the writer that he is sure a preacher by the name of NORRIS used to preach there, and he thinks NORRIS was Methodist Episcopal. At any rate, the Methodists did not have full sway at Maxinkuckee, all down through the years. In very early days, when Maxinkuckee was the "lower settlement," the people there were mostly of the "New Light" or old Christian Church. The Maxinkuckee Christian Church has continued until late years.

A new church edifice was built for the Methodist Protestant people at Maxinkuckee in 1914. The work on the structure was almost completed by the middle of October, that year, and the building was dedicated on Sunday, October 18th. The writer was informed also that a church was built at Maxinkuckee in 1888.

Among the former pastors of the Methodist Protestant Church at Maxinkuckee, living in 1934, were the Reverends L. COOMER, BETTER, and STANTON, at Marion. Ind.

Other Old Churches MARVIN LOUDEN recalled the church at Wolf Creek, which was demolished when he was a boy of around ten years. He mentioned another church, wrecked about eighteen or twenty years ago. The first building was of frame construction.

One of the staunch old Methodists of this region was JAMES O. LOUDEN, who was a member of the Methodist church since the age of eighteen, or around the year 1855. He was born in 1837, died at Rutland in 1904, and was buried in Poplar Grove Cemetery.

About the year 1872, there came into the Zion neighborhood a Protestant Methodist minister by the name of DOUGLAS who, together with Rev. CANDO, commenced protracted meetings, resulting in one of those "great revivals" of early days.

Describing the early church in Indiana, JULIA HENDERSON LEVERING says that "neighborhoods grew up, schools were gradually started, and `meetings' were held, when the itinerant preachers came around on their circuit of the isolated settlements. One of the characteristics of the early days was the liberal hospitality connected with the religious meetings. Whenever the associational, synodical, or quarterly meetings were held, each settler of the immediate neighborhood would provide for a score of people that might come from a distance. (There were good things to eat). As the 'meetin' broke, the mother in Israel would go about among the congregation, and gather up a dozen or more of the attendants from the remote settlements, and take them home to dinner with her."