I was looking around for something to share for one of the Geneabloggers.com themes, and I came across The Primitive Baptist Library of Carthage, Illinois. While this may not look like much at first glance, this resource is an amazing little treasure trove of information for Primitive Baptist Churches across much of America. Sadly, they are several hours from me, but 10 minutes of looking at their county-based accounts of their sections called “Church and Family History Research Assistance” turned up about twenty of my close relatives, including my great-great grandfather.
The Primitive Baptist Library is a reference library that seeks to preserve and republish materials of historical interest about Primitive Baptist Churches and Associations. This is one of thiose things you just have to dig into for yourself. If you have any family who were involved somewhere with a Primitive Baptist Church, I strongly suggest you have a look. They have a database of obituaries that have appeared in their movement’s publications containing over 60,000 entries, and they keep adding materials. Notes on the website indicate that they do lookups and recommend you email them for details pertaining to their records.
The records, including minutes of church proceedings, are very detailed for these churches in many cases (comically so for some of the ones I’ve read, as they read like a gossip column in some cases). Stop by and have a look at this website, because within this site are hidden several golden nuggets, not to mention the promise of what their noncirculating library contains.
We have a new URL address for our website of the Primitive Baptist Library – http://pblib.org/pbl.html