I first featured this Baptist Record collection several years ago when someone mentioned its availability online. After several years, the links were all changed or broken. The NC Baptist Chruch Records Special collection housed at the Z. Smith Reynolds Library on the campus of Wake Forest University is just to special and massive to not feature again. It "contains material on 118 North Carolina Baptist churches (some dating back to the 1700s) selected from our NC Baptist Historical Collection. Objects digitized include original records, photocopies of records, and microfilmed records. The collection may contain timelines of constitutional dates, associational memberships, and any name changes, divisions, or mergers the church may have gone through; newspaper clippings; brief historical sketches; lists of former and current pastors; church directories; and photographs."
The featured Baptist collections can be views by using "Baptist" as the keyword from the search menu on the Special Collections page. once in this collection you can use the keyword "Wake" to narrow the search further. All the records here seem digitized. Some have on screen viewers to use. Others require downloading to read and may be very large. If your personal computer and network are not robust enough, you may need to visit a library to gather these downloads. The first two screen captures below required downloads.
From that page, you are offered several collections of Baptist memorabilia and historical files to choose. Looking through North Carolina Baptist Church Records I found some really old records. There was a Minutes book from Olive Chapel dated 1864-1869. Below is an excerpt of the details found there.
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| Excerpt Olive Chapel Minute Book 1864-1869 ZSR Special Collections, Winston Salem, NC |
This preview is from the 1850 Minutes book of the Holly Springs Baptist Church. This looks to be very early in the church's history.
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| Excerpt Holly Springs Minute Book 1850 - 1922 ZSR Special Collections, Winston Salem, NC |
This next preview is from an 1848 letter from Cedar Fork Baptist in Durham. This letter was viewable at the site.
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| 1848 Cedar Forks Letter ZSR Special Collections, Winston Salem, NC |
In addition to the minute books, and letter you see here, you will find member lists, bulletins, letters of dismissal, publicity books, financial notes and reports, newspaper clippings, historical sketches, pastor lists, directories and photographs.
Browsing within the Baptist Church Records will reveal collections for Newspapers, Conventions, the NC Baptist Church and Association Files and much more.
When you visit the ZSR Library site, be sure to browse to see the other special collections they offer including Campus Photos, University Archive Photos, and Biographical files. The viewing capability of the ZSR seems somewhat hit and miss, but if you can spare the bandwidth, these are special records and may just fill in some nice history for you.
Visit Wake County Genealogical Society's Website -
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