Well, by now I think everyone in town is well aware of the sad state of this building, and that in the near future it will no longer be a part of our cityscape. [For the record, I got to go inside it to take some pictures when I heard it was coming down, and folks, it was SCARY BAD in there. Sometimes you just have to know when to start fresh, and *this* fervent history lover agrees that this was the right thing to do here.]  

This, friends, is why we work to create and preserve a rich historical record of our dear city. If you’re interested in learning about this building, and the people associated with it, you know where to come.

• The online History Index refers to numerous stories which appeared in the local papers about this church (scroll down to look under CHURCHES–FREE WILL BAPTIST and further on under  CHURCHES–UNITED BAPTIST.)
• We have images up on Maine Memory Network of the church in 1955 and the reverend who was serving in 1895, Rev. Musgrove (who just happens to look kind of like Gerald McRaney–remember Simon & Simon?!?)
• And just this week I digitized our copy of the Jefferson Street Baptist Church directory from 1926 and added it to our growing library of archival resources on the Internet Archive, which is fully downloadable and readable in multiple formats.

This is just a taste of what we have, and you can access even more here at the library (especially the newspaper articles, which are usually a treasure trove of information). We continue to try and to pull even more resources together to add to our “BUILDINGS + BLOCKS” binder, to make it easier for folks to locate materials which may live in several different collections.

In any event, be assured that there are people who are working to make sure that as time moves forward, one will be able to look back on where we have come from.

The only thing new in the world is the history you don’t know.  ~Harry S. Truman