First Baptist Church
30 Centre Street
This view is looking southeast from the corner of Center and Elm Streets. Rev. Ervin R. Powell was the minister in 1910. He lived at 52 Mahoning Street with his wife Sarah and sons Harold and Frank.
From Bell’s History of Northumberland County 1891:
The Milton Baptist Church originated in the labors of the Rev.
Eugene Kincaid, a missionary of that church who visited this place in
1826 while on a preaching tour through the West Branch region. There was
then but one member of his church here, Miss Susanna Thomas, but Mr.
Kincaid at once entered upon the work of preaching, and on the 25th of
August, 1826, organized a society with nine members, viz., Eugene
Kincaid and Almy his wife, William Thomas and Catherine his wife,
Susanna Thomas, Nathan
and Martha Delany, Sarah Watts, and Harriet Geddis. The first service of
baptism by immersion in the Susquehanna at this point occurred on
Sunday, September 10, 1826, immediately after the morning sermon, when
the missionary pastor baptized his recent converts in the presence of a
large concourse of people assembled on the river banks. The first
deacons of this church, James Moore, Sr., and William Thomas, were
ordained in August, 1832.
The first church building, a plain one-story brick building of
medium size, with steeple and bell, was built in 1829 on the west side
of Church Lane (Filbert Street), upon ground donated for the purpose by
James Moore, and served as a place of worship until 1868. In that year a
two-story brick edifice was erected at the southeast corner of Elm and Center streets. It was burned in 1880, and was succeeded by the present church building, a brick structure with tower in front, one of the most substantial and attractive places of worship in the borough.
The following is a list of pastors since the organization of the
church: Eugenio Kincaid, 1826-30; George Higgins, 1830-34; Thomas B.
Brown, 1835-37; David C. Wait, 1838-39; Collins Hewitt, 1840-45; Joel E.
Bradley, 1846-52; Howard Malcolm, D. D., president of Bucknell
University, 1853-56; Thomas F. Curtis, D. D., professor in Bucknell
University, 1856-63; James Parker, T. E. Clapp, and William B. Thomas,
1864-68; A. C. Wheat, 1868-70; Joseph Green Miles, 1871-78; E. C. Houck,
A. H. Emmons, and W. C. McNaul, present pastor.
