Penney Memorial United Baptist Church embodies three Baptist churches from early Augusta: the First Baptist Church, the Second Baptist Church, and the Free Will Baptist Church. These early Baptist churches are significant for what they tell us about the moral convictions of early residents, and specific women, in particular. In 1831, after many of years of occasional services (beginning around 1806), seventeen people voted to form the first Baptist Church in Augusta - twelve of them were women and their names are known today: Esther Oliver, Rebecca Foster, Rachel Wade, Susan Prescott, Rebecca Jones, Sarah Ballard, Prudence Snow, Betsey Crommett, Lucy Pierce, Sylvia Pierce, Eliza Lawson, Surena Doe, and Ann Eliza Haynes. The committee to consider whether or not to form a church, which had met prior to the vote, did not include women.

 In 1844, the Second Baptist Church split from the First Baptist over the issue of slavery. The splinter group felt the First Church was dragging its heels in adopting a stern resolution barring slaveholders from church membership and communion and, additionally, barring slaveholding ministers from the pulpit. The Second Baptist Church was formed by eight men and twenty-four women. Their position was to hold –. . .fully and strictly to anti-slavery sentiments." By 1852, the Second Church had dissolved, with some members returning to the First Church, and some joining the Free Will Baptist Church. The Free Will Baptist Church formed in 1834 (with seven members), declined by 1838, but was re-established in 1850. The second pastor of the Free Will church, the Reverend Oren B. Cheney, was instrumental in establishing the Maine State Seminary in Lewiston (founded in 1855), a two-year teacher training institute that was the first co-educational, post-secondary school in New England. The school opened in 1857 with 84 men and 53 women students. L. Georgie Mitchell of Augusta was in the first class. Other Augusta women who attended during the early years of the school included Ellen A. Fogg (1858 & 1859) Ellen Richardson (1858), and Mary A. Taylor (1858). Fannie S. Waite is noted as having graduated in 1866. Maine State Seminary continues today as Bates College. In 1920, the Free Will Baptist Church (which carried the name Penney Memorial Free Will Baptist Church and built the present-day building) and the First Baptist Church merged, forming the current Penney Memorial United Baptist Church.

 

Site #16.1 Sources:

	Augusta, Maine Sesquicentennial. Special reprint of Daily Kennebec Journal, Augusta, Maine, Sesquicentennial Edition, Wednesday, July 30, 1947.
	Catalogues of the Maine State Seminary, 1857, 1858, 1859, 1866.
	Cheney, Emeline Burlingame. The Story of the Life and Work of Oren B. Cheney. Boston, MA: Morning Star Publishing House, 1907.
	Faith Communities of Augusta, Maine - Past and Present. A City Bicentennial Project under the auspices of the Augusta Clergy Association, 1997.
	Kuss, Kurt. –That's Freewill, Not Freewheelin': An Introduction to Freewill Baptists, 1780 to 1868." Paper delivered at the Washburn Humanities Seminar, June 7 - 9, 2001, Norlands Living History Center, Livermore, Maine.
	North, James W. The History of Augusta Maine. Somesworth, NH: New England History Press, 1981. New forward by Edwin A. Churchill. Originally published in 1870 by Clapp and North of Augusta, ME.
	vonHerrlich, Phyllis. –The Freewill Baptists of New England and the Maine Connection." Research paper for HTY210/499, Fall 1999, University of Maine, Orono, Maine. [Unpublished]