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"The Complete Register, Clear Water Circuit, Tampa District, Florida Conference, for the Methodist Episcopal Church, South", bulk 1870-1900

 

Summary

Creator:
Methodist Episcopal Church
Abstract:
Collection documents the Methodist Episcopal Church along the Pinellas Peninsula from the 1870s through the 1890s.
Extent:
1 boxes
Language:
English
Preferred citation:

"The Complete Register, Clear Water Circuit, Tampa District, Florida Conference, for the Methodist Episcopal Church, South", Nelson Poynter Memorial Library Special Collections and University Archives, University of South Florida, St. Petersburg, FL.

Background

Scope and content:

Collection consists of a single bound volume titled, "The Complete Register, Clear Water Circuit, Tampa District, Florida Conference, for the Methodist Episcopal Church, South." Volume contains directories of congregations served by the circuit riding Methodist ministers who traveled along the Pinellas Peninsula from the late 1870s through the 1890s. The volume also includes records of church members, baptisms, and similar information relating to the Methodist Episcopal Church since 1873, a time when the sparsely populated Pinellas Peninsula fell under the administration of Hillsborough County. This volume is one of the earliest written records from the lower Pinellas Peninsula.

Biographical / historical:

A handful of isolated farming communities and small settlements dotted the rural peninsula often known as "Western Hillsborough." Found within this book are membership lists from small Methodist and Methodist Episcopal churches at Clear Water Harbor (present-day Clearwater), Indian Pass (Anona and Largo areas), Sylvan Abbey (near present-day Safety Harbor and Clearwater), and Bay View (an early settlement near the northern end of the Bayside Bridge). These congregations, served by itinerant ministers who "rode the circuit" to serve the spiritual needs of those along the peninsula, flourished at a time when only a few residents lived in southern Pinellas and the city of St. Petersburg did not even exist. Indeed, most of the Pinellas Peninsula remained isolated until the arrival of the Orange Belt Railway in 1888.

Notable pioneer families attended these small frontier churches, including members of the Belcher, Blanton, Booth, Campbell, Garrison, Kilgore, Lowe, McMullen, Meares, Rousseau, Stevenson, Taylor, Turner, and Whitehurst families. At the time, census records often omitted the given names of women and children; this source will assist historians, genealogists, and researchers hoping to reconstruct families and family life during the years between Reconstruction and the accelerated development after the arrival of the Orange Belt Railway.

Acquisition information:
On March 6 2006, the Poynter Library acquired by purchase "The Complete Register, Clear Water Circuit, Tampa District, Florida Conference, for the Methodist Episcopal Church, South."

Access and use

Terms of access:

None. The contents of the collection may be subject to copyright. Visit the United States Copyright Office's website at http://www.copyright.gov/ for more information.

Preferred citation:

"The Complete Register, Clear Water Circuit, Tampa District, Florida Conference, for the Methodist Episcopal Church, South", Nelson Poynter Memorial Library Special Collections and University Archives, University of South Florida, St. Petersburg, FL.

Location of this collection:
140 7th Avenue South
St. Petersburg
FL
33701
USA