Middle Fork Church

(1887 - ?)

The Gospel Messenger May 10, 1887 page 299

From Over Hill, Upshur Co., W. Va.

  I visited the Brethren in Randolph Co., W. Va., March26, and organized them into a congregation which will be known as the Middle Fork congregation. We installed two deacons, brethren Benjamin F. Staterfield and James Markley.  There are, in all, twenty-eight members, and all expressed a willingness to conform to the Bible and the general order of the church in the plainness of dress. The sisters all appeared with the covering, in which so many of our sisters fail.  I hope our West Virginia sisters may pattern after the Middle Fork sisters in this.  We anointed sister Fox, who is quite old and feeble. She is awaiting patently the time of the Lord, to remove her. She had been a member of the Disciple church for many years, till lately she joined the Brethren. May God bless and prosper this band of Brethren!

  April 9, I visited the Goshen congregation, this county, that was organized last November.  I found love and union prevailing with them; preached five discourses and appointed their love-feast for the evening of July 30, 1887.  Those Brethren, as yet, have no church-house and are not likely to have, soon, as all are just beginning in a newly settled country.  Their school-house is too small for holding a love-feast, so the Brethren have decided to build a large shed on Bro. David Sine’s farm, to be known as the Brethren’s “clapboard tabernacle” under church to hold their love-feast, till the Lord bless then with something better.  We desire for all Brethren that can, to attend their love-feast.  It is a new thing to them, none ever seeing the like. They now number thirty-seven members. The voice of one of our preachers was never heard at that place until Bro. Thos. Digman, from Garret Co., Md., visited it last October.

David Miller