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| Old Stone Church Result Of Cooperation |
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| Opinion | |||
| Written by Grady Atwater | |||
| Wednesday, 28 October 2009 07:00 | |||
Reverend Samuel Adair was a congregationalist minister who worked to build the Old Stone Church with the cooperation of other denominations that lacked a church building. No one denomination had either the prerequisite number of adherents or the money to build their own church, so Reverend Adair proposed that all denominations work together to build a “Union Church,” which would be used by all Christians in Osawatomie. Reverend Adair stated in a September 8, 1856 letter to Reverend S.S. Jocelyn of the American Missionary Association:  “The talk is now that as soon as sickness abates we must organize, & make an effort to build a meeting house. Messers Pomery & O.C. Brown have each proffered to give $100.00 towards it, and Brown has written to Ward, another proprietor in the town of Osawatomie, to learn whether he will give another $100.00. The Baptist (anti-slavery) & Wesleyan Methodists talk of uniting and building the house, providing they can each have it for a few years a certain portion of the time.” Reverend Adair continued to work to bring the Christian community together during Osawatomie’s early years, and listed only some of the varying denominations that had sent missionaries and ministers to Osawatomie in an 1856 letter to the Free Mission Society of the First Congregationalist Church in South Brookfield, Massachusetts. Reverend Adair wrote “I cannot give a full list of Ministers of the various denominations here. The American Miss. Ass. has 4 missionaries. Three Congregationalists & one Wesleyan Methodist. One that was here last summer has returned. The Home Miss. Soc. Has but three that I know of, all Congregationalists. Baptists (close communion) have sent two missionaries from the East. We have also Presbyterians, Methodist North, Methodist South, Lutherans, United Brethren, Friends, Unitarians & Cambelites and Catholics.” Reverend Adair’s patient efforts worked, as the Old Stone Church was built in 1861 with the aid of donations from Christians of all denominations. The Old Stone Church went on to serve as a house of worship for the Congregationalists, Methodists, Baptists, and Episcopalians and other denominations while they were building their own churches. Reverend Samuel Adair was a unifying force in Osawatomie, and Rosalie Ward Conner noted in the program for the 1963 rededication of the Old Stone Church that Reverend Adair served as the pastor of the Old Stone Church until 1893. He commented on his efforts to build the church and serve the congregation in the Western Spirit on April 14, 1876 that “though as a church, we have seen dark days, and had many hard trials, yet God has never forsaken us. His mercies have never failed. Little did that small band of seven (the original members) which stood up twenty years ago and covenanted with God, and each other, to live for Him, and to maintain His worship in this place, know what trials were before them...” Reverend Samuel Adair led not only his congregation, but was a leader for Osawatomie’s citizens in building a unifying spiritual foundation in Osawatomie that we still benefit from today.
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