Second Baptist Church (Mechanicsburg, Ohio)

Second Baptist Church is a historic church building in the village of Mechanicsburg, Ohio, United States. Constructed in the mid-19th century, it is the oldest church in the village, and it has been named a historic site.Congregational historyMechanicsburg was platted in 1814, and the town grew rapidly in wealth and population. By 1840, the value of real property in the village had surpassed ten thousand dollars, and another forty years saw its value pass one-third of a million dollars. The population likewise grew from 99 in 1830 to 258 in 1840, 682 in 1850, and 1,522 in 1880. From its early years, Mechanicsburg was a multi-racial community; one black resident was recorded in the 1830, and after growing gradually to 53 by 1870, the black population jumped to 209 in 1880.By the 1880s, Mechanicsburg's black population was large enough to support two separate churches: a Baptist congregation and a congregation of the African Methodist Episcopal Church. Formed in November 1872 with a charter membership of eight, only the Baptist congregation survives of the two; it uses the name "Second Baptist Church", as a white Baptist congregation had been founded in 1840. In 1917, the membership of the congregation and of its Sunday school were recorded as seventy and fifty respectively; in its first forty-five years, the congregation was served by fourteen pastors. One of the ministers, Elmer Curry, founded the Curry Normal and Industrial Institute at the church, modelling it after the Tuskegee Institute, but after a period of operating in Mechanicsburg, the school relocated to Urbana.