HISTORY OF CLAY COUNTY                              395

August 27, 1888, succeeded by William Grether, who was in charge until
1894, who was followed by H. H. Kattman, for eleven and a half years,
from January, 1895, to the summer of 1906, since which time the pastor
has been C. H. Riedesel.


    All the churches of Clay county are not here enumerated. Doubtless,
there have been houses of worship in the geography and history of the
county of which the writer has no personal knowledge, which are but
memories with surviving pioneers.
    A Christian church, named “Lodi,” perhaps, was for a time main-
tained on the James M. Halbert place, in the north part of Dick Johnson
township, of which we have no details at command. The same is true
of two churches in Jackson township—the pioneer Poplar Chapel of the
U. B. denomination, and that of the Evangelical Association, in the neigh-
borhood of the Carrithers place, near the east side of the township; and,
probably, equally true of Washington township. As a reminiscence, the
writer dates his first attendance at church service in Clay county back to
the 24th day of June 1855, held in a pioneer log house east of Bowling
Green, in the Kincaid neighborhood, north side of the road, on which
occasion the services were conducted by Dillon Bridges, father of
ex-County Clerk Dillon W. Bridges, and Samuel Hollingsworth. This
may have been a church, a school-house, or an abandoned residence
building.
    In the southeast part of Washington township, in the McGrew, or
Martin, neighborhood, probably on the Haltom place, was also a primi-
tive United Brethren church, as remembered, which may have given place
to a new building and be still maintained.
    In the early summer of 1859 a call was issued by George Bentz,
Benedict Lehman and Philip Rinehart for a meeting to be held the first
Sunday in June, at the home of the first named, in Harrison township,
to organize a Lutheran church society.
    Elisha Adamson organized an M. E. church society, at Middlebury,
in the summer of 1859.
    The thirty-fifth annual session of the Indiana District Conference of
the M. E. church, for the year 1892, was held at Clay City, beginning
Monday, August 1, and closing with Wednesday, the 3d.
    The Seventh Day Adventists have held tent meetings at Bowling
Green, Cory, Clay City and Middlebury. The Lane Brothers preached
at Bowling Green in the summer of 1873, and Rev. Thompson, at Clay
City and Middlebury, in the months of July and August, 1907. The
meetings at Cory were held in the month of August, 1882.
    The Annual Conference of the Free Methodist church was held at
Clay City, for the year 1889, in the month of August.
    The thirty-eighth annual meeting of the Northwestern Indiana Con-
ference of the M. E. church, for the year 1889, was held at Brazil, assem-
bling at Hendrix Chapel on the 4th day of September. There were in
attendance from abroad two hundred and fifty members, guests of the
church people of Brazil.
    A Free Methodist camp-meeting was held on the Clay City fair
grounds, in the summer of 1890, beginning Thursday, July 31, continuing
over two Sundays.
    The corner-stone of the A. M. E. church, at Brazil, was laid Sunday,
August 19, 1898.