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Bayou Rouge Baptist Church to celebrate 175th anniversary Sunday

 

    Not many institutions last 175 years. Businesses fail, organizations are disbanded, churches grow and move or shrink and disappear.
    Bayou Rouge Baptist Church in Evergreen has stayed the course since 17 members counting Pastor John O’Quin met on July 25, 1841 to establish one of the first non-Catholic churches in Avoyelles Parish. 
   The original church was located about two miles from its present location.
   This Sunday (July 31) the small congregation will begin its day like any other Sunday, with Sunday School at 10 a.m. followed by morning worship at 11 a.m.
   After the final “amen” is said in that service, present members, former members and visiting non-members will retire to the church grounds to celebrate Bayou Rouge’s 175 years of staying power with a time-honored tradition of “dinner on the grounds.”
   “We worship today in the same building that was constructed in 1859, which is on the Louisiana Registry of Historical Places,” Rev. David Trimbur, the church’s current pastor,  said. “It has had 56 pastors, three of whom served twice and one, myself, three times.
 
HISTORY
    The current cypress wood church building  is 157 years old, being built in 1859. It has served its members  well with only a few changes and additions since then. 
    The church was placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1980.
    The church, which can seat 200, once served as the meeting site for the Southern Baptist Convention.
    During the Civil War, the Union Army used the church as a hospital for their wounded in the Battle of Yellow Bayou near Simmesport.
    Some of the changes over the years included replacing a large side door with a wall, moving the baptistry from the floor in front of the pulpit to a space above the floor behind the pulpit and building a second floor behind the pulpit for three Sunday School classes and a stairway to the baptistry.
    The structure was built of cypress wood and will not rot or deteriorate. The selection of the type of wood could have been practical or symbolic, but it has proven to be a  good choice.
    The pews are hand-planed cypress. The flooring is made up of 12-inch planks. The wooden floor was covered with carpet in 1984, when cushions were added to the hard, wooden pews.
    Inside the steeple and the roof are wooden pegs that fasten  together. 
   Much of the property around the church is part of the historic Bayou Rouge Cemetery, which dates back to the Civil War era.
   The cemetery is a community graveyard, with members and non-members of Bayou Rouge Baptist buried there. It is maintained by donations that are invested by a committee. The grounds care is done by hired employees with the assistance of work-release prisoners. Lots are purchased by the families of the deceased for a nominal cost set by the cemetery committee.
    A later addition to the church property is the parsonage, built  on the southeast corner of the property in about 1938 and still serving the church’s pastor today.
   The wood home was originally a two-bedroom house, but was enlarged to a three-bedroom structure in 1961.
   “In its history, the church founded 11 missions, five of which are still self-supporting churches, including Marksville Baptist Church and the First Baptist Church of Bunkie,” Trimbur stated. 
   He added the beautiful cemetery located next to the church in Evergreen is carefully cared for and has graves from before the Civil War era. Trimbur added all of the monthly business minutes are persevered in the archives of the Louisiana Baptist Convention offices in Alexandria.