Axe ’Em, Jacks!
NACOGDOCHES, Texas –– Old North Baptist Church records dating back to Texas Republic days were recently donated to the East Texas Research Center at Stephen F. Austin State University by the Summers and Middlebrook families of Nacogdoches.
“The East Texas Research Center takes its role as a steward of Texas history very seriously,” said Kyle Ainsworth, ETRC special collections librarian. “Getting a significant collection like the Old North Baptist Church minutes is reaffirmation of the trust that exists between the community and the archives for us to responsibly collect, preserve and make available the state’s most important documents for students and researchers to use and appreciate.”
Located four miles north of the Nacogdoches city limits on U.S. 59, the church was founded in 1838 and is the oldest active Missionary Baptist church in Texas.
The Summers family joined the church soon after their arrival in Nacogdoches in 1851. Four members of that family — Jesse Summers Sr., Jesse Summers Jr., Sallie T. Summers and Dr. Tom Middlebrook, Sallie’s great-nephew — guarded the set of records for more than 130 years.
The church elders first entrusted the documents to Jesse Summers Sr. in the 1890s with the direction to keep them safe from the Primitive Baptists after they and the Missionary Baptists at the church parted ways. The split happened in 1882, when the Missionary Baptists wanted to paint the church, but the Primitive Baptists saw this as a matter of “worldly pride” and vanity. After the church was painted, the Primitive Baptists broke away and formed Bethel Baptist Church.
The four “Guardians of the Minutes” were then sworn to never let the church records fall back into the hands of the Primitive Baptists. Through the years, this oath became more tongue and cheek than literal, but the Guardians continued to preserve these records.
The records include the church’s theology, covenant, membership and disciplinary actions from the 1830s through the 1870s. They also contain the founding minutes of the church from 1838, when Texas was still a republic, making the set of records the oldest document from the oldest church in the oldest town in Texas.
Middlebrook, who earned his bachelor’s and master’s degrees from SFA before his Doctor of Medicine from The University of Texas Southwestern Medical School in Dallas, was a child and adolescent psychiatrist as well as an avid historian and archeologist in Nacogdoches. Before his death in 2024, Middlebrook directed his daughter, Hollis, to donate the Old North Baptist Church records to ETRC.
“My father realized the significance of the book and took great care to have it transcribed by Rev. Gene Tomlin, so that it could be preserved and made accessible for future generations,” said Hollis Middlebrook. “Today our family is honored to pass this minute book on to the East Texas Research Center, in accordance with the wishes of Dr. Tom Anderson Middlebrook, the last of the four Guardians of the Minutes of Old North Baptist Church.”
For more information on SFA’s East Texas Research Center, visit sfasu.edu/library/archives.