At the recent EA Historical Society Cemetery tour we not only got to see the Wertsville Baptist Church Cemetery but got to tour the inside of the former Wertsville Baptist Church, now the home of John and Carol Lepree. The Leprees purchased the shell of the former Church and redid it into one of the most spectacular homes in the Township and graciously allowed us in to see the beautiful building which naturally led to a discussion of the founding and slow death of the church.
Hopewell and Flemington both had congregations of conservative “Old School” Baptists. During the early 1830’s there was a schism within the Baptist Church with the “New School” Baptists believing in foreign missionaries and more reading of the Bible in church This split caused many in Hopewell and Flemington to leave and start their own church in Wertsville which became known as the Wearts Corner Baptist Church. The congregation was “New School” but still very conservative. There was to be no swearing, no drinking, no playing cards and no dancing. If one violated these rules a committee would come out to your house, you would be admonished, and have to apologize and testify at the next church meeting. Four acres of land for the church and cemetery was donated by Jim Servis (now the Manner’s farm) and the stone building was constructed in 1834.
People in the church called each other Brother and Sister and from reading through the minute book in the Hunterdon County Historical Society, many people were thrown out of the congregation for being “against Christian character”! The congregation flourished in the mid-1800s. In 1859 they had 90 members and 80 children in Sunday school. It was interesting to see that many church members left in the 1840’s for move to Nebraska and it wasn’t unusual to see members transfer in and out to other local congregations, especially in Somerville and Sandy Ridge. Family subscriptions paid the minister but by the 1870’subcriptions and members began to fall off to the point they could not pay for a full time minister and relied on sharing ministers with other churches. Then they could not pay the coal bill nor fix the roof. Finally they sold the building to the NJ Baptist Society and took out a mortgage in order to pay off all of their creditors. A revival of sorts came in 1884 when a Reverend Henry Chapman arrived and with his own money and hard work made all the needed repairs to the building and built the stone addition to the front of the structure – all by himself. The congregation wrote a long testimonial to him but eventually he left too when the church could no longer afford to pay his salary of $600 a year.
Meantime a Baptist Church sprang up in Ringoes and many discussions ensued over the next few years as to the congregations merging. This unfortunately never happened. By 1900 the church again had many repairs that needed to be made so they had a week long tent revival which raised $132. This was not enough however to keep the church going and eventually they closed their doors of the building for the winter of 1907 because they could not afford the heat. The church closed for good in 1908. The building was sold and became a garage and even a commercial chicken coop. When Leprees purchased it, it was a disaster but today is an incredible building, still retaining the original church alter, windows and wooden inlaid ceiling. As a historical footnote: the Ringoes Baptist church closed its doors in 1934.
Jim Davidson