The First 30 Years
1953 - 1983
From 2008 to 2009, I worked with Dean Hoggatt, my father, to
compile a History of the first 30 years of the
Pictures
– Several pictures from the congregation’s history
Financial
Records – check registers exist back to the first sunday meeting in 1953
Contribution
and Attendance – Recorded Contributions and Attendance records for 1,587
Sundays (Aug 2, 1953 to Dec 25, 1983)
Bulletins
– beginning with the first bulletin of the current series from March 1966
Men’s
Meeting Minutes – beginning with the second minutes book from 1958
Teacher
Assignments and Education Curriculum – various teacher assignments
Joy
Bus Attendance Records, Routes, Riders, and VBS cards – Bus program at
LaGrange plus some VBS records
Men
to Serve, Calendars, Zone and Membership lists
Keenagers
Program at LaGrange – Keenagers Program at LaGrange 1978 to 1995
General
Letters – mostly from the 1970’s and 1980’s
Newspaper
Entries, Gospel Meeting announcements, VBS flyers, Etc. – every newspaper
entry plus flyers
Assembly
times and Locations – When and Where did the congregation meet?
Land
and Building Projects – Description of the various land purchases and
building projects of the congregation
Church
Leadership – Identifies ministers, elders, deacons, treasurers – and when
each served
Vacation
Bible School – Listing of VBS programs with links to the advertisements or
flyers for each
Gospel
Meetings – Listing of Gospel Meetings and Seminars at LaGrange with links
to advertisements or flyers
Baptisms
– Listing of documented baptsims
Guest
Register 1963-1975 –The congregation had a guestbook for visitors to
sign. The guestbook asked for Date, Name, Address and
Class
Record Book 1965-1972 – The “Class Record” pages were completed to organize
the Education Program. The Book is a
compliation of Class Record forms. From
about 1969 to 1972, a Class Record form was completed for each Sunday morning
and Thursday evening Bible class. The forms identified the teacher, course of
study, and often listed each student in the class.
Construction
of Church Building Diary - Personal
daily diaries were kept by Dean Hoggatt for most of the years from 1961 to
1983. These diaries supplement information gathered from other sources for
those years in compiling the published History. From 1954 to 1956, the
congregation purchased land from Noel and Georgia Rowan, and completed
construction of its first permanent church building. This diary was kept by
Dean Hoggatt of the day-to-day progress of construction, including amounts paid
for labor and materials. The same construction diary was also used in 1976-1977
to record Dean’s hours, for the church to pay him as overseer of the
construction project for a new classroom addition. Transcripts of both periods
of this “construction diary” are included in the published History.
Class Attendance
Books:
Miscellaneous:
Delinquent
Member list - baptized 1966-1974
1970-current
Partial Baptism List
19800105
Kendallville Bible Bowl on Genesis chapters 1-30 - study questions
19800105
Kendallville Bible Bowl on Genesis chapters 1-30 - winner plaque
Known Factual Errors in the First Edition (June
2009) of the Printed History, Along with other edits to the First Edition
corrected in printing the Second Edition (December 2009):
- Page 30 – In the paragraph that begins “Also in June 1957” … change “Doris Hosse from to LaGrange” to “Doris Hosse to LaGrange”.
- Page 51 – ERROR - In the paragraph that begins “At the April 5, 1960 meeting, …” change Carl Hostetler to Carol Hostetler.
- Page 67 – In the paragraph that begins with the sentence, “On June 15, 1962, Warren R. Campbell, brother of Thelma Hoggatt, preach the morning sermon on Love.” … change “preach” to “preached”.
- Page 84 – In the paragraph that begins “At the morning service on May 24th” … change “attend the Nile MI Gospel Meeting” to “attend the Niles MI Gospel Meeting”.
- Page 100 – In the paragraph that begins “On Saturday, September 25th” … change “advertise Gospel Meeting” to “advertise the Gospel Meeting”.
- Page 106 – In the paragraph that begins “On Thursday, February 10” … delete “the” before Carl Pieratt’s name.
- Page 108 – Change “On March 6, 1966” to “Dated March 6, 1966”.
- Page 109 – ERROR - The History book says “The Gospel Meeting with Garrett preacher Jerry Weir began on March 27, 1966, when 125 attended.” Actually there were 125 present at the area-wide singing hosted by LaGrange, on that same afternoon. The Gospel Meeting attendance on March 27th is unknown.
- Page 111 – ERROR - In the paragraph that begins “On May 15, 1966, the” … change the end of the paragraph from “May 20th” to “May 30th”.
- Page 112 – In the paragraph that begins “On June 20th” … change “Paulding” to “Paulding OH”.
- Page 115 – In the paragraph that begins “At 3:00 pm on October 2, 1966” … change “singing a Mark’s Nursing Home” to “singing at Mark’s Nursing Home”.
- Page 117 – In the paragraph that begins “On Thursday, December 1st” … change “and was s completed” to “and was completed”.
- Page 130 – ERROR – In the paragraph that begins “On January 14, 1968” … remove references to the missing bulletin from January 7, 1968. It was found and the bulletin records from all of 1968 are now complete.
- Page 138 – In the paragraph that begins “On August 11, 1968” … close the parentheses after “in the bulletin”.
- Page 139 – In the paragraph that begins “On August 25, 1968” … change “there was no more summer sessions” to “there were no more summer sessions”.
- Page 143 – In the paragraph that begins “At the men’s meeting on December 1, 1968” … change “announcement is scheduled was Donmoyer” to “announcement is scheduled at Donmoyer”.
- Page 155 – In the paragraph that begins “The bulletin welcomed two new families to LaGrange.” … change “18 books of stamp books” to “18 books of stamps.”
- Page 157 – ADDITION - In the paragraph that begins “At a special men’s meeting” … add a sentence at the end “Dean Hoggatt thanked the congregation for the “Works of Josephus” book presented during his hospital stay.”
- Page 158 – ERROR - In the paragraph that begins “On November 9, 1969” … change “Brust’s (4)” to “Brust’s (5)”.
- Page 160 – In the paragraph that begins “On January 4, 1970,” … move “On” down to the beginning of the first row.
- Page 162 – ERROR - In the paragraph that begins “On Thursday, February 5th” … change “Paul” to “Paula”.
- Page 174 – In the paragraph that begins “At the men’s meeting on November 4, 1960” … change “survey).” to “survey.”
- Page 176 – In the paragraph that begins “On December 22nd” … change “college students home” to “college students, who were home”.
- Page 183 – In the paragraph that begins “On June 4-5, 1971” … change “Man’s” to “Men’s”.
- Page 193 – In the paragraph that begins “On November 21, 1971” … change “appointments on Dean” to “appointments of Dean”.
- Pages 199-200 – In the paragraph that begins “On Wednesday, March 1, 1972” … change “deacon qualification” to “deacon qualifications” and move the “I” of “I Timothy” to the next row.
- Page 233 – In the paragraph that begins “On January 7, 1973” … remove the leading space in “ older”.
- Page 244 – In the paragraph that begins “The bulletin on September 30th” … change “former preacher” to “formerly a preacher”.
- Page
276 – In the paragraph that begins “On April 18, 1975” … change “
- Page 306 – ERROR - In the caption of the picture of Joy Bus teachers, the picture is incorrectly dated “March 1976”. Connie Davison was not a member at LaGrange until August 1976, as announced to the congregation in the bulletin for August 29, 1976. In addition, Melissa Herron was not baptized until April 29, 1977, and would not have been used as a Joy Bus teacher prior to her baptism. Therefore the picture was probably taken in 1977 (or even later). For that reason, the date was stricken from the caption.
- Page 312 – In the paragraph that begins “At the Wednesday evening class on July 14, 1976 …” remove the “the” before Jeff Sponsellor’s name.
- Page 321 – In the paragraph that begins “On November 12, 1976” … clarify that the 15 who attended were 15 from LaGrange, in addition to others from area congregations.
- Page 357 – In the paragraph that begins “There were many responses” … change “before the teenagers return” to “before the teenagers returned”.
- Page 376 – ERROR - In the paragraph that begins “Joe Hughes preached the evening sermon” … remove Wade Spears from the list of men who attended the meeting for the first time. Wade Spears had actually attended his first meeting on July 4, 1976.
- Page 380 – In the paragraph that begins “The second annual Lagrange Youth Rally” … change to “The third annual LaGrange Youth Rally”.
- Pages 401-402 – In the paragraph that begins “The bulletin on January 20th” … change “morality” to “immorality”.
- Page 425 – ERROR - The listing of teens at the Hoggatt’s house for a Christmas party ends with “Melissa Oakley”. It should read “Melissa Herron”.
- Page 428 – In the paragraph that begins “At the elders’ meeting on January 5th” … change the commas to periods after the first and second suggestions discussed.
- Page 461 – ADDITION – The contribution for December 31, 1981 was $1,101.85.
- Page 474 – ADDITION – Add Sunday AM worship attendance of 151 and 150 for May 16, 1981 and May 23, 1981, respectively.
- Page 476 – In the paragraph that begins “This picture from the Youth Banquet” … change “Winter 1982” to “Dec. 1982”.
- Page 477 – In the paragraph that begins “Some of the LaGrange members” … change “May 30” to “May 30th”.
- Page 481 – In the paragraph that begins “At 5:30 pm on July 12th” … delete the last sentence, which duplicates information earlier in the paragraph.
- Page 483 – ERROR - In the paragraph that begins “After the evening service on August 15th” … remove Wade Spears from the list of men who attended for the first time. Wade Spears had attended his first men’s meeting on July 4, 1976 and another men’s meeting on November 26, 1978.
- Page 494 – In the paragraph that begins “On November 12th” … change the beginning to “For November 12th”.
- Page 495 – In the paragraph that begins “At the November 30th elders’ meeting” … change “along with a watching” to “and watched”.
- Page 498 – In the paragraph that begins “On December 14th” … change “the men helped installed” to “the men helped to install”.
- Page 503 – In the paragraph that begins “At the elders’ meeting on January 10th” … change “The elders considering offering” to “The elders considered offering”.
- Page 504 – In the paragraph that begins “On January 14th” … change “ended” to “ending”.
- Page 505 – In the listing at the top of the page of items discussed by the elders, add a period at the end of the 3rd item (regarding ushers).
- Page 517 – In the paragraph that begins “At the elders’ meeting on February 14th” … change “How Shall We Then Live” to “How Shall We Then Live?”.
- Page 530 – In the paragraph that begins “At the elders’ meeting on July 25th” … change “The also discussed the new Zone points” to “They also discussed the new Zone points”.
