churches so that by 1920, due to declining membership because members were retiring to town, the end of the horse and buggy era and the beginning of auto travel, the congregation was dissolved.

First Baptist Church and Parsonage

The First Baptist Church was organized in the late eighties. Founding members included L. B. Baker, Mr. and Mrs. George Pratt, Mr. and Mrs. George Haight, Mr. and Mrs. John Avery, Mr. and Mrs. J. D. Hoover, Mr. and Mrs. Chas. Carr, Mr. and Mrs. Joe Jackson, Mr. and Mrs. Frank Reavis, Mr. and Mrs. Conrad Hansen, Mr. and Mrs. James Rowland, with Joe Cossairt as pastor. Mrs. Cossairt was a daughter of the J. L. Averys.

The location of the church which the congregation built was on the ground now occupied by the Elmer Kohle and Mrs. Arthur Gronau residences. When the parsonage was built, it was erected on the lot now occupied by the Victor Gronau residence.

Though for a time the congregation flourished, by 1930 because of loss of membership as people were moving away, the congregation was disbanded in 1945 and the property turned over to the Nebraska Baptist Association in Omaha.

From the first visit of a Lutheran missionary to hold services in the school house built one and one-half miles south and one and one-half miles west of the present town in May or June, 1872, Lutherans were determined to organize a congregation. Pastor J. C. Rupprecht of Christ Lutheran Church in Norfolk was invited to serve them. That same year, the congregation was organized as St. Johannes Evengelishe Lutherishe Gemeinde, since renamed St. John's Lutheran Church. Charter members were

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