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In
1989, in preparation for Kelham's seventy-fifth anniversary celebration,
Eugene H. (Gene) Brewington, an avid genealogist and amateur historian, wrote
a definitive history of Kelham Baptist Church. Working with the
pastor, who proofread, fact-checked, and edited, Gene produced Kelham—Church
on the Move, a bound volume that was given to all who attended
the anniversary celebration. It was not until years later, we discovered the church had actually been founded and incorporated in December of the previous year, 1913.
Billy
Tuter, a graphic artist who then worked for the Baptist Messenger,
scanned old photographs Gene was able to locate. These were manually
pasted into the originals; the images are included in PDF files after the page on which they appear. Technology in 1989 was far behind the rapid developments
we've since seen. This was a herculean effort on Gene's part, marshalling
the resources, writing the chapters on his Windows 3.1 computer
in WordPerfect and then translating them for editing and production
on an Apple Macintosh in WriteNow. Long hours were spent in
this labor of love. Less than twenty-four hours before the celebration,
an army of members and volunteers were copying, running to Kinko's,
and collating and binding the volumes.
The
pastor recently came across these files on an old Mac floppy (400K)
and had to do all kinds of computer magic to retrieve them.
The history is available in a chapter-by-chapter format by clicking on the links for each chapter, or alternatively the whole book can be downloaded by clicking on that link.
Gene
passed away in July, 2001, and he is sorely missed. Gene's obituary, like most, hits only the highlights of Gene's life.
Clicking
on the individual links below will download a PDF file of the original
chapter pages, with offsets for binding. Clicking on the link for the whole book will download the complete book in one file. The book is not yet indexed, and with internet sources now available, more information can be retrieved on the individuals and churches described. Gene Brewington would have been, as he would say, "in hog heaven."
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