First Baptish Church of Saxeville Contributed by Joan Benner
When the Danish Baptist Church in Potter County, Pennsylvania, disbanded, some of the members moved to Waushara County, Wisconsin. Reverend Soren Larsen left the Raymond Wisconsin church in 1857 to go to Waushara. There is no record of the exact date of the organization of the church in Waushara County but most likely it was organized in 1858. When Rev. Lars Jorgensen visited the field in 1859, he helped the church to re-organize. N. S. Lawdahl in his History of Danish Baptists in America says of the Waushara church, that it probably was the most checkered career of any of our [Danish Baptist] churches. Divisions often rent the church, so that, at one time there were as many as three different organizations on the field. Because of this, many different names for the church appear in the records, as: Waushara, Bloomfield, Town of Leon, Pine River. All of these places are in Waushara County, and the work spoken of in these records is that of our Danish Baptists.
We are naturally interested in knowing the cause of the many divisions in the church. It seems, first of all, that the church suffered from too many leaders; this sounds rather strange, but perhaps the trouble was a bit of jealousy among the different leaders. Adventist propaganda also caused the church considerable trouble. And, even at this early date, the language question seems to have been the cause of mis-understanding and dissension. In spite of all these difficulties, about 190 souls were added to its membership by baptism. In the year 1900 the Waushara church was reorganized as an English-speaking church, under the name of The First Baptist Church of Saxville.
Source: Seventy-Five Years of Danish Baptist Missionary Work in America. Published by the Danish Baptist General Conference of America, printed by American Baptist Publication Society, Philadelphia, � 1931.
