Have you heard of the church that didn’t want to leave Batemantown?

MIDDLEBURY TOWNSHIP — Knox County has always seen plenty of churches built for its wide variety of congregations. What it hasn’t seen too often is a church being moved. 

However, an August 1910 report from the Mansfield News Journal, tells of such a happening.

Joseph Kulb of Waterford, in Middlebury Township, wanted to provide a new church building for the faithful of his Methodist Episcopal congregation, but was willing to try something other than the usual approach of building a new facility.

Kulb heard that an old church was for sale in Batemantown, just a couple miles down the road from Waterford, so he devised an ambitious plan to move it to a new home.

Kulb hired a builder by the name of Logan from Galion to move the old church. According to the newspaper report, it took Logan “a few days over four weeks” to move the structure. 

The article doesn’t make it explicit how the structure was moved.

For that period of time, I would guess that it involved taking the stone church apart, piece by piece, numbering the pieces and reassembling them in Waterford. 

Perhaps certain sections of the building were able to be moved in large chunks, which certainly would have been a sight to see.

In those days, it seems unlikely that they would have had enough horsepower to move the complete building in toto, so disassembly/reassembly does seem the most likely plan.

However it was moved, the article remarks that it took longer than expected because Logan’s crew “had all kinds of bad luck,” and then follows it up with a delicious bit of local color: “[T]he Batemantown women said that it was because the church didn’t want to leave Batemantown.”

Apparently, the builders were finally able to convince the stubborn old church to go with them down the road to its new home in Waterford.

Is this vintage postcard image from Waterford in 1910 the church in its new home? It seems very possible, noting the newly planted trees in front of it and the very fresh-looking concrete sidewalk leading up to it.

If so, it must have been quite the project to relocate it. It was dedicated with a community dance.

The church is no longer in Waterford today. One of the two churches currently there is expanded from an older structure, but it doesn’t appear to match this one, unless it had been altered beyond recognition.