My interest in history isn’t shared by everyone. Lots of people listen politely and patiently when I start talking about some piece of information that sparks excitement for me, so it’s really special when events of long ago grab the attention of local people in a particularly personal way.

Coming up in a few days is the 200th anniversary celebration of Marston’s Corner Baptist Church in Auburn. It’s the white church with a blue roof at the corner of Hotel and Beech Hill roads on the northeast side of the Auburn-Lewiston Municipal Airport runway.

Bicentennial celebrations are not all that unusual these days. The Androscoggin Valley was thriving in the decade before Maine statehood in 1820. In my mind, the importance of these celebrations is not in recognizing the longevity of a church, a town or an organization. These observances call attention to the remarkable men and women who settled here and established the vibrant neighborhoods we know today, and the celebrations remind us of many connections to nationally significant events through the years.

Robert Putnam and Christian Gumprecht, co-pastors of the Marston’s Corner Baptist Church, recently gave me a tour of their attractively renovated building, and they pointed out the original walls of the church. They showed me squares of slate that had been stacked as foundation corners 200 years ago, they pointed out where a half-moon window had become a round window over the front entrance over the years, and they showed me many large scrapbooks kept by devoted church members.

Those are the physical artifacts of history, but it’s the echoes of the past they can evoke that fascinate me. The story of that 200-year-old church is well-documented with many references to the events that shaped our nation.

A flier prepared for the church’s bicentennial observance on Sunday, Sept. 9, says its roots are in land deeded by the Pejepscot Indians to Col. Bagley Moses Little around 1773.

In the winter of 1793, Elder Jesse Lee, a Methodist minister and circuit rider, preached at a public house located at the Nason’s Mill neighborhood, and the following year a minister was sent every four weeks, which was a schedule maintained for 13 years.

In 1808, the Rev. Daniel Hutchinson came to the area and preached every eight weeks for four years. Formal organization of a church didn’t take place until September 1812, during the war with England. It began with 20 members meeting at a schoolhouse at Littlefield’s Corner, and later at the house of ruling elder Nathaniel Sturgis.

The early records indicated strong stands against liquor taken by those first church members. In early 1832, a 150-member “Temperance Society” was organized.

“During the struggle against slavery, the members were prominent in working or speaking against it,” the flier says. “Three members of the church, Reverends Sturgis, Tracy and Perkins, were persistent agitators.”

The historical material says it is known that they were somehow involved in the Underground Railroad, and the church, then known as the West Danville Free Baptist Church, served as a secret station in the dangerous travels of slaves to freedom in Canada.

Nearly a full page of the Lewiston Journal, Oct. 28, 1912, contains much detail of the church’s first 100 years. It says the Rev. Gideon Perkins, an early pastor of the church, “was the first abolitionist sent to the legislature by the city of Lewiston. He is said to have given up tobacco, tea, coffee and all luxuries of the kind so that the money could go to missions. He spoke so strongly against slavery that he was asked to give up his pastorate. His work in favor of temperance, too, made him many enemies so that many times he was mobbed, and a plot at one time was made to burn his house. He even was threatened with being tarred and feathered.”

Those are just some of the things we call history, and a local celebration at the Marston’s Corner Baptist Church brings them to our attention again. It’s much more than saying, “Here’s a church that originated 200 years ago.” Dig into it a little. There’s much more to history than facts and dates.

Dave Sargent is a freelance writer and a native of Auburn. He can be reached by sending email to [email protected].