Excerpt from History: First Baptist Church, Elizabeth City, North Carolina, 1786-1961 A book of history is like a telescope through which one may look into the past ages. See the customs, achievements, shortcomings of those who lived before him. Antiquity comes alive to his clouded memo ries, and he is able to comprehend the truth or falsity of the many tales and traditions which he has heard. Moreover, he may profit by the fortunes or misfortunes of his forebears. There is a well worn tradition that our Church minutes up to 1857 were lost in a fire, which is probably true, but there are no refer ences in the immediately succeeding minutes to prove it, much less to give any details which we would ordinarily expect. There may havebeen a fire in 1846 or 1847. We do not know what became of the Meet ing House which was replaced with a new one, the construction of which began in the early part of 1847. It is possible this old Meeting House was burned as was the first one on Knobs Creek, and the records up to that time burned in it. But if that be the case the question arises: Where are the minutes of the next ten years? Another possibility is that they could have been burned in a fire which destroyed a parsonage in the early part of 1886. Could the minute books have been divided, with those up to 1857 in the parsonage and burned, and those after 1857 somewhere else and saved? The most likely fire to have destroyed them was one mentioned in the February 25, 1860 minutes but there are some questions about this fire which will have to go unanswered. In that con ference it is stated No minutes were read as a consequence of their having been burnt up in the recent fire. Where was the fire in the Church, parsonage, Clerk's home? When? What else belonging to the Church was lost? Something else is strange about this conference: The two previous leaves in that minute book and the bottom sections of three leaves previous to them have, some time, been cut out of the book with no explanation of why it was done. We presume this fire to have oc curred the month or quarter preceding that February 25 conference, depending upon whether it was a monthly or quarterly conference; and it was those minutes that were not read. If in fact however, this was the fire which tradition tells us destroyed our minutes up to 1857, the logical assumption is that those minutes were in a book or books at the scene of the fire while the minutes beginning with March 27, 1857, the earliest we have, to February 25, 1860 were in another book being kept somewhere else at the time. It is a fact that our March 27, 1857 minutes do begin a new book. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.