Monongah Baptist Church, 256 Lyndon Avenue, will celebrate its 125^th anniversary on Monday, October 15.

There’s a caveat.

It began in 1803 as the yellow Rock Ford Church.

Then it was renamed the West Fork Baptist Church.

Finally, it became the Monongah Baptist Church. That name stuck.

It was the first established Baptist Church in Marion County and the first church of any denomination erected in Grant District.

It gave birth to the Boothsville Baptist Church in 1804 and the Worthington Baptist Church in 1844.

The Rev. David Huckins is the current senior pastor. Bruce W. Hamrick is the Sunday School superintendent.

By thanks to Barbara Marsh. I cribbed this information from her Monongah News column in the Fairmont Times. When I was at Monongah High and WVU I was the Monongah News columnist. This is the second go-around for Barb. She was the Times’ Monongah News columnist in the 1980s.

Barbara Marsh shouldn’t be confused with Barbara Fleming Marsh, Class of 1947, who passed away in 2016.

Columnist Barbara Marsh married Dennis Toler in 1965. Dennis passed away in the Farmington #9 mine explosion a half-century ago. They had three boys and a girl.