Bethel UMC
Membership Registration Books
Three "Register" books have been used to record membership, baptisms, marriages, etc during the years 1925-today. They are all large-format books that are not easily "scanned" so the large double page layouts of the first two books were placed under a large plate glass and photographed. Those photographs provide the record of those volumes. The photographs are presented in a vertical scroll. Clicking on one of the photographs will open it for detailed viewing. Clicking on it will zoom in for a closer view...clicking again moves back out. Clicking the "back arrow" will return to the scrolling view and clicking the "back arrow" from the scrolling view will return you to the menu.
- Book1 - "The Church Register of the Bethel Methodist Episcopal Church South" used in years 1925 - 1956.
- Book2 - "The Official MEMBERSHIP and CHURCH RECORD of THE METHODIST CHURCH" used in years 1956 - 1973. The Title page has the note from Rev. Bean that it is "Closed" and to be followed by "The Red Cover" book. This book also contains the original first pages of Bethel's history, prepared for the "Centennial" in 1947 of receiving the land on which the church now stands. Miscellaneous Items - found between the pages.
- Book3 - This is the "Red Cover Book" mentioned above - "MEMBERSHIP REGISTER and CHURCH RECORDS - No 148" that is in current use. It is divided into 5 sections whose pages were not photographed but information from them was entered into a spreadsheet designed to reproduce closely the appearance of the Register pages, without the cursive writing. Reports in PDF format were printed for each of the sections and are provided below.
Click on one of the Section titles below to open a PDF report of the section
- Index of Last Names - a Last-Name/First-Name sequenced list of names showing the Page & Line of references in the Baptism, Preparatory, Membership, Marriage and Death reports where the name occurred. You will notice multiple entries for some persons that are obviously the same person,
- Index of First Names - a First-Name/Last-Name sequenced list of names showing the Page & Line of references in the Baptism, Preparatory, Membership, Marriage and Death reports where the name occurred.
- Birth/Baptism Records - from 1956-2018.
Preparatory Membership - from 1971-2005.
- Full Membership Records - from 1956-2019 with many undated entries before that.
- Marriage Records - from 1958-1994 with a few entries before that.
- Death/Burial Records - from 1959 to 2020. I've added a "BCEM" item, for the indexes, to indicate burial in Bethel's cemetery.
- Historical Record - pages for writing of events in story fashion. This was used by Rev. Russell Bean during his pastorate and provides a mini-record of construction of the Fellowship Hall
Click Here to download a zip file which contains each of these PDF files and the Open-Office spreadsheet from which they were printed.
