The Kaskaskia Baptist Association has a unique history. It was formed in the 1840's by three converging movements: The Friends of Humanity, which was the group of anti-slavery Baptists led by the Lemen family, the Sunday School Movement, and the Missions Movement, both of which were led by John Mason Peck, who was sent by the Northern (American) Baptists from the East.

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The Association is also unique in that the majority of the founding churches still exist today. The Association has never disbanded, but rather has three names which were changed in order to accommodate the changes of boundaries as new areas joined, It changed from Vandalia to Centralia to take in Mount Vernon and Centralia churches, from Centralia to Kaskaskia then churches left Northern (American) Baptists to join the Southern Baptists in the 1900's. The results of the name changes is that our Association history is divided as though it were 3 different associations, when in truth, it is one association which has had three names. Also, the old regular (non-missionary) Baptist Association records are mixed with our Association records in the historical archives of the state library.

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Kaskaskia Baptist Association was the fifth association formed in the Friends of Humanity. There were the three district associations, the Wood River Association, and finally Vandalia association was formed. When you first look at personalities who founded the Association, the history sometimes gets a little confusing. Many of our churches, which predate the Association, seemed to be simultaneously formed by the Sunday School movement and Anti-Slave movement, but neither group seemed to be working together at the time. Later, these two groups joined joined together to form the Illinois Baptist Convention in Edwardsville and shortly after, our Association was formed.

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Another interesting fact is that early in our history, the Association tried to establish work of a part-time missionary to help with the preaching in the churches and to work toward the development of the churches. If you look at a time line, you will see years where they had a missionary and times they were searching for one.

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Some of the earliest church and Associational records either do not exist or have been lost. Because of this, information about individuals, churches, locations, or circumstances that might otherwise clarify certain gaps in history are missing, Also, there may be misspellings of family names because they were spelled differently in various different records, and our information is only as good as our oldest source. We endeavor to be as honest and accurate as possible, but being limited by the fact that we were not there, we must rely on other's records and memories.

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