The meeting-house of the Sardis Baptist Church was located beside the present-day Highway U. S. 42, across Fowler Creek, behind the Veterinarian Office. It was abandoned about the turn of the twentieth century and later torn down. This church was referred to as a Primitive or Old School Baptist Church because of its hyper-Calvinistic (Predestiniarian), anti-missionary beliefs.

The Licking Association of Particular Baptists, with most of its associated churches located in the central Kentucky area, "met with Sardis Baptist Church, Boone county, (Union) Kentucky at 11 o'clock on the 2d Saturday and two succeeding days in September, 1838." The nearest church of this association, geographically located to Sardis was Williamstown Particular Baptist, William Conrad, Pastor.

The Minutes of the association indicate that Sardis had united with the association recently (1836 or 37), so it must have been constituted about that time. The church met on the 4th Saturday of the month for business and the following Sunday for preaching. They list a total of 38 members. During the previous year they had received 3 members "by letter or examination," 1 was excluded and 3 died.

There were a total of 26 churches in the Licking Association that year. The messengers of the Sardis church to the association were: A. E. Clarkson, W. Jones, E. A. Adkins, and J. M. Clarkson.

James M. Clarkson wrote the Circular Letter for the Association that year. The Circular Letter was an essay written to all of the churches. Various subjects were chosen about doctrine, polity, the history of the churches or an exhortation to the members of the various churches. The Circular Letter was presented to the committee on the first day; the next day the Circular was read and adopted, then published with their annual records.

The Licking Association did have a correspondence with Northbend Baptist Association; at that time [1838] all of the other Baptists churches in Boone County were associated with Northbend, though four other churches broke away from Northbend and constituted the Salem Association of Predestination of Baptists in 1840.

The records indicate that the church at that time had neither a licensed nor ordained minister. They must have had a minister come from some other church to assist them.

Morris Lassing was pastor from 1854 to 1867, when he died from a heart attack.

Mary Bristow (Aunt Polly) was a member there and wrote extensively of the church in her diary when Morris Lassing was the pastor in the 1850s and 60s. [Go to Diary.]

[Taken from the Minutes of the Licking Association of Particular Baptists, 1838, pp. 1-3. jrd]