Z 0968.000 First Presbyterian Church (Port Gibson, Miss.) Subscription List

Z 0968.000 F
FIRST PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH (PORT GIBSON, MISS.) SUBSCRIPTION LIST

As early as 1824, subscribers for the building of a new church in Port Gibson were sought. By 1826, a list of subscriptions and promised donations was developed. This subscription drive may well have involved more members of the Port Gibson community than the Presbyterians, since the list specified the new church would be open to services for other denominations as well. The following year, the Mississippi legislature approved the incorporation of the First Presbyterian Church of Port Gibson and designated trustees to receive the funds and land donated for the church; the land for the new church was deeded to the trustees in 1829. Leadership for the new church was provided through the recruitment in 1827 of Zebulon Butler, who was ordained as minister of the Bayou Pierre Church in 1828. By the end of that year, Butler was presenting a petition from a church elder to the Mississippi Presbytery requesting a new church name: the First Presbyterian Church of Port Gibson. Initially meeting in a courthouse, the First Presbyterian Church of Port Gibson possessed a fine enough church by 1834 that it could host the meeting of the Synod of Mississippi and South Alabama.

By 1859, the congregation had grown to the extent that a new church was required. The present brick building housing the First Presbyterian Church of Port Gibson was completed in 1860. The Romanesque Revival church was created by James Jones, apparently a local architect, and bears a distinctive 165-foot high steeple crowned by an upwardly pointing gilded hand. First carved of wood by Daniel Foley in 1859, the original hand was replaced by one of sheet metal about 1901.

1. Subscription List. 1826-1829. 1 item.