Trust Deed. The Trustees of the Olivet Baptist Church of Chicago to Nicholas B. Rappleye use of The Massachusetts Mutual Life Insurance Company. Dated December 14, 1875. Executed by William S. Johnson, T. Cooper, Albert C. Brown, D. B. Peyton and John Enders as Trustees of Olivet Baptist Church. This Deed of Trust was executed to secure repayment of a series of Promissory notes executed by the Trustees of Olivet Baptist Church obligating them to pay what seems to be a total of $4350 to The Massachusetts Memorial Life Insurance Company at various fixed dates over the next 54 months ending on July 1, 1880. Repayment was secured by three lots, presumably those on which Olivet Baptist was located.
Three page, partly printed document executed by the five trustees plus one page Notary Certificate plus usual legal document backing sheet. 34 cm. Modest soiling on legal backing sheet but otherwise sound and clean. Recording stamp on face of folded document indicates that this Trust Deed was recorded on Dec. 18, 1875. Olivet describes itself today as "The first and oldest historically African-American Baptist Church in the city of Chicago." Olivet appears to have been of modest size when this Trust Deed was executed in 1875 with a congregation of perhaps a few hundred. The Olivet congregation may have been borrowing to build or enhance a new church structure replacing the church building destroyed in the 1873 Chicago fire. Olivet grew to have a membership of 10,000 or more in the 20th Century after the Great Migration brought a lot of African Americans from the South to Chicago. Lacey Kirk Williams and Joseph Harrison Jackson, two of Olivet's ministers in the 20th century, served long terms as President of the National Baptist Convention, Inc. -- Williams was President from 1922 to 1940 and Jackson even longer (and more controversially) from 1953-1982. Very Good. Item #95088
Price: $500.00