Jolly Elders

Lassen County Times, Volume 3, Number 23, 18 March 1981 By Clinton Schemmer Staff Reporter

Gerald Whitehead, who moved to Janesville in 1955, remembers when the big cast-iron bell of the Baptist Church of Janesville used to ring out through the community every Sunday morning at 10 o’clock, calling church-goers to worship. “1 kind of missed it when they quit ringing it….yeah, I kinda miss it,” Whitehead recalls. The church bell has been quiet for years, as the churchyard lawn, untended, grew high and the church building itself lay still. About five years ago, as the congregation dwindled to nothing, the 70-year old building saw its last religious service. But last week, the churchyard again bustled with activity as volunteer carpenters worked to erase years of weathering and restore the building to community use. The bell tower was rebuilt, asbestos shingles from the 1950’s were torn off, revealing the old pine tongue-and-groove siding, and finishing touches were put on a new ceiling inside. The restoration project is being undertaken by the Janesville Historical Society, a community group organized in 1978, according to Jerry Rainey, society chairman and owner of Rainey’s Market. Volunteers are “trying to make (it) just like it used to be,” Rainey said last week. Late Wednesday afternoon, 40 feet above the ground, in the church’s bell tower, Whitehead and Thornton ‘Thorny’ Edmonds, of Janesville, sent the belfry’s pigeons flying and built a new platform for the church bell.

“They’re pretty mad,” Whitehead said, referring to the starteld birds. Whitehead and Edmonds had their work cut out for them, in building a new plaiform for the massive cast-iron bell. They removed the weak, weathered boards, and over the course of an afternoon, manuevered new ones into place under the bell. The bell, cast in Northville, Michigan and brought by freight wagon into Janesville, weighs “500 pounds if it’s anything,” Whitehead said. Last week, the two volunteers also finished a new, lower ceiling built inside the church to reduce heating costs and began removing green asbestos siding nailed in recent years over the church’s pine boards Last summer, Edmonds tidied up the high, overgrown lawn of the churchyard by putting his pony and donkey to graze there. “They knocked it right down,” he said. Later, a new foundation was laid under the church; the beams of which had rested on rocks and boulders for 70 years. Those pine foundation timbers were handhewn with a adze or broadaxe. Most of the cross-members under the church floor are logs that were simply barked, notched, and laid on each other. The tongue-and-groove boards which form the walls of the church were milled either at the Jellison lumber mill in Janesville or at the lumber mill that once sat up Gold Run Creek. Ornate, hand-painted moldings graced the interior walls of the church. When use of the church faltered, it was given over to the Baptist Association in Reno, Nevada.

Rainey said he is hoping the building will be used “for a library or a museum or a combination of both.” Those uses are also the wish of William and Blanche Hail, longtime Janesville residents. Hail remembers when the church building was constructed; “I seen all of it happen, but of course I was a kid.” Hail said he “was just old enough to get in the way.” Hail’s grandfather, J.S. Johnson, one of the organizers of the church, was its first pastor, in 1909. Johnson came west in that year to the Honey Lake Valley from Colorado Springs, Colorado. Johnson, who was born in Kentucky and served in the Union Army in the Civil War, preached for a time in Missouri, then headed west. Hail’s father, William B. Hail, helped build the church in 1911. W.B. Hail farmed profitably in Kansas, then – at the age of 60 – came west and bought 200 acres in Janesville. He planted an orchard of apple and peach trees, and raised cows, hogs, and chickens. The present-day Mr. Hail lives in a house on land that once was that farm. According to records of the Hails, the baptist church was organized on Nov. 7, 1909. At that meeting, J.S. Johnson was appointed by the congregation to find a site for

the future church building. A year later, on Nov. 7, 1910, a 75′ X 120′ lot, property of the Christy brothers, was deeded for the church site. The building, which today stands just a short distance east of Rainey’s Market on the old highway, was built by the donated labor of community members in the summer of 1911. The only paid individual was Frank Alexander, the carpenter in charge of seeing the church erected. Oct. 8, 1911 saw the first service in the new church. J.S. Johnson never lived to see the permanent place of worship he helped to create; he died in Pacific Grove, California before the church building was built. Blanche Hail, a long-time U.S. Forest Service employee who used to look down on Janesville from high up in the Thompson Peak lookout, recalls the many church activities held years ago – prayer meetings, baptisms using the waters of nearby creeks, and church ‘ice cream socials’, where church members enjoyed cake, homemade ice cream, and party games. The church “had goodsized congregation,” according to Mrs. Hail. The Hails are glad to see the church being restored. “We fought to keep the church from being torn down. We wanted it.