When pioneers moved west and settled, one of the first things they did was provide a house of worship. They would meet in homes until the church was built and that's just what happened at Maple Hill. There were several Eastern families who moved from Connecticut, Massachusetts and New York who were either related by blood, marriage or by church affiliation. They were the Warrens, Cheneys, Thayers, Pierce and Woodfords. In one way or another, they all had associations with the Eliot Congregational Church of West Newton, Massachusetts.
When the Warrens moved to Kansas in 1873, they built large stone houses where the first religious gatherings were held. Soon they had convinced the Eliot Congregational Church to start a mission church at Maple Hill. William Pierce gave 40 acres of prime pastureland for the building of the church and to provide a burial ground. The church was situated high on a hillside overlooking the Mill Creek Valley and the area's most prominent landmark, Buffalo Mound.
The church was founded in 1875 at a meeting held in the District #39 School House. This was the first frame school in Maple Hill Township and is located on the Adams Ranch north of Maple Hill but has been remodeled many times and is used as a residence. There was an earlier log school house built near Watermann's Crossing on Mill Creek. There were 13 charter members in the new church. The congregation met in the church and were often served by the Rev. W. S. Crouch, who was pastor of the Congregational Church in St. Marys. The stone church built and was dedicated in 1882. The dedication provided an opportunity for a huge gathering of Congregationalists from Topeka, St. Marys, Alma, Manhattan and other cities. It was reported that the hillside was "covered" with wagons, buggies and horses.
The church was dealt a severe blow in 1887 when the Rock Island Railroad was built through the Mill Creek Valley. It had been the plan of William A. Pierce to build the new town of Maple Hill on his ranch just to the south of the church. However prior to 1887, another large ranch, that of George Fowler and William J. Tod, had developed east of the church on many sections of land. For a modern-day reference, the Fowler/Tod Ranch is primarily located on what is today called the Brethour and Hudson Ranches, divided by Interstate 70. The Fowler-Tod and Pierce factions fought and pursued legal action to secure the townsite on their ranch, but finally Pierce was given stock in the Fowler-Tod townsite and the new town of Maple Hill was developed 1.5 miles east of the church. (Within five short years, William A. Pierce had lost his ranch and moved to Denver, Colorado where he died penniless in the 1920s.)
Transportation was by foot, horseback or horse-drawn conveyance at that time and being separated from the town by 1.5 miles was a handicap for the fledgling church. So in 1905, the Maple Hill Town Company offered the original grade school building and the land on which it sat for a town church. The understanding was clearly that the burial ground would remain in the country at the Old Stone Church.
There were three other churches in Maple Hill. There were the Methodist, Baptist, and AME. Eventually all of these churches closed and their members were melded into what became known as The Maple Hill Community Congregational Church. This is the church where I was baptised and where I attended until I moved out-of-state in 1978. The members of my extended Clark, Jones, Corbin and McCauley families were all members of the Old Stone Church and its successor, the Maple Hill Community Congregational Church. Some of the Lemon family belonged to the Methodist Church, some to the Baptist and some to the Congregational Church. However all of these families living in Maple Hill Township buried their dead in the Old Stone Church Cemetery. Many of the Clarks are buried in the Snokomo Cemetery in Newbury Township south of Paxico, Kansas in Wabaunsee County.
Ronelle Bennett of Alma, a well-known plastered in the Mill Creek Valley, was hired to do the plaster work but the youth group assisted him in putting up and moving scaffolding and in mixing and carrying scuds of plaster. The work took about three weeks.
Miss Emily Adams headed the raising of funds to pay for the plastering, a new floor, and to provide furnishings for the new church. Over the summer of 1961, I personally typed over 200 letters for Miss Adams on her little Royal portable typewriter. These letters went to families near and far who had some association with the church or cemetery. We were successful in raising more than $15,000 which was enough to complete the work.
Ann Gorbet Adams, wife of Raymond Adams, Jr., chose the paint colors for the interior and the Hammarlund Family donated a very large wooden cross for the front of the sanctuary. The wood came from rafters of an old church in St. Marys. The restored church was rededicated on Memorial Day/Decoration Day, 1963 and was used until 1994.
As fate would have it, the church was completely destroyed by a tornado in April of 1994. When it burned, the church walls remained standing and the roof was replaced. When it was hit by the tornado, the walls and everything inside the church was completely destroyed. The church/cemetery board decided to use insurance monies and again there were generous donors who allowed the church to be completely restored a second time.
In the mid-1990s, the church and cemetery received a very large, anonymous six-figure bequest, which allows for the complete maintenance and upkeep of both the cemetery and maintenance. In addition, Emma Jeanne and Warner Adams gave an additional five acres of ground to the cemetery, which should be sufficient for several generations to come.
Barring some kind of natural or human disaster, the Old Stone Church and Cemetery should be well kept and much loved well into the future. May it be so.
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