Clifton Park Center Baptist Church and Cemetery

http://www.cliftonparkcenterbaptist.org/index.html-------------------The Origins of Clifton Park Center Baptist Church. In 1793 Abijah Peck was licensed to preach by the Second Baptist Church of Galway. The next year he moved to Clifton Park (then part of Halfmoon) and began holding services in his home. In September 1794 the First Baptist Church of Halfmoon was organized. In 1796 the church joined the Shaftsbury Baptist Association, and remained a member until 1935 when it joined the Saratoga Association, an offshoot of Shaftsbury. The first delegates to an Association meeting took a church offering of $15 for missions. Without a pastor, the new church grew slowly. In 1801 Abijah Peck was ordained and became pastor of the church. A meeting house was erected and opened in October. Over the next 40 years the church grew and took over the membership of the failing Newton Baptist Church, which remained open for worship. In addition to holding services in two churches, members were dismissed to restart or found other area churches in Burnt Hills and Schenectady. In 1835 the groups meeting at the two locations voted to become separate churches, and the Peck church became First Baptist Clifton Park after the name of the new town created from western Halfmoon. A brick Meeting House was built. Elder Abijah Peck died in 1848, two months after a grandson was ordained. In his over 54 years of ministry, he had baptized 740 and brought another 263 into the church through letter or statement. In response to a new law of 1876, the church reorganized as Clifton Park Baptist Church. In 1891 an adjacent shop was purchased for a prayer room. Sunday School started in 1894 using the district school house for many years. In 1913, a parsonage was built across the road. In 1944, the horse sheds were torn down and the materials used to build a Fellowship Hall onto the prayer room. In 1957, the church incorporated as Clifton Park Center Baptist Church in order to obtain a loan to build a new education building.