St. John's Evangelical Lutheran Church was established in the small Missouri farming community of Babbtown in the early 1870s by German immigrants. The town of Babbtown disolved in the early 1900s when the Rock Island Railroad chose to construct their line through Meta, a few miles south. The post office and community business then moved there. Today, the church and church school building are practically all that remain of the town.
My journey in genealogy began here, as my ancestors were among the German settlers who formed this church community. It wasn't long before I discovered that the records from the church had been archived on microflim and stored in the Missouri State Archives in Jefferson City. I ordered a copy of the microfilm, and after spending two full days in the library at a viewing machine, I decided it would be worth my while to have the film converted to digital images so I could do my research from the comfort of my livingroom couch.
The problem, I found, with researching my ancestry and relatives from Babbtown, was that they are nearly all related in some way or another. Family names of the orginal founders included Mengers, Schulenberg, Ahlers, Mueller, Schroeder, Schriefer, Leithauser, Auftengarten, and later Groene, Harfst, Petershagen, and others. Children from all of these families intermarried with each other for several generations, not just here, as it turned out, but most knew and were related to each other before emmigrating from Germany. Most of these families were all members of St. Cyprian and Cornelius Church in Ganderkesee, Niederhausen, Germany and nearby communitees.
While doing my research, I've run across other ameture genealogists who found interest in the Babbtown church records, and I've heard tell of many others who have stopped by the church and cemetery and wished to view the records. So I decided to make my digital images available here. These images are scaled down do to space limitations, but if you would like a hi-res image of a particular page, feel free to . These are not the complete church records. I've limited what I've posted to pages of those who are predominantly deceased, or that are otherwise available on the internet via other sources of public records, hence the baptismal records posted stop at 1938, and the marriage records at 1956, although the records avaliable do continue to 2002, when the microfilm was created. I also have other church records, including confirmation and communion records, as well as images of the original church book written in German.
Baptismal Records