The authoritative source on
early churches of New Jersey
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We've created a database and photographic inventory on more than half
the 18th & 19th century churches in the state and add to it each
month. We welcome and solicit all contributions and suggestions from
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Holmanville Mormon Church
Jackson Township, Ocean County
I'm not sure where I first read that there was a Mormon presence in the state in the early part of the 19th century, but a visitor to this site wrote of a small church near Hamilton, in Ocean county that was originally built as a Mormon church in 1828. The fact that any building has survived since that time is remarkable, but that the original (and perhaps only) Mormon church in the state has survived, is quite noteworthy.
In fact, the congregation was one of many in the state, and was likely organized between 1840 and 1850, and the building erected in 1857. In the 1850s there was a great falling away from the Latter Day Saints church in the state, although throughout the 1840s there had been a great deal of organizing activity, including visits by both Brigham Young and Joseph Smith. Protestants ran off the remaining Mormons in 1869 and a Presbyterian congregation took over the church. They abandoned the building in 1940 and it sat empty until the 1970s, when a nondenominational group occupied it. The church is now the Faith Baptist Church.
There is small burial ground to the rear of the church; the earliest burials I could read date to 1869-71, but surely some are older. More information about the history of the Mormon church in the state can be found in two publications in the Bishops Library in Tom's River.
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