120 years ago in 1905, transcribed as originally published in the Youngstown Vindicator:

A committee appointed at the last annual meeting of the First Presbyterian Church of this city to investigate and determine if the congregation had ever been incorporated, made its report Sunday in the following form which was printed on the regular church program, showing that the congregation, the oldest in the Western Reserve, was incorporated in 1863. The church was first organized in 1800:

To the First Presbyterian Church — Your committee appointed at the last annual meeting of the congregation, and by you authorized to investigate and determine whether the church has ever been legally incorporated, and if not, to proceed to procure such incorporation, beg leave to report as follows:

‘We find that by an act of the legislature, passed in 1852 and in force until amended in 1865, any religious society, at a meeting of a majority of its members, might elect any number of its members, not less than three, to serve as trustees or directors, and one member as clerk, who should hold their office during the pleasure of the church: that the clerk so elected, might make a true record of the proceedings of the meeting and certify and deliver the same to the recorder of the county in which the church is situated, and designate the name by which said church desires to be known. And the country recorder should record the same in a book kept for that purpose, “and from and after making such a record by the county recorder, the said trustees or directors and their associate members and successors shall be invested with the powers, privileges and immunities incident to aggregate corporations.

We also find that, at a meeting of the congregation, held in the church building January 3d, 1863, at which, according to the record, more than one-half of all the members of the church were present, being one hundred and fourteen (114) in number. Reuben McMillian was chosen chairman and B. S. Higley clerk. Paul Wick, Robert Montgomery and William S. Parmelee were unanimously elected trustees of said church for the next succeeding year.

It was moved by the Rev. L. B. Wilson, which motion prevailed unanimously, that the clerk be instructed to get the minutes of this and the preceding meeting, and the certificates of the election of the trustees at this meeting elected, recorded as in the statutes of this state directed, for the purpose of incorporating said First Presbyterian Church of Youngstown, O.”

We also find that a full record of the proceedings of said meeting, duly certified, together with the certificate of the election of said trustees, were duly filed in the office of the recorder of said county and by him recorded in a record book, kept for such purpose, in volume 1, at page 83.

We find that the statute in force in 1863 was duly compiled with and conclude; that the First Presbyterian Church of Youngstown, Ohio is therefore a duly and legally incorporated body.

‘C. H Booth, E. H. Hosmer, C. R. Truesdale, B. C. Pond, R. D. Gibson.

Compiled from the Youngstown Vindicator by Dante Bernard, Mahoning Valley Historical Society Museum educator.