This is a Message Board Post that is gatewayed to this mailing list. Surnames: Guard, Gard, Cowden, Penn, Lusby, Fletcher, Frost, Lingenfelter Classification: Biography Message Board URL: http://boards.ancestry.com/mbexec/msg/rw/ok.2ADE/1777 Message Board Post: During her retirement, Mabel Bridges (4/6/1891 - 4/18/1976), using a card file, gathered notes on the earliest of the Fremont county pioneers. I'm copying the following from Mabel's notes: 1.--1841: The Rev. Jeremiah Guard, called a "reformer", was the first clergyman; lived on land now (1881) owned by Jacob Fletcher; came in 1841.--1881 Hist. of Fremont county, page 510. 2.--1841: The first preacher was Jerry Guard, a reformer in 1841, who lived on a claim he sold to S. B. Frost and now (1876) owned by Jacob Fletcher.-Lingenfelter's history, page 6. (SEE Mabel's notes re.: Samual Buchanan Frost.) 3.--1841: In the year 1841, the first cleryman came to Fremont County, the Reverend Joseph Jeremiah Guard--called a "reformer", a term both vague and general. (From "Early History of Sidney" by Mary Zinzie Penn, published in the Shenandoah "Evening Sentinel" in 1951, written in 1900.) 4.--Mrs. Lusby remembers Rev. Mr. Gard, a Christian or Campbellite minister, as the first preacher. Preached in open air at Pleasant Grove and performed first baptism in a small stream that ran through the grove.--1881 Hist. of Fremont county, page 517. 5.--Rev. Gard lived on or near what is known (1927) as the Fletcher farm, church not known.--Cowden.