Before the church was built in 1895 services were held in different homes of the neighborhood.
The township had not been settled more than a year or two before the settlers began to think of religious matters. Mr. Burns, a minister, had taken up a claim on section twenty‑four. In 1884 or 1886 Mr. Burns began preaching in the homes of the settlers and a Sunday school was started. When the schoolhouse was built, the Sunday School met in it. A church was organized and they began to consider a building as a home for worship. Four hundred dollars was secured from the Congregational Home Building Society, but this amount would not pay for the lumber for the church, so each donated a few days' time and the rock was hauled from the surrounding prairies. The money secured paid for the stone mason and material for plaster. Archie Nicolson and J.W. Perkins did the stone work and Duncan McNabb finished the inside work. So the stone church so long a land mark was built in 1895 on Section twenty‑one. Sunday school was held in the afternoon at 2 p.m. and worship services at 3 p.m. According to church records about 50 people attended.
The church was dedicated in August 1896 with appropriate ceremonies. The cost of construction was $1,118. In 1913 the congregation transferred to the Bordulac Church.
After its abandonment, the stones from the church were later used for road repair work along the Kelly Creek road.
1890 ‑ J.C. Jones
1891‑ W.H. Bimblett
1898 ‑ J. Lincoln Jones
1899‑1901‑ Rev. Johnson
1903 ‑ Rev. McKinnon
1904‑1906 ‑ C. W. Smith
1907‑1908‑H.T. Gardner
1909 ‑ Rev. Snape Rev. Cummings Rev. Savage
The following excerpts are from a letter written by Mary Black Smith, a former member of this church:
"The stone church‑ Rose Hill Congregational‑ is another of my bright memories. We drove there to church in the afternoon, my sister, Goldine, sitting in the front seat of the double buggy and I sitting with the dear grandma in the back seat. How I hated a windy day! We were sure to be plastered with hair from the shedding horses and tobacco juice from Pa's chewing and spitting.
"To me, the church was a temple with its deeply recessed windows. Looking back, I give thanks to those homesteading fathers of ours, who, as soon as they filed on their homestead, built a church. Schools were next.
"Now looking back on those wonderful days, my heart is filled with appreciation for those folks who came from fairer lands and pleasanter climates and who helped make a God's country, as it is today of the barren prairie.
"The one church on the 'south road' was made of the beautiful native stone with six deeply recessed windows. The Church served as a community place, also.
"I remember one Sunday afternoon in August, the wheat crop hung golden and ripe and the man who farmed the land behind the church was cutting grain. The day was hot and the flies were swarming and the man on the binder had his troubles handling four or was it six horses. He had a vocabulary. The congregation was singing "Bringing in the Sheaves, " a fitting hymn for harvest time. The windows were open and intermingled with "Lo, the harvest fields are smiling, With their waves of ripened grain." Outside it was the driver's "G__ D___ Bunch of $#@!" "Lord of mercy bring forth reapers, Hear us, Lord, to you we cry. Send them forth the field to gather, Ere the harvest time pass by!" We God‑fearing folk who never broke the Sabbath couldn't see the humor in the situation.
"I wonder, if our children, now grown, with families of their own, enjoy their Christmases much as we, the children of homesteading pioneers.
"Those Christmas Trees‑ as the gatherings were called, were a visit of fairyland and Paradise combined. A few weeks before Christmas the ball was rolling. Two women with a man driving the team on the sleigh would make the rounds of the community and collect the necessary funds. Some time, somewhere, by someone‑ I later realized‑ sacks of bright red and green mosquito netting would be 'run up' on someone's sewing machine. These sacks would be filled to the top with candies and nuts and always a big orange. That was the only time we children ate an orange, at Christmas.
"Christmas trees and oranges were connected in my childish mind.
"The Christmas Tree was usually in the Rose Hill Church on an afternoon shortly before Christmas. The shades were drawn and inside the church it would be as dark as night. Of those earlier gatherings 52‑53 years ago, I can recall only the tree. Standing in the northeast corner of the church, tall and green, a symbol of the life everlasting our Savior promises, not the pagan's god and ritual as modern sophisticates say.
"The candles were lit and the tree stood a thing of dazzling beauty! It was trimmed with the gifts, mostly dollies for the little girls here and there on the branch trips, drums and mouth organs for the boys and handkerchiefs for the women. A big barrel of rosy red apples and a basket of snowy white popcorn balls were distributed. Also those gay sacks of candies, etc. for the children. I can't recall Santa Claus visiting nor do I remember the program that preceded the lighting‑ of the tree. But when I was only 3 or 4 the dazzling beauty of the tree filled my little mind.
"I remember the joint Christmas programs given a few times at the church when the Haven No. 1 school and the 'Graham' and 'Nicolson' Rose Hill schools would combine their programs. There would be dialogues, drills, and recitations. There was always a tableau at the end. It would be built around 'Away in the Manger', 'Little Town of Bethlehem' or maybe 'We Three Kings'. Then the powder would be ignited and the eerie red or blue light would dramatize the settings‑ beautiful and impressionable.
"After a program of 'pieces' and songs Santa Claus came bouncing jingling a string of musical sleigh bells with a bulging sack on his back, ruddy and frosty from his long journey. He was shouting 'MERRY CHRISTMAS, EVERYBODY'.
"After the wonderful evening we'd come home in the bob sled filled with clean straw and warm blankets‑ warm from having blanketed the faithful team that waited patiently on our pleasure that evening. We had a star‑filled sky to gaze on and the frosty creak of the sleigh runners, accented occasionally by the soft breathing of the horses as a rhapsody."
Source: A History of Foster County 1983 Page 381