I still miss Ginny Franklin. I still hear her feisty, playful voice in my memory sometimes. I’ll say, “Well, I’m trying.” … and I’ll hear her say, “Yes; you’re very trying!” Or I’ll say, “I’m going to go.” …and I’ll hear her say, “Go-right-ahead…gourd-head!” Virginia Franklin was the first person to make my wife and I feel at home in the First Baptist Church of Linton. She was a corker!

One Sunday after church, she took my wife and me out to lunch (again!). This time, we were joined by Max and Katie Slough. Max was the long-time pastor of the Glenburn United Methodist Church; I’d known him before, and we became reacquainted when we moved to Linton.

Sitting there over what was left of our lunch, I breathed a huge sigh and commented how tired I was after the morning’s services. Max responded, “Of course you are! You preached this morning; virtue has gone out of you, just like when Jesus healed.” He was referring to three references in the King James Bible: Mark 5:30, Luke 6:19 and Luke 8:46.

Recently I read again an article that described how our church began. I keep a file on the history of our church, and it contains various bulletins, newspaper articles and records from our church’s past. This particular article was written in 1963 by one of my predecessors, Reverend Dale T. Heinbaugh, for the 75^th anniversary of our church’s founding. Reverend Heinbaugh was the pastor of First Baptist Church of Linton from 1960 to 1969. I shared this with our Sunday night crowd recently, but I thought it needed a wider circulation.

I had been told, and had told others, that our church was started in 1888 by the Olive Branch Baptist Church, which is just west of the Linton city limits. That is both true and not precisely true. What actually happened is told in the following excerpts from Pastor Heinbaugh’s article.