Strong faith in God motivated the Euro-American settlers to establish worship spaces soon after arriving in Dakota Territory. In the county’s first two decades, from 1880 to 1900, the settlers established at least twenty-one places of worship, reflecting the diversity of faith traditions and ethnic origins among the early residents.
While religion played an important role in the lives of people, both in the towns and rural areas of Aurora County, the nature of religious affiliation changed over time. The two Jewish settlements in Aurora Township had dissolved by 1885. Five years later, the Baptist church had disbanded, and the Welsh Calvinist Church in Dudley Township had adopted the English language and changed its name to Dudley Methodist Episcopal Church. The South Dakota Census of 1915 showed that 75 percent of Aurora County’s population affiliated with a church. As in 1890, more people, 1,351, stated affiliation with the Roman Catholic faith than with any other denomination. Lutherans numbered 1,203, and Methodists numbered 835. In the decade before 1920, six more congregations were established in the county; one Catholic, one Lutheran, two Methodist, and two Presbyterian. In addition, some residents of Aurora County attended church in neighboring counties, including one Lutheran church less than a mile east of Belford Township. The Congregational Church of Plankinton, having difficulty repaying a church loan, merged with the new Presbyterian Church in 1913. That same year, a number of families of Dutch descent moved to Center Township and established the Aurora Reformed Church in a small, unincorporated village called Aurora Center. In 1918, the First Presbyterian Church in Stickney became the last new congregation to form in the county for sixty years. (Several families, holding prayer meetings in homes, organized the White Lake Community Church in 1978.) Churches that could not continue operating either merged or closed their doors forever.
Immigrants had built many of rural churches and some town churches, and their ethnic culture remained strong. A close-knit community of Welsh-speaking families established the Welsh Calvinist Church in Dudley Township. For several years, German-language services took place in two Lutheran churches in White Lake and in the townships of Truro, Gales, and Crystal Lake. The Catholic churches in White Lake and Washington Township served a large population that had originated in Luxemburg and spoke German, while the Catholic Church in Plankinton originally served those of Irish descent. The Norwegian Storla Lutheran Church still held one-third of its services in the Norwegian language as late as 1923. The Dutch Aurora Reformed Church also did not change services to English until the 1920s. The large membership in Catholic churches in Plankinton and White Lake, and later Stickney, consisted of people living in town and distant rural areas, while the Catholic church in Washington Township and numerous Protestant churches served a much smaller and more local population.
By 1920, the county accommodated twenty-four churches, with some still reflecting the ethnic origins of the churches’ founders. While each town supported one Catholic, one Lutheran, one Methodist, and one Presbyterian Church, the rural townships hosted another ten churches, including one Quaker, one Methodist, three Lutheran, one Catholic, one Evangelical, and one Reformed church.
Today the number of churches stands at eleven churches served by 8 ministers, with the Presbyterian Church in each town having either closed or merged with the Methodist Church. As the rural population has declined, all but two of the rural churches have also closed, leaving one rural church with Dutch roots in Center Township and another rural church with Norwegian roots in Belford Township. With a county population registering only 38 percent of that in 1920, today’s congregations continue the tradition of worship brought to this area so long ago by those early residents who placed their faith in a loving and merciful God as they built new homes, new farms, new businesses, and new places of worship on the prairies of Dakota Territory.
It Happened Right Here: Faith on the Prairie (Part 2), by Ruth Page Jones. Published in the South Dakota Mail, Plankinton, South Dakota, April 27, 2017.
RPJ Histories - Ruth Page Jones 