Annual Christmas service to be held at old Wasioja Church

The old Wasioja Baptist Church will come alive again this Saturday as the Dodge County Historical Society sponsors its annual Christmas service at 6 p.m. on Dec. 12.
The service will feature Pastor Barb Streed from Faith Lutheran Church in Dodge Center giving the message and Barb Hanson from Concord providing the musical accompaniment for the singing of Christmas carols.
The church was built in 1857 by the Free Will Baptists and was the first church building in Dodge County and the only one in Wasioja, according to Historical Society Board Member Barbara Gilliland. Congregations of the Methodist and Congregational churches were present in the village but they did not have their own church building.
The church was also instrumental in the founding of the Wasioja Seminary, the location of which is now a county park, Gilliland said.
In 1857 the Quarterly Conference of the Free Will Baptists met in Mower County and discussed the establishment of a denominational school in the area, according to an 1884 history of Dodge County.  Wasioja was determined to be a desirable location for the school plus one of those attending the conference said the citizens of Wasioja would be willing to contribute at least $1,500 toward the construction.
A committee was formed to further investigate the possibilities and by the next conference in March 1858 a proposal was submitted that the citizens of Wasioja would erect the building and enclose it and the Free Will Baptists would complete the structure and support a “school of sufficient grade to prepare students for college.”  
A Board of Trustees would be established with 10 members from the Free Will Baptists and five from the community.
The Baptist group agreed and construction of the seminary was started in 1858 using limestone from nearby quarries.
The work was completed and the seminary opened in November of 1860.
The school was opened under the name of Minnesota Seminary but that was changed in 1861 to Northwestern College.