Mark Twain in Roughing It (1872) - his fanciful recollection of his Nevada sojourn (1861-1864) - recalled about early Virginia City: "There were military companies, fire companies, brass bands, banks, hotels, theatres, 'hurdy- gurdy houses,' wide-open gambling palaces, political pow-wows, civic processions, street fights, murders, inquests, riots, a whiskey mill every fifteen steps, a Board of Aldermen, a Mayor, a City Surveyor, a City Engineer, a Chief of the Fire Department, with First, Second and Third Assistants, a Chief of Police, City Marshal and a large police force, two Boards of Mining Brokers, a dozen breweries and half a dozen jails and station-houses in full operation, and some talk of building a church."

But in this, Twain was playing to Eastern stereotypes. Church services occurred in Virginia City soon after the 1859 strikes and here was at least one church (and probably two) were built before Samuel Clemens settled in Virginia City in 1862 (where he took his penname in 1863).

Some of the speed with which church services and church construction took place in a Western mining camp depended on the value of the ore and the nature of the rush that attracted a population. A modest mining camp was not as likely to attract a preacher and a congregation as was a truly booming mining town. But for those that could boast a population of a thousand or more ministers soon followed. Invariably, constructing a church became a point of honor - a clear demonstration that the camp was a town and that civilization had arrived, so one quickly saw these structures in most communities of reasonable size and duration.

I address this in my book The Roar and the Silence: A History of Virginia City and the Comstock Lode (1998).

In Claude S. Fischer's book Made in America, he talks about how outside of intentional Protestant communities, churches were late coming to communities:

Churches were few and scattered; most colonials were "unchurched." Even in larger settlements, religious diversity and apathy left many people unconnected. In late seventeenth century, for example, only about one in seven children born in Charles Parish, Virginia, was baptized.... (108)

He discusses how there was a precedence for people to practice religion privately in early American life, and that the establishment of churches developed out of, or in connection with, other community administrations. In planned communities, like early puritans, churches were institutions that helped plan the parochial economy, setting wages, organizing crops, etc. In a sense (this is one of the book's broader claims), these early communities emphasized voluntary social congregation of the whole community.

In unplanned communities that were "unchurched," religion wasn't necessarily absent. Some people rejected established churches in their communities, opting to practice their faith in public or at home. "Folk spiritualism" and evangelicals preached up-beat universal salvation. One of my favorite anecdotes is that apparently a Mrs. Lucy Mach Smith of New Hampshire "persuaded a minister to baptize her as, in effect, a Christian of her own personal denomination" (113). She, like many women of her time, chose to follow her own readings of the bible. Many women like this would elect to do esoteric things like dream interpretation and private worship (some got in trouble for it). Who was this Mrs. Smith? She was the mother of Joseph Smith, the founder of our modern day Church of Latter Day Saints.

I think what is interesting is how some of these very individualistic religious practices sometimes alienated people from their communities in New England, and in turn evangelicals and Mormons sought "open" land westward to establish their own lives and communities. I think that's why you find, especially in the northwest, a relatively low percentage of European Christian denominations as you see the late establishment of states (I can count the number of Catholics I knew in high school on one hand, and number of Jewish friends in high school on one thumb).

The book "Caddie Woodlawn" by Carol Ryrie Brink won the Newberry Medal for excellence in children's literature in 1936. It is the embellished tale of the life of Caddie Woodhouse Walkins, who was the maternal grandmother of Carol Ryrie Brink. It tells the tale of a young girl, growing up in Menomonie, Wisconsin during the US Civil War. This town was very small. It had a water powered flour mill, a general store and a steam boat landing. It also had a multi-purpose building that served as a school house, during the summer and winter and as a church, when the Circuit Rider made an appearance three or four times a year. The Circuit Rider, in this context, was a minister with some theological training that would travel from town to town, in northwestern Wisconsin in the 1850s and 1860s. Menomonie was to small to support a full time teacher and had to share her with a larger town, twelve miles away. The bigger town had the school teacher in the spring and fall, but the kids in Caddie Woodhouse's village had to go to school when it was too hot and too cold.