Perth Baptist Church

The foundation stone for the current building was laid by Mrs William (Mary) Gibson, Snr on 8/8/1888.

"A bottle containing copies of the Launceston Daily Telegraph and Examiner of August 8, the Day Star, coins of the realm, and the following address (read by Pastor Walton) were placed in the brickwork beneath the memorial stone...'On Wednesday, the 8th day of August, in the year of Our Lord 1888, and in the 51st year of the reign of Her Majesty Queen Victoria, this stone was laid as the foundation stone of a building to be devoted to the purpose of religious worship and the proclamation of the Gospel of Our Lord Jesus Christ'..." 'The Colonist', 11 August 1888 - https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/201176881?searchTerm=Perth%20Tabernacle&searchLimits=#

The foundation stone of an earlier Baptist Church building, at the same site had also been laid by Mrs W Gibson on 8 May,1862.

A note by Lauris Rowston, Tasmanian Baptists Historian records: 'The Perth Baptist Church is rightly seen as the Mother Church of the denomination. It was the need to register the Perth chapel as a denominational place of worship in the early 1860s, and find pastors, that set off a chain of events which saw the revitalisation of Baptists in Tasmania. This led to the formation of an association of churches: the Baptist Union of Tasmania. The Gibson family was associated with the Perth Church for nearly half a century.