Messengers from five Baptist churches met at the Salem Church in September 1806 to organize the Mississippi Baptist Association. The Union and Pearl River Association were organized in 1820. The first Mississippi Baptist Convention was organized tentatively in 1822, when delegates from the three District Associations—Mississippi, Pearl River, and Union—met in the Meeting House of Bogue Chitto Church in Pike County and adopted a Constitution, which was completed in 1824. The convention dissolved in 1829. In December 1836, at the Clear Creek Baptist Church in Washington, Mississippi, the present Mississippi Baptist Convention was organized. It comprised 122 churches with 4,287 members. The Convention intended to promote missions and religious education. Its Constitution declared that every local Baptist church is sovereign and independent, and that the Convention had no authority over the local church. The Mississippi Baptist Convention predated the 1845 organization of the Southern Baptist Convention by nine years, and Mississippi Baptists had leadership roles in that organization.