The plain style Mount Zion Primitive Baptist Church is one of the few tangible landmarks of the Doyle community, sometimes described as Putnam-Doyle, for inclusion of the nearby ghost town of Putnam. The post office in Doyle was open from 1891-1957, but was known as Wigginsville when it first opened in 1889. It was apparently named for Miss Jennie Doyle White Rogers.

According to Clarence White, from which all the following history is credited, the congregation was established in a brush arbor after the Civil War, and the present church building dates to at least 1888. The property was expanded by a gift from Ida Munroe, a professor and member of the Stevens family, large landowners and, formerly, slaveholders. Mr. White notes that Mount Zion served as anchor to the large African-American population of the communities of Putnam and Doyle.

A schoolhouse [in use until the construction of an Equalization School in Buena Vista in 1957] and the White Pearl Lodge #30 were located near the church. The lodge was destroyed by a tornado in the 1940s. Regarding the lodge, Mr. White wrote: Annually, on the second Sunday in June the lodge held a public program and ceremony at Samuel Chapel, which was known as a “turn-out.” This dignified event had a measure of simple, rural formality in an atmosphere of gentility and community fellowship. Lodge members dressed similarly, including the wearing of ceremonial badges. Unforgettable feasts were spread on the churchyard at the conclusion of the program; these were massive potlucks of meats, vegetables, salads, breads, cakes and pies brought by the women of the lodge in cardboard boxes and served with fresh-squeezed lemonade from one of the largest of galvanized tin tubs reserved for this singular use.

White’s description of this ritual is even more fascinating: The third Sunday in August was Big Meeting Day at Mt Zion, and nightly revival meetings (by kerosene lamp light before electricity) preceded the huge Sunday gathering. The occasion was a kind of festive homecoming attended by hundreds, many of whom returned from the Northern cities to which they had migrated beginning in the 1920s. There were concession stands that sold food and snacks. Cars and trucks overflowed the churchyard and were parked everywhere along Mt Zion Road, sometimes reaching to Highway 26. Moonshiners discreetly made their products available, being watchful for law enforcement officers who might suddenly appear. As the long day wore on, old family feuds might suddenly reignite. In addition to two services inside the church, there was a lively social scene outside the church. People came to see and be seen, to promenade—in their Sunday best. Indeed many attendees never set foot in the church; for them, visiting and being in the sprawling scene were how the much anticipated day was spent.