This historic church is located in the Empire community, west of Jesup. It’s of a style typical among churches in rural Georgia for nearly 200 years. The pressed tin roof is still protecting it, if taking on a bit of rust. The building looks stable overall. My best guess as to a date would tend toward the early 1910s-1920s.
Morgan Bailey, whose father was a pastor at Satilla in the 1970s, shared the following on Facebook: “From my mother–Only 7 members when we got there (1971?) and 9 when we left. All of the members were quite old, but loved their church. They yearned to have a dinner on the ground, but the church had no bathroom. We solved that problem by hiring someone to build an outhouse. Happy group of people to get to have dinner on the ground. There was an old hand pump for water. They heated the church with fire wood. When one of the sister churches offered to give them an oil/kerosene heater, the old gentleman who always chopped the firewood said. “If you take that heater, you’ll take my job away from me”. So we turned the offer down. On Sundays he would fire up that old wood stove and the wasps would start swarming. Great group of people at that little church!“
I hope it can survive. It does seem to be watched over by neighbors and was well built, probably by men of the church.
The United Methodist Church might still own the building. It usually does. I wonder if anyone has thought about calling the Southeastern Conference Director and asking if the church building itself could be moved and saved. It looks salvagable and if it was moved somewhere and modernized a little, it could serve a small rural church using a strip store to meet in on Sunday mornings. It couldn’t hurt to have the county officials there ask.