Burroughs was a community of formerly enslaved people in southwestern Chatham County who, in the 1870’s and 1880’s, were given the opportunity to buy the land they were living on from their former enslavers. Today, St. Bartholomew’s Episcopal Church and New Ogeechee Missionary Baptist Church are the tangible links to that past. Simple vernacular housing, such as the example pictured here, were once common in the community, but are rapidly vanishing.
The St. Barholomew’s Day School was constructed in 1897. It was operated by the St. Bartholomew’s Episcopal Church until 1916, at which time Chatham County rented the building and took over its operation. It was closed as a school in 1951 and has since served as the parish hall.
National Register of Historic Places
Established in 1832, St. Bartholomew’s is the oldest active African-American Episcopal congregation in Georgia. The Episcopal church was actively pursuing the evangelization of slaves by the early 1830s. In 1832, a white family in the area initiated religious education for its slaves and by 1845, the bishop appointed the Reverend William G. Williams as the area’s first official pastor. He established a church and school on the three plantations he served and was so successful that by 1860, on the eve of the Civil War, his congregation was the largest, black or white, in the Episcopal Diocese of Georgia.
A gift of $400 from St. Barholomew’s Episcopal Church in New York City to the Ogeechee Mission Congregation in 1881 helped stimulate interest in the construction of a permanent home. The present structure was consecrated in 1896 and named in honor of its first major patrons. Known officially today as St. Bartholomew’s Chapel, the church which was once so integral to the life of the Burroughs community still meets on a limited schedule.
National Register of Historic Places
Organized in 1891 when members split from nearby First Bethel Baptist Church over their choice of Reverend Burke as pastor, New Ogeechee Missionary Baptist Church was built two years later on land donated by member J. D. Campbell. F. E. Washington was the first pastor to serve the congregation.
In the late 18th and early 19th centuries, this area was predominately populated by slaves. In the 1870s and 1880s, freedmen bought land on which they had worked prior to Emancipation. Burroughs was established on the lands of Wild Heron Plantation, at its peak encompassing over fifty dwellings, a school and a store, as well as three churches. It was incorporated in 1898.
National Register of Historic Places