Sources are quite varied as to the early history of Mt. Olivet Methodist Church, but I believe it was established circa 1843, per the Liberty County Historical Society, and the present structure built in 1881. A bicentennial history of the South Georgia Conference of the United Methodist Church, published in 1984, posited that the congregation was established circa 1768-1770 as Pleasant Grove. My understanding is that Pleasant Grove was a satellite congregation of Midway, established in the early 1800s. Because of a plantation association, it catered more to its enslaved congregants, and as a result, its white members eventually established Mt. Olivet.
Stacy Ashmore Cole has done excellent research on the subject of the Pleasant Grove name and concluded: “There are several Pleasant Grove churches within the history of Liberty County…” including the “now-defunct Pleasant Grove Methodist Church that was an offshoot of the Midway Congregational Church. Founded in the early 1800’s, it was attended by both white and black – enslaved and free – members…The white membership of the church later founded the Mt. Olivet Methodist Church in Fleming, Liberty County, which still exists.”
I feel that this is the same Pleasant Grove referred to by Lillie Walthour Gillard in Liberty County: A Pictorial History: “A meeting house was erected on land between the North and South Newport rivers in 1806 and was named Pleasant Grove [possibly on Roswell King’s South Hampton plantation]. According to Dr. Stacy’s history of the Midway church, “Messrs. Bradwell, John Ashmore, Colonel Joseph Law and others held reading services every Sunday for the Negroes in that area. Later the Methodist circuit riders made it a station from which the Negroes benefited.”
Liberty County received historic snowfall on Tuesday night as a result of Winter Storm Enzo, a weather system that brought blizzard conditions to the Gulf Coast and lower Southeast. I’m sharing a few random landmarks from my local rambles of the past week. My only regret is that I couldn’t photograph everything. I hope you enjoy seeing these as much as I enjoyed making them. I’ll be sharing some shots from Long County, as well.
This church was built in 1942 and dedicated in 1944. This photograph dates to 2011 and the structure is now gone, replaced by a newer facility in the past few years. The main sanctuary building, next door, was completed in 1985 and is still in use.
From the South Georgia Conference of the United Methodist Church, a bit of background on the congregation: In 1837, when the town of Hinesville was laid out, a plot was reserved for the Methodist Church. This site was adjacent to the courthouse, where Bradwell Park is now. A small frame building was built on the lot reserved for the church and it was there that Methodism in Hinesville began to grow. By 1845, the church had a Sunday school and, by 1890, the Woman’s Missionary Society had twenty-five members. In March 1900, a group of Hinesville ladies banded together to form a Ladies Aid Society which made special efforts to raise funds for the church building. In 1901, this group paid for new shingles for the roof, two chandeliers, and six bracket lamps...Under the pastorate of Rev. C. B. Ray, construction of a new church began in 1941 [the one pictured here]. Work was completed in 1942, under Rev. J. W. Patterson, and was dedicated on September 4, 1944, with Bishop Arthur J. Moore delivering the dedicatory sermon.
Palmyra was established in 1874 by Geechee freedmen near Sunbury. Among its members over the years were Myers and Christine Anderson, the grandparents who raised future Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas in the Pinpoint community of Chatham County. Mr. Anderson was the subject of Thomas’s 2007 autobiography, My Grandfather’s Son.
The vernacular headstones of Sunbury Missionary Baptist Church Cemetery in the old Trade Hill-Seabrook area were memorialized by photographer Orrin Sage Wightman in Margaret Davis Cate’s beloved book, Early Days of Coastal Georgia (Fort Frederica Association, St. Simons Island, 1956). The images, made mostly in the 1930s and 1940s, depict monuments in much newer condition than we see today, and many which have vanished altogether. Still, its surviving collection of these iconic memorials make it one of the most important African-American cemeteries in Georgia.
Rachel Bowens-Pap (1886?-March 1937)
The most significant of these monuments were predominately wooden markers and whimsies thought to have been made by Cyrus Bowens. None of these survive at the site today but a small collection of concrete markers remain, also attributed to Cyrus Bowens. [Findagrave lists a Cyrus Bowens, who died in 1866, among those buried at Sunbury Missionary Baptist, but these graves were made much later than that. This Cyrus Bowens appears to have been active in the 1930s].
Chaney Bowens (1855?-18 February 1931)Detail of Chaney Bowens monument, featuring a hand-incised dove.George Bowens (?-7 August 1931) A right-pointing hand and a cross adorn this stone.Frank Jackson (Dates unknown). The empty concave rectangle likely featured a photograph of the decedent at one time.Lucy Bowens (Dates unknown). The empty concave oval likely held a photograph of the decedent at one time.Boston (Last name unknown, dates unknown)Brick Footstone (Name and dates unknown)Symbolic headstone; broken vessel
In her essay “Negro Graves”, in Early Days of Coastal Georgia, Margaret Davis Cate writes: In old Negro burying grounds the grave is outlined with various and sundry items…The articles on the graves include every kind of container or utensil–sea shells…piggy banks…clocks…cups, saucers…Everything on a Negro grave is broken. To them, this is symbolic. Life is broken; the vessel is broken…Years ago Negroes put these broken articles on all their graves; but today, one finds them only in isolated communities far removed of the white man’s culture. To seek them out, one must leave the paved roads and search in remote areas…
Horace Fuller (26 July 1872-18 September 1933)
The Fuller monument and the seven images that follow feature delicate hand-incised natural forms and symbols.
Detail of Horace Fuller monument, featuring whimsical hand-incised flowers.Ceasar Hamilton (7 September 1867-January 1938)Detail of Ceasar Hamilton monument, featuring whimsical hand-incised flower.Joe & Martha Baker (Birth dates unknown, Joe, d. January 1931; Martha, d. Feb ?), with flower and hand pointing right.Unknown decedent, with hand-incisedsymbol.L. G. Delegal (1872?-December 1935)Mary Mattox (1861?-29 June 1938)Painted brick lot boundary markerEdward Fuller (21 Jun 1896-29 March 1925) & Samuel Fuller (?-8 March 1924) Julia Fuller (188?-1907) & Lila Fuller (Died 1900, Age 3 weeks)William Fuller (?-20 June 192?)Mamie L. Hague (?-1940)Ira L. Williams, Sr. (12 October 1889-4 November 1969)Ira Edwin Williams Deacon Eddie Bowen – Son of Isaac and Mary – Born Colonels Island off the coast of Georgia in the 1890s. One of the oldest commercial fishermen who worked the coastal waters of Liberty County.
Though the present building was constructed in 1974, Sunbury Missionary Baptist Church was founded by Revs. Frank Harris and Andrew Neal, with 40 freedmen who had been members of Sunbury Baptist Church, which was burned by Union troops in November 1864. Sometime after the Civil War, the black congregation built a chapel near the Medway River. It was moved to this location, given by the Delegal family of the Trade Hill-Seabrook community, and reconstructed in 1918 and remained in use until the present structure was completed.
Located on the opposite corner of the intersection of the E. B. Cooper Highway and Barrington Ferry Road from First African Baptist Church, First Zion was established by members of the “Mother Church” in 1870-1871 with the Reverend U. L. Houston as its first pastor. The present structure was built in 1971 during the pastorate of Reverend B. N. Jones. The churchyard is a beautiful spot shaded by old-growth oaks.
The First African Baptist Church of Riceboro is considered the “Mother Church of all Black Churches in Liberty County”; the present structure was built in the 1960s to replace the original church. The community, just west of Riceboro, is locally known as Crossroads.
The marker placed by the Liberty County Historical Society in 1996 reads: The First African Baptist Church, the oldest black church in Liberty County, had its origins in the North Newport Baptist Church, founded in 1809. In 1818 the North Newport Church, composed of both white and black members, purchased this site and erected a church building here which had a gallery for the slave members. In 1854 the North Newport Church moved to Walthourville, but the black members in this area continued to use the old building.
In 1861 the black members formed their own church organization and the first black pastor was the Reverend Charles Thin. On July 20, 1878 the North Newport Church sold the building to A. M. McIver for $225 for use by the First African Baptist Church.
One of the early white pastors of this church was the Reverend Josiah Spry Law to whom a cenotaph was erected here in 1854 by both blacks and whites.
Three other neighboring churches have been formed from the membership of this church: First Zion Baptist Church in 1870, First African Baptist Church of Jones in 1896, and Baconton Baptist Church in 1897.
A marker placed by the Liberty County Historical Society in 2003 notes: Founded in 1809, the North Newport Baptist Church has had several homes over the years. In 1923, the Church moved to this location and in 1952 the Church voted and renamed the church Walthourville Baptist Church. The original Church did not have a building of its own, so it shared facilities with the Sunbury Baptist Church. In 1864 the church building was burnt by General Sherman’s army as a signal for gunboats anchored in the channel. Before the building was burnt, the original Bible of the North Newport church was saved by members of the church.The present sanctuary was built in 1923. This building has two unique features; solid brick walls and a theater style floor made of heart pine. In 2000 the original tray ceiling and pine floor were restored.
Midway Congregational Church, founded in 1754 and a seat of power in the Colonial period, was associated with three satellite congregations known as retreats, because their locations, slightly more inland than Midway, offered a respite from the malarial swamps of the coast. The last of the retreat churches to be established was located at Dorchester. Its origins can be traced to nearby Sunbury, a short-lived boom town founded in 1758 whose trustees were members of Midway Church. Sunbury thrived nearly from its inception, rivaling Savannah in commercial importance, but its proximity to Fort Morris lead to its capture and subsequent burning by British troops during the American Revolution. While many such casualties of the war recuperated, Sunbury never seemed to regain its prominence after the devastating four-year occupation that followed. The hurricane of 1824 and a yellow fever epidemic sent many of its residents scattering into the nearby countryside. Huge plantations with names like Laurel Grove, Arcadia, Melon Bluff, Cedar Point, and Palmyra were emerging in the countryside around old Sunbury. In 1843 upon the suggestion of Reverend Thomas Sumner Winn, a tutor for prominent Presbyterian minister Charles Colcock Jones, a site was chosen for a retreat between Sunbury and Midway. It was originally known simply as “the Village,” but was soon christened Dorchester, in tribute to the heritage of its citizens. Some families built summer homes at Dorchester, though many tore down their dwellings near Sunbury and rebuilt them on the higher and drier ground the retreat afforded. As this new location was only six miles from Midway, the idea of building a church was not initially entertained, though an academy was built in which Sunday school was regularly taught. By 1854, with the continuing decline in membership at Midway, the families of the village built a permanent church, which still stands today. The old town bell from Sunbury, dated 1799, was placed in the steeple. The land was donated by Bartholomew Busby, who owned the nearby Melon Bluff Plantation. At first it was used only in summer, but by the onset of the Civil War was in regular use. The church was officially recognized by the Savannah Presbytery in 1871 and named Dorchester Presbyterian Church. The church holds services on the first Sunday of each month at 5 PM.
Flemington Presbyterian was the second of the Midway retreat churches. It remains the most active of all the congregations associated with Midway Congregational Church. In 1815, Midway member William Fleming established Gravel Hill [also called Graney’s Hill], a retreat in the pinelands of Liberty County. Like the settlers of Walthourville before them, the people who came to Gravel Hill established a more permanent presence as time passed. For many summers, worship services were held in homes and then in a log structure which also housed a magistrate court. The first permanent church was built in 1832 on land given by Simon Fraser and was used for twenty years. The church followed the organization of Midway and was seen as a branch, not a mission, of Midway. In 1850 the name of the retreat was changed to Flemington in honor of William Fleming. A new home for the old Gravel Hill church was constructed between 1851 and 1852, and one of the selectmen of the congregation, T. Q. Cassels, was the architect. Though an amateur, he was well read in classical civilization and its monuments. The impressive steeple, to this day the pride of the congregation, was built by member Irwin Rahn. By the end of the Civil War, those who had settled in Flemington found the ten-mile trip to Midway nearly impossible, sought and were granted independence. In the spring of 1866, they officially adopted Presbyterianism. Upholding Puritan values of good education, a school was established, known by the 1830s as the Tranquill Institute. Confederate, then Union soldiers, used the old school as a hospital in 1864, and three of the Union casualties are buried in the Flemington cemetery. By the Victorian era, the Flemington Musical Society’s influence on popular entertainment in the area illustrates the shift away from Puritan roots toward a more secular society.
