All of the Crawfordite meeting houses have a similar style, most notable in their primitive board-and-batten architecture, but each has distinct elements. Enon is a very “long” church, when taking its layout into consideration. It overlooks a beautiful piece of farmland and has expansive views of the surrounding area. It is still an active congregation. Thanks to member Brittany Mixon Ragan for sharing.
Though this congregation no longer holds regular services, their meeting house and cemetery are well-maintained.
I still hope that these important resources will one day be collectively added to the National Register of Historic Places.
The interiors of these wonderful structures are just as “plain” as their exteriors.
Though I’ve photographed nearly a dozen of these meeting houses, it always impresses me to see that the emphasis isn’t on decoration but on creating a place where the service is the primary focus.
The First Presbyterian Church was organized in Blackshear in 1872 and and this historic chapel was built two years later, in 1874. Though the congregation has grown over its nearly 150-year history, making expansions as needed, the main historic structure has remained. It was completely restored in 2018. It is similar in style to the nearby First Presbyterian Church in Brunswick.
Organized in 1833, Shiloh’s earliest members are some of the first settlers of this section of Georgia.
The congregation is still active today; storm windows have been placed inside to give some protection against weather, and new restrooms with modern plumbing are adjacent to the church.
Shiloh’s large cemetery suggests an old and active congregation.
Isham Peacock was one of the most influential early Baptists in Georgia, and certainly the most influential of the Primitive Baptists. After first joining Lott’s Creek Primitive Baptist Church in Bulloch County around 1802, he went on to establish Black Creek, Beard’s Creek, Salem, and most notably, High Bluff at Schlatterville. As to Peacock’s theology, it was decidedly Calvinistic. Historian Michael Holt notes that he was quick to speak out against the proper “discipline” of the Baptist faith. “In 1830, he was able to get Beard’s Creek Church to adopt a resolution forbidding Missionary and temperance speakers from taking the pulpit there. However, they rescinded the resolution as soon as he moved to Pierce County. Though he was alleged to be sober, he was known to demonstrate his aversion to temperance societies by carrying a cane full of whisky he used to refresh himself while preaching…The disgust Peacock showed toward organized attempts to regulate public morality was typical of frontier Baptists.”–Michael Holt, [Thesis: The “Gold Standard” of the Wiregrass Primitive Baptists of Georgia: A History of the Crawford Faction of the Alabaha River Primitive Baptist Association, 1842-2007, Valdosta State University, 2009]. In addition to these activities, Peacock founded the first Baptist church in present-day Florida in 1821 [Pigeon Creek Primitive Baptist Church near present-day Boulogne]. It represented an extension of Baptist theology into a foreign territory, as this was still part of Spanish Florida at the time and therefore was technically against the laws of Spain regarding the establishment of non-Catholic churches. Elder Peacock’s last church was Providence Primitive Baptist in Ware County, where he was preaching at age 101; blindness ultimately ended his life of preaching and he moved to the Jacksonville area. On a trip to visit family members in Pierce County in 1851, at the age of 107, Peacock died and was buried at Shiloh.
