Readers of Man Of TIN Blog might have read my previous posts about the interesting old American buildings featured in the Forgotten Georgia blog spot and associated Forgotten Georgia Facebook group.
My family find it amusing that whilst I live in the rural southwest UK, that Georgia in the Southern States Of America has fast become my ‘adopted’ American State, even down to an ‘adopted’ city of Bowdon (“The Friendly City”, Carroll County, NW Georgia) for which I have Mixed Train Daily to blame …
Many of these churches and their communities have now been bypassed by history, the changing economy and agriculture and quite often physically bypassed by the Interstate highways, leaving ghost towns and fading communities. Maybe I feel some empathy or understanding for this as in my own area of semi-rural Britain, many of the distinctive local Methodist stone chapels have now closed and become at best houses or builders’ stores, as their once large agricultural and mining populations have moved on.
From a gaming and modelling point of view, Forgotten Georgia blog and this beautiful Historic Rural Churches Of Georgia book are a great resource for looking at everyday buildings from the Revolutionary War onwards.
A fair number of these ordinary historic buildings on the Forgotten Georgia Blog, photographed in various states of decay and preservation, are the rural churches, many listed on the Historic Rural Churches Of Georgia website and charity.
I noticed that in addition to its own HRCGA YouTube channel of videos The Steeple , that they have also produced a book. The last of my Christmas money went on this, ordered new at £35 to £45 including shipping through Book Depository / Amazon.
Many of the photographs on the HRCGA website are ones taken from this beautiful photographic survey of 47 representative church buildings, written and edited by Sonny Seals and George S. Hart.
The publisher’s blurb describes the contents and background:
“Aspects of Georgia’s unique history can only be told through its extant rural churches. As the Georgia backcountry rapidly expanded in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, the churches erected on this newly parceled land became the center of community life. These early structures ranged from primitive outbuildings to those with more elaborate designs and were often constructed with local, hand-hewn materials to serve the residents who lived nearby. From these rural communities sprang the villages, towns, counties, and cities that informed the way Georgia was organized and governed and that continue to influence the way we live today.”
“Historic Rural Churches of Georgia presents forty-seven early houses of worship from all areas of the state. Nearly three hundred stunning color photographs capture the simple elegance of these sanctuaries and their surrounding grounds and cemeteries. Of the historic churches that have survived, many are now in various states of distress and neglect and require restoration to ensure that they will continue to stand.”
“This book is a project of the Historic Rural Churches of Georgia organization, whose mission is the preservation of historic rural churches across the state and the documentation of their history since their founding. If proper care is taken, these endangered and important landmarks can continue to represent the state’s earliest examples of rural sacred architecture and the communities and traditions they housed.“
It has a foreword by President Jimmy Carter from Plains, Georgia, peanut farmer and the earliest incumbent US president that I could remember as a child, and one who still teaches Sunday School in a Georgia Church in his nineties. His childhood church from Plains is one of the 47 churches featured and photographed.
A preface by the two authors Sonny Seals and George Hart sets out how the HRCGA project came about, partly with Sonny and George discovering Seals’ grandfather’s Confederate grave in Powelton Methodist Church cemetery in the now vanished or lost town of Powelton, Hancock County, GA. This is the deteriorating Church featured on the book’s cover.
There is more about this church and Powelton on the HRCGA blog amongst many other stories.
About the authors Sonny Seals and George S. Hart – HRCGA blog post
About the HRCGA photographers
Some useful historic maps of Georgia accompany an Introduction or essay by John Thomas Scott on ‘Religion in Georgia’. This sets out the history of the early colonisation Of Georgia, before the Revolutionary War (what we ‘British’ call the American War Of Independence), the clearance of land from Cherokee and Creek Native American inhabitants (and ‘Trail Of Tears’) and the development of King Cotton and slavery before its decline after the American Civil War.
The essay by Thornton also sets out how the churches were founded, moving on from early Anglican efforts under British rule to Northern and Southern Baptist, Lutheran, Methodist and other denominations.
Interesting to note, living as I do in the UK in a country of ancient stone and later brick churches, that most of the sturdy timbers of these buildings were logged and shaped locally from Georgia’s once extensive heart pine forests. These made up the walls, roofs, floors, steeples, pews and pulpits of these important community buildings.
Many of the short histories that accompany the photographs note how the churches fared during the Revolutionary and Civil Wars, along with some short accounts of soldiers buried in the adjacent cemetery.
The most surprising feature that I found were the early churches which had upper floor ‘slave balconies‘ for the servants and slaves of the prosperous white families worshipping below.
“The Civil War ended the slave based cotton kingdom but not the Bible Belt – in either the white or the black community.” (xxxii Introduction, Clarke)
Despite the emancipation of the Civil War, segregation still affected many congregations. One solution was for the establishment of separate white churches and African American churches – AME (African Methodist Episcopal) and CME (Coloured Methodist Episcopal) – and African Baptists.
In many rural and pioneer areas, “The churches performed as community center, dating service, courthouse (complete with judge and jury) and everything else these individualistic settlers needed in order to function as a civilised society.” (xxi Preface, Seals and Hart)
Some of these churches are still active, whilst others have been restored for new uses. One is now a stable but far too many are closed and sometimes decaying, often to the point of collapse.
One black African American church at Carswell Grove Baptist, Jenkins County is pictured before and after the fire that consumed its old timbers in 2014.
Some of the saddest cases can be found in the “Almost gone but not forgotten” category on searching by County on https://www.hrcga.org/find-a-church/
When the church has gone, often only the cemetery remains, often the last clue to a lost or vanished community.
The photographs and churches featured in the book and many more can be found at: https://www.hrcga.org/find-a-church/
A beautiful photographic book and part of a worthy project to record and restore these beautiful and historic buildings.
From a military history point of view and modelling point of view there is much of interest in this book and this HRCGA website.
Sardis Volunteers ACW – Sardis Presbyterian – for the American version of our WW1 British ‘Pals’ Battalions.
The Battle Of Chickamauga – ACW – Cove Methodist, Walker County
Blogpost by Mark Man Of TIN, March 2023
*
B.P.S. Postscript
Worth watching these stories on Youtube – Saving Grace Georgia’s Historic Churches On Youtube / PBS https://m.youtube.com/@savinggracetheshow367
Inspired? There are a number of modelling kits of American churches usually for railway models but sometimes for tabletop gaming:
And Terry Wise’s American Civil War conversions of Airfix railway buildings (kits still issued by Dapol)
http://vintagewargaming.blogspot.com/2010/10/terry-wise-buildings-for-wargames_03.html
http://vintagewargaming.blogspot.com/2010/10/terry-wise-buildings-for-wargames.html
Man of TIN blog two 