Butts County GaArchives News.....Old Bethel Church October 29, 1897
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Don Bankston http://www.genrecords.net/emailregistry/vols/00024.html#0005864 November 6, 2006, 7:04 pm

Jackson Argus – Butts County October 29, 1897
Before Butts county was in existence, Bethel church was the happy meeting 
ground of the pioneers of this once wild and barren land.  It was the camp 
ground, where people of God met annually to worship, as did the ancient church 
of Jerusalem in the day of our Lord.  While the preacher would appeal to the 
congregation from a pulpit that covered his end of the house.  When his voice 
would fall, the congregation could hear the yelp of the howling dog, and the 
echo of the hunter’s horn in the fox chase on the Sabbath day.  The old house 
is gone and a new and modern one stands on its foundation.

But the same church is living.  The same old Primitive Baptist preaching the 
same soul inspiring gospel of a “poor sinner saved by grace.”  It is a part of 
that church which Christ said “the gates of hell should not prevail against” 
and of course it is there.  

The same graveyard is there, and the same monarchs of the forest are there, 
grown older and shading more ground than they did when the old patriarchs who 
first made a grave there were put under their cooling shade.

Many churches have sprung up in this county since old Bethel was organized, but 
none of them have a deeper hold on the people’s gratitude in Butts, and it has 
many cherished memories closer around that sacred lot of land.

Many couples, who now have families, did their courting there.  Many remember 
it as the place they first saw the Lord.  Many melancholy scenes are green in 
the memory of many, which transpired at old Bethel.

Many have parents sleeping there, and many more have grand parents there.  Some 
have little children there in the silent city of the dead.  Whenever, or, quite 
often, when an old person died, he is buried there.  When one of the families 
of the first settlers die, they are buried there.

The writer, having often admired the beautiful grove of oaks that surround the 
church and cemetery, and the recent death and burial of Mr. B. J. Bennett, and 
later, Mrs. Burl Jinks, have been made to feel more tenderly toward the sacred 
grounds; and believing the following to be the feeling of many, has, in an 
uncouth and imperfect manner, rendered these lines:

While I am young and full of life,
Let me roam from hill to hill;
While I am battling with the strife 
I must face duty with a will.
But when I must lie down and die, 
Giving up the world and such,
Let this wandering body lie
In the shade at Bethel church.

Should I be led across the sea
By ambition for gold or fame -
In whatever cline I may be,
In a land whatever named – 
If there, I must lie down and die,
Giving up the world and such
Let this prodigal body lie
In the shades at Bethel church.

Should I be, by my soul inspired,
To see America’s sandy shore –
Or my soul for the heathen field
Sails, to return no more – 
Yet, when I must lie down and die,
Giving up this world and such,
Let this lifeless body lie
In the shades at Bethel church.

N. J. H.

File at: http://files.usgwarchives.net/ga/butts/newspapers/oldbethe1918gnw.txt

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