ALAMANCE COUNTY, NC - CHURCH - Freedom's Hill Church Stood Against Slavery
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Freedom's Hill Church Stood Against Slavery

   In October of 1847, newly ordained preacher Adam CROOKS left Ohio and
headed south to minister to a small congregation in the Cane Creek area now
known as Snow Camp. Only 23 years young, Crooks served the Wesleyan
Methodists, a new denomination that left the Methodist Episcopal Church
because of their pro-slavery agenda. Rev. CROOKS no doubt voiced his
abolitionist concerns as freely as his new denomination cried out against
slavery, because he and his church soon made quite a few enemies in this
otherwise quiet Quaker community.
   His congregation of 40 members included Hugh DIXON, George COUNCILMAN,
Alfred VISTAL and Ira HINSHAW and wife along with Macajah and Phoebe
McPHERSON. They secured land from Simon DIXON and built a simple log
structure on Freedom Hill. Standing 27 by 36 feet, the small sanctuary was
built on a foundation of stacked fieldstones. The logs were fastened by pegs
instead of nails and the floor was laid with one inch boards. The windows
originally consisted of shutters. Simple hand-hewn pews filled the otherwise
sparse and unheated room lit with oil lamps that hung from the ceiling. A
solid mahogany pedestal served as the pulpit and it faced a "very thick and
heavy" mourners' bench in the congregation.
   The church, because of its staunch abolitionist stance, was attacked
repeatedly by local mobs, as bullet holes in the solid side door made very
clear. After one mob attack, however, some of the assailers were so moved by
the resiliency of Rev. CROOKS and his steadfast congregation that they came
and repented for what they had done.
    During the Civil War, Confederate conscripters kidnapped church member
Macajah McPHERSON because of his stand against slavery. His wife and
grandson Monroe ROACH watched helplessly as he was dragged away and then
hanged on a cliff from a dogwood tree. These Confederate "hunters" left the
body hanging while they pursued another victim. In their haste they realized
they did not have enough rope for the second hanging so they raced back and
found Macajah hanging lifeless from the tree. Thinking he was dead, they cut
him down and left the body. Little did they know that Macajah was merely
unconscious.
   Macajah was nursed back to health by his wife. There is a legend, however,
that the dogwood tree never recovered from the event and later died from the
trauma associated with the hanging.
   The church and its congregation continued its ministry to the Snow Camp
area. A stove vented through the tongue-in-grove ceiling was added. Glass
windows replaced the shutters but the bullet holes remained in the doors,
reminders of when neighbors attacked neighbors over the issue of slavery.
One hundred years later, however the small sanctuary that stood as a sentinel 
to slavery had succumbed to disrepair. Long time Snow Camp resident
Dacie MOORE, who used to look after the church building which stood beside
his house, says that men from the Damascus Rehabilitation Home used to bring
their lady friends to the abandoned church for weekend flings. Once one of
these parties started a fire in the building and Dacie had to put it out.
   By the 1970's the run-down church was surrounded by saplings and other
natural signs of neglect. What remained of the church was restored in 1973
by the folks of Neighbor's Grove Wesleyan Church under the leadership of
their pastor, Rev. R.H. KINDSCHI. The building was carefully taken apart and
moved west to a camp in Colfax in the North Carolina West District of the
Wesleyan Church where it was reassembled. There it served as a reminder to
campers of the brave stand of the Wesleyan Methodist against slavery and the
costs many people paid for those convictions. In 1999 the church building
was moved  once moved to the campus of Southern Wesleyan University in the
town of Central, South Carolina, The building is now being restored to its
original condition. The restoration is expected to be completed next year.
   The legacy that Freedom's Hill Wesleyan Methodist Church left for us is
now reduced to oral histories, church records and a brief mention in the
history of "Alamance County, Shuttle and Plow". The first Wesleyan church in
the south, whose members stood resolutely against an institution that reduced 
many to servitude and worse, now consists of a few stones from the foundation 
and remnants of the chimney that fell and was replaced only to fall once more. 
Surely its legacy deserves a marker to join the other standards of history 
that line the roads of historic Snow Camp.

   Written by Tim ALLEN, pastor of St. John's New Mission UCC in Burlington, 
NC

   Permission granted to copy this article from: City-County Magazine, April
 2001. Ashlee COLEY, Publisher and Karen CARROUTH, Editor