MILE CREEK BAPTIST CHURCH CEMETERY (1878), Pickens County, SC a.k.a. > Version: 3.0 Effective: 27-Nov-2006 Text File: P100.TXT Image Folder: P100 ******************************************************************************** REPRODUCING NOTICE: ------------------- These electronic pages may not be reproduced in any format for profit, or presentation by any other organization or persons. Persons or organizations desiring to use this material, must obtain the written consent of the recording contributor, or the legal representative of the submitter, and contact the following USGenWeb coordinator with proof of this consent. Paul M Kankula - nn8nn (visit above website) SCGenWeb "Golden Corner" Project Coordinator Anderson: http://www.rootsweb.com/~scandrsn/ Oconee: http://www.rootsweb.com/~scoconee/oconee.html Pickens: http://www.rootsweb.com/~scpicke2/ DATAFILE INPUT . : Paul M. Kankula at (visit above website) in -2006 Vivian Parkman in Nov-2006 GPS MAPPING .... : Gary Flynn at (visit above website) in -2006 HISTORY ........ : ____________ at ____________ in _______ IMAGES ......... : Paul M. Kankula at (visit above website) in -2006 RECORDING ...... : ____________ at ____________ in _______ ******************************************************************************** CEMETERY LOCATION: ------------------ > GPS = Latitude N x Longitude W CEMETERY HISTORY: ------------------------ Preachers and Pews: A H By Brian Garner "The church is what made the community." That sums up what sort of effect Mile Creek Baptist Church has had on the community outside of Six Mile for about 115 years. This Sunday, the church celebrates their 115th birthday. Community residents Albert Nix and Hoied Durham tell what they remember of the church. Many of the descendants of the congregation that built the church still live near it, like Hoied Durham. The history of the church is bound up with that of the pastors that have come and gone through the years, and it is through the pastors that Albert Nix, who once wrote a history of the church, remembers it. He points across the road from the back of the church. "The beginning of the church started where that storage building is standing. There was a little log building that stood there, and a man by the name of T.W. Tollison, (this was back in the 1800's), he was a music man and a preacher and country doctor. He lived in the vicinity and he started a little school in that log building, so I was told, and the children that lived around, they came to school a month or two a year and he would teach them. "There wasn't any charge they just brought him anything they wanted to, chicken or a bushel of corn. He started teaching singing school there, and after that, he started preaching. "In 1878, they organized the church. I don't know when they started the building, but it was finished in 1886," he said. Most of the membership came from Keowee, Albert said. Tollison is buried on Hoied Durham's land behind his pecan trees. He remembers that his mother went to school in the old schoolhouse. One of his ancestors was the first person to be buried in the church's graveyard. Albert Nix's uncle told him he helped plane the lumber by hand that helped build the church. He can recall that the church stood in a grove that had so many trees, people coming to Sunday service would tether their mules to them. The church building stood until the 1950s and when it was torn down, the new church was already under construction. "After Tollison, came Preacher 'Book' Singleton and then Major Matt Stewart, they were two of the first people who put up the first Baptist Church in Pickens. Stewart gave the land where they built the First Baptist Church on Main Street in Pickens. Albert Nix then calls out the names of the other preachers, like some sort of ecclesiastical roll call, telling an anecdote here or calling to mind first and last name there. "Then there was Joel Forrester, he was from u in the Dacusville area, but you know, they went for miles to preach, they didn't preach but once a month; then there was Seabrooks Atkinson, F.S. Childers, who rode to church from Greenville on a bicycle; Frank Murphree, then Reuben Hudson, he was the probate judge for years, after him was C.R. Abercrombie, then Stephens and his wife, they taught school, and he moved into that log house while he was keeping school and preaching; then Stephens was followed by Herbert Newton, he lived in Pickens; then Wade Nicholson, then Clever Marchbanks, Harrison Whitlock and a man named Bolding, he also ran a barber shop; then Garland Leopard, then Coley Harrison, Eugene Burdette, Halley Marchbanks, Fred Bryant, Lloyd Looper, Franklin Lesley, David Howe and a man named Ford and then Pastor Roberts," said Nix. Many of the preachers walked to the church, from Pickens, or longer distances than that. "Some of them said when their shoes got holes in the bottom, they would cut them a piece of pasteboard to get there on and when they started back they had another pair of those pasteboard soles in their pocket," said Hoied Durham. "The pay was a lot different back then, too," he said. "You remember, Albert, when they used to give them a pound of sugar or coffee, during the revival?" said Durham. And the church was always faithful about paying its dues. Albert Nix remembers when the new church was being built and they had asked for some money from the Southern Baptist Convention. "A man came down from Columbia to look. Well, we had the church framed up and we'd run out of money and didn't have anything to buy the brick with. And he looked at the church and he said he looked up the record on Mile Creek before he left Columbia and he said, ever since it was organized, in 1778, and it joined the Twelve Mile River Baptist Association in 1779, there never had been a year but what the church had contributed something to the cooperative program. "He said some years it hadn't been as much as a dollar, but it sent something. He said certainly we could get some help. "In the next week, the brick was piled out there in front of the church," Nix said. Albert recalls coming to the church "when I was just a little bitty thing. We lived on top of a hill about a mile away and we had a surrey buggy with a fringe around the top and you hitched up to that and got in it to come to church. "They laid a blanket down under the homemade pews and when you were small, they put you down there. "You could lay there and kick around, and just about the time you got good asleep, they would all jump up and scare you to death when they started singing." The original wooden church was one large room, made of all wood, with hand- dressed lumber, weather boarded with six-inch boards on the outside and finished with six-inch hand-dressed boards on the inside. Sour kerosene lamps with reflectors illuminated each wall and two hanging kerosene lamps were at the front of the church, said Nix. The pews were handmade and about as comfortable as a mausoleum slab. Sitting on those handmade, hard-as-rock pews when the church was used as a school was what almost broke him from going to church, he said with a laugh. "I started school when I was six years old and I sat on that seat. I was a little kid and my knees didn't go out there and you sat there and looked at your toes all day." The teacher pasted numbers on the back of the pews and if the student's number was uncovered they were punished. "You see, that's why you couldn't move around, you had to sit there with your number covered up and look at your toes and that was about as good a misery as you'll ever have," he chuckled. But the church means a lot to him, otherwise, why would he have the parts of one of the original pews? Both men said they are proud that Mile Creek is 115 years old. "It makes you feel good about your parents having been a part of it," Hoied Durham said. TOMBSTONE TRANSCRIPTION NOTES: ------------------------------ a. = age at death b. = date-of-birth d. = date-of-death h. = husband m. = married p. = parents w. = wife