NEW PLEASANT HILL BAPTIST CHURCH CEMETERY (1909), Pickens County, SC A.K.A. Version 2.3, 31-Jul-2006, P121.TXT, P121 **************************************************************** 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 contributor, or the legal representative of the submitter, and contact the listed USGenWeb archivist with proof of this consent. Paul M Kankula Seneca, SC, USA Pickens County SC GenWeb Coordinator Jennie Boggs Central, SC, USA Co-Pickens County SC GenWeb Coordinator Pickens County SC GenWeb Homestead http://www.rootsweb.com/~scpicke2/ **************************************************************** DATAFILE INPUT . : Paul M. Kankula at (visit above website) in Jan-2006 DATAFILE LAYOUT : Paul M. Kankula at (visit above website) in Jan-2006 G.P.S. MAPPING . : Gary Flynn at (visit above website) in Jun-2003 HISTORY WRITE-UP : ____________ at ____________ in _______ IMAGES ......... : Paul M. Kankula at (visit above website) in Jun-2003 TRANSCRIPTION .. : ____________ at ____________ in _______ **************************************************************** CEMETERY LOCATION: ------------------ 3 miles S of Six-Mile Latitude N34 45.821 x Longitude W82 49.950 CHURCH/CEMETERY HISTORY: ------------------------ The source for this condensed history is "Pleasant Hill Baptist Church - 150 Years of "Serving Christ Faithfully" 3 July 1848 - 3 July 1998" . There is no author listed so I guess it was the Church History Committee. Judy Ballard Pleasant Hill Baptist Church held its first meeting on July 3, 1848 with twenty- six (26) members present. The first church was a log cabin located 2 1/2 miles east of the present church (now known as Browning Road). No traces of the old church exist today. According to old church records, the first presbytery consisted of Rev. Joe J. Wilson, D. H. Kennemore, L. Fendley, Samuel Parsons, and O. A. B. Sargent. A second building was located about 200 yards northwest of the current church. A third building was built in 1892 at the current location. Ministers in the first fifty years were: Joe J. Wilson, J. R. Hamblin, J. C. Chapman, L. Fendley, J. King, B. Holder, D. H. Kennemore, J. Chapman, Tom land, E. P. Boroughs, D. Coneymore. Ministers the second fifty years: D. L. Hatcher ? - 1908 B. F. Murphree 1910-1916 J. E. Crawford 1920-1920 W. M. Walker 1923-1928 W. H. Nicholson 1930 - 1934 Paul Hayes 1938-1939 Coleman Brown 1942-1944 W. M. Walker 1908-1909 B. C. Atkinson 1917-1919 R. W. Kelley 1921-1922 E. L. Waldrop 1928-1929 Lloyd Pace 1935-1937 A. C. Harrison 1940-1941 A. C. Harrison 1945-1948 In 1909 some of the members of Pleasant Hill formed King's Grove Baptist Church. In 1925 some of the members formed Welcome Baptist Church. In 1926 wings were added to the wooden church giving it a cross shape. In 1945 the wooden church was turn down and replaced with the current brick building. o----------o The First Fifty Years: 1848-1898 A time to be born... In the sweltering heat of a southern July summer. Pleasant Hill Baptist Church was born. Carved out of the upstate South Carolina wilderness, a log cabin was hewn by hand creating a place of worship. On July 3, 1848 twenty-six members (eleven male and fifteen female) formed the church, emphasizing the importance communal worship and reliance on God played in their lives. The Reverend Joe J. Wilson, D.H. Kennemore, L. Fendley, Samuel Parsons, and O.A.B. Sargent formed the first presbytery, according to the old church records. The log structure was located approximately two and a half miles due East of where the church building now stands. The old church site has long since been consumed by the forest. Any traces of the log cabin vanished decades ago. Large trees now provide a canopy of shade filtering the sunshine into hundreds of little fingers of light darting to and fro on the thick mat of leaves covering the forest floor below. All that distinguishes this site from any other patch of dense woods are the graves. The graves are laid out in neat rows standing sentinel to the past. While standing in this patch of woods you can almost hear the booming voice of a pastor from long ago, preaching the gospel from a wooden pulpit at the old log cabin on the hill. You can hear the laughter of children, and the crying as loved ones are laid to rest. Today even a cursory glance produces a count of forty-one church members bodies now hidden and undisturbed, except for an occasional woodland creature, in this patch of woods. This hill, now enshrined in forest, once stood as bare farmland overlooking Todd's Creek. The church would have caught the cooling summer breezes coming up from the creek valley below and would have been visible for several miles. This was the pleasant hill for which we are named today. To fully grasp the significance of what the early founders of Pleasant Hill accomplished, it is beneficial to take a look at Pickens County and this country in the context of 1848. Pleasant Hill Baptist Church was formed only three years after the Southern Baptist Convention was created in 1845 in Augusta, Georgia. We are not sure when Pleasant Hill joined the convention. Some early church records were appar- ently lost many years ago. The date of the church founding was also some thirteen years before the start of the American Civil War in 1861. It was also a mere seventy-two years after the founding of our nation in 1776. In 1848, James Polk was the eleventh Presi- dent of the United States serving from 1845 to 1849. The current Pickens County area was very rugged terrain in the 1840s when Pleasant Hill was formed. The town of Pendleton was one of the first towns cre- ated in the upstate in 1789. The town site was selected by General Andrew Pickens, General Robert Anderson and others, on the Cherokee path from Charles- ton to the old Keowee Town. By 1800 the current counties of Oconee, Pickens and Anderson were all known as the Pendleton District. Until 1826 the only towns in the Pendleton District were Pendleton, the county seat; Andersonville, and Pickensville. In 1791 Pickensville was founded on a rocky site surrounded by pines about a mile southeast of the present town of Easley. The town site selection committee again consisted of Generals Pickens and Anderson. Originally the town was named Rockville, but General Pickens' friends wanted it named in his honor. In 1826 the District was divided into the Pickens and the Anderson District. The lower half was named for Robert Anderson and the upper half for his lifelong friend Andrew Pickens. At the time Pleasant Hill was constituted, the Pickens District included the current Pickens and Oconee counties. Oconee county was not formed until 1868. In 1840 the population for the Pickens District (current Oconee and Pickens counties) was only 14,356. The 1990 census figures put Clemson's population alone at 11,096, not including 15,000 Clemson University students. These same census figures show that the Pickens County population in 1990 was 93,894. Generals Pickens and Anderson were members of Old Stone Church, located near Clemson. This church was built in 1797 and the first Sunday School in the upper part of South Carolina met here in 1816. Both men were among Old Stone Church's first elders and both are buried in the churchyard at that church. The following excerpt is taken from the diary of a Mary E. Moragne. Miss Moragne was related to the Calhoun family of Abbeville County. In August 1840 she was making a mountain trip to the famous Table Rock. She stopped at Pickensville, at the Keith-Sutherland Hotel near Pumpkintown and at Pickens Court House on the Keowee River. This excerpt is included to give a personal view of the area during the decade Pleasant Hill was formed. ...Just before dark we drove up before the best house in Pickensville where we put up for the night:.. Fickensville is a pretty rural hamlet only remarkable as having been the seat of the first Courthouse of the upper districts - which was built entirely of stone, and on a solid rock. but on the union of the two districts, the seat of justice was removed to Pickens and Pickensville has now no income except for the traveler to the mighty rock, who if he can restrain his curiosity sufficiently to stop here. will find a plentiful table, a tolerable bed and kind attentions - then there is a long piazza where he may walk by moonlight with the lady of his choice if she be so near him... Thursday 6th August 1840. The gentlemen very promptly ordered candles into our rooms before daylight - - making allowance for the tedious process of a lady's toilette, to be ready to start by sunrise: but this time they "counted without their host": for we were in the piazza most triumphantly calling our gallants before they arranged the etcetera's. Before sunrise we were several miles from Pickensvilie. having very prudently supplied ourselves with a cold breakfast from the larder of our host: for the poverty of the road would have been very poorly supplied us with one. ... Though we had but fifteen miles to travel in order to reach Pumpkintown. we found il exceedingly tiresome from the dullness of the road. and the eagerness of expectation - at length -- oh! mighty to behold! the table mountain stood up with its huge broad side apparently right up our path - a sudden awe seemed to have seized upon the party - the sounds of laughter died away - the lips of every one sunk into silence." The Keith-Sutherland Hotel at Pumpkintown was described as the "oldest, rudest, dreariest that ever greeted the eyes of a wayworn traveler." Breakfast was "fried few 1 and corn. bad biscuits and worse coffee." The ladies slept in little rooms downstairs and the men upstairs with the mice --- "a glass vial for a candle holder and a clay bake pan for a wash bow I." (She gives this description of Old Pickens on the Keowee River. "There stands a well. and then the C. House' - here a dwelling and there a dwelling -- oh. taste' in what dungeons had thou hid thyself- in what chambers confined, when the people of Pickens District selected this little red knoll of earth for the seat of their judicature? No one but a half-starved lawyer would think of vegetating in such ground! The very houses seem to shrink away in shame and hide themselves under the hill." The party got rooms at the "tavern" which was a store with a piazza and rooms upstairs. The store was crowded with loafing men and boys but the rooms and meals were reported good." Sources: Mary E. Moragne, The Neglected Threat, A Journal from the Calhoun Community 1836-1842.. University of South Carolina Press: Columbia. 1951.pp.177- 179. Pleasant Hill Baptist Church was still in its infancy when the Civil War, 1 86 i -1 H65. began. On August 3. 1861, the church clerk, J.S. Brewer, wrote these records in the old church minutes: "Whereas we as a people in this America once boasted of our liberty and our peaceful homes where we could confer with our brethren of the North, both religious and commercial and whereas a different state of things now exists, we as Southern people have been forced to defend ourselves by the force of arms, and whereas it pleases the authorities of our country to call upon us for defense with arms which call was manfully responded to and that by numbers of our neighbors and friends who went and met our fierce accusers in open fields of Virginia and some of them have fallen." Four members of Pleasant Hill were listed as having died in battle during the war. Those members were R.F. Todd. J.B. Boroughs, J.B.F. Parsons and A.C. Symmes. On August 15. 1863 a letter was received from Chaplain W.E. Walters, 2nd Regiment. SC Rifles, from a camp near Petersburg, Virginia. His letter stated that "upon their profession of repentance toward God and faith in the Lord Jesus Christ he baptized three young men from this community" and recommended them for membership and fellowship at Pleasant Hill. According to the church minutes the church opened to receive these three young men as members. During the years since the Civil War many young men from this church have served their country, both in war and peacetime, fighting for the freedoms we all hold dear. Many young Pleasant Hill men, like these four young men of the Civil War, never returned to their wives, parents and friends, giving their very lives for what they believed in. This church has steadfastly stood by their servicemen and women, supporting them with prayers and letters throughout these 150 years. The church minutes record that Sunday School was organized, to meet the third Sunday in March, 1881. This Sunday School was organized to meet once a month. The church minutes from the years 1884 to 1907 were lost many years ago so there are gaps in our recorded history. At some point the members decided to relocate, building a structure some 200 yards north-west of the current church location. In 1892 a third building was built, also of wood, on the current church location. Wood for this structure may have been donated by Ira Holladay. Ira owned 438 acres of land, part of which is now Isaqueena and was very involved in the church. He made his living in the saw-mill business and did donate the lumber for a black church, located below Daniel High School. The cemetery is all that remains of that church today. The pastors of Pleasant Hill during the first fifty years were as follows, but the dates of service are not available: E.P. Boroughs D.Coneymore Joe J. Wilson L. Fendley D.H. Kennemore J.R. Hamblin J. King J. Chapman J.C. Chapman B. Holder Tom Land One aspect of church life that many churches have departed from today, is in the area of church discipline. The church minutes from the 1800's through the 1930's record instances where members were disciplined for various offenses. Today Pleasant Hill would also exercise church discipline in cases where it was warranted. In the 1800's members were cited in church conference for non-atten- dance at several meetings. Several women were charged with "improper conduct" and excluded. A man was excluded for fathering a child with a woman not his wife. Another man was excluded for getting drunk, and a sister was excluded for fornication. One man brought a charge upon himself for using bad language not fitting a Christian and the church forgave him. In 1867 a man and his wife were charged with unsoundness in the faith and excluded, also a man was excluded for being obscene and for immorality. One woman each year in 1868 and 1869 was excluded for becoming pregnant out-side of marriage. In 1922 a charge was brought against a brother for using profanity and a committee was appointed to go talk with him in the spirit of meekness. At the next church conference the member came and acknowledged his sin and the church forgave him. The church withdrew fellowship that year from a brother who was living in adultery and another brother for fornication. In 1924 an investigating committee preferred a charge against one of the brethren for non- fellowship, and another sister for unchristian conduct and falsehood. This sister would not apologize to the church and the church voted to withdraw fellowship from her. A brother was charged with non fellowship but would not respond to the committees inquires. He was charged with contempt of the church and fellowship was withdrawn. In 1937 a brother and his wife were excluded for departing from the faith and living in adultery. The Civil War obituaries included on the next four pages are those of the Pleasant Hill Men who died during that war. They are taken directly from the church minutes. The grave-stone rubbing came from R.F. Todd's grave at the old church cemetery. It is reproduced actual size. The Second Fifty Years: 1898 - 1948 ... A time to build up. The Pleasant Hill pastors during the second fifty years were: D.L. Hatcher B.F. Murphree J.E. Crawford W.M Walker W.H. Nicholson Paul Haves Coleman Brown W.M. Walker B.C. Atkinson R.W. Kelley E. I.. Waldrop Lloyd Pace A.C. Harrison A.C. Harrison In 1909 some of the members of Pleasant Hill Church formed the King's Grove Baptist Church some 2 miles west of this church. Again in 1925 some of the members formed the Welcome Baptist Church some 2 miles east of the church. Many times forming new churches in those days had more to do with convenience of worship than difference of opinion. It took quite a while to hitch up a wagon and travel eight or ten miles to church and back. It even seems that some of our pastors may have traveled the circuit among these churches later on. Church minutes record that in July 1917 a collection was taken for pastor B.C. Atkinson's salary and $3.35 was received. Again in August another collec- tion was taken and $13.00 was received. In August 1918 the church voted to send S5.00 to state missions. In 1923 church sexton William Kelly was elected, to he paid S12.00 per year. Mrs. Edna Richey recalls that she was baptized with a group of 56 people in August 1923 in Todd's Creek. Her husband to he Arthur. his sister and brother, and Reece Holladay were all baptized together that day. Mrs. Richey said that it was her dad's job as the church sexton to "toll the church bell" whenever there was a death in the church to announce the time of the funeral. One ring meant one o'clock, two rings two o'clock, etc. In 1926 an addition was made to the 1892 wooden church, adding wings on the pulpit end creating a cross shaped church, forty feet high. The wings had curtains attached that allowed them to be drawn creating Sunday School classrooms. This church remained until 1945 when it was torn down and the current brick building was constructed in the same location. By: Pleasant Hill Baptist Church TOMBSTONE TRANSCRIPTION NOTES: ------------------------------ a. = age at death b. = date-of-birth d. = date-of-death h. = husband m. = married p. = parents w. = wife TODD, R.F., b., d. 1862, a. 27y