African American Churches in Saluda
Part of a Scrapbook prepared for The Edgefield County African American Heritage Commission by its Treasurer, Helayne Butler.
Left: Pleasant Hill Baptist Church, at 130 Pleasant Hill Road north of Saluda, SC, was founded in 1871 by 182 former slaves that came out of Red Bank Baptist Church. Samuel T. Edwards of Red Bank assisted these individuals with the establishment of the church, and it was organized by Rev. Limon Simmon, who became the church’s first pastor. Land was donated that was two miles north of
the town of Saluda, and brush arbor services were held. The first building was a log cabin built 1871 which was used until 1881. The second church was a frame building used until 1923. The present building was built soon thereafter and has later been remodeled and dedicated in 1992.
Right: the graves of one of the founding deacons of Pleasant Hill Baptist Church, deacon John Graham (1833-1913) and his wife Laura Graham (1840-1902). They donated the first acre to the fellow deacons of this institution on April 20, 1872 in a deed recorded in Edgefield County in 1889. The couple are now found in a plot on the south side of the church’s cemetery.
Left: Cornerstone of Pleasant Hill Baptist Church, remodeled 1992 by the Freemason Peerless Lodge number 214 during the administration of Pastor Zeddie Mackey.
Right: painting of ECAAHC Assistant Treasurer Helayne C. Butler’s maternal grandfather Eddie Graham (1886-1947) and his first wife Lou Ella Dozier Graham (1889-1917) as they appeared c.1915 in Saluda, SC. Two years after Lou Ella’s death in 1917, Eddie married Butler’s grandmother Emmie Martin (1899-1984). Eddie and Lou Ella had three children, and with Emmie, there were eight more. Eddie, Emmie and all eleven children eventually moved out of the town of Saluda in 1937 to a 50.65 acre farm three miles south of Saluda on Highway 121.
Right: Eddie Graham’s church, Williams Chapel CME Church, which once graced Bouknight Ferry Road in Saluda, SC. The church was already established and holding brush arbor services on Mr. Foulk’s land near the town of Batesburg in 1864. The church had purchased a quarter acre of land in 1898 and this building was erected sometime later. Williams Chapel became defunct after 1980 and was later used as, among
other things, a rehearsal place for the Greater Saluda Mass Choir. Lower right: Having been demolished after 1993, the cedar trees and the steps are all that remain of the church.
Above: The Riverside High School building in Saluda, SC, built in 1954. It was funded by the South Carolina Equalization Program designed to keep state schools segregated by updating Black schools. It became a middle school in 1970, closing in 2001. Right: The site of the campus of the Saluda Rosenwald School that was
built 1924-25 a block away from the Riverside School and attended by elementary and high school students. The school was funded by the Julius Rosenwald Fund and was half paid for by local Blacks. By the 1950’s it had an agriculture and shop building, and a Faith Cabin Library.
Left: Ridge Hill Baptist Church on 114 Ridge Hill Drive in Ridge Spring, SC. This institution was established Sunday, March 13, 1870 by 117 former slaves who broke away from Ridge Spring Baptist Church. Four acres of land was conveyed to the church by peach and asparagus pioneer Colonel R. B. Watson in 1872. The first building, which also became the first school in the Ridge area for
African Americans, was erected the following year. The present building, built 1921, replaced an earlier building destroyed by fire in 1920.
Right: the grave of African American Civil War Veteran William Thomas Merritt (1847-1928) who entered as a private in the Union Army on March 24, 1864. He rose to the rank of Corporal in Company K and became a minister after the Civil War. He is buried in the cemetery of Ridge Hill Baptist Church in Ridge Spring, SC.
Left: this stone wall at the public white Ridge Spring Cemetery on Main Street in Ridge Spring, SC was built by George Washington Coleman, grandfather of Ridge Hill Baptist Church deacon and Sunday School Superintendant, Earnest H. Coleman (1921-2002). Both Colemans and Earnest’s father Arthur (1887-1949) span three generations of master African American brick masons and builders in
this region. This cemetery dates back to the early nineteenth century and the wall shown here separates the graves of the original Watson and Boatwright family section from the rest of the cemetery grounds. Both Arthur and Earnest Coleman are buried at Ridge Hill Baptist Church.
Right: An older photo of the Faith Cabin Library in Ridge Spring, SC. This building, built 1934, was the second of many log cabin libraries established between 1932 and 1960 for rural African American communities by Saluda native Willie Lee Buffington (1908-1988). An impoverished white mill worker, Buffington was inspired to this work of giving Blacks better access to books by his friend and mentor, African American Euriah Simkins.
Left: The present-day chimney, near the old Ridge Hill School, is all that remains of the Ridge Spring Faith Cabin Library. A 1948 plan to widen the adjacent street ran directly through the library. This structure, which was to be moved to a different location, was dismantled and never rebuilt.
Below right: a portion of Mill Town Cemetery outside of Ridge Spring, SC that holds the interment spots of some of the founders of Ridge Hill Baptist Church. Some individuals say this public Black graveyard began in the mid 1800’s. The oldest known grave was made in 1907. Below left: grave of notable Ridge Hill Baptist Church founding deacon Mingo Levin Peterson (1853-1919), whose name was among the deacons listed on an 1872 deed in which Colonel R. B. Watson conveyed four acres to the church. As that deed was lost in a fire, a replacement deed was made in 1907. Peterson rests in Mill Town Cemetery in an area surrounded by other members of the Peterson family.
Above: Wesley Chapel CME Church, near Highway 178 six miles northwest of the town of Batesburg, SC, was organized in 1866 during the Georgia Annual Conference when the Southern Methodist Church offered to set their African American members in their own autonomous conference. This church was started by eleven families who gave one and six tenths of an acre of land to the church upon which to have services. These services were held in a brush arbor until the first building was built in 1907 under the pastorate of Rev. W. A. Walker. The first school for Blacks in this area was built within the church grounds as well. On Easter Sunday, 1964, the first church building was destroyed by fire and was replaced by the present building three years later. One of the notable members of this church was (below, left) Major Perry (1831-1925). He was a biracial uneducated field hand who, from his midlife years on, commenced preaching under a trance every night for the remainder of his life. Born a slave in Fairfield County, SC, he had a bout of illness in June of 1880 and afterwards started delivering sermons in his sleep that continued every night for over forty-five years. What was awesome about this was that awake, he could neither read nor write, but under trance, he used perfect English. He married Francis Peat by which he had seventeen children. In 1890 he moved his family to present-day Saluda County just west of the town of Batesburg, SC near Highway 178 and became a member of Wesley Chapel in 1896. He now lies (below, right) alongside his wife in the church cemetery.
