Anchors of Faith. Martha Dickson
was based on the architecture of ancient Greece. Of course, Greek Revival did not replicate classical Greek architecture; rather Greek Revival was inspired by ancient Greco-Roman architecture. In general, the Greek Revival style was characterized by symmetry and proportion and a simple rectangular floor plan. A columned portico supported a pedimented front gable, and the rectangular windows often had louvered, exterior shutters. Although classic Greco-Roman temples, the inspiration for this style, were built of stone, in small town and rural America, including the South, these buildings were usually constructed of wood. However, the most sophisticated and ambitious, usually urban constructions, were of brick, often covered in stucco and scored to resemble cut stone. Master carpenters, with the aid of builders’ guides, could easily build in this style.
Slightly later than Greek Revival, a second high style became popular. Subsequently classically-inspired and medieval-inspired styles continued alongside one another. The style, based in one degree or another of the Christian medieval architecture, is called Gothic. Actually—because Gothic was so popular and because it was accepted as a Christian architecture as opposed to pagan classicism—it went through many variations. Like Greek Revival, Gothic Revival was popularized through builders’ guides, such as those of Alexander Jackson Davis, Andrew Jackson Downing, Samuel Sloan, and Richard Upjohn. If classical buildings focused on columns, Gothic buildings focused on steep gables and pointed-arch windows and doors, both of which helped create verticality.
In the American countryside and small towns, Gothic Revival style architecture, like Greek Revival style architecture, was adapted to fit local needs, technical capabilities, and financial resources. Local or house carpenters were used, and they freely improvised, retaining the basic Gothic elements. This improvised style—which came out of an abundance of wood rather than the stone or brick used in American urban and in European Gothic Revival architecture—was made all the more economical by the circular saw, water-powered sawmills, and stud-frame construction. Nineteenth century Gothic style changed over time. Carpenter Gothic, which began as an antebellum style, was a peculiar American version of the Gothic. To the basic Gothic elements, it added decorative, but not structural, buttresses, as well as board-and-batten siding, which was an attempt to achieve a degree of verticality. Late in the nineteenth century, High Victorian Gothic was the fashionable Gothic style. Even for simple, rural church buildings, it was characterized by a great deal of creativity: asymmetrical massing, a variety of surface textures, decorative wooden trim, and a degree of excess.
Variants on classical (such as Greek Revival) and medieval (such as Gothic Revival) style church buildings are evident throughout most of the United States, especially in longer-settled areas. Variation occurs for a number of reasons. Besides fashion, financial resources, the relative skills of builders and carpenters, and denominational preferences based on worship practices were considerations in determining church architectural choices.
Religious Denominations
Until well into the twentieth century, Protestantism dominated the religious life of the United States. The Protestant denominations most prominent in the South—Methodist, Baptist, Presbyterian, and Episcopal—provide the majority of wooden churches presented in this book.
Methodists. Of note during this early era of Southern wooden church building was the rapid, unprecedented growth of Methodism, largely due to the diligent efforts of seemingly untiring Methodist circuit-riding preachers who traveled the Southern states by horse or buggy, taking from two to six weeks to make their assigned rounds. A proverbial saying persists about these faithful early circuit riders, once spoken on a bitterly cold winter day, “There is nothing out today but crows and Methodist preachers.”
Methodism, which was founded by John Wesley, a minister of the Church of England, was brought to America in the 1760s and was spread widely by the well-known preacher George Whitefield, who was famous for his part in America’s First Great Awakening movement. After the American Revolution, which stalled growth of the denomination, Methodism was soon revitalized. Wesley sent a general superintendent to establish and oversee church governance. In a 1784 conference in Baltimore, the official Methodist denomination was established in the United States and named the Methodist Episcopal Church.
One of the most influential of early Methodist circuit riders was Francis Asbury, who had been elected a joint superintendent in the first organizational Methodist conference. Historian John Wigger stated that Asbury traveled more widely across America, riding horseback, than probably any other individual of his day and that by the end of Asbury’s era “Methodism had become the largest and most dynamic religious movement in America.”
In those early years, however, only one circuit rider chose to minister in the newly formed Mississippi Territory, coming to the Tombigbee/Tennesaw River area in 1808. Finally an assistant came, and the two of them witnessed for several years in places like St. Stephens and McIntosh Bluff. St. Stephens’s wooden Methodist church, organized in 1857, still remains in what was from 1817-1819 the first capital of Alabama Territory. A log church, built by Methodists in 1860, survives in McIntosh. Both of these early settlements are located in southwestern Alabama. In 1819, the year Alabama became a state, the first full-fledged Methodist minister preached his first sermon in Montgomery.
In 1820, Florida became a state, ceded to the United States by Spain the previous year. Before this, Protestant clergy had been forbidden to serve in Roman Catholic Florida. In 1821, well-remembered Alexander Talley began his circuit riding work encompassing Pensacola, Florida; Mobile, Alabama; and Blakely, Georgia. Early Methodist settlers soon came to the Vernon, Florida, area and began a Methodist mission there.
In addition to circuit riders, another evangelistic tool aiding the spread of Methodism—as well as the Baptist denomination—also developed in the early part of the nineteenth century. This practice was particularly effective in the South. First appearing in the 1830s, “camp meetings” were usually held under brush arbors or simple wooden shelters when permanent shelter was unavailable. Models of unrestrained enthusiasm, these services were characterized by all sorts of dramatic, emotional outbursts. Itinerant preachers would sometimes preach for weeks, inspiring their eager listeners to great heights of emotion. One awed observer told how a large portion of the gathered believers were “prostrated on the ground and in some instances they appeared to have lost the use of their limbs. No distinct articulation could be heard; screams, cries, groans, shouts, notes of grief and notes of joy, all heard at the same time, made such confusion a sort of indescribable concert.”
The large number of surviving wooden Methodist churches reflects the phenomenal growth of Methodism. The South, it was said, proved particularly receptive to the spread of this denomination. By 1850, half of all Americans professed to be Methodists, although a split had occurred in 1845 over slavery—which led Southern Methodists to call their denomination Methodist Episcopal Church, South. This percentage dipped slightly as Baptists expanded, but as late as 1890 Methodists accounted for about 43 percent of Christians in Alabama, 50 percent in Florida, and 38 percent in Mississippi. Today, after consolidation of several branches of the church in 1968, the official name of the denomination is the United Methodist Church.
Baptists. Other denominations came south. The oldest Baptist church in the South is the First Baptist Church of Charleston, South Carolina. It was first organized in Kittery, Maine, in 1682 under sponsorship of the First Baptist Church of Boston. After harassment by Massachusetts, which then controlled Maine, and by Congregationalists, who dominated Massachusetts, Kittery’s Baptist pastor and sixteen members migrated to Charleston and began Baptist work there.
In 1755, a Baptist church organized at Sandy Creek, North Carolina, led by a minister from Massachusetts who wanted to reach out to the unchurched backcountry farmers. It became a very mission-minded denomination, going to all the Southern colonies plus the Western frontier. In general, these frontier Baptists were less sophisticated, poorer educated, and of lower socio-economic status than their coreligionists in the coastal towns. The denomination placed little emphasis on an educated ministry. In fact, any Baptist who felt “the call” to preach could do so, educated or not. Furthermore, any group of like-minded Baptists could form a church; approval from a governing body was not needed. Therefore, Baptist work as a whole was somewhat hampered, as the variety of Baptist beliefs brought about divisions into over eighteen distinct Baptist church groups