The 1827 Bethel Brick Methodist Church, Screven County, Georgia.
At the northern end of Screven County, near the South Carolina line and several miles north of U.S. Highway 301, on a road called the Oglethorpe Trail, lies the Bethel Brick Methodist Church, constructed by slave labor in 1827. In 1859, just before the Civil War, the church had 150 white parishioners and 418 black members. The church has been in continuous use in all the years since its founding and is still in excellent condition. It is both the oldest Methodist church and the oldest church building in Screven County.
Louise and I visited the church on July 25, 2016, as I was working on my book Backroads and Byways of Georgia. It was a very hot day, and she and our little dog Georgia stayed in the car with the air conditioner running while I made photographs.
Although I found the church to be of interest, I eventually decided not to include it in my tour of the northern end of coastal Georgia because it was an outlier, too far from the other points of interest on the tour, which covered an area from just north of Savannah to Tybee Island and south nearly to Darien.
The photograph was made with an Olympus E-M5 digital camera fitted with a Panasonic Lumix Vario G 12-32mm lens.
Visit my online gallery at https://davejenkins.pixels.com/
Signed copies of my book Backroads and Byways of Georgia
are available. The price is $22.95 plus $4.95 shipping. My PayPal
address is djphoto@vol.com (which is also my email). Or you can mail a check to 8943
Wesley Place, Knoxville, TN 37922. Include your address and tell me how
you would like your book inscribed.
Photography and text copyright 2025 David B.Jenkins.
I post Monday, Wednesday, and Friday unless life gets in the way.
A pleasant-looking building. I would never have guessed it's a church from the outside of it. What was the difference between a parishioner and a member?
ReplyDeleteNo difference. I just like to vary my terminology a bit to keep from being static.
ReplyDelete