Sunrise in the wilderness of East Tennessee in the early 1800s would bring a shine to the leaves, a sheen to the dew covered grasses, and the sound of horses hooves pounding the ground, echoing through the trees across the hillside. The horse’s rider would be wearing the closest thing to a "Sunday-go-to-meeting" suit he could afford, with an overcoat if not summer. The saddle bags would hold a well worn Bible. In the rider’s hand, and laid across the saddle in front of him, was a rifle, armed and ready.
The rider would be a minister on his way to one of his churches or to an area in need of a church. If he met anyone on the trail, where there was a trail, it would most likely be another minister, a farmer on the way to the nearest town or settlement, or Indians, hopefully friendly. The rifle was for unfriendly Indians, thieves, and ne’er-do-wells, as well as predatory animals. The church to which he was on his way would be on his mind as he thought of, or went over, his sermon. The minister would not be picturing a white washed building with benches, a pulpit, and bell in the tower. His churches were the people themselves meeting in places of convenience. One church would meet in a particular grove of trees. Another might meet in someone’s cabin.
The pioneers of his churches would be anxiously awaiting his arrival. In some areas, he would be their link to civilization. The minister would bring news from surrounding areas, a Bible story, and guidance for their salvation. The infrequent services helped them to keep their faith alive in trying circumstances. In East Tennessee, it would be common for Cherokee Indians to attend the church, or for the church to be at a mission in a sparse Cherokee village. The whites in the area coexisted with the Cherokees, occupying land with permission from the Indian tribe.
To endure the hardships of the frontier took more than a determined pioneer spirit. It required a faith that everything would work out for the best - that something more was to come other than the meager crops they scratched out of the earth. The minister brought them a renewal of that faith as well as reaffirming that they were not alone. Ministers were often linked closely with the education level of their congregations and small communities. Many families would rarely read anything but the Bible and church literature. Church meetings were the social activities of these communities which oftentimes did not have a school or other social center.
In the early 1830s, all land south of the Tennessee River and the Hiwassee River had been reserved to the Cherokee tribes by the Calhoun Treaty of 1819.1 What was to become Chattanooga was then Ross’s Landing. Prior to the execution of the Calhoun Treaty, the Cherokees had struggled to relate to the new nation and its people and by 1820 the Cherokee Indians were well on the road toward the white man’s culture. The course of the Cherokee education and development was accelerated in the 1820's by the invention and acceptance of a syllabary by Sequoyah, son of a Cherokee woman and a white trader. This made possible the writing and printing of the Cherokee language and a large number of the Indians learned to read and write in their own language. There was probably less illiteracy among the Cherokees than among the whites living in the same states.2 Considerable credit for the advancement in education among the Cherokees can be attributed to the influence of Christian missions.
Missions, churches, and even schools, in new and frontier lands were formed and services or classes held, around campfires, by the river, in groves of trees, wherever deemed suitable, without benefit of a stationary structure. And so it was when a group of men and women met on a tract overlooking the Tennessee River in Cherokee Territory on May 23, 1835 – the fourth Saturday in May – and formed Salem Baptist Church.
A unique characteristic of the Salem congregation was their immediate desire and commitment to build a church building. The founding members and their parents had grown up in western Virginia and North Carolina during the time of the "great religious awakening" on the western frontier. It had been a time of itinerant preachers and camp meetings but with few organized churches and even fewer church buildings. Populations were sparse, families were on the move to find free land, and church buildings were not a high priority. Religious services had been held irregularly depending on the availability of a circuit-riding minister on horseback. Planned camp meetings, where families camped for several days, had provided what little Biblical instruction was available beyond the family.
But then, on that fourth Saturday in May, 1835, on a creek near the Tennessee River, the Salem congregation committed to erecting a church building, not a campground – here they would regularly meet as a church body and here they would teach their children the words of the Lord. They had come to stay. A short time later a log structure was erected as a meeting house for the church on land near the Blue Springs Ferry operated by James T. Gardenhire, white son-in-law of Cherokee leader, Path Killer.
Founding fathers of the Salem Church are unknown but probably included James Gardenhire, George Irwin, and Maximilian Haney Conner. George Irwin and M.H. Conner "and their successors" were later named as trustees of the Salem Church when title to the church property was formally established. M.H. Conner was twenty-nine when the church was founded and had arrived in the Ocoee territory in January of 1835. He was to remain an active member of Salem Church throughout the remainder of his life. Both Conner and Irwin were listed on the 1836 tax list of Civil District 10 of Hamilton County, which had by that date extended its jurisdiction to the south bank of the Tennessee River.
Pioneers in the community that made up Salem’s congregation during the first few years of the church included the Conners, Roarks, Smiths, McCallies, Gardenhires, Hixons, Johnsons, Crosses, Webbs, Haneys, Killians, Richeys, Friddells, Gambles, and McCormicks. No complete roster of the original members is now available. Not all of these families were represented in the charter membership, but many of them were.3
As the men and women met to form the first Baptist church in the Ocoee area, President Andrew Jackson was working with leaders of the Cherokee Nation for their relocation to lands beyond the Mississippi. Two months before, in March 1835, the U.S. Senate had approved a buy-out offer to the Cherokees, and in April President Jackson had published a letter to "the Cherokee Tribes of Indians East of the Mississippi River" explaining the financial offer and urging its acceptance by the Cherokees.
T.J. Campbell, a former member of Salem Church, born in the last year of the Civil War in Hamilton County, in his address on the history of the church at the one-hundredth anniversary of Salem Church on Sunday, May 26, 1935, described the church’s founding as follows:
When a group of God-fearing men and women assembled in this community to organize Salem Church, Andrew Jackson was president of the United States. Victoria was a sixteen year old girl being prepared to become Queen of England. The Church of the Holy Sepulchers, which was the occasion of a great war, had not been erected in Jerusalem. Cleveland and Chattanooga had not yet appeared on the map. Birchwood was a spring and a birch tree or two. There were only scattering white families in this part of the country which was still in possession of the Cherokee Indians. These pioneers, however, while striving to establish homes for themselves and their children in the wilderness, thought it also well to plant and propagate the religion of their fathers.4
There was, at that time, bitter division among the leaders of the Cherokee Nation on how to respond to government pressures. Opinions were divided between those of Cherokee leaders Major Ridge, with his son, John Ridge, who advocated peaceful acceptance of the Senate’s offer and that of John Ross, who strongly suggested opposition. As founding fathers met to form Salem Church, meetings were being held at the home of John Ross at Red Clay to decide the response of the Cherokee Nation.5 Unfortunately, within three years the trail of tears for the Cherokees would begin at Blythe’s Ferry.
With the opening of the Ocoee Land District by the Tennessee Legislature in 1838, the area around Salem Church began to grow in population, having become part of Hamilton County in 1836. In September 1844, when Salem Church was nine years old, the members moved to acquire title to the tract on which the church meeting house was located. The dedicatory deed provided by George W. Gardenhire read as follows:
For the love and affection I entertain for George Irwin and M.H. Conner, Trustees for the Salem Church, I do hereby give, transfer, and convey to them and their successors my tract of land in Hamilton, Tennessee, District Number Ten, containing by estimation two acres and bounded as follows to viz Beginning at the North West [sic] Corner on a post oak tree, thence North East [sic] twenty poles, thence South East [sic] sixteen poles, thence South West [sic] twenty poles, thence North West [sic] sixteen poles to the beginning including two acres to have and to hold the same to the said George Irwin and M.H. Conner and their successors [and] assigns forever I do covenant and agree for myself and my heirs to warrant and defend the title to the said tract of land to the said George Irwin and M.H. Conner and successors [and] assigns against the lawful claim of all persons whatever. This 24th Sept 1844
G. W. Gardenhire Seal
Attest
C.C. McKeehan
Robert McCallie6
As the number of Baptist churches grew in a given area, a Baptist Association would soon be formed to bring the churches together. Associations were intended to be autonomous, subject to votes among the delegates of member churches. The earliest Baptist Association was formed in England in the 1650s. Philadelphia spawned the first Baptist Association in America in 1707. The Charleston Association in South Carolina was the first Baptist Association in the South in 1751.
Of the fifteen associations stemming from the Tennessee Association that was formed in 1802, the closest geographically were the Hiwassee Association, formed in 1821, and the Primitive Ocoee Association formed in 1841. When the Ocoee Baptist Association was formed in 1859, the rules of the Hiwassee Association were used at the meeting and part of the Hiwassee Association was absorbed into the Ocoee Association. For this reason, the Ocoee Baptist Association is attributed to the Hiwassee Association.
Salem Baptist Church was fundamental in its Christian faith and, in 1842, aligned itself with the Primitive Ocoee Baptist Association, the first and only Baptist Association available to Salem at that time. While the Ocoee Baptist churches did not participate directly in the Great Revival, which had run its course by 1815, they were involved in the subsequent controversies developing from that movement, particularly as to missions, baptisms, and Sunday Schools. One of the immediate results of the Great Revival was the expansion and impetus given the missionary movement among the Baptists and other denominations.
The promotion of missionary activity, however, was far from unanimous and a large anti-mission element also developed. This group objected to the centralization of authority and to an educated and paid ministry. All missionary societies and similar man-made organizations were contrary to the Scriptures, it was held. Anti-mission sentiment was strongest on the frontier and, as late as 1847, there was a large anti-mission group in Tennessee.
Indicative of this spirit was the Primitive Ocoee Baptist Association organized in 1841, four years before the Southern Baptist Convention was founded at Corinth Church in Augusta, Georgia. Little is known about this Association except that it was formed out of the Tennessee Association, and that it existed until 1860, a year after the Ocoee Association of Missionary Baptists was organized. The Primitive Ocoee Association, by 1848, consisted of between eight and thirteen churches all located south of the Tennessee River in Hamilton and Bradley counties. In this period, several attempts were made to unite the Missionary and Primitive groups or to admit the Missionary Churches into the earlier Primitive Ocoee Association. Harrison Church, representing the missionary element made advances for union and cessation of "fighting in the Church of Christ." Agreement was finally reached, for after organization of the Ocoee Baptist Association in 1859, "the ole one was dissolved."
A few words should be given here to the explanation of the term "Primitive Baptist", as well as to state that both the former and latter Ocoee Associations were primitive in nature. The term "Primitive Baptists" is, at the same time, a misleading, yet appropriate term. Primitive Baptist ancestors have been called by various names over the ages. The name Primitive Baptist became popular in the early 1800s when the term primitive conveyed the idea of originality rather than backwardness. Accordingly, Primitive Baptists claim to maintain the doctrines and practices of the original Baptists, who claimed to be the New Testament church. Primitive also conveys the idea of simplicity. This well describes the Primitive Baptists, whose church services consist of nothing more than preaching, praying, and singing.7
Using the terms loosely, the stance of the Primitive Ocoee Baptist Association was "Orthodox Primitive", while the later Ocoee Baptist Association would be viewed as "Conservative Primitive." The former association was anti-missionary, did not have Sunday schools, and did not believe in training. Such Primitive Baptists believed that Bible study and worship should involve the entire congregation as a whole and segregation of the church into age groups was against the teachings of the Bible. Likewise, the Spirit did the teaching which mortal man could not do.
The Ocoee Baptist Association felt that it was a church’s, and its association’s, responsibility to spread the gospel outside a church’s physical borders, to provide separate Bible study to children in order to help them fully understand the word of the Lord, and to train teachers and missionaries for the task for which they felt chosen. Outside of the few differences, both associations maintained the same beliefs, principles, and practices such as referring to ministers and church leaders as elders, requiring elders to be male, footwashing during communion, and baptism by immersion. "The appointment of two men to ‘ride as missionaries’ revealed a great interest in carrying the message of Jesus Christ to the ‘destitute portions of the Association.’ The subject of missions, and that of Sabbath Schools, became very familiar in the annual sessions of the Ocoee Baptist Association."8
By 1850 Hamilton County had a population of just over 9000 while the area south of the river and north of Old Harrison had a population of almost 1000.9 With an increase in population and commerce comes change, even in the churches and their associations. When change comes, the populace is split between those accepting, and those rejecting, change. The churches were not exceptions.
In 1856, while Salem Baptist Church began to feel the rumble of change, the church meeting house burned. The building and all of the previous records were destroyed. Rather than rebuild in the same location, the church voted to relocate away from the river and closer to what was the center of the Salem Community. A new meeting house was built on what is now Birchwood Pike adjacent to Grasshopper Creek and on land owned by Joseph Roark. It was to serve the community both as a church and a school.
Just when they were getting settled into the new church house and setting about reconnecting the members in a new location, the world begin to change drastically for Salem, her sister churches, and the South. The missionary movement began to take hold in East Tennessee as well as the feeling that Sunday schools were needed to pass the word of the Lord to the increasing number of children. Both ideals were met with hesitation from church and association members, even those who would eventually resolve to accept the changes. Echoes of the Great Revival were calling them to reaffirm their commitment to keep the mission effort within the church and refrain from having Sunday school in order that church members of all ages could hear the word of the Lord together as churches did in biblical times.
In either case, both sides struggled with a difficult question. From the outset, both held the belief that theirs was the true path to a heavenly reward and the other group were disillusioned. Yet these were not nameless and faceless people they were condemning. These were people they had known for years, some close friends, and in some cases family. Although it could scarcely be spoken, at some point doubts would have to form as to which might actually be the proper path and why God would have them condemn people they knew were God-fearing.
Salem Baptist Church did not attend the meeting in 1859, that was to be a planning meeting for the new Ocoee Baptist Association. They would, instead, attend the twentieth anniversary meeting of the Primitive Ocoee Association. The change would not be easy for Salem Church. It is not known how many members would leave Salem to remain with a Primitive Baptist Association. At the meeting of the new association, the name Ocoee Baptist Association was adopted. At the second meeting in 1860, at which Salem Church would be represented, the Primitive Ocoee Baptist Association would be dissolved.
The constitution of the Ocoee Baptist Association provided that each member church would be entitled to three messengers, that no person should be eligible to election as moderator for two years in succession, that the Association was not a legislative body and had no power over the churches as far as their independence and discipline were concerned. It was merely a paternal conference "to learn each other’s state, to cherish brotherly sympathy and union, and advance each other in the faith, love, and hope of the gospel."
The Ocoee Association was organized in response to a call published in The Tennessee Baptist, on July 2, 1859, advocating the formation of a new association from the Hiwassee, State Line, and Sweetwater Associations. The boundary set forth in the proposal began "at the State line on the southwest corner of Hiwassee Association, then making the line between Tennessee and Georgia the southern boundary line, until it includes Polk County, Tennessee, then making the Hiwassee river the northern line until it intersects the Tennessee river, thence including all that portion of Hiwassee Association southwest of the junction made by the Hiwassee and Tennessee Rivers, together with any contiguous churches at any point too remote for any other Association." It covered the present area of Bradley, Hamilton, and Polk Counties and that portion of Meigs County south of the Hiwassee River. Elders William McNutt, Jonas Burk, and Lewis Mitchell signed the call. The Ocoee Association was designed to unite the missionary and anti-mission churches, and replace the Primitive Ocoee Baptist Association.10
While the churches of the Ocoee Baptist Association were reeling from the unsettling division of Baptists in East Tennessee, the rumble of conflict would steadily grow. Even those churches not affected internally were concerned about their troubled brethren at sister churches. Their faith was about to be shaken to its roots. The movement for the abolition of slavery had been encouraged by the Great Revival as it came to an end in the early 1800s, and the slavery question entered even the controversies of the southern Baptists. Emancipation sentiment was not so strong in Tennessee as it was in Kentucky, but East Tennessee was more abolitionist than the rest of the State, probably because of the fewer number of slaves in that region. Until the Civil War, churches in East Tennessee counted a few slaves among their members – among the first licentiates of the Ocoee Association in 1859 was Ephriam, a "col’rd brother." While in 1867 the First Baptist Church of Chattanooga granted letters of dismissal to two "colored members," Candies Creek Church had the previous year admitted several "colored persons" to membership.
April 1861 and the fall of Fort Sumpter at Charleston saw the beginning of the Civil War, which, in East Tennessee more than any other area in the country, divided brother against brother and family against family. Families were equally divided and long-time friendships were severed. The Ocoee Baptist Association ceased to function and no meetings of the Association, with its fourteen member churches, were held between 1861 and 1865.
As both armies, North and South, maneuvered to position for the battles of Chickamauga and Chattanooga in late 1863 and early 1864, the area around the Salem Church building was subject to devastation. Horses and other livestock were taken by the subsistence officers of both armies. Rail fences disappeared as camped armies sought wood for campfires. Rich and cultivated farm lands were made worthless by the trampling of thousands of horses and men. Following the battle of Chickamauga, the beloved meeting house of the Salem Church was used as a hospital for the Confederate wounded. Through the agony of war, fought at its doorstep, through the sorrow from loved ones killed in battle, through the tears of defeat, and through the bitterness of a divided community, the Salem Church survived, as did the church building itself.
An example of Unionist sentiment held by some of the Ocoee Baptists may be found in the statement in 1864 from the Candies Creek Church to the Ocoee Association that the members of the Church thought "‘it necessary to spread on record the cause of this long space of Eleven months between Church meetings the Cause is this there arose a rebelion people in force and arms against the country and drove the male members nearly all from their homes and throwed the country in such a deranged condition’ and that it was best not to have meetings. In 1865, a member of the church was reprimanded for calling another a ‘confounded coperhead.’ Thus did the churches take sides in the Civil War."11
With the surrender of the Confederate armies, the congregation of Salem Church began to experience the extended suffering of the Reconstruction era. Old and deep animosities engendered by years of conflict were not easily forgotten. Salem Church struggled to adjust. Money was scarce and the returning veterans of both armies, many of whom were unable to work because of war wounds, found their farms difficult to cultivate in the ravaged countryside. The suffering and deprivation of Reconstruction was to last ten long years.
In 1865, the "Ocoee Association was preparing for a session with the church at Cookson’s Creek in Polk County, Tennessee. One interesting note of the fourth annual session [1865] was the fact that eighteen letters were received from churches, an increase of four over the first annual associational meeting."12 Salem was one of the four additional churches being represented that were not at the first meeting. The "interesting note" comment illustrates the association’s joy at having that many churches active at the height of Reconstruction. It was also reported at that meeting that various areas within the geographical boundaries of the Association had no regular services or preachers.13
Divisiveness caused by the war could have easily split the church asunder, but, in spite of the remnants of the war, the Salem Church survived. A brief statistic illustrates the potential for conflict within the church. By August 1872, the earliest date for which church records are available, Salem Baptist Church had 162 members. Of the 35 men of the church between the ages of twenty-three and fifty-five (the ages most likely to have seen military service during the Civil War), almost half had served in the war - eight for the Union forces and eight for the Confederacy.14 Still, while animosities doubtless continued elsewhere, the extent minutes of the church reflect no war-related difficulties within the church.
© 2005 Dan Roark
