Hog Hammock, McIntosh County
Founded in 1884, St. Luke’s Baptist Church is still an active church with services every other Sunday. It was formed by former members of the First African Baptist Church. The church was initially called the 2nd Baptist Church. Current structure has been in use since 1902.
St. Luke’s also had one of two Rosenwald Schools on the island. Everything I’ve read states that the school is still standing and is being used by the church. If that is the case, this is the school, but it has been heavily modified. I hope to get confirmation that this is the building.
hello cynthia, i am trying to find proof that this church was once a rosenwald school. i attended a workshop on sapelo some years about the rosenwald schools and i’m almost positive that the speaker said it had been. i went on a bus tour of the island with yvonne grovesnor ( sp) and asked her to please point it out – she swung out of the post office where we had just visited- and waved her left hand toward the church and said ‘that’s it’. i am becoming quite anxious to find out. my daughters are taking me to darien over thanksgiving and i want to take them to sapelo. they know i am passionate about the rosenwald schools. i have offered to pay for a nice marker on the building if it can be established that it once was indeed a rosenwald school ( similar to the one recently placed in the ‘little white house’ in warm springs for the eleanor roosevelt school. no luck so far. one obstacle, i have been told, is that an official record of the sapelo school is not in the fisk archives- well neither are they there for the well- known roosevelt school. if you would kindly give me your email address i will share what looks like proof to me ( how it was funded according to the state of georgia.) hopefully yours, mary emerson-smith, retired family therapist, lover of all things rosenwald. p.s i have exhausted all my (2) resources on the island and likely exhausted them with my inquiries
Hi Mary,
It’s great to hear from another person passionate about Rosenwalds. My information that this is the extant Rosenwald is from the National Register of Historic Places nomination for the Hog Hammock Community and a master’s thesis about Georgia Rosenwalds by Summer Anne Ciomek.
Also, as an FYI, the old Rosenwald database was not complete. I’ve identified several schools not in the database but verified by other resources. Once the new database is up, it might be listed there.