I know most folks will do a top ten. I thought I would do a least popular posts. I do have a large catalog of images I have never shared that span a decade, but these are all places I documented in 2022.
Built in 1913, the Gothic Revival Jones Gap Baptist Church sits atop a hill in Henderson County, North Carolina. The church traces its history to Mount Crystal Baptist Church, a church built on Jump Off Mountain in 1892.
The church was the site of arson in 1971. James Robert Arrowood, a volunteer fire fighter, set fire to several schools and churches in the area and then fought the blazes. It is believed there were copycat arsonists at work, too. It was never determined if the damage was caused by Arrowood or one of the copycats.
The congregation is still active. They built a modern structure down the hill, which they’ve used since 1998.
Reference: Terry Ruscin’s article in Blue Ridge Now, “Jones Gap Church originally stood on Jump Off Mountain”
The Abbott’s Creek Primitive Baptist Church was founded in 1756 in Davidson County, North Carolina. This is one of twelve county cemeteries containing at least one pierced headstone made by local craftsmen during the early to mid-nineteenth century.
In 1981, the National Endowment for the Humanities conducted a photographic survey of these soapstone markers and categorized them in different phases of styles. This type of sculptural work in cemeteries in North America has only been found in this part of North Carolina.
In the mid-eighteenth century, this part of North Carolina was being settled by people from Scotland, Ireland, and Germany. The Germans are attributed to the craftsmanship seen in these stones.
This cemetery was placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1984.
Built in 1912, the Oakdale School was built by the mill. The one-room schoolhouse was active until 1943 when it merged when another school.
Located a few miles north of Ahoskie, North Carolina, the Pleasant Plains School is an atypical Rosenwald School built in 1920. The three classroom school was built more in the tradition of the many rural schools that could found in this area of North Carolina. Many of these schools were built from plans that the state of North Carolina provided to communities in the early 1900s.
The school replaced an earlier school building that was built by the Pleasant Plains Baptist Church, an early congregation for free People of Color to worship that started prior to the Civil War. That school was built in 1866. The school provided education for Black and Native American children of the area until 1950.
It was placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2016.
North of Ahoskie, North Carolina is a small community known as Pleasant Plains. Prior to the Civil War, it had one of the largest freed people of color populations in the state. The Pleasant Plains Baptist Church, known originally as the Free Colored Baptist Church, was founded in 1851. This church building was built in 1951.
