I love old churches. They remind me of old hymns – Amazing Grace², Be Still My Soul³, Victory in Jesus³ – all the old ones we carry around in our hearts and sing when we are in the most need of a good blessing. When I think of The Ridge Church, it’s The Church in the Wildwood¹.

Oh, come to the church in the wildwood,
Come to the church in the dale,
No spot is so dear to my childhood,
As the little brown church in the dale.¹

Although The Ridge Church is little, it is not “brown”, but I think of this song when I remember the church itself. Something about the lyrics and the melody just brings this church to my mind.

The Ridge – a little church in the “wildwoods” out there in the middle of nowhere in South Carolina. I should know more about this church – you’d think I would have more memories of it. Rarely have I been there – only a handful of times when I went to family reunions all as an adult. But it is nonetheless a part of me, and I think of it as Mama’s church.

Now, having said all that, I do not know how much Mama went to church there when she was a child or if she went to church there at all. So, why write about the church and indicate it was the church where mama prayed? Well, because it’s in Lowndesville and that is where she was born and where she grew up; Lowndesville is where she came from; and The Ridge is where her ancestors probably would have worshipped, where many of them are now laid to rest. The cemetery by the church is filled with Mama’s ancestors. My grandparents are buried there along with a good number of aunts, uncles and cousins. The names on the tombstones attest to their lives in Lowndesville and Iva and Abbeville…..all remind me that they are my Mama’s people; and, yes, they are my people too resting in peace there giving me a sense of the familiar, of home…and of Mama.

When you search online you can find a good bit about Lowndesville and the surrounding area but very little about The Ridge Church itself. Like many small churches that are no longer active, very little of the church history seems to have been written down or memorialized. Lowndesville itself is a “small” town. When I say that, I mean it is way smaller than any one-horse town you’ve heard of. As far as I know, Mama’s daddy was a sharecropper at the turn of the century, at a time when things were going well for farmers in the south and cotton was still king…..right up until the Great Depression. Prior to the depression, the town seems to have been a relatively prosperous railroad town….prosperous enough that the Southern Railway could pay for a belfry with a brass bell for a little church out in the woods a few miles outside of town.

The congregation was established in 1839 and first met under a brush arbor. For those who’ve never heard of a brush arbor, it is an outdoor meeting place – open sided – made of wooden poles with tree limbs (brush) across the top, where people met to worship God and have church meetings…think tent revivals but much earlier and more rustic. In 1840, a log house was constructed with pews of hewn logs with wooden pegs⁵. It was known then as the Ridge Meeting House and in 1890 the present church was built. This would be the church that I have come to know and the one that Mama would have known.

Sad to say, the church itself has become somewhat easier to find nowadays because it has been desecrated by vandals and some errant bloggers have made it a bit famous by telling the world online that the church is haunted so every year around Halloween, miscreants try to find it to desecrate it some more. Fortunately, The Ridge is now owned and managed by the Smyrna Methodist Church in town, and a locked gate on the roadway going up to the church has made it more difficult to get to the old church. Additionally, the doors are now kept locked and the windows have all been boarded up. The congregation at Smyrna provides for the ongoing upkeep of the church and the cemetery – sadly that includes painting over the smut left by vandals. Smyrna Methodist also holds special services at The Ridge several times a year including a candlelight service at Christmas.

My personal memories of Lowndesville and The Ridge Church are much more recent. When we have attended family reunions in the past, we always go over to the Ridge Church after dinner on Sunday….and it is always a good visit. The church is quiet and peaceful and beautiful in its simplicity – just an old wooden church sitting in the trees back off a dirt road in the middle of nowhere.

When I think of it now, I think of my cousin playing the piano while we gather around to sing a few old hymns. I remember my sister standing right there by him singing away while pointing her cane sternly at any of her grandkids who might have even a single thought to misbehave. Before we leave the church, we gather around the pulpit to pray for blessings and safe travels for all the cousins as we head back home later in the evening. Perhaps we prayed standing very near the spot where Mama would have sat with her sisters as a young girl, prayed for her family and maybe prayed for her future and the children she might have….perhaps she prayed that they might someday make their way back to her home in Lowndesville and to The Ridge Church “Where Friends Meet”.

Notes:

1. THE BROWNS – THE CHURCH IN THE WILDWOOD LYRICS
   1. The Church in the Wildwood – Wikipedia
2. Amazing Grace > Lyrics | John Newton
3. Be Still, My Soul > Lyrics | Katharina A. von Schlegel
4. Victory in Jesus > Lyrics | Eugene M. Bartlett
5. I did find a blog written by a lady (Donna Bratcher) who lives down in South Carolina and writes about old buildings and churches there. Her blog is called Faded and Forgotten History. She was kind enough to send me an article from an old newspaper that she had used as a source for her blog, so I do have that bit of information. (If you’d like to read her blog about The Ridge Church, you can find it here.)