Saint Mark’s Evangelical Lutheran Church
Sumter County, GA

By Ray Davidson, syndicated columnist. He can be reached at  ray.davidson@usmc.mil.

Saint Mark Evangelical Lutheran Church is today much as it was in 1870. Simple in design, it was built to endure generations. That is not true for Bottsford itself, its five stores, three churches, school; law office, sheriff's office and governmental offices no longer exist. The only building left from the town is St. Mark's.

Bottsford was a community that grew up around a ford across the Kinchafoonee Creek in Southwestern Sumter County. A family by the name of Botts lived near the ford, or crossing, hence the name Bottsford.

The Treaty of 1821 opened the lands in the Southwestern part of Georgia to settlers. In the Indian Spring Treaty of 1825 the Creek Indians ceded 4.7 million acres of land to the United States for an equal amount of land beyond the Mississippi River. With this treaty signed and action by General Andrew Jackson to pacify the remaining hostile Indians, an initial migration to Sumter County from South Carolina by several Jennings families formed a nucleus of Lutherans in the Bottsford area (The closest Lutheran Church was in Andersonville.). The first church in the Bottsford community was a Methodist Church and the Jennings, although Lutheran, attended services there. Shortly thereafter, the Confederate States of America was established and found itself at war with its Northern neighbor.

The Confederacy suffered defeat and its former citizens were repatriated into the United States of America. After the hostilities, the former Confederate States was devastated by the 4 years of war and adding to this destruction, over 3 million war refugees left the South. Lutheran families living in the Deutsch Forks area of South Carolina and related to the Jennings of Bottsford left their war torn area and moved Southward. This part of Georgia saw little or no action during the war and appealed to the newcomers.

These new families, related by marriage and friendship, started migrating in late 1860's. There were the Addy's, related to both the Jennings and Wise families. The Hiller families related by marriage to the Wise and Etheride families. More Jennings came who had blood ties to the Wise, Kennedy, Dozier, Rauch, and Market families that too moved to the area. The Derrick family was related to the Wise's. These families, along with the Chapman's, the Culpepper's, the Dickens's, the Haynes's, McNeary's and the Ninncks's moved to Bottsford and the surrounding Terrell and Webster Counties during the following 20 years.

By 1870 there were enough Lutherans living in these three counties to build a church. Two tracts of land were acquired from a Dr. Hiantrit and Colonel Samuel Hawkins. Farmers in the area donated lumber and David Samuel Derrick took the timber to Dawson, Georgia to have it cut and sawed into lumber. George Calhoun Wise, who had lost a leg during the war, planed the rough-cut lumber while Joel Wise dressed the smooth planks. Ap Monts, a former slave who migrated with one of the families from Deutsch Forks, was also instrumental in the construction of this new church.

They named their new church after the war-damaged church they had left in South Carolina. From this humble beginning the original members of Saint. Marks were part of the founding of Saint Paul's in Bronwood, Magnolia Springs outside of Plains, Saint Paul's in Americus and Saint Andrew's in Plains. Today only Saint Andrew's remains as an active church. Saint Mark's, in joining with Saint Andrew's, incorporated a provision in the merging of the two churches that the Saint Mark's Church would be maintained and a "homecoming" service would be held there on the fourth Sunday of July each year. This action was taken due to the loyalty and reverence the members of the Lutheran community had to Saint Mark's and perhaps to what had happened to the Saint Paul's Church in Bronwood. Saint Paul's closed in the early 1940's; the church was later sold to a Dr. Bowman in Sumter County. Dr. Bowman dismantled the church and built a barn with the lumber on his farm. This fermented an attitude at Saint Mark's that their little church, built those many years ago would "never be made into a barn".

Saint Mark's is maintained by a building fund established at Saint Andrew's. With only the addition of electricity the church is as it was built in 1870. There is no air conditioning (hand held fans provide a breeze), there is neither heat, nor are there any restrooms (the outhouse has long since collapsed) yet the church is a tribute to the perseverance of the early settlers of Georgia.

Bottsford, itself, with its five stores, school, law office, sheriff's office and governmental offices no longer exists. The only building left from the town is Saint Mark's.

Sitting here in the front row, I wonder if Corporal David Samuel Derrick ever sat in this same pew. He lies only a few feet to the back of the church. Sitting in this pew, what were his thoughts those many Sundays ago?

The Lutherans had fled Germany to search for religious freedom in America. As a Corporal in Company C, 15th Infantry, Jackson's Core, Army of South Carolina he fought for a new freedom, in a new nation and suffered the humiliation of defeat.

Did he sit in this old pine pew and hear the screams of that war? Did he smell the fresh dug Georgia earth or were his nostrils impregnated with the permanence of gunpowder and death from the Wilderness or a month later at Cold Harbor? Did his eyes, forever dimmed by the horror of what he had seen at Petersburg, ever adjust to the bountiful beauty of South Georgia farmland?

I wonder did he sit in this pew?

My generation had its war too. Vietnam. Sitting alone in this church I close these eyes dimmed by time, thinking of Derrick's war. I can remember mine. I see a young draftee, only months from a Georgia farm. He has run across a clearing, fallen at my feet, clutching my pant leg, he is begging me to stop the pain. As if by magic I could turn back the seconds, back to the sunshine and quiet woodland sounds, back to... Back only a few seconds before hell was unleashed.

I stiffen, jerking my eyes open. I'm not there. I am in a beautiful old church, hollowed by time and generations. It's winter and I am cold; cold and alone with their ghosts and their generations. Corporal Derrick lies only a few feet from where I sit.

Email:

lorrie@scally.com

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