By Betty Ewalt and Sue Taylor

Special to the Progress

Very few empty seats remained Sunday at the worship service at Antioch United Methodist Church as members, past members, friends and acquaintances gathered to celebrate 135 years of worship in this country church.

The Rev. David Moore delivered the sermon and special music was presented by Dr. Sam Smith, Trish and Tommy Helm, and Mike Smith. The Rev. Dale Jamerson, pastor, presided at the service.

Following the service, lunch was served in Memorial Hall, and music continued during the afternoon.

The church is located one and a half miles south of Lake Jacksonville’s Buckner Dam. It was a pioneer Christian church in Cherokee County.

Serenely situated on a picturesque two-acre churchyard, a modern brick church building is the present home of a faithful and enduring congregation that organized originally 135 years ago at another location about four miles farther south.

Founding fathers of Antioch Methodist arrived in Texas from Alabama in 1850. Settling on Gent Mountain, about eight miles south of Jacksonville, the newcomers soon organized Sand Springs Methodist Church, named for nearby springs on the mountain’s western slope at the northwest corner of the George Looney survey.

The community also needed a school. As a prerequisite to receiving state pay for a local teacher, the use of the church house for school classes was offered. On March 1, 1854, John Slayton, on whose farm the church was built, deeded an acre of land surrounding the building to Samuel Nelson, William Hammett and William Mathews, trustees of the Methodist Episcopal Church South, to be used by “all orthodox Christians to preach in, and free to the neighborhood for a school house.” The one-room log building served as a church and school until after the Civil War.

About 1865 the water supply from the springs began to fail so the congregation agreed on another church site about two miles north at another good spring of water on the upper reaches of One Arm Creek in the Nathan Johnson survey. Here, a rectangular frame building was raised and dedicated to church and school purposes. A decade later, on Sept. 1, 1875, the proper paperwork transferred the existing church and five acres of land from William Hammett to lsham Mullinex, William Hammett and George Duggan, trustees of the M.E. Church South. Also, in the deed, Hammett renamed the church, New Antioch, borrowing the name of the church he had left in DeKalb County, Ala.

In addition to congregation members already named, other family names on the 1875 church roster include: Shoemaker, Taylor, Bolton, Cloud, Burrow, Rainey, Doherty, Hammond, Morgan, Rogers, Price, Holcomb, Odom, Benge, Love, Honea, Jones, Gilmore, Norwood and Caton.

Camp meetings held in the last half of the 19th century were the best attended rural religious and social events of the time. One mile southeast of New Antioch Church in the TJ. Hammond survey was the Methodist Campground. The site was donated May 17, 1882, by two pioneer neighbors living at Gent Mountain. Benjamin Claiborn Edmiston and Martin V. Musick deeded four acres of land including a strong spring of water to E.F. Ezell. W.H. Hammett and Thomas Holsomback, trustees of the C.E. Church South.

A large tabernacle was erected there for worship services. Along in the summers after crops were laid by, farm folks of all religious persuasions gathered at the campground. Camping in wagons and tents, the people socialized and attended protracted services conducted by a host of preachers and song leaders. Usually the activity was sustained for several successive weeks. Campground revival meetings, once so popular, gradually disappeared when individual denominations began sponsoring revivals in their own churches.

After the turn of the century, New Antioch Church moved to its present location two miles still farther north as the population shifted in that direction. The land was deeded by John B. Benge and wife, Ida. The first church and school house built there was a single-story frame structure dedicated in 1903. The present church was erected in 1945 and was remodeled and enlarged in 1956 and again added to in 1985.

Adjacent to the church yard is the well-kept Antioch Cemetery. Headstones therein dating from the year 1918 shout the congregation roll call of by-gone years to the lingering passers-by.

Currently, Antioch Methodist Church is a member of the Northwest District of the Texas Annual Conference of the United Methodist Church of which Bishop Janice R. Huie is the presiding bishop. A vital congregation with an enrollment of approximately 112 members was led by the Rev. Paul Bonner from 1974 until his death in 2004. Trustees at that time included Finis Warren, F.T. Pate, Ray Hawthorne, Gus Phillips and David Jones.

Three pastors have served since Bonner’s demise: the Rev. Leslie C. Daly, 2004 to 2005; the Rev. Joe Beran, Dec. 11 to Dec. 25, 2005; and the the Rev. Jamerson, from the time of Beran’s departure to the present. Trustees at this time are Jerry H. Taylor, Angela Johnston, Julie Hataway, Bill McKnight and Hazel Burleson.

A list of ministers who have served the church includes the following names, among others: T.T. Booth, 1888 to 1895; L.M. Fowler, 1896; S.W. Low, 1911; D.S. Burke, 1912; W.B. Moon, 1916; A Mr. Galloway; Monroe Vivian, 1925; J.D. Tredwell, 1927; W.A. McKee, 1928; C. W. McPhail, 1928; B. N. Merchant, 1929; G. M. Byers, 1931; J. C. Stewart, 1935; B. R. Skelton, 1938; Jessie Robertson, 1942; J. D. Wallace, 1943; Leland N. Edmunds, 1946; Asbury Lenox, 1946; Clayton Johnson, 1947; Bill Scales, 1950; Walter Klingel, 1952; Mr. Helpenstell, 1955; John Derr, 1956 to 1962; Wesley Kendall, 1962 to 1963; Clyde Woodward, 1963 to 1964; Jimmy Hawkins, 1963 to 1966; C. 0. Boatman, 1966 to 1969; L. L. Broughton, 1969; J. D. Helpenstell, 1971; Paul Bonner, 1974 to 2004; Leslie Day, 2004 to 2005; Joe Beran, 2005; and Jamerson, 2006 to the present.