An ‘Old-Timey’ Service: Once a Cherokee Mission, Floyd’s Second–Oldest Church Will Be Open to Worshippers Sunday

Romans will have the opportunity to gather once again in a historic Presbyterian church that traces its roots to missionaries who ministered to area Cherokee before the devastating, government-sanctioned removal that took Native Americans away from this area.

Sardis Presbyterian Church, which calls itself Floyd County’s second-oldest church, will host its spring service and dinner on the grounds Sunday, May 5, at 11 a.m. with Matthew Myers, Calvary Baptist Church children and family pastor, delivering the message and the sounds of a reed organ filling its small sanctuary.

Sardis today

The church, once part of the Cherokee Presbytery, hasn’t been regularly active since 1979. The presbytery, no longer interested in keeping up the property, deeded the church over to the Sardis Preservation Society, and a board of trustees, established in the 1990s, has kept its legacy alive, overseeing building and cemetery upkeep (often performed by area Boy Scouts) and securing a pastor for twice-yearly services, according to board member Joe Holden.

Services now draw worshipers from all Christian denominations, Holden said, and tables set up under a huge, gnarled oak tree near the church allow attendees to enjoy the covered-dish meals afterward. Holden remembers eating meals periodically at Sardis when he was a child. His family, he said, regularly attended another nearby church.

“My family went to Pisgah Baptist Church up the street,” he said. “My parents would not miss a Sunday, so we had to go to service at Pisgah, and then we would go down there and eat after.”

‘A very old-timey feel’

Sardis, housed in an unassuming, angular white building, sans steeple, stands 13 miles west of Rome on state Route 20 where the road passes between Heath and Turnip Mountains — an area known colloquially as “the narrows.” Its double entrances allude to the long-abandoned practice of gender separation during sermons.

That tradition disappeared when the church “got a little liberal,” explained Holden. “They started sitting together, which we still do.”

In a little nod to tradition, though, he said, women and men will line up on separate sides of the church to receive communion this Sunday.

Sam Moses, a West Rome native and a Sardis board member, recalled his initial intrigue when he saw the property from the road.

“I remember the first time noticing it, just driving through the narrows on Alabama Highway,” he said. “And you’re coming around this corner, and you can’t see it until you’re right up on this church. And then — boom!”

It was immediately clear to him, he said, that the building, with its old cemetery, was historic. Moses, a self-described history buff started researching the property, located a board member and soon found himself on the mailing list. He’s brought his own family members to services since then.

“It’s just super-charming, old-fashioned,” he said. “It’s just a very old-timey feel to it. There’s no air conditioning, I believe. No plumbing,”

Despite the primitive digs, Sunday attendees will have proper accommodations with a “luxury” portable restroom, Holder said.

Missionary roots

The church building itself is old, but the ministry it sprang from started considerably before its construction. The structure went up in 1850, Holden said, although the Presbyterian church was officially established in 1836.

According to the church’s history documents: The mission began in 1821 at Turnip Mountain under the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions. Missionaries Elizur Butler and his wife, Esther, took over the mission and lived in a log cabin near where the church’s cemetery is today. The Butlers eventually moved a couple of miles east to a site they called the Haweis mission. Elizur Butler was later jailed when he refused to pledge allegiance to the state government regarding its laws designed to push the Cherokee out.

New Echota missionary Sam Worcester was jailed along with Elizur Butler until a case against their imprisonment reached the United States Supreme Court. The two were pardoned after the Supreme Court nullified the state law under which they were imprisoned, but the Cherokee were ultimately forced from the area in large part by President Andrew Jackson’s push for Native American removal. After a brief return to the mission, Elizur Butler eventually traveled west with the Cherokee. Today, a historical marker near the grave of Esther Butler, who died in 1829, denotes the only evidence of the original mission.

Later, Scots-Irish worshipers who moved here from the Carolinas established the church as Presbyterian, Holder said.