Mt Zion Primitive Baptist Church

(African-American)

 Putnam/Doyle, Marion County, Georgia

If you have any corrections or additions, please contact me

Directions:  From downtown Buena Vista take Georgia Highway 26 east six and one-half miles to Mt Zion Road and Doyle voting precinct on right, take right turn; church and cemetery are one-half mile further on right.

This file was contributed for use by:  Clarence White, White792@aol.com. Report corrections, additions, etc to Clarence White, 678.429.9670 Mobile.

 History

 Received oral reports hold that the church began after Emancipation or during Reconstruction under a bush, or brush, arbor. The church building was standing in 1888 on one acre of land when the trustees acquired an additional acre from Miss Ida Munro for cemetery use. A college professor, Miss Munro was a member of the Stevens family, large landowners and slaveholders in both Marion and Schley County. The church land property has been expanded several times over the years. 

Mt Zion would become the anchor of a large African-American community at Putnam and Doyle. On its grounds, north of the church, a one-room school stood. It was used until 1957 at which time a new “equalization” school opened in Buena Vista that consolidated all of the schools for blacks scattered across Marion County. Across the road from the church and school, the White Pearl Lodge #30 of the Mutual Benefit Society of Marion County, Sons and Daughters of Zion, acquired land from Miss Munro in 1926 and erected a two-story meeting house, which was destroyed by a tornado in the 1940s and replaced with a one-story meeting place. The lodge—organized into adult and juvenile departments with different dues, fees and benefits for each— was a self-help organization that functioned as a kind of insurance company, bank, and mortgage lender for its members over several decades.

 In 1925, Rev. George W. Hartage and several of the Shipp brothers began a new African Methodist Episcopal church that met for a couple of years in the abandoned Good Hope Church next to the railroad tracks, with permission of white citizens of the area. Then, in1928, the new church acquired land for its own building one-half mile from Good Hope, and across Highway 26 and less than a mile from Mt Zion. Named Union Hill AME at first, the name was later changed to Samuel Chapel AME in honor of Samuel Shipp, father of the Shipp brothers. Like the White Pearl Lodge meeting house, Samuel Chapel too was destroyed by a different tornado in the 1940s. It closed in 1996, its membership having dwindled to an insufficient number. Many of the members of White Pearl Lodge were also members of Mt Zion or Samuel Chapel. Annually, on the second Sunday in June the lodge held a public program and ceremony at Samuel Chapel, which was known as a “turn-out.” This dignified event had a measure of simple, rural formality in an atmosphere of gentility and community fellowship. Lodge members dressed similarly, including the wearing of ceremonial badges. Unforgettable feasts were spread on the churchyard at the conclusion of the program; these were massive potlucks of meats, vegetables, salads, breads, cakes and pies brought by the women of the lodge in cardboard boxes and served with fresh-squeezed lemonade from one of the largest of galvanized tin tubs reserved for this singular use. 

The third Sunday in August was Big Meeting Day at Mt Zion, and nightly revival meetings (by kerosene lamp light before electricity) preceded the huge Sunday gathering. The occasion was a kind of festive homecoming attended by hundreds, many of whom returned from the Northern cities to which they had migrated beginning in the 1920s. There were concession stands that sold food and snacks. Cars and trucks overflowed the churchyard and were parked everywhere along Mt Zion Road, sometimes reaching to Highway 26. Moonshiners discreetly made their products available, being watchful for law enforcement officers who might suddenly appear. As the long day wore on, old family feuds might suddenly reignite. In addition to two services inside the church, there was a lively social scene outside the church. People came to see and be seen, to promenade—in their Sunday best. Indeed many attendees never set foot in the church; for them, visiting and being in the sprawling scene were how the much anticipated day was spent. 

Before Big Meeting Day, on the Thursday before the second Sunday in August, the community gathered for an annual cleaning of the cemetery. Weeds and grass were removed, the dirt mounds on the numerous earthen graves were restored, women would sweep the churchyard and several bare areas of the cemetery with dog fender brooms—following the ancient African practice, broken household items might be placed on earthen graves as markers (another African retention), fresh bouquets of cut flowers could be seen here and there. By noon the cemetery was transformed, fit for the many visitors who would tread its paths on Big Meeting Day. The acknowledged custodians of the cemetery were Deacon Jimmie Sampson and his wife Mrs. Willie Marie “Kid” Slaughter Sampson, members of the church who served faithfully in this capacity for decades until their passing. They are interred at the western extreme of the cemetery directly behind the church building. 

Link to Mt Zion Cemetery

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Return to the Church home page

Return to home page

This page was last updated on -11/01/2014

Compilation Copyright 1999-Present by The GAGenWeb