ATKINS — Linda Lewis wants to see the 1833 church building she owns in Atkins saved because her father preached there, and David Lindsey wants to see it preserved because it’s part of history.
The former church, said to be the oldest building in Atkins, is listed for sale for $35,000 with Petit Jean Properties of Morrilton.
“It was my father’s life,” Lewis said. “It was what he lived and breathed.”
Lewis, 67, lives with her daughter Tami McCreary in a double-wide mobile home just yards from the church. She said as a widow on a fixed income, she can’t afford the upkeep of the church anymore.
She said her two brothers, who own it with her, can’t either.
“It’s getting pretty rundown,” Lewis said.
Their father, James Boren, was a farmer and pastor of the church, Free Holiness Pentecostal Church. He died in 2001.
Lindsey, a member of the Pope County Historical Society, was a member of the church when it was Point Remove Primitive Baptist Church.
“I have called everybody I know trying to get them to take the old building,” Lindsey said. “I told them I would help them restore it, but nobody’s interested in it.”
Lindsey said he and two other Pope County Historical Society members would like to see it saved, but they’re in the minority.
“Our group’s not going to do it,” he said.
Lindsey said he also inquired if Potts Inn Museum in Pottsville would want the church, and that group isn’t interested, either.
“I suspect they’ll eventually tear it down. Nobody wants the building. It’s too old and too much trouble to remodel it to get it up to shape,” he said.
Lindsey, who lives in Atkins and has published a history of the church, said it was built in November 1833 north of Atkins in what is now called the Buttermilk community.
At that time, the community was called Glass Village, named after Chief Glass of the Cherokee Nation that had a village there, Lindsey said.
“He was a salt maker,” Lindsey said of Chief Glass. “He took water out of Point Remove Creek and got salt.”
The church was first called the Regular Baptist Church of Christ at Point Remove Creek. In 1875, it became Point Remove Primitive Baptist Church.
In February 1925, some church men took the building apart, Lindsey said, and moved it by horse and wagon to Atkins and put it together at its current location.
“I went there quite a bit as a kid, and even in the early ’70s, I used to go there quite a bit,” Lindsey said.
Indoor plumbing was added in the ’70s, he said.
“I preferred the outhouses,” he said. “It’s the oldest building in Atkins. It’s the very last one that came out of Glass Village or the Buttermilk community.”
Lindsey said some of the original elements of the church are still there - the outside of the church, rafters, floor joists and even the rocks the building sits on. A couple of wooden benches in the sanctuary are original, too, he said, made by the Johnson family’s sawmill in the 1800s.
He said the original plank wood floors are likely under the carpet, too.
In 1976, Point Remove Primitive Baptist Church in Atkins and Russellville Primitive Baptist Church “agreed to consolidate and keep the name to keep their heritage,” Lindsey said.
The Point Remove Primitive Baptist Church congregation, of which Lindsey is a member, moved to a new building at 510 N. Knoxville St. in Russellville.
Lewis said her father didn’t start preaching until later in life. He started a church in an old two-story school building in Blackwell; then he and Lewis’ mother, Estelene, bought the church building in Atkins from Ernest Knowlin and started the Pentecostal church.
She said her father worked hard as a farmer, but church was a priority.
“He would come in from the fields, and if it was a church night, he would come in and sit in his chair with his Bible and get his sermon ready,” she said.
Lewis said her father later had Alzheimer’s disease and Parkinson’s disease.
“He got to where he couldn’t read. I would read the text for him toward the end,” she said.
“We tried to have church for about a year after he died, but the air conditioner unit went out,” Lewis said, and her mother couldn’t afford to repair it. Her mother died in December at age 93.
McCreary said she went to church there “sporadically” through the years, and she said it was a relaxed atmosphere.
“At times, the spirit would move. You didn’t know if someone would shout or do a dance,” McCreary said. “It was a simple church, like a country church, but in town.”
She pointed out construction, which she said will be apartments, across the street.
Lewis said the electricity is still on in the church building, and she pays the bill every month.
Lindsey said that after Lewis’ father bought the church, he added a room with a kitchen.
Lewis said her family has used the room for gatherings and celebrations.
“All my children, my grandchildren, my brothers, have our family Thanksgiving and Christmas in the back,” Lewis said.
“My grandchildren are just heartbroken thinking about us having to sell it or tear it down.”
Gary Lovell, the real estate agent for the church, said he isn’t optimistic about the building’s survival.
“I’m afraid somebody will end up buying it, tearing it down and building duplexes,” he said.
“That would absolutely break my heart,” Lewis said.
She said her family would like to sell the church to someone who would revive it as a church, “or for some good purpose.”
Lindsey lamented the potential loss of history.
“It’s a bygone era of things that used to be that’s going to disappear just by modern technology, I guess, and it’s just something that needs to be seen and appreciated, how our forefathers lived,” he said.
Senior writer Tammy Keith can be reached at (501) 327-0370 or tkeith@arkansasonline.com.
River Valley Ozark, Pages 137 on 07/29/2012