MARVELL — For 140 years, Mount Olive Missionary Baptist Church, in some form, has been on Phillips County Road 116, a gravel road surrounded by farm fields.
Like many country churches, this one is sustained by a few faithful members. While small — eight to 10 active members — the congregation still provides for the community. The Sunday before Thanksgiving, Bishop Sean Daniels, pastor of the church, announced that members had raised enough funds to give 30 Thanksgiving dinners to needy families.
The congregation also is trying to gather funds to preserve the church, which has a long history. In May, Preserve Arkansas placed the church on its Seven to Save list of Arkansas' Most Endangered Places. The listing includes the sanctuary, a fenced-in graveyard that holds the graves of many former church members — some going back to the late 1800s — and, across the gravel road, a building that was once a two-room schoolhouse and now serves as the fellowship hall.
The buff brick church built in the 1950s is one of seven buildings that have housed the congregation. Organized in 1870, the first congregants met in a farmhouse. The next building was made of logs, followed by several wooden buildings. The current church has a tower entrance with a small white steeple, a metal roof and wings on either side that hold the pastor's office and restrooms. Then, there's the sanctuary with rows of wooden pews and a slightly vaulted tile ceiling. The altar area is raised with seating for a choir.
Marilyn Norwood wrote the nomination for the church to be included on the endangered list and described problems with the church's structures:
"Foundation is sinking and settling so that the walls are separating from the floor. The tiled ceiling consists of old tiles that are dry rotted. The windows are not secured. The front doors are old and not secure. It leaks in the bathrooms when it rains."
In addition, the school has a leaky roof, needs painting and has no bathrooms. Because there is no parking lot, people can't park there when it rains or they get stuck, she says. And in the graveyard, some of the graves are sinking, making it unsafe to walk among them.
The church hasn't always had such a small congregation. It once had a full choir of young people, and the two-room school was used to teach children through sixth grade. But many, if not most, grew up and moved away.
The church is and has been an important part of the community, according to Norwood. The members, mostly sharecroppers and farmers, "have been a part of the church during all of the historical events that happened in the state of Arkansas and the rest of the world. People who were born and raised in the community have family buried in the cemetery, and many went to the school there."
While the simple church building itself may not be of architectural significance except as an example of a 1950s rural Arkansas church, the graveyard goes back to the original church on the property and gives many clues to the history of the community.
The first monument one encounters when entering the fenced-in burial ground was placed in the 1990s and is a memorial to the Scaife and Alexander families, which still have reunions at the church. The older graves are at the front of the graveyard, while newer ones are toward the back. There are many gravesites without markers, but there are also many headstones bearing information about the deceased.
Tamer Nixon's gravestone indicates she was 100 years old when she died in 1915. One of the oldest graves seen during a recent visit was Mary Nixon's. Her monument records that she died in 1891 "age 21 years, 2 months and 14 days," the wording a suggestion of how precious each day of her life must have been to her family.
Nellie Hull, who died in 1943, is listed as "Founder and President of the Christian Aid Club of Marvell." Several headstones indicate that military veterans are buried there.
Alberta Lewis, who died in 1923, was a member of the Supreme Royal Circle of Friends of the World, according to her monument. There are several gravestones with the Circle of Friends emblem. This organization, according to the Central Arkansas Library System Encyclopedia of Arkansas, was "an African American fraternal organization founded in 1909 in Helena." It was founded to supply insurance to the black community, and its members received a distinctive headstone — a lion sitting atop a triangle with the letters RCF in the points of the triangle.
Norwood says that if nothing is done, the structures and burial ground will continue to decline. The congregation still meets for worship and has dinners in the former school, where they hope to open a food bank for the community.
"Speaking for so many that love these structures," says Norwood in the nomination, "it is heartbreaking to watch them deteriorate."
RELATED: This is Part 6 in a series on the seven structures Preserve Arkansas spotlights in its 2019 list of the state's most endangered historic places. See earlier articles at http://www.arkansas…">arkansasonline.com/….
Style on 12/23/2019