A local church is the product of many believers, past and present. It is their many voices combined over time that create a single story of God’s work. Mars Hill Baptist Church in Watkinsville, celebrating 225 years is no exception to the rule.
When the church was organized in 1799 by Revolutionary War veterans and their families, it was on the western edge of the Georgia frontier. The Cherokee Nation was less than two miles away. The law required men to carry their weapons to church because an unarmed group of people in a building would have been the ideal location for an Indian attack.
Although almost all early Georgia Baptist churches had their roots in the revivalist Separatist Baptist tradition, Mars Hill had at least one notable exception. Revolutionary War veteran William Daniel was one of the church’s early members. His mother’s family, the Ravens, had arrived in Charleston, South Carolina in the 1680s, from Kittery, Maine. They were Regular Baptist who were fleeing persecution in New England. Moving south they established the first Baptist Church of Charleston, the oldest Baptist Church in the South.
Reflecting the history of the nation, the old cemetery contains the remains of veterans from every American war from the Revolution through Vietnam. One of their members, not buried in the old churchyard, Eliel Melton, died at the battle of the Alamo. At least three buried there died from wounds suffered in the Mexican war, Civil War, and World War II.
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EDITOR’S NOTE — This story was written by Charles Jones and originally published by the Christian Index.
