At The Tall Pines And What We Found There

Recently, officials with the South Carolina Department of Natural Resources announced the opening of a new Wildlife Management Area, the 1757 acre Tall Pines Wildlife Management Area located in northern Greenville County. The area is now open for hunting, fishing, and hiking. Part of new WMA runs along the South Saluda River, with one parking access off Moody Bridge Road near Tall Pines Lake. The South Carolina DNR has produced a helpful PDF map of the WMA.

While I was adding the area to OpenStreetMap, I could see some some lakes, disused agricultural fields, old logging roads that all looked interesting, but not a high priority to visit. That changed when I examined a topo map from 1961, and found an old church and a cemetery located in the new WMA.

A recent satellite view showed nothing there but trees...

which made me highly curious to know what, if anything, remained.

Last Wednesday, I met up with Tom Taylor at the Moody Bridge Road access area to see what, if anything, remained of the church and cemetery.

Most of what is now the Tall Pines W.M.A. was named Tall Pines Farm, owned by George Jr. and Mildred Wilkinson. The Wilkinson parcel, and other parcels, were bought by the Burroughs & Chapin Company, operating as Tall Pines Investment, in 2007. In November 2006, before the sale was finalized, the Burroughs & Chapin Company Inc. proposed a subdivision with an 18 hole golf course to be named "Tall Pines". From the November 6, 2006 edition of The Greenville News:

A Myrtle Beach-based company is considering turning the property near State 11/U.S. 276 and Moody Bridge Road into a residential golf community. A draft submitted by Burroughs & Chapin Company Inc. to the Greenville County Planning Commission for preliminary viewing showed 990 lots, a village center and an 18-hole golf course in a development called "Tall Pines."

In February 2008, the subdivision plans were changed to reduce the number of homes. Again from The Greenville News archives:

The 1,700-acre former timber farm in northern Greenville County may have fewer home sites than initially proposed.

Owners of the Tall Pines farm are considering about 600 home sites for the property, located at U.S. 276/State 11 and Moody Bridge Road, half of the 1,200 in the original plans...

Plans for the golf course were scrapped.

In May 2008, plans for the subdivision changed yet again and announced in The Greenville News. The name was changed for some odd reason:

The planned Copper Lakes community in northern Greenville County would have approximately 550 home sites, a working farm and market that would be open to the public.

Later in the article more about the revised plans was revealed:

Copper Lakes will be gated and offer its homeowners amenities that include a craft village, lakeside pavilion, fishing piers, a mountaintop pavilion with hiking trails, riverside campsites with fire pits, community gardens with greenhouses, a swimming hole, and underground utilities.

The plans for the subdivision came to nothing. T.D. Bank foreclosed on the property in 2014, then sold the property to The Conservation Bank in 2015. The Conservation Bank officially turned the property over to the South Carolina Department of Natural Resources on January 28. The news conference and press release about the acquisition took place a few weeks later on February 15th.

Rain, a frequent visitor around here the past few months, was falling yet again at my house as I stepped out the door last Wednesday. Fortunately, local radar showed the rain band would be east of the Tall Pines WMA by the time we got there.

Tom and I accidentally timed our arrival so well he pulled in right behind me as I entered the semi-muddy parking area. As expected, the rain had departed. One pickup truck was there and its owner was out by the lake fishing. The parking area overlooks the more interesting of the WMA's lakes, with an interesting island containing a stone tower topped with a lantern. We both suddenly wished we had brought our kayaks to explore this island.

Across Moody Bridge Road by the creek was the ruins of ... something.

Blogger Liene mentioned these same ruins in her recent visit and didn't know what they were either. So that makes three of us that don't know.

We were here to visit the old church and cemetery, about a half mile down the road from the parking area, so we walked down the side of the road toward our targets. Before the visit, I had marked the location of the old church and cemetery online and downloaded the locations to my phone.

GNIS named the church "South Saluda". I found a 1955 aerial of the area showing the church still standing:

Along the way we explored a dam separating two lakes.

Or at least my digital map showed two lakes, but in reality the dam for the second lake had failed allowed the creek to flow straight through. A path lead down from the top of the dam into where the dam failed. The old lake is now a bog-like wetlands area.

The road to the church was clearly marked....

and recently maintained.

Saluda Church and cemetery were located at the top of ridge. We had considered bushwacking up, but we decided to stick to the road. The road, muddy in spots, curved around and up the ridge. We reached a spot where the road branches off in two directions. One lead to the southwest, another to the northwest. Neither headed in the direction we wanted to go, so we took the third way northeast through a thin concentration of pine trees.

Tom spotted some field stones, and then I found some others:

When we came to some fallen pine trees, underneath we found several grave stones:

We found several intact gravestones, mostly children of William and Mattie Keith, but others were from the Carr and Boyd families.

One was hand carved with the name "Carr":

This one was carved with the name "Blythe Williams".

The name "Blythe" got us both excited. Blythe Shoals is named after the Blythe family and we couldn't help but wonder if this fellow was related in some way.
We were also looking for signs of the church foundation or some other remnant. The only thing we found were some broken remnants of some milk colored glass globes from a light fixture:

A lone mossy brick was the only thing we found:

We were clearly in the right area though. The church and cemetery were both in a clear area in the 1955 aerial, and we were in a relatively clear area. Just off the ridge the trees became thick.

We found some metal grave markers, but the actual names were gone. I noticed the letters on the stand were reversed, but that was easily reversed in editing:

I'm sure they're more gravestones underneath the downed trees, but there were too many downed trees in the way to find out.

The location we found for the cemetery was a bit off the location on the topo map so I suggested we head on just in case there was more graves to be found. We didn't find any at the location on the topo map, but we did find a small path leading down the hill.

We decided to head that way and then bushwack directly back down to Moody Bridge Road. That way was more direct, easy to walk, and less muddy.

We walked back down Moody Bridge Road to the parking area, then crossed over the road down a dirt road to take a closer look at the building ruins we had seen earlier.

We walked down the path until it opened up into a field. The South Saluda River, the border between Greenville and Pickens Counties and also the edge of the WMA, could be seen in the distance.

I noticed one building on the satellite located above the parking area that hadn't yet been torn down after the Wilkinsons sold the property. We went up a muddy road leading up and away from the parking area. When we reached the spot I had indicated, we saw nothing but straw and new grass. Drat!

Around where the building was once located we spotted some impressively large bamboo.

While the height of the bamboo was interesting, we were more impressed by the girth. The photo doesn't do them justice:

I posed so Tom get could a photo with my new best friends for some perspective:

We walked back down to the parking area. As we were chatting, we watched a fellow pull off the side of Moody Creek Road, launch a canoe, and paddle out to the island.

I envied that guy.

Tom had some other business requiring his attention so he had to leave, but I wanted to explore the area a bit more before heading home. We said our goodbyes and I walked around a bit. I'd love to report I made some astounding finds, but I didn't.

Down a road heading toward two more lakes, I found some rusty cans, rusty fencing, and a rusting barrel among other things.

The dam for the first lake is breached.

This lake is more of a bog now.

The dam for the second lake upstream is still intact. I found a fishing pole in the water someone left behind.

I headed back to the parking area, and back up to explore an area where another building was once located. All that's left now are rows where a covered garden may have been:

I had seen enough for now. My feet were a muddy mess, but a quick wash at home took care of that.

I wanted to know more about the church and the cemetery, but information about both was hard to come by. Find-A-Grave has no listing for the old cemetery, but the Greenville County Cemetery GPS Cemetery Project does give its location, but I already knew that.

I moved on try finding some info about the people buried in the cemetery. I couldn't find anything about the people either until I used HeritageQuest, accessible my county's local library or from home with a library card.

I found this record about Blythe Williams from a 1910 census record search:

The record indicated Blythe Williams was 34, single, black, and a sharecropper. I checked the census record for 1920, but I couldn't find a listing for him there.

Some writing on his tombstone interested me in particular:

The words  "A Member of the W.B. & S. Society" (I think) suggest he may have been a member of a fraternal society but I couldn't find any African-American fraternal societies matching those initials. Anyone know the meaning of the initials, and if it's related to the symbolism at the top?

I also found William and Mattie Keith's records, and Mack and Mary Carr's records in the 1910 census. They were all listed as married black sharecroppers. This means the church members were African-American.

I found a story about Mack Carr in the Greenville News on Newspapers.com. The library's access to Newspapers.com doesn't grant access to The Greenville News, but someone made a clip about his death I could access. The clip uses cringey language, and goes into unnecessary level of detail on how he died:

I turned my attention to the church. I searched through the deed indexes of Greenville County Register of Deeds for churches in the approximate location of the South Saluda River. Churches were indexed under "church" which made the search somewhat less tedious.

I found a deed for a church matching the location in book SS, pages 834 (on page 2 of the PDF) and 835. I'll transcribe enough for you to get gist of the deed:

I, Lizzie Hagood, ... have granted, bargained, sold, and released ... unto the Deacons of South Saluda Ridge Colored Baptist Church ... on the waters of South Saluda River containing two acres. ...  Witness my hand and seal this 13th day of August in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and eighty six.

The deeds provides a three important pieces of information. One, the church land was bought in 1886, and possibly organized then too. Two, the church was named  South Saluda Ridge Colored Baptist Church in this deed. And three, the denomination was Baptist. The few references to the church I could find omitted the words "ridge" and "colored" so I'll just go with the name "South Saluda Baptist Church".

However, I found map that shows the church may have been founded earlier. This 1882 map of Greenville County at the Library of Congress shows a church in the same area as South Saluda Baptist Church, so it's likely the same one:

The 1882 date also matches information about the charter members of the Oolenoy River Baptist Association I found on a web page about area Baptist associations. South Saluda Baptist Church is listed as a charter member in 1882. In 1982, it's listed now as a historical member:

What I couldn't find is a deed selling the two acres, so I don't know when the church ceased to exist.

I did find a listing for the church in the book Directory of Negro Baptist Churches in The United States, Vol 2 sponsored by the Works Projects Administration that showed the church as active in 1942.

So the church was organized in 1882, four years earlier than I originally thought, but the area we explored wasn't bought until 1886.

Thank you Tom for coming along! We had a good time exploring and preserving some forgotten history of South Saluda Baptist Church, the cemetery, and the people that once worshiped there. I know we both would like to come back sometime and explore some more.

Now the SCDNR owns the property and is under public ownership, perhaps they could help organize a cleanup of the cemetery? If not, at least Tom and I preserved in photos what we could.

Tom has already shared his photos in an album on Flickr, and his post about the visit on his blog.

I uploaded my photos from the visit to an album on Google Photos.