(mellow string music) (mellow string music continues) (mellow string music continues) ♪ Ye fleeting charms of earth farewell ♪ ♪ Your springs of joy are dry ♪ ♪ My soul now seeks another home ♪ ♪ A brighter ♪ - [Sonny Seals] Following the Revolutionary War, the population of Georgia was only 80,000 people, including 30,000 slaves.

They were clustered in small enclaves on the coast and near the Savannah River.

In 1790, the land that we now know as Georgia, belonged to someone else.

Creeks to the south and the Cherokees to the north.

In a remarkably short period of time, the State of Georgia acquired over 30 million acres from the Native Americans, often by nefarious means.

By 1832, all the Creek and the Cherokee land had been taken.

Georgia's footprint was now set with 80 counties - [Songleader] In the sweet buy and bye.

- [Sonny Seals] The first order of business for these early pioneers was to build a meeting house to function as a social anchor in a brand new world.

The rural churches were the very center of community life.

We have a duty to preserve this history and save at least some of these old structures for future generations.

Today's technology and strong local leadership is a big step in the right direction.

Many of these 19th century icons are no longer with us but we're fortunate that some of them are still standing.

There are some success stories and one of them is in Tattnall County and in South Georgia, where one of Georgia's most well known writers, Janisse Ray is leading the effort.

- Our first stop is along this back road in Tattnall County.

Now, as you can tell by the flatness of the land, we're in Georgia's coastal plain.

Once this was all pine forests and wire grass prairie.

Today, it's agricultural land.

Vidalia onions are grown just up the road here.

And this is it, Cedar Grove Methodist Church.

It's a haunting place.

It's really nothing more than a shell.

There's no door, there's no windows, but for one woman, it's a thing of absolute beauty.

(gentle music) Janisse, hi, I'm Jeff.

How are you?

- Hey Jeff.

Thanks for coming.

- My pleasure.

- I've been looking forward to meeting you.

- Me too.

You got some guys working here.

What's going on?

- We're putting a new roof on Cedar Grove Church.

- What made you want to do this?

- It's a community landmark and our community decided they didn't wanna just see it disintegrate into the ground and we wanted to keep it for posterity.

So here we are.

- It's great.

Can we take a look inside?

- Please, I'd love to show you around.

- Thanks.

Janisse Ray is a writer who grew up in neighboring Appling County.

A few years ago, she and her husband bought a farm nearby.

- So as a nature writer, I write about the longleaf pine ecosystem, 99% of which is gone.

And when I think about what happened to it, you know, you have to realize that part of it is gone because of agriculture.

But where it went, in part, was to build these structures, these habitations.

In some ways, saving old places is really, for me, an homage to this landscape that I really have given my life to.

- Janisse, what drew you to this place?

- I used to pass by all the time on the way to town and I thought, what a beautiful old church.

When I was a child, I dreamed of living in a church.

And then one day I had decided to stop and come inside and I saw these lovely architectural features, this high unusual ceiling, and the sweep of windows behind the pulpit - And it's got this great old piano, even though it's seen better days.

Did you discover anything else about the property when you were working on it?

- Yes, in our local archives, I found a pamphlet of schools from 1916 and just happened that this is Cedar Grove School but the church was used as part of the school and the school is now gone but I thought that if somebody doesn't do something, the church will disappear soon too.

So, I started a letter writing and an Indiegogo campaign and we got going.

- That's great.

I'm looking around, I'm seeing so much work to do.

How did you know where to start?

- Storms have caused a lot of damage to the north side and then the west side, metal was coming off, so I knew that if we didn't get the old roof off and a new one on that it would cause irreparable damage to the wood.

- Absolutely.

What was it like seeing 100 year old beams for the first time?

- It was awesome.

It really was awesome.

It's like a different.

♪ To Jesus now ♪ ♪ At His dear feet just humbly bow ♪ ♪ Confess to Him your every sin ♪ ♪ He'll save and cleanse you, give you peace and joy within ♪ ♪ I never shall forget the day ♪ ♪ And all the burdens of my soul were rolled away ♪ ♪ It made me happy, be glad and free ♪ ♪ I'll sing and shout it, God means everything to me ♪ ♪ Everything to me ♪ - So Janisse, were there any surprises?

- There was one really big one.

- Yeah.

- They had, roofer Ivan discovered a brick chimney inside the roof.

When he gave it the gentlest nudge, the whole thing moved.

- Ouch, that can't be good.

- No and it appears that that metal square was all that was holding this brick chimney up.

- Holy cow.

I was in a church recently, a similar situation.

There was a huge wooden stove with a metal flue going up through the ceiling to vent the smoke.

- Obvious, yeah, the same thing.

This obviously hadn't been used in a while.

The, it had been cut off at the ridge, but I could just imagine that entire chimney crashing through the ceiling and killing people below.

So, I told Ivan we couldn't go any farther until we had to remove this thing.

- That's a good plan.

- Yeah.

- [Jeff] For the early Georgia pioneers, the first order of business was to set up a community meeting place.

Usually it began with a crude brush arbor.

Soon replaced with a log house, and finally, a frame structure that begins to look more like the churches we see now.

In Franklin County, one of those post Revolutionary War churches is still going strong.

- [Sonny Seals] In Franklin County, among the hills of Northeast Georgia stands a church, which at first glance, seems utterly unremarkable, but asbestos siding and arch doorways conceal a far older and simpler structure.

This is Carroll's Methodist named for William Carroll, a settler who came here after the Revolutionary War.

Inside, the altar looks almost cobbled together, the sturdy pews like a humble carpenter's work.

These pieces harked back to a much earlier era when the Methodist faith was still new in Georgia.

- And they emphasized very much the need to be saved.

Salvation was a crucial moment for evangelical Christians and conversion was the moment that one became saved.

And being saved meant that once you died, you would go to heaven.

- [Sonny Seals] Methodism's founder, John Wesley, once visited the state but had long since returned to England.

In his place, he sent one of his most trusted bishops to preach the new faith across rural America.

Arriving in 1771, Bishop Francis Asbury traveled as much as 6,000 miles a year preaching to rural congregations across the south.

- And from the 1780s onward, Asbury was really the leader of the Methodist church in the United States.

And he was the the developer, the brain behind this idea of a circuit rider.

- A circuit rider would be a a man who lived often a very simple life.

They said that he would carry a saddle bag and he would ride a horse from town to town and would preach a message in whatever location he was given the opportunity to preach his message.

- [Circuit Rider] I have ridden about 200 miles in Georgia, find the work very dead.

The peace with the Creek Indians, the settlement of new lives, good trade, buying slaves take up all the people's attention.

- [Sonny Seals] Often he received little reward for his efforts.

But on this evening, November 21st, 1799, it's a different story.

- [Circuit Rider] We rode 16 miles to Carroll's meeting house, a new log cabin in the woods.

Some of the congregation are from east and western parts of Maryland.

I felt that the Lord was with them.

- [Sonny Seals] This simple house of worship is about to be caught up in the great revival, that explosion of faith that transforms the south into the Bible belt.

- Praise be to God.

- [Congregation] Praise be to God.

- [Sonny Seals] By the time of Bishop Asbury's death in 1813, Methodist numbers have risen to over 20,000.

One out of every 10 souls across the entire state of Georgia.

Today, Carroll's Methodist still serves as a meeting house for a new generation of members.

♪ My latest sun is sinking fast ♪ ♪ My race is nearly run ♪ ♪ My strongest trials now are past ♪ ♪ My triumph is begun ♪ ♪ Oh come ♪ - [Sonny Seals] At Cedar Grove, as the first sheets of the new roof are nailed in place, they stir in Janisse Ray a deep sense of connection.

- This amorphous thing, which is just history, it's that I know my people were here for generations and generations.

They came in when the land was open to white settlers.

The water of the Altamaha River is my blood.

My bones are made from the minerals that come down from the Appalachians.

So I know I am this place.

- Wow, what a labor of love.

Janisse, the tin roof you're replacing isn't a hundred years old, but the building is.

Now, what are the various features that would tell you that?

- Well, as you can see, we're surrounded by longleaf pines.

- [Man] Yeah.

- This tree once covered all of South Georgia.

It was highly prized for its timber.

And if you look under the church, you'll see why.

This one beam stretches the whole length of the building.

- [MAN] Wow.

- And that comes from a single tree called heart pine.

And it'd be difficult to get a piece of lumber that large and that long these days commercially.

- That's fantastic.

Janisse, this is a diamond in the rough.

So what happened to this church?

Why was it abandoned?

- Well that's a sad story.

In the early 1930s, the State of Georgia decided it needed a new prison.

And so it chose this location and that gobbled up 10,000 acres of farmland, so it effectively displaced an entire community of people.

- The streams and creeks that water the farms around Cedar Grove Church in Tattnall County flow into the mighty Altamaha River.

It's big winding flow works it way slowly through Georgia to the Atlantic Ocean near Darien, home of Georgia's second oldest settlement.

A few years before Cedar Grove was built, a very different community was building their church.

- [Sonny Seals] Darien is the second oldest city in Georgia, founded in 1736 as a military buffer between Savannah to the north and Spanish troops to the south.

To accomplish this, General James Oglethorpe sent one of his lieutenants to Inverness Scotland to recruit Highlanders to serve as warrior farmers and assist in defense of the colony.

Darien was located at the mouth of the Altamaha River and it prospered as one of the most important ports on the East Coast.

But during the Civil War, she was virtually burned to the ground by African American troops under the command of white officers.

This highly controversial act was made famous in the movie "Glory", which was nominated for five Academy Awards.

From these ashes arose Saint Cyprian Episcopal Church in 1876 - Episcopalianism had always been the most proper of the denominations.

It had been the elite denomination in the colony and later, in the state.

And because it was connected with wealth it was connected with rice plantation.

It's not at all unusual for individuals, both slave owners and also their slaves and later their freedmen to gravitate towards Episcopalian service.

- [Sonny Seals] St. Cyprian's was born out of an unlikely partnership.

In 1873, Reverend James Wentworth Leigh, an aristocratic English parson took over his wife's rice plantation across the river on Butler Island.

He began preaching to its former slaves, now sharecroppers.

- [James Wentworth Leigh] And the Apostle Philip said to the Ethiopian, understand it what thou readest.

- They understood that there was power in this sacred text, that this text that they couldn't read, would speak.

It was closed book to them closed because they were illiterate.

They couldn't read it themselves but it was an open book in terms of the stories and the messages and how they ended up interpreting and translating those messages.

- [Sonny Seals] The congregation soon swelled beyond the capacity of the island's small chapel.

One of it's members, Louis Jackson, a black elected official from Darien persuaded Reverend Leigh to start an Episcopal church there.

While Leigh's wife, Francis Butler donated a plot of land near the river, Jackson rallied the local black community to provide the labor.

The church walls were built of tabby, an ancient building material made of sand, lime, and oyster shells mixed with water.

It's one of the last major structures built this way in Georgia.

On April 30th, 1876, with the black choir of Butler Island leading the way, St. Cyprian's Episcopal Church was consecrated by the Bishop of Savannah.

Since that time, the church has become an enduring pillar of the Darien community.

♪ I've seen the past ♪ ♪ Well, kumbaya ♪ ♪ I've seen the past ♪ ♪ Well, kumbaya ♪ - And so when I came here, I was looking for Episcopalian church and here I found St Cyprian and knowing the history of it, where it was built for the black slaves and them, I really feel connected to my history as an African.

Next to my family, this is my love, you know and I do everything with them in my thoughts and in my mind.

- Many of today's congregation at St. Cyprian's Episcopal Church trace their roots back to the Butler Plantation over on Butler Island.

In the past, we've often relied on that one very diligent family member to preserve the family stories, collect the old photos, or put together a family tree that let's us know who we are.

Thanks to digital technology, all that's changing.

Today, the history of rural churches can be accessed in such a way, anyone can do it.

- I'm the Senior Digital Scholarship Strategist here at the Emory Center for Digital Scholarship.

And I'm a part of a team that includes folks at Georgia Tech that's developing what we're calling a digital drawer, which is a web-based interface through which people from all across the state can submit all kinds of information, documents, photographs, documenting the history of Georgia's rural churches.

- [Sonny Seals] The digital drawer will be housed on the historic rural churches of Georgia website.

- Okay, let's go to Tattnall County.

Here's Cedar Grove Methodist.

And then here is this educational survey of Tattnall County from 1916.

It comes into this interface where an editor housed here at the Emory Center for Digital Scholarship will just take a look at the material.

Okay, okay and here's Cedar Grove School.

So valued at $800 and it has blackboards, desk, a large flag, a well on the lot.

This is great.

Looks like the same building.

It's got this feature here.

It has these little pieces where the roof comes in.

Definitely some differences, but it looks like the same building.

So that's a great find.

People can collectively contribute the little pieces of a picture that are a reflection of their personal experience and together that can help weave this larger story.

I think that's really exciting and something that's possible with this project because it touches so many people in the state.

- Jeff, I'd like you to do us the honor, if you will of nailing the last few nails in place on the last piece of roof metal.

- Oh, this is awesome.

Thanks.

- Thank you.

- I'm really excited, this is gonna be great.

(motor whirs) Here we go.

Got one of the last screws to put in this great old tin roof, putting it in now.

(drill whirs) (gentle music) (motor whirs) Janisse, you got a great bunch of guys working up there.

How does this project make you feel?

- Fantastic.

This was hard but the first step usually is.

Windows and a new door are next to make it truly weatherproof.

But already, I can see it becoming a gathering place for our community once more, and with some luck, it will last another century as a sanctuary for people to enjoy a beautiful piece of history and as a memorial to the hardworking settlers who built it.

- But pastors, ministers came and went.

Perhaps they moved on, perhaps they died, but the church remained from generation to generation.

It might be expanded, some cases, it might even be replaced but the building becomes the kind of permanent symbol in a way that a minister, a simple human never could.

- [Sonny Seals] Today's technology allows us to reach back into our past.

The digital drawer is a good example of that.

It enables us to find and preserve those bits and pieces of history that are embedded in our historic rural churches.

It lets us organize these scraps of history, get them off fragile pieces of scattered paper and put them in the cloud where they can be organized, accessed by every one, and preserved for generations to come.

- If you don't know where you came from and how hard people worked and how they slaved.

How, what things died so that you could have life and have this very comfortable, convenient life.

I think to not know those things is a travesty.

And that's what places like Cedar Grove teach us.

- [Sonny Seals] These abandoned icons of our past do not have to wither and die.

They can be saved, repurposed, and brought back into the community they have served for so many years.

Janisse Ray is a great example of how local leadership can make a difference.

♪ Then we read of the earth's weary pilgrims ♪ ♪ Who have lived here thru hunger and cold ♪ ♪ They've at last reached their harbor in safety ♪ ♪ And there we shall never grow old ♪ ♪ In heaven we'll never grow old ♪ ♪ In heaven we'll never grow old ♪ ♪ We will live in that city forever ♪ ♪ And there we shall never grow old ♪