Ridgeway Baptist
originally published in Georgia Backroads, Vol. 18, №3, Autumn 2019
By Clayton H. Ramsey
Churches dot these hills — Baptist and Seventh Day Adventist and Pentecostal — little pockets of faith hidden among the gaps of North Georgia. Among them is Ridgeway Baptist Church. The faithful who attended services one damp Sunday morning recently snaked along winding roads cut into the layered rock of the mountains. They drove due west of Ellijay, across U.S. Highway 76 from Fort Mountain State Park, through the mist that hung low among the pines after a late winter shower. It was a journey most had made for decades and one their ancestors traveled for generations. I came in search of history; they were acting out the ancient and ongoing story of redemption.
I parked beside the long concrete table, used for communal meals, or “dinner on the grounds,” covered with a pitched pavilion that ran from the front of the log church toward the cemetery hill, parallel to the road. Across the paved road was a brick sanctuary, topped by a stout steeple, and by ten a.m. members were trickling in, settling into familiar pews and opening the Bibles they brought with them to the passage they would study in Sunday School.
Today they would look at a text from St. Paul’s Second Letter to the Corinthians. No one had trouble locating it in their well-worn copies of the Scriptures. There was prayer, thanksgiving for blessings, earnest entreaty for resolution of the problems of life — a neighbor with cancer, a friend who needed the Lord — and then the rustle of pages as the reading was identified. Each one read a verse out loud, down one pew and up the next. Though there was a leader of the conversation, there was no heavy, pedagogical lecture. Members were asked what they thought of Paul’s inspired ideas of God using the weak to show God’s strength, the fractured to demonstrate God’s grace. Paul’s vision in these verses found echoes in Isaiah’s vision and Daniel’s and John’s. Scripture linked to Scripture and members shared what struck them as important, what resonated with their lives. After an hour of discussion, there was a break. Hugs and handshakes among members. How was your week? Good to see you!
I was the interloper but was welcomed sincerely and warmly. Then, almost on cue, they found their seats again. Raised a Baptist, I gravitated to the back pew by habit, but was invited forward. Padded pews were marked on the aisle end with small brass plaques, inscribed with the names of those who had donated to the building fund decades ago. The couple dozen worshippers sat where they usually did, I suspected.
The adult Sunday School teacher, Danny McArthur, was also the song leader, and we sang for half an hour as he picked and strummed a guitar in the style of these mountains. One member and then the next would stand and suggest a hymn, and we moved from song to song in the traditional shaped-notes hymnal that was in the pew racks, but not always consulted. The hymns were old friends: “Who at My Door Is Standing?” “I Am Blessed,” “Love Lifted Me,” “Sweet By and By.” The sound was fresh, but the music was timeless. Some warbling, some strong, the voices were the chorus of eternity in Sunday clothes, flashing with hints of glory among these housewives and laborers, mechanics and parents, younger and older. There was a solo, and a monthly collection for the pastor who relied on secular work to pay the bills.
And then it was time for the message. With an apology for a throat shredded by a spring cold, the Rev. Anthony Stonecipher stepped behind the pulpit, removed his suit jacket and hung it on a hook behind him, slipped his necktie off and folded it carefully, took a sip of water, and surrendered himself to the Spirit of God. The Prophet Jeremiah would supply the prompt for his message, the sealed and open documents of chapter 32. With an escalating volume that reflected a holy vigor, he challenged and reminded and comforted. He called names for confirmation; he shook hands for connection. He exhorted and quoted and, choking back the pain of a raw throat, he preached as if it were his best and last sermon.
And then the fire receded and he was talking again, whispering almost. “Who Is That Knocking?” was sung for what Baptists recognize as an “altar call,” a chance to publicly express their response to the message and settle their soul’s business with God. With that, the service was over. Smiles and handshakes followed. Farewells until the next gathering.
I discovered the Sunday School teacher and song leader was also treasurer, most senior deacon, and keeper of church records. He offered to meet me after lunch and share what historical documents he possessed. After a hamburger, I was back early. He had three cloth and leather-bound ledger books under his arm, the written records of the church since 1897. Everything before that had burned in a house fire. The stories and names of thirty year’s worth of church history disappeared in the flames, those who preserved the oral record long gone. We spread the books on a table in the fellowship hall, a room added later, perpendicular to the sanctuary. First built in 1990–91 and subdivided into smaller rooms for children’s Sunday School space, it was later converted to an open area for luncheons and informal gatherings.
We could see the old log church through the window. Built in 1865 when discharged Confederate veterans, led by Wiley Pankey, came back from the War, it was constructed with logs fit together on property that surely belonged to the Pankey family. For years it had a dirt floor. In 1954 there was an addition of planed lumber and not whole logs built for a pulpit platform at the front of the sanctuary, the same year the building was wired for electricity. Back then it was known as New Bethel Church, which it stayed until 1982, the year the brick sanctuary was built, and they changed the name to Ridgeway.
The inimitable Celestine Sibley related the story of Nancy Pankey in an August 27, 1959, article in the Atlanta Constitution (later reprinted on October 25, 1978). Nancy, then a delicate woman in a retirement home, was Wiley’s second wife, and Celestine told the tale of how she stared down a team of workmen that was preparing to demolish the old church. “As long as I live, them logs stand!” she reportedly shouted at the crew. The fact that it still stands today as one of the last log churches in the state, listing to the right under the weight of history, was her gift to those who worship across the street.
They still meet in the old log structure once every year, the fourth Sunday in September, for Old Timer’s Day, singing and praying and preaching in the building that’s stood for 154 years. But mostly it’s just a reminder of days past, of faithful ancestors and the survival of their community. When the con- gregation decided to move across the street, the Rev. Kimsey McVey shepherded the transition, as last pastor in the log building, first in the brick. Ernest Quarles gave $10,000 for the construction project and it was finally paid off in full three years later, in 1985. It is in this modern building where they meet every Wednesday evening, and every second, fourth, and fifth Sunday morning.
We sat in the fellowship hall, ladybugs on the ceiling and these three precious books of records spread out before us. Every second Saturday of the month the congregation holds church conference, a tradition that stretches back at least as far as the date of the first entry. At one time a member could actually be dismissed from the church for missing too many con- ferences, and it was in the notes of these gatherings that the stories were found, if you knew where to look.
There were Rules of Decorum and Statements of Faith. There were lists of male members and female members. There were records of those joining the church by “experience of grace,” or by letter from another Baptist Church, or by “watchcare” with the expectation of a letter. There were those who left to join other churches or passed into the cemetery. There were those who were dismissed for drunkenness, fornication, profane language, dealing in liquor, and disorderly conduct. Someone attempted murder and lost access to church fellowship, and another stole chickens the year of the Stock Market Crash of 1929 and was shown the door. The hands of dozens of church clerks recorded the business of the congregation for a full century, with illegible scribblings, spidery scratchings, and beautiful calligraphy, using grey pencil and black ink. Spellings varied. Format didn’t.
There were surprises: The Rev. J.C. Worley, presumably a relative of the murdered Henry Worley, victim in the famous “whitecap cases” of the 1890s who was buried in the graveyard, was the first pastor mentioned in the first ledger book. The indomitable Nancy Pankey was the first woman mentioned in the records to serve as church clerk in 1929. The concrete for the dinner tables was poured in 1972, with the exact amount expended on record. The purchase of a vacuum cleaner was important enough to note.
There are about forty members now. Fewer show up for services. Slightly more might come to Revival every August. Many more do on Homecoming Day every June, lining the serpentine road with their cars. Their ranks are small, but they are loyal.
Danny smiled when he read the names, made the connections, found tidbits of unfamiliar history. We spent more than an hour deciphering the ledgers, and then we went into the bright afternoon and up the hill to the cemetery. He identified the monuments of relatives, who was kin to whom, who was mean, who beloved. I shared the Worley history I had uncovered and the significance of the proximity of burial plots. He told stories that will stay between us, and others that helped me understand the history of this place.

The mist had burned off by then, but I felt a web of connection running from the morning worshippers to the voices from the ledgers to those in eternal repose on the hillside. All participated in a community of the living and the dead, the faithful present and the peaceful departed. After a final handshake, I left with his phone number and email address, pages of notes, and gratitude for having participated, if only for a few hours, in the kinship of Ridgeway Baptist Church.
Clayton H. Ramsey is a freelance writer and former president of the Atlanta Writers Club. He lives in Decatur. For more informa- tion about (and photography of ) Georgia’s historic rural churches, visit www.hrcga.org.