Lower Fairforest Baptist Church, Union, celebrated its 250th anniversary during homecoming services Aug. 26.
Lower Fairforest Baptist ChurchPastor Jim Cunningham welcomed guest speaker Mike Whelchel, whose father served as pastor of Lower Fairforest for almost three decades.
The church was founded on Dec. 13, 1762, when a group of 13 people traveled from North Carolina and settled in the fork of Dining Creek and Fairforest Creek. The group built a simple log house for worship.
Later, men of the church met after working their own crops and tramped out the mud to make the bricks for a new building. The brick building stood 116 years, but burned during a January 1888 Sunday School Convention meeting.
The church was rebuilt as a frame building. A baptismal pool was dug out not far from the spring. When a baptism was scheduled, the spring was dammed up and made to flow into the baptistry.
The church struggled during the war with England because of divided loyalties in the congregaton. The cemetery remains at the original site, but many markers have been broken and Civil War markers have been stolen.
In 1932, the church moved to a new location about 11 miles from the original site. Church members carefully dismantled the old building in order to reuse materials in the new building. In 1978 a parsonage was built, and a fellowship building was added in 2008.