Pine Valley Cemetery and Missionary Baptist Church

Duane's take

Here's my telling of what the official marker says about Pine Valley Cemetery and Missionary Baptist Church, out in San Jacinto County. Now, every good church has a founding story, and this one starts in a smokehouse. Not a chapel, not a courthouse, not even a cleared field under the open sky.

A smokehouse. Sometime around 1868, the organizational meeting for this congregation was held right there, in the smokehouse of a man named David Pursley. You have to appreciate the setting.

The smell of cured meat in the air, and folks deciding, here and now, that they were going to build something that lasts. And build they did. The members themselves put up the earliest sanctuary, a log building raised by the hands of the very people who would worship inside it.

The first pastor to stand before that congregation was the Reverend Lewin Adams, born in 1822, and he is buried right there on those grounds today, having passed in 1899. He saw this church from its smoky beginnings through decades of Sundays. The cemetery beside that church has its own story to tell.

It served the pioneer settlers of the whole surrounding area, and it holds within it a grave that carries a particular kind of quiet weight. The earliest marked grave belongs to a woman named Susan Henley Irby, born in 1825, who died in 1878. She had come from Mississippi.

She was visiting. And she never made it back home. Her grave became, in a manner of speaking, the oldest named stone in this place.

The church found fellowship beyond its own walls, too, becoming an early member of the Tryon Baptist Association. And every May, the congregation still gathers here for homecoming. A smokehouse start, a log building built by the faithful, and more than a century later, people still coming back.

That's a story that keeps going.

What the marker says

The organizational meeting for this church was held about 1868 in the smokehouse of David Pursley. The earliest sanctuary was a log building constructed by the members, and the Rev. Lewin Adams (1822-1899), who is buried here, served as the first pastor. The community burial ground also served the pioneer settlers of the area. The earliest marked grave is that of Susan Henley Irby (1825-1878) who died here while on a visit from Mississippi. An early member of the Tryon Baptist Association, the church celebrates homecoming here each May.