DUANE
Duane's take
Here's how the official marker tells it, and I'll pass it along just the same. Now, some stories start with a bang — a gunfight, a flood, a fortune struck overnight. This one starts with a deed.
Two lots of land, signed over on October 25, 1888, by J. E. and Mary E. Turner to three men: Uriah French, Lewis Jones, and Thomas Garrett, serving as trustees of the Christian Church.
The town was Smithfield — a brand-new railroad town, the kind of place still findin' its footing, still figurin' out what it was going to be. And right there in the middle of that becoming, somebody put up a one-room building for worship services. Nothing fancy.
Just four walls and a congregation with something to say to each other and to the sky. Then came the early 1900s, and with them a doctrinal split — the quiet kind of earthquake that shakes a church right down its foundation. When the dust settled, the congregation carried on under a new name: the Smithfield Church of Christ.
They kept going. Decades passed. By 1956, the congregation purchased property on a new site — just across the street from where it all began, which, if you think about it, is about as far as you can move while still keeping one eye on where you came from.
And by 1960, a new building stood complete on that ground. Across the street from two lots deeded in 1888. Same community.
Same purpose. Different century. Programs of study, worship, and outreach carried the congregation forward from there, woven so deep into Smithfield's story that you really can't tell one without the other.
Some things last not because they're loud, but because they're rooted. And those roots go all the way back to October 25, 1888, and two people who signed their names on a deed.
What the marker says
Smithfield Church of Christ This congregation can trace its history to October 25, 1888, when J. E. and Mary E. Turner deeded two lots of land in the new railroad town of Smithfield to Christian Church trustees Uriah French, Lewis Jones and Thomas Garrett. A one-room building was constructed on the property for worship services. Known as the Smithfield Church of Christ after a doctrinal split in the early 1900s, the congregation purchased property on this site in 1956, across the street from its original location, and completed a new building in 1960. Programs of study, worship and outreach continue to keep the Smithfield Church of Christ a significant part of the community's heritage. (2002)