New Kent Charles City Chronicle

News for New Kent County and Charles City County, Virginia | March 29, 2024

Charles City church nearing 200th anniversary milestone

By Community Member | August 26, 2010 11:46 am

Members of Charles City County’s Elam Baptist Church are busily preparing for the church’s 200th anniversary celebration scheduled for Sept. 23-26.

Located in Ruthville, Elam is regarded as one of the oldest black churches in Virginia. The church’s history will be a focal point of the Thursday-Sunday celebration along with guest speakers, a banquet and cookout, and a dedication ceremony.

“We are excited, and we want the public to know they are invited,” said the church’s pastor, the Rev. Horace Parham.

“We expect to have a grand time,” he said. “We are indeed thankful to God for 200 years of ministry. To accomplish what the people did in 1810, it’s sometimes difficult for me to grasp that the church was started 40 years before the Civil War.

“We want everyone to come and enjoy and have a good time. Our members have helped plan, arrange, and set up our 200th anniversary, and we’re thankful for that.”

Thursday begins with a meet and greet session where visitors can peruse church archives that include old written stories and letters along with a pictorial history of the church, Parham said.

At 6:30 p.m., University of Richmond professor Dr. Darryl Dance will speak on the church’s founding, history, and uniqueness.

Friday features a 7 p.m. banquet ($25 per person) at Charles City Social Center with guest speaker Dr. Richard Willis from First Baptist Church in Hampton.

“On Saturday, we plan to go to the original site of the church where it was organized in 1810 and have a dedication and memorial service,” Parham said. “Then we’ll walk to Elam Cemetery where last year we dedicated a monument for those in the Revolutionary War from Charles City. Then we’ll return to the church for an old-fashioned cookout.”

Sunday starts off with Parham leading the 11 a.m. worship service. Then Dr. Wesley McLaughton from Mount Olivet Baptist Church in Petersburg takes the podium for the 3 p.m. service.

“We expect to have a grand time in the Lord,” Parham said.

Dance, who teaches American and English literature along with African-American and Caribbean literature and folklore, said Elam existed as one of only a handful of truly black churches in the antebellum South.

“It’s often cited as the third oldest black church in Virginia and was the most independent of the early black churches” she said, adding it’s open to interpretation and debate as to where Elam actually ranks.

“It was the first independent black church founded by blacks, not whites, on land provided by blacks and not whites,” she said.

“It is amazing to me the independence they had at that time,” she added. “It was the most independent of the early black churches and one of the few that has continued.”

Elam’s members back then, Dance said, represented the church in the Dover Association, the governing body for Baptist churches in Virginia.

“As a historian, I find events occurring then and the activism really quite unusual for 1810, and we know they were worshipping before that,” she said.

A Charles City native who grew up and was married in Elam, she labeled Ruthville as a unique community with an air of sophistication where educated blacks held large land holdings. The area was known as “Freetown” in pre-Civil War Days.

“They had an activist sense even in those days when activism was a dangerous thing,” she said.

That activism continued long after the Civil War, she said, noting several churches that had their roots in Elam and three schools that evolved from the church.

All that has been accomplished over the past 200 years now comes together for the four-day anniversary celebration.

“We’ve been here for 200 years,” Parham said. “Hopefully it continues.”