HISTORY OF GUM BRANCH BAPTIST CHURCH
DARLINGTON COUNTY, SC, 1789-1989,
by Jill King Lyles...As
all students of Darlington County history and genealogy know,
the Baptist Church had a strong influence upon the Pee Dee
region from the mid-1730’s
through the present day.
Many early families who lived along the Pee Dee River have
been documented using the minutes of the Welsh Neck Baptist
Church and the diaries
of Rev. Evan Pugh. However,
for those researchers whose families lived on the opposite
side of Darlington County, along Lynches Creek, documentation
has been a much more
difficult task. Now
there is a tool that will make their research a little easier.
Gum
Branch Baptist Church was first identified in the records as
the Baptist congregation at
the Lower Fork of Lynches Creek in 1789.
It is indeed fortunate that the church’s
minutes survive from this date.
This church served the religious needs of those
individuals living in the extreme western corner of
Darlington County as well as
neighboring Chesterfield, Kershaw, and the upper Salem
portion of Sumter County.
Lyles’ history relies on church minutes, Baptist
Association Minutes, local anecdotes,
ministers’ biographies and reminiscences to paint a
portrait of Gum Branch’s roll in the
development and growth of the Baptist denomination in
Darlington County. Concrete
information on many of the church’s early members
(including females and slaves) is
difficult to obtain from traditional sources.
The pages of this history are rich with the
day-to-day activities of the church.
Members were disciplined for offenses that seem
unusual from today’s perspective.
Changes in church membership, vital in
documenting migration patterns, are well documented on the
pages of this history.
Lyles’ history is supplemented and enhanced by the
inclusion of membership roles,
lists of church officers, and letters from former ministers.
© 2000, 233 pages, soft
bound, full name index, Library of Congress Catalog Card
Number- 00-102879.
(See Index
of this book) Price: $25.00 plus
$4.00 shipping for first book and
$1.50 for
each additional book.
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