By Colleen Nelson
Bill and Vivian Eakin of Waynesburg were packing things up and getting ready for their move to Washington to be closer to the kids when Tom Waters and I came knocking with their Monday Meals on Wheels lunch. We had become good friends over these deliveries available to those who have trouble preparing a meal and Vivian was always there with a smile to pay for this assistance to their living at home. But now she was sorting out what to take to their new digs and she told me she had some things that needed a perfect new home.
“I have the communion table and chairs from the Claylick Church and I don’t have room for them at my new place,” she tells me. “Do you think the museum would want them?” I gave director Matt Cumberledge a call then and there. Heck yeah – they’ll come get it!
I remember seeing that little white church on the hill when taking the shortcut from Bristoria Road to Graysville by way of Claylick back in the day. Vivian tells me the church plagued by bees and the building was dismantled. The building was dismantled sometime in the 1980s; that’s when she got permission to save the communion set. Her love for it came from attending services there in the 1930s when she spent summers with her Knight relatives near Holbrook. Now the sacraments she saved have their special place at the Greene County Historical Society Museum.
Vivian also donated a painting done by her brother William L. Knight’s who is buried in the cemetery that now stands alone on its knoll above Claylick Road, sheltered by a massive oak tree. You can hike up and enjoy the solitude of hallowed ground. I read the stones and found a corner plot of Scotts, whose sons mustered out with Company A 140th Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry. Over in another corner I found M. E. Pettit who was a private with the 65th Infantry in World War I.
William L. Knight painting is a photographic capture of the church that is no more. Look closely and you’ll see he and Vivian standing beside a doorway, getting ready to say goodbye.
The history of Claylick Church can be found at Cornerstone Genealogical Society, filled with family names from the early days, when the faithful met in a log cabin on Edmund Scott’s farm before the church was built. “Prior to 1874, there was no organized church in Claylick valley.” Lay pastors from the community conducted services and the occasional ordained minister would come to preach and give communion. Later the faithful would meet at the new school building on the Johnson farm, “with two denominations represented; the Methodist Protestant and the Cumberland Presbyterian.” When Claylick Church was finally built on land donated by Mathias Scott, the congregations agreed to “occupy the house every alternated Sabbath, except during the progress of a revival” and share the upkeep. Each congregation chose their own trustee and a third was chosen jointly.
Then they rolled up their collective sleeves and built their church. First services were held on October 1, 1874, with Reverend Phillip Axtell serving the Presbyterians, and the Methodists served by Reverend J. B. McCormick.
Since I started out writing about Bristoria, just over the hill from Claylick, I was happy to learn that when the Presbyterians of Bristoria built their church in 1914 it became third in the charge shared by Claylick Church and Harmony Presbyterian Church in Wind Ridge.
The history gathered for the 90th anniversary celebration in 1964 tells us that the church was closed only once in 90 years and that was the winter of 1937 “due to inactivity and bad weather.” It would not reopen until the first Sunday in April, 1939.
In 1963 there was a “concerted effort to repair and redecorate the church.” An electric heating system was installed, plaster got repaired, ceiling and walls were insulated, new wallpaper was hung and a new worship center was put in.
And there the paper trail ends.If anyone remembers when the last sermon was read, let the Greene County Historical Society know. Matt can add it to the story of a little country church that lives on in the communion table and chairs and William L. Knight’s beautiful painting.