The final Amen was uttered Sunday as members and former members of Walnut Grove Presbyterian Church said goodbye. The church -- located between Farmington and Prairie Grove -- held its final service and the congregation disbanded after 187 years.
The church, long a pillar in the community, recorded only seven members at the time of its closure, reported Bruce Schlegel. Schlegel, ordained as an elder in the Presbyterian Church USA, has served the church as a part-time lay pastor for the past eight years.
The church has seen a decline in membership every year, Schlegel said. "The old folks have passed away, and the young folks have gone to the city. After World War II, generation after generation after generation moved away.
"It's a sad thing, change in the way America works," he continued. "This was always a community church. The church was about serving the community."
Juel Hamblen Giles, a descendant of early church members, recorded a saying of the late Maclin Leroy Hamblen, in a 1993 article in the Rural Arkansas magazine of Ozark Electric Cooperative:
"If you are looking for a church where you will be appreciated when you are present and missed when you are absent, this will be your church."
Not so rich history
Several of the seven remaining members of Walnut Grove Presbyterian Church could boast of roots in the congregation dating back to the early 19th century. Henry Tollett and his family settled in Walnut Grove in 1828, on land just opened for white settlement.
"They worshiped out in the open by a creek under a brush arbor," Schlegel said. "The early pioneers were worshiping even before they had a church building."
"Henry and Eliza Tollett were very religious people, and the first Sunday after their arrival, they held services at their big spring, later called Mountain Spring, according to Temperance Laura Tollett Hamblen and her cousin R.M. Morton, grandchildren of Henry and Eliza," reads a history provided by 30-year church member Linda Hayes. She has collected several written histories of the church.
"They very quickly built a log building for worship," reads another history. "That building burned in about five years, and another quickly replaced it. In the late 1850s, a two-story frame was built -- the lower floor for worship while the Masons used the upper floor."
"The Walnut Grove Community Presbyterian Church was organized in October 1887 in the Protestant Methodist Church building -- where the community fellowship building sits now," reads a 1993 history written by Giles.
The Rev. Sexton was a circuit preacher and the first at Walnut Grove.
As those early pioneers grew older, the new Cumberland Presbyterian Church, popular around the country at the time, grew stronger and soon took the place of the Methodists, Giles wrote. The church changed from Cumberland to U.S.A. Presbyterian about 1911.
"During the Civil War, before and during the Battle of Prairie Grove, Union soldiers camped at Walnut Grove and made the new two-story building, which was nearing completion, their headquarters," history records. "They burned it when they left."
The most recent home of Walnut Grove Presbyterian Church was a brick structure dating to 1903.
"Church members must have been relieved to move into a building of fire-resistant brick," wrote Bob Besom, director emeritus of the Shiloh Museum of Ozark History, in a 2006 history in The Northwest Arkansas Times. "There had already been five wooden churches built on the site, beginning with an 1830s long structure. Three of these were destroyed by fire. One went up in flames during the Battle of Prairie Grove."
"They suffered through the Civil War -- this was a terrible place to live during the Civil War -- and survived Reconstruction," Schlegel said.
For building materials, the congregation did not have to search far, Besom noted.
"Church members George and Frank Terpening operated a brick factory on their farm, located less than a mile from the church site," history recounts. "In 1890 or thereabouts, the Terpening family discovered clay on their land and began experimenting with brick making. In time, the family created the Terpening Brick and Tile Company. They purchased a stem-drive machine to mix and mold the clay and constructed a drying shed and a large kiln to finish off the bricks."
The church members provided labor, too. The Terpenings and Nathan Hanks, a circuit-riding Presbyterian minister, laid the bricks, and Hanks and George Terpening were credited with the woodwork, too -- "including the handsome beaded ceiling and the ornate comfortable pews."
One of Hayes' histories says the new building featured a "commodious auditorium" (the most recent sanctuary), "equipped with a heating plant and electric lights."
The only feature of the church that couldn't be provided locally was the stained-glass windows -- rumored to have been imported from Europe.
"It was their only extravagance," said Bo Morton of Fayetteville. He attended the final service Sunday afternoon for a final look at the stained-glass window dedicated to his family forebears, Harriet and James Morton.
Ten years after the building was finished, the congregation struggled to pay a part-time minister, the histories agree. The pastor E.M. Freyschlag convinced the church members to purchase 25 acres of nearby farmland and grow crops to support the church. The sale of tomatoes and strawberries provided enough money to pay off all debts and build a manse. They also paid a full-time pastor at a higher salary than was paid by most larger churches.
Members of the community who had no ties to the church also contributed. "This shows how important others in the community considered the Walnut Grove Presbyterian Church to be," one record reads.
"This was never a congregation with people of any money," Schlegel said. "They were rural people who donated their time. It was really incredible."
"The congregation has long since sold the farmland, and those 25 acres have sprouted modern homes," Besom wrote.
Historic future
Today's tiny congregation could not support the cost to operate and preserve its historic 1903 building.
"We've known for a few years," Schlegel said. That early church garden created a nest egg for future congregations, he said. "But we were taking more out than we were taking in. We've been operating on savings for a long time."
Currently, the Presbytery of Arkansas owns the historic church building, and a commission has been appointed to determine options for its fate.
Ted Belden of Fayetteville, a Presbyterian elder and member of the commission, said the commission has just started its work and might take six months to a year to finalize plans. Options might include using the structure for another purpose, selling the building to another church or to someone who will turn it into a house.
"Folks go on to other churches, but the building will remain with the Presbytery," he said.
Belden said the commission understands the building's historical significance -- especially of the stained-glass windows.
Subdivisions now surround the church. "But they won't want a one-room church," Morton said. "They'll want programs for their kids. Perhaps the building could be a home to a church plant until it can build its own building."
"I hope another Christian church will worship there and enjoy it as we did," Hayes said.
"It was hard on the church," Belden said. "They were a wonderful congregation and significant in the community for years. But the area around the church is growing. Now might not be the time to abandon ship but to reinvest."
Saying goodbye
Charlotte Mefford of Springdale grew up in the Walnut Grove church. "I grew up in that church. I was married in that church. And my oldest daughter was christened in that church."
Her father, Max Tate, is still a member, but because of health reasons, has rarely been able to attend. Her mother, Arlene Tate, also grew up in that church. Arlene died April 16. Her grandparents worshiped there before moving "to town," to Prairie Grove. Mefford and her family now worship at the Presbyterian church in Springdale.
"There were a lot of children," Mefford said of the 1950s and 1960s. "I remember a lot of Bible schools and dinners held in the community building that just recently burned."
"When I came with my parents, Herbert and Elizabeth Shumate Benbrook to Walnut Grove in 1915, the first things I remember are Tom Shumate leading the song, 'Send the Light,' and looking at a linen sampler on the wall, embroidered in brown thread, that read, 'As the twig is bent, the tree is inclined," Giles wrote. "I was told that it was very old and had been embroidered by Eliza Tollett in the 1800s for the little Protestant Methodist church."
"Through the years, this place has seen an unbelievable number of baptisms, weddings and funerals," reads one of Hayes' histories. "The life cycle has been played out over and over and has created a mystique to this building that is not unlike the old saying about a house ... 'It takes a lot to make a house a home.' This church has become a home. It has seen generations of children grow up. Special Christmases and Easters. Potluck suppers. Picnics. Just the act of singing hymns and praying together Sunday after Sunday has created a spiritual bond between the people who came here and also between them and the place to which they came. That bond can never be broken.
"This place represents the best in America -- family, community, God. Although I believe this building needs to be preserved for future generations to enjoy, whatever future it has, it will always have precious memories to all those who have worshiped here. Like a living thing, it will always be home to them. May God bless and keep this church."
"They are wonderful people out there that have held onto their church as long as they possibly could," Schlegel said of the church members. "It was a privilege to be their pastor. Memories of the people -- those who are still there and those who have passed away -- that's what I will take away from Walnut Grove. Every single one of them is a special human being.
"It's something for history to come to an end.""
NAN Religion on 05/09/2015