Spotlight Rural Builders

Rural Builders still the bedrock that supports Son's Chapel

The National Register of Historical Places placard designated by the United States Department of the Interior by the front entrance of Son's Chapel in Fayetteville May 19, 2015.
The National Register of Historical Places placard designated by the United States Department of the Interior by the front entrance of Son's Chapel in Fayetteville May 19, 2015.

Trisha Beland isn't the only one who keeps the history of Son's Chapel in east Fayetteville alive. But she's the only one with "historian" as her job description.

photo

NWA Democrat-Gazette

Trisha Beland stands in front of Son’s Chapel on Arkansas 45 in east Fayetteville. The Rural Builders, who support maintenance of the chapel, will hold an open house on Sept. 10.

"Because I was a terrible quilter," Beland says when asked how she took on the role. "They came up with 'historian' so I could still participate and feel like I was contributing."

Go & Do

Son’s Chapel

Open House

What: Quilt display, baby quilts and crafts for sale, chapel tours, silent auction, music by Central City Grass, Farmer and the Markets and harpist Desire Gashler

When: Noon to 5 p.m. Sept. 10

Where: 21/2 miles east of Crossover and Mission at 5480 E. Mission in Fayetteville

Admission: Free

Information: sonschapel.com or email [email protected]

"They" is a 501(c)3 nonprofit called the Rural Builders. Being a recognized nonprofit is fairly new -- the designation was received in 2015 -- but the organization dates back to 1922, when "determined local rural women conceived the idea of building a community chapel and center for activities and scraped together pennies doing whatever they could to slowly build the chapel," Beland says.

Son's Chapel gets its name not from Christ but from the Son family, who in 1852 sold for $2 "two acres and 117 poles for use of the Methodist Protestant Church ... for the benefit of said church forever," a history published in 1937 reads. On that property was built a log chapel, which the community eventually outgrew, Beland explains.

"Women of the community got together and decided they would form a club to raise money to build a bigger nondenominational chapel and community building," she says. "They had pie sales and contracted to provide lunches at cattle sales, made quilts, so it took a long time. As they had the money, they'd do a little bit more. Mostly it was the husbands and a few hired people who actually built the chapel." And that explains the "giving credit to 'God and our husbands' on a plaque at the back of building."

Over the years, the women have continued to be the ones to keep the building -- and the community -- solid. Every Tuesday, rain or shine, about three dozen women meet. Their stated purpose is to quilt -- and they do. But "it's the camaraderie and the friendships you form while you're sitting there and visiting over the quilt frame" that keeps many of them, including Jeanette Loris, coming back.

Loris, who has been a member of the Rural Builders club since she moved north from Fort Smith with her husband in 1996, wanted to "attach myself and both of us to Fayetteville," she says. Already a Master Gardener, she was invited by a colleague to visit Son's Chapel.

"I did sew some, but I didn't quilt," she says. "I had never been in a group that would take the time and patience to teach me. That's one of the things I love about this group. A lot of people come who are not quilters, and we take them on and teach them."

It is Loris' job to draw the patterns on baby quilts, which will be embroidered, quilted and sold to help support the upkeep of the rock-walled building.

"The maintenance of the chapel is primary to anything we do," she says. "How many 90-year-old buildings are still around? It's a beautiful little chapel, unique in the fact that it's rock, and it was established ... to be the center of the community."

McRae remembers when that community was much smaller -- and members of the Rural Builders had to live within a few miles of Son's Chapel. Her father, an architect, was the designer of the building, and her grandmother was one of the founders of the club.

"We moved here just about the time that the building was built," she recalls. "We had Sunday school in the little one-room school, then when the church building was mostly completed, they moved the Sunday school into the church. That's when I start remembering." McRae was also the first to marry in the chapel. Although she moved away and didn't return until 2011, she kept up with the Rural Builders.

"My grandparents and parents and husband are all buried out at that church," she says. "It's just part of me."

Beland points to women like McRae as the real driving force behind the Rural Builders and the continued upkeep of Son's Chapel. "I'm a minor part of it," she says. But she was selected to spread the word about an event coming up Sept. 10 at the church.

"In old photographs and articles in the Fayetteville paper, they said they had crafts fairs every fall [at Son's Chapel] as a way of making money. They probably sold quilts and whatever they had made to get people to stop by and buy stuff," she says. "Now people zoom down [Arkansas] 45 without even seeing it, except every once in a while someone pulls in on a Tuesday because they see the cars.

"We had an open house last May when we had our 70th anniversary of the dedication, but we haven't had a craft open house for a lot of years. So we formed a committee and decided to try it."

Her hope, she says, is that "people who have never been to the chapel before will stop and see what's inside." The event, she adds, is the same day as Polo in the Ozarks on out Arkansas 45, and the Ozark Quilt Fair is that same morning at the Shiloh Museum of Ozark History in Springdale. "We will have people at Shiloh displaying quilts and publicizing the open house," she says. "We're looking for a new audience.

"The only thing [Rural Builders] members get is meeting every Tuesday to quilt and sew and socialize and solve the world's problems and try to come up with money raising ideas," she says. "We all love the chapel, and we want it to continue -- and that's why we do this."

NAN Profiles on 08/21/2016

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