A photograph of the first Pine Grove Baptist Church

I had no idea that you and I had so much in common. I love cemeteries and Pine Grove Baptist Cemetery in particular.

This photo of the first Pine Grove Baptist church was copied from an original loaned to me by Charles Ray and Maxine White.

As children growing up out in the country we didn't have a whole lot to do especially during the summer vacation months. So, at least once or twice a month we would walk to Pine Grove Baptist Cemetery, walk around looking at all the gravestones while Aunt Ella would tell us who these people were and we would sample the Honeysuckle that grew in the ditch beside the road around the cemetery. This is another one of my fondest memories about Aunt Ella and my youth and childhood. I think between all the visits to Pine Grove Cemetery and having Aunt Ella living with us and telling us stories of the old days formed me into who I am today.

After my husband, Blake and I moved back to Chesterfield County in 1993, I began visiting the library and court house to do research, talking with some of the older family members to gather their history and memories, and going to the family cemeteries to clean them up. I kept running into some of the same people at the library and court house, so one day we came up with the idea of starting a genealogical society. Maybe this was a good idea, but it ended up taking up all of my time with the day to day business and I no longer had time for my own family history.

When we were first forming the genealogy society though, I was also taking my second course in Genealogical Research. It was a very in depth home study course offered by the National Genealogical Society that took me almost two years to complete. One of the lessons in the course was about local church and cemetery records. I had to find a church that actually still had some of its earliest history and had kept its cemetery records. I went to three churches, first Friendship Methodist, then I think Shiloh Methodist, before ending up using Pine Grove Baptist for my lesson. I called around to the local church members and located some of the written history. Borrowed this photograph of the old church that also served as a school and compiled the cemetery survey. I did all this only a couple of months after my Dad died in October of 1999. It turned out to be the most rewarding lesson in the course. It was very educational as well as somehow comforting and soothing.

During the course of my surveying the cemetery which took three days, Rev. Routan came out to ask what it was that I was doing. In explaining to him about the course that I was taking and the lesson that I was working on, he asked if the church could have a copy of the survey when I was finished. I gladly complied and made sure that I did my absolute best on this lesson. I am sure there are mistakes, but I still have several copies of this survey as well as a hand drawn plat of the locations of each grave numbered. If anyone would like a copy, just let me know where to send it to. As another part of this lesson, I found out that the Pine Grove Baptist Church history and minutes had not yet been microfilmed by Furman Baptist University for their Special Archives. At that time Furman was offering this service for free for Baptist Churches, but charging a fee for the other denominations. Now every church is charged a fee. Anyway, I wrote a letter to the Deacons of Pine Grove explaining the process, giving them the contact information and asked that they please have this done for the future safekeeping of the rich church history that Pine Grove had which included almost all of our Eddins, White and Rivers families as well as some of my Freeman family. They readily agreed that this would be a good thing and now they have a copy of this microfilm as well as the copy that is held at Furman University Library.

I started a committee in the genealogy society to encourage all the church in Chesterfield County to have their records microfilmed, but it was very timeconsuming and not an overwhelming success. Mrs. Sarah Norwood Campbell was, without a doubt, the best and hardest working member of this committee.

By the way, I am sorry about the photo that I added of Jack and Dollie Eddins. I could not remember how to add it to my post and now it is just up there without all the information. If you could tell me how to add it to the post/comment and delete it from where it is or if you can do this, please do or tell me how. I would greatly appreciate it.

One more thing . . . I called Charles Ray and Maxine yesterday to invite them over to our home for Memorial Day. I had to leave a message. Maxine called me back last night to tell me that Charles Ray was in the hospital since this past Tuesday with a fast heartbeat. They actually shocked his heart to get it back into rythem which is what they have had to do to my mother's heart several times. He is hoping to come home from the hospital today, but if you want to call him he is in the Myrtle Beach Grand Strand Hospital.