Pickens County, South Carolina Genealogy Trails

Pickens County, South Carolina
Genealogy Trails
A History Of Mt. Calvary Wesleyan Methodist Church
(As Told By J. P. Black, submitted by Yuna Black)

In 1927, a tornado came through the "Black Community" (as it was called, because of the numbers of people with the name Black in the area), just at treetop level. The tornado loosely followed the path of what is now Hwy. 135, barely missing Charlie Black's home, before crashing through a grove of trees, roughly where Mt. Calvary church now stands. Those trees were ripped and tossed everywhere, but it left people's homes alone.

The tornado disappeared in a field just past the sight of where the cemetery is now. It was said that it would be a shame to waste all that wood, so the people in the community got together and decided to build a church on the spot. The Sheriff's, who owned a sawmill, cut up all the logs and the church was built by the men in the community from those boards. (Most of them were later buried right there at the church, including J. Sam Black, who was killed when a church in Greenville he was building collapsed during a storm.) The church was in almost continuous use until Charlie Black died in 1965. Thereafter, it was attended sporadically until sold and the name changed to Mt. Calvary Pilgrim Holiness Church, in the 1990's.

(Note: J. P. Black was the son of J. Sam Black and lived in the community his entire life. This story was told to the author after the funeral of Ruth Stewart Black in 1996.)

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