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Mt. Zion Associate Reformed Presbyterian Church – History by Paul M. Gettys, 2024
The Yorkville Enquirer reported on August 8, 1872: The only colored A.R.P. [Associate Reformed Presbyterian] church in the world has recently been built at Due West in Abbeville County.
A short sketch of this church was included in the book The Second Century: A History of the Associate Reformed Presbyterians, 1882-1982 by Lowry Ware and James W Gettys, published in 1982 as part of the Bicentennial celebration of the denomination. This article is summarized below from pages 115 and 116 of the book.
The Due West Associate Reformed Presbyterian Church before the Civil War had been notably successful in attracting slave members, and during the war it added some fifty more. In 1865, the black members totaled 150, whereas there were only 90 white members. The black members were ministered to by Rev. W. R. Hemphill and Rev. J. N. Young, both professors at Erskine College. After emancipation, Rev. Young’s former slave, Thomas L. Young, was prepared for the ministry by his former master. In May 1870, the Second Presbytery met at Due West where T. L. Young was ordained. The licensure took place at the college’s Lindsay Hall before a large gathering of blacks and whites with Rev. J. P. Pressly preaching.
One week later, most of the colored members of the Due West church were organized into a new congregation which sometime later took the name of Mt. Zion. The first communion was held and new officers were ordained. The membership soon reached one hundred, and a church structure was built just west of the Erskine College campus. (This is the building described in the Enquirer article). In 1877, a cyclone badly damaged the building, and a few years later another church was erected on a site east of the Due West Female College, now part of Erskine College. This building was on Beulah Street.
For the next dozen years, Mt. Zion was the A. R. P. Synod’s only black congregation, and Rev. Young its only black minister. The church continued to depend on the Due West church for its support until 1882 when it transferred to the United Presbyterian Church. The explanation for this move was to seek affiliation with a denomination which could supply black ministers. The United Presbyterian Church was a northern denomination which was closely related to the A. R. P. Church and which had been active since the Civil War in beginning churches and schools among blacks in the south. For some years after Mt. Zion left the A. R. P. denomination, the Due West church continued to provide occasional preaching, and members of Mt. Zion continued to be buried in the section of the Due West church cemetery previously set aside for black members.
The Mt. Zion church declined in membership and after a number of years was disbanded. The building no longer exists.
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