“The mother church of many Western York County, S.C. African American institutions.”
BLUE BRANCH PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH: Founded by freedman, Reverend Baker Russell, former slave of Rev. Robert Y. Russell, shortly after the Civil War. Baker attended Bullocks Creek Presbyterian Church and was converted under the voice of his master who tutored him in the Scriptures. This was the first black church in the area and is the mother of other congregations whether they are Presbyterian, Baptist or A.M.E Zion, this congregation continued to the 1960’s when it became defunct. The original building (probably log) has long since been razed and the present building was erected in 1945. This church is located in a wooded area off Blanton Road; the site originally was on Quinn’s Road.
Baker Russell was born in Virginia in 1819, at the age of five he was brought to Yorkville where Rev. Russell took compassion on the boy and purchased him. The 1880 census show Baker and his wife living in the Bullocks Creek area along with nineteen-year-old Willie Williams and a fifteen-year-old boy; both were “indentured servants.“ A fifteen-year-old girl, Alice Minter, was listed as a “domestic servant.”
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