Shining the Light

By Colleen Nelson

The Upper Ten Mile Presbyterian Church is hard to see from Route 18 but the Fish Fry Friday 1-6:30 p.m. sign is a good marker for the slope of Church Lane that takes you up the hill to the modest brick building with its no nonsense steeple that has been serving the faithful for more than 100 years. Go back another century and you get the full story of how Presbyterians have kept the faith here since frontier days.

According to Crumrine’s history, published in 1883, a group of settlers living in and around Prosperity “met at Jacob Cook’s house and organized a church.” The year was 1781 and the frontier wars were still ongoing between the French, the English and their indigenous proxies. The Presbyterian religion of Europe was being forged anew in this new land of opportunity, as differing interpretations of Scripture and man’s commitments to follow the tenets of Christ took on the concept of self-determination versus predetermination. Settlers no longer believed that souls were preordained for salvation before birth. The frontier taught them that Christians were in charge of their own destiny if they chose to follow scriptures and live the life Christ intended. These were the years when God and danger came calling on a daily basis. A church record from 1783 tells us “we should have had the sacrament of the Lord’s supper ministered but could not complete our designs on account of the incursions of the savages.” On April 30 “the session met at Lindley’s fort and 22 persons joined.” By May 3, things had settled down and the now burgeoning congregation celebrated Sabbath with Reverend Dodd in Daniel Axtell’s barn.

Demas Lindley donated some land near the fort for “a Presbyterian Church and no other” and the faithful built their first meetinghouse there in 1792. No record remains of what it looked like but by 1818 a second frame building “45 by 50 feet with a gallery on two sides and one end” had replaced it. A third church was built on the same site in 1854 but was destroyed by fire in 1860. The brick church you see today on Church Lane, just around the bend from Prosperity was built in 1860 and while the bricks were being laid the congregation either met at “the schoolhouse or outdoors, weather permitting.”

Revivals swept through post Colonial America in the early 1800s, as the message of the New Testament was honed to fit the needs and the politics of the time. People disagreed over tenets and upper and lower congregations formed as charismatic preachers forged their own flocks. According to Crumrine, on December 14, 1803 Joseph Riggs held forth “in a sugar camp with a canopy of heaven for a temple, snow for a carpet and wind accompanying a chorus of hundreds of voices.” By 1811 the upper and lower Presbyterian churches had split and in 1831 a camp meeting that lasted through the summer into autumn helped form the Cumberland Presbyterians. In 1832, 62 people in the Prosperity congregation “were received.”

Through all this back and forth, the Upper Ten Mile Presbyterian Church managed to keep its doors open and do good work.

Today’s congregation is a friendly, informal fraternity of families, and most have known each other for centuries. The two cemeteries that spread from the church back yard to the top of the hill with that amazing view of town – and three bars on your cell phone if you need to call out! – are full of last names that match the phone book, including town founder Robert Wallace.

I picked a wonderful day to visit – the parking lot was full and so was the basement. It was the second Lenten Friday and I was about to have the best fried fish and corn and pineapple hush puppies of my life.

Each table, overflowing with hungry patrons, had a sign listing the charities that this annual fish fry – 14 years and counting – supports. Upstairs are lists of the dozens of missions the church has gone on to help communities suffering floods and other natural disasters in Kentucky West, Virginia and elsewhere. The flood two years ago in Hundred, WV brought it close to home and missions are on standby to help local families, church member Eric Cowden tells me.

This year’s fish fry promises to be the biggest Mission fundraiser yet. The Lenten season usually brings in about $30,000 but according to Eric, who collects the money each week, a record 1375 sandwiches were sold on March 15 so the kitchen is ramping up for overflow crowds until April 19. I know I’ll be back! Sunday services are 11 a.m. in winter, 10 a.m. in summer and AA meets Sunday evening. Call 724-222-0454 FMI or to preorder your fish on Friday. No calls taken after 4 p.m. due to high volume.