Cedar Spring Missionary Baptist Church
One Hundred Years
1899 – 1999
Centennial Homecoming · Sunday, August 15, 1999

Dear friends and family,

On the third Sunday in August, about two hundred of us came home to Cedar Spring to give thanks for one hundred years. Some of us had only to walk across the road. Others drove all night from Atlanta, from Detroit, from Chicago, from as far as California, to sit again in the church where their mothers and fathers and grandparents were baptized, married and buried. Many of you have asked for the pictures, and those who could not come have asked what it was like. My grandson Jeff took the pictures and has kindly put them on the computer for me, and I have written down the day as well as I can.

I am Olive Bivens. I taught first grade in this county for thirty-eight years, and I have been the clerk and historian of Cedar Spring since 1961. The history I read at the afternoon program is on its own page: Our History, from the Brush Arbor to Today.

Sunday morning about ten o'clock. The cars kept coming until there was no more grass to park on.

Morning Worship
The bell rang at a quarter to eleven, the same bell that hung in the old church before this one. The deacons led the devotion and the old hymns were lined out the way they were when I was a girl, and I saw some of the young people from Atlanta looking at each other, and then by the second verse they were singing too. The choir marched in wearing their purple robes, new for the centennial, and sang until the windows shook.

The Cedar Spring choir, with some of our homecoming voices added. Jeff took this from the back so as not to be a distraction. He was one anyway.

Our pastor, the Reverend Gerard McCormick, welcomed everyone home and then gave the pulpit to our homecoming preacher, the Reverend Roosevelt Freeland of Detroit. Reverend Freeland's grandparents were members here before they went north in the 1920s, and his mother brought him back every summer of his boyhood. He preached from the 126th Psalm, on coming home with rejoicing, and there was not a dry eye in the house, mine included.

Dinner on the Grounds
For those of you who did not grow up in the country, this is how dinner on the grounds works. Every family brings food, as much as they can carry, and more than anybody could eat. The men set up the long tables under the oaks the evening before. After service the ladies cover the tables in white cloths and lay out the dishes, the pastor blesses the food, the visitors and the old people go through the line first, and the children are made to wait, which is good for them. Then everyone sits wherever there is shade and visits until the afternoon program.

Fried chicken, ham, potato salad, collards, macaroni and cheese, deviled eggs, sweet potato pies and more cakes than I could count.

I counted fourteen sweet potato pies. Sister Bertha Sebring's coconut cake was gone before I got there, as it is every year.

The Afternoon Program
At three o'clock we went back inside, where it was cooler, if only by a little. There was a welcome, and a roll call of the families, each one standing as its name was read. The choir sang again. They recognized the family that came the farthest, which was Brother Donald Mims and his people from Detroit, and the oldest member present, which turned out to be me. I did not ask for that. Then I read our history, which took longer than I had promised Reverend McCormick, and nobody complained out loud.

Me with my great-grandson Frank, who is seven, on the steps after service. Jeff is his father.

Those Who Came Home
Our families came from near and far, the Lyles, the Porters, the Stills, the Norths, the Bolens and the Hices, whose people founded this church; the Spratts and the Abrons from Chicago; the Mimses from Detroit; my own children and grandchildren from Atlanta; and many more. We sent the guest book around and there were 197 names in it, and I know of at least a dozen who did not sign.

Before they left, many of them walked out back to the old part of the cemetery to find their people. Our founders are buried there, under the cedars. The young men of the church cleaned the graves the Saturday before, and families laid flowers.

Behind the church, late in the afternoon. Some of the oldest graves are marked only with a field stone.

One hundred years. We are still here. Thank you, every one of you, who came home, who cooked, who gave, who prayed, and who sent your love when you could not come. God willing, I will see you at homecoming next August, the third Sunday as always.

Yours in Christ,
Olive Bivens
Church Clerk and Historian

Our History, from the Brush Arbor to Today

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Write to Mrs. Bivens at [email protected]
(Jeff reads the mail to me on Sundays.)
Last updated Monday, August 30, 1999

Pictures and computer work by Jeff Calahan, Atlanta