Chattooga Baptist: Serving Christ and community since 1838
Chattooga Baptist Church celebrated its 175th anniversary on Sunday, Sept. 29.
White settlers were meeting for worship before the town of Chattooga changed its name to LaFayette in December 1835 and the church’s members chose to continue identifying themselves as Chattooga Baptist.
The congregation officially organized as Chattooga Baptist Church in 1838, the same year local Cherokee Indians were forced to vacate their lands and travel the “Trail of Tears” westward, and built a log house of worship.
James Sartain’s “History of Walker County” notes the Baptist church’s cemetery was established about 1840 and had about 360 graves when his history was published in 1932.
Among the graves Sartain counted were those of Confederate soldiers, a doctor, members of the church and surrounding community.
It is also claimed that Cherokee are also buried at the site as are the remains of slaves and servants.
The history of the area is also the history of the church.
“White’s Statistics,” printed in 1849, devotes several pages to Walker County and notes its “people are moral and industrious. They are remarkably attached to their homes and consider this area the garden spot of Georgia.”
White’s also lists some land values, circa 1849: first quality, near river and creek bottoms, was $15 per acre; second quality, gray and dark soils adapted to corn and cotton was available for $7 an acre and mountain land, fit for grazing and fine timber, was sold for 25 cents per acre.
Hunting and fishing were noted as “amusements” among those who settled in this area nes- tled against the slopes of Lookout and Pigeon mountains. The latter was named for the white feathered birds that gathered in such numbers that the mountain appeared covered in snow and whose weight broke tree branches.
Early hunters were said to kill a sack full of pigeons with a single shot, but by 1932 the birds were extinct.
Unlike the local fowl, the congregation of Chattooga Baptist survived and thrived. Its log cabin home was replaced in 1879 by a two-story wood frame building that served as church, school and Masonic Hall. In 1906, that building was replaced by today’s current church that can be found at 6982 Ga. 337 in LaFayette.
But through the decades of its existence, some things are little changed.
As church historian Mary Brown recently wrote:
“Like our forefathers who founded our church and built our existing meeting house so many years ago, who worshiped in it, who rejoiced and praised the name of God and who have gone on to heaven, we realize we too are just passing through this life with our days on earth but a shadow. The prayer of the membership is that our children remain faithful and continue what our ancestors began many years ago.”