Located in the Red Hills of Northern Monroe County Al
Located in the Red Hills of Northern Monroe County Alabama, beside a remote red dirt road sits a crumbling old church. It has been a curiosity for many people for many years.
No one seems to be able to find out anything about this church. Many have asked on social media forums and other places. However for some reason nobody seems to have had any information on it. Nobody even seemed to know the proper name of it.
It has been dubbed names like Old Red Hills Church because it is in the Old Red Hills. Other places it has been called Locke Hill church because of the famous Locke Hill that is in the area of the old church. I am sure that there are other names attributed to it by various other people as well.This old church has been the subject of many photographs over the years of wanders who saw it and were enthralled with it. It is just sitting there.
Being from Monroe County and a natural wander I have passed it many times over the years and I have asked many times if anybody knew anything about it. Always I came up with nothing.
In May of 2020 I shot a drone video of it and it drew attention from several people who started to aske more questions. Shortly afterwards I learned from a relative at Beatrice, Al. that there was a guy that came in his place of business that had actually attended church there.
Covid hit. Everything was locked down. Nobody was visiting. I put it all on a back burner and started pursuing other interests.
Two years later I finally got back on track on this old church and was able to find the guy who knew.
The following is the information he was able to share with me. The Proper name for the church to start with is Pilgrim Rest Baptist Church. The man’s name is Irving Long. Irving agreed to meet me at the old church and share with me memories of this old and for most of civilization forgotten church.
He said that originally the congregation had a church over beside the Red Hills Cemetery. This was long before he was born. The original church burned and the congregation moved over to the present location and built the existing church.
He said he was not totally sure of dates and records had been lost over the years but in September 1927 there was an incident where the Sherriff came to arrest a man and they got into a fight. There was another man at the church that tried to break the fight up and the Sheriff shot him and he died as a result of the gun shot. The man shot was named Will Riley. His wife’s name was Fannie. He went on to say that Will’s wife sewed the hole in Will’s shirt up with a needle and thread and they buried him in the same shirt.
He showed me the out house that still stands on the right hand side and laughed and said that was the ladies restroom. The men’s was on the other side.
He motioned over to the other side and said that one time there was another building there that served as a school and also a Masonic Lodge.
As we stood and talked he told me many things that resonated with me giving me a feeling of how it was back in the day.
He said that his father had told him that back in the hey days of the church that there was a community there as large as the town of Beatrice.
One thing he shared was that for many years there was a revival there starting the 4th Sunday in September of every year. He went on to say that the crowds would be incredibly huge for the size of the building. People would come from all over and many from out of town that had moved away would return. There would even be folks that had moved up north to places like Chicago that would come back.
He laughed and said that his grand gather always called the place “The Holy Ghost Headquarters”.
We walked around to the back of the church and went in through a side door. As we walked in Irving shared that the back room we were in was where they always had food on that 4th Sunday. He said the food would be incredible. The women would stay at times up all night that Saturday night preparing food for the Sunday meal. There were long tables around the walls and then across the back outside there are still posts against the building that held another long table where people ate.
There was a very small room on the side right behind the pulpit that was the pastor’s study.
Over to the side of the wall is nails in the wall that the men would hang their coats and hats on.
Standing on the platform where the pulpit facing the back Irving said the men sat on the right and the women sat on the left.
Then as we walked across the wooden floor. My guide stopped and smiled again. He said this old floor was incredible. Never heard anything like it in my life. All of the people would be singing and they would be tapping on the floor with their feet and the sound would be in time with the music.
As we went back outside and stood and I listed as he shared he told of how hard it was to have a church out there in the middle of nowhere in the latter days. Vandals and thieves were incredible. It got to a point that they could not keep anything. The stole the heaters out of the church and even the propane tank. He said that it got so bad that they had to take the heaters home after church and bring them back early the next time they were to have church early the morning of the service to keep them from being stolen. He did say that for some reason nobody ever took the bell. It was in one of the towers on the front of the church for many years. Now it has been taken out and placed in a safe undisclosed location.
The church used Flat Creek to do baptisms, and burials were in the cemetery at Red Hills Cemetery.
Pilgrim Rest Baptist Church held services till sometime in the early 1990’s.
During the 1970’s and 80’s the congregation got down to the point that that there would be 18 to 20 people in attendance and then it dwindled to nothing and they closed the doors.
The last pastor to preach at Pilgrim Rest was Rev. Jessie Andrews.
Some of the long time members were Woodrow Nettles, Amos Nobles, Charlie Johnson, Ollie Nettles, and Lorenzo Nettles.
As for the future. Irving says that slowly but surely he is cleaning up there and hopes to one day have something back on the property once again. Possibly a shed or something for people to gather from time to time and use the property for future generations.
I would like to personally thank Irving one more time for taking his time to meet me out in those woods and share with me about this grand old place that has been the focus of wonder for so many years by so many people.
My mother was raised in red hills she was born in 1929, she is 93 now and has dementia and can’t tell a lot but she has told me many times about her and her sister’s how they would walk to the church and sit outside and listen to the service how the holy spirit would get into a someone in the church and members of the church would bring them outside and lay them in the shade in a wagon, I wish I could remember more but I don’t but that has always stuck in my mind
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