Lone Camp church marks its centennial

<b>By Libby Cluett</b><br><a href="mailto:lcluett@mineralwellsindex.com">lcluett@mineralwellsindex.com</a>

One hundred years is something to celebrate and that’s just what the Lone Camp Baptist Church plans to do next weekend.

A church history committee, comprised of members Burkie Thornton, Brenda Marsden, Karen Locke and John Wilson, recalls much of the church’s history.

First meeting
The church was formed Aug. 2, 1909 – long before anyone’s memory – and first met in a small school house, known as Lone Camp District No. 8 or Knight Pasture District 8. On that day “Brother R. W. Bradford of Brazos, Brother Graves of Lipan and Reverend Lothich of Village Bend led the organization of Lone Camp Baptist Church,” according Thornton, who serves as church historian.

According to the centennial history, Bradford – the churchs’ first pastor – traveled by horseback or horse-drawn buggy from Brazos for monthly worship. The Baptist church and other churches in the community shared the school house. Each denomination was designated one Sunday each month.

Thornton said the church’s charter members were: R.W. Bradford, Mrs. M.J. Bradford, J.P. Bradford, Mrs. M.L. Walls, R.R. Bradford, Mrs. M.B. Funderburk, William Walls, Mrs. A.C. Funderburk, J.W. Walls, L.E. Walls, Mrs. M.E. Bradford, Robert Thornton, Emma Carver, Mrs. H.P. Nicks, Theo Spencer, Hanna Burns, Myrtle Chenault, Effie Funderburk and Minnie Owens.

During the summers – until the advent of air conditioning – all the community churches would congregate under the shade of the community tabernacle on the church property.

“It didn’t matter who was having a revival there, everybody came,” said Wilson, who moved to the area from Millsap as a young child in 1943 for one year and came back “for good” in 1947.

In 1935, Lone Camp Baptist Church began its history of employing seminary students from Fort Worth as its pastors before they graduated. This could explain why the church had a total of 50 pastors in its 100-year history.

The first seminary students would arrive in Santo by train on Saturday morning, preside over three services and attend the Saturday night business meeting then leave Monday morning.

The church’s early building endeavors provided some interesting moments.

The basement
In the late 1930s the first church building was started.

One optimistic pastor decided the Lone Camp congregation needed a mega-structure. It began and ended with a large basement, according to history committee members and a photo taken in 1936.

It was going to be a big two-story church,” said Thornton.

“What happened was, there was a preacher who came in here and he was more the fundamental type preacher,” recalled Wilson. “He wanted to build a big mega church here, so he was going to start out below ground. So they got that far and he left and it just dwindled out.”

Wilson said members dug the basement by hand with a floor plan of 40 feet by 60 feet. Thornton said the basement was 6 feet below the ground and had a 4-foot wall extending above the ground.

“They walled it up with red tile,” recalled Wilson. “I think the Holder boys did that, they were pretty good masons. And it had beams across it and had cables across it.”

“We used to play in it, on it and around it,” he added. “We had a big sore-eye out there for years and years so they dumped trash in it to fill it up.”

Marsden said one of their church history committee colleagues, Terry Jones, who recently passed away, said, “We filled in with anything and everything.”

Over the years Wilson said they filled the basement hole with cleared trees from “Talley’s land” and a later church building, which Wilson and Jones pushed into the hole until it was leveled off.

First useable building
The church had its first building, with walls and a roof, in 1946.

“They didn’t know how to mix the mortar,” said Thornton.

Wilson said they built it out of two types of tile – one on the inside and one on the outside.

“This ground up here moves,” he noted. “they already had this building built by the time we moved back. It wasn’t a very smooth slab, you could almost trip over it.”

He said the slab began to crack and, “it leaned the walls.”

“I remember one Sunday we [met there] and the wind was blowing out of the north real heavy. We were sitting here facing the north and you could see that wall giving like this with that wind blowing, literally,” he said moving his hands about 4-to-6 inches apart.

He said the preacher wasn’t more than 4 feet from the wall

“We were all glad when he said, ‘Amen,’ because we figured he was going to get covered up here in just a minute,” said Wilson. “That evening the men gathered up here and decided to build a new church after seeing that.”

Wilson said he recalls the county came down and pushed the faulty church building into the basement hole.

Next buildings
“We left the slab and built a pier-and-beam [building] on the slab,” he said.

This was a wood-frame building that was built in 1963 with volunteer labor. The new building, which Wilson called “a pretty decent church” lasted a while.

In July 1963, the church installed two air conditioning units, “making our members very proud,” according to the history booklet.

Lake Palo Pinto was impounded in 1964 and the church community grew as the area developed. The frame building had additions made until a new church was constructed in 1985, which is what they use today.

Local church members and members of Bethany Baptist Church in Crane Hill, Ala., built the present-day brick building. The old pier-and-beam building became a sunday school and hospitality hall.

In 2001 the church added an education building/fellowship hall and leveled the old pier-and-beam building.

Next weekend
Now 80-members strong, Lone Camp Baptist Church members plan to reminisce, celebrate and share with the community the church’s history.

Marsden said it is important to remember “the people who kept it going in the good times and bad,” including the depression and dust bowl eras.

Next weekend’s celebration begins with an ice-cream social under the tabernacle at 7:30 p.m. Saturday. This includes “down home” singing.

For Sunday morning worship, led by Dr. Pete Bradfield, the history committee encourages anyone attending to wear period dress, “if you desire.”

The history committee encourages all to come out at 2 p.m. for a gospel music concert, featuring the “Gospel Four” of Arlington and a reception at 4 p.m., in the Fellowship Hall.

The church is located at 108 Hoover Road in Lone Camp, just west of State Highway 4.

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