Damascus Baptist Church Arbor is a historic

Baptist Baptists form a major branch of Protestantism distinguished by baptizing professing Christian believers only (believer's baptism), and doing so by complete immersion. Baptist churches also generally subscribe to the doctrines of soul compete ...

church Church may refer to: Religion * Church (building), a building for Christian religious activities * Church (congregation), a local congregation of a Christian denomination * Church service, a formalized period of Christian communal worship * Chris ...

arbor located in Sharpesburg Township south of

Love Valley, North Carolina Love Valley is a townhttps://www.ncleg.gov/Files/BillDrafting/CityCharters/Charter%20of%20the%20Town%20of%20Love%20Valley.pdf in Iredell County, North Carolina, United States. It also extends into Alexander County on its western end. The populatio ...

, United States. It was constructed in 1855, and is an open rectangular structure measuring 35 feet by 55 feet. The Damascus Baptist Church Arbor continues to be used for

brush arbor revival A brush arbour revival, also known as brush arbour meeting, is a revival service that takes place under an open-sided shelter called an " arbour", which is "constructed of vertical poles driven into the ground with additional long poles laid acro ...

s. It has a gable-on-hip roof and hand hewn, pegged frame, log rafters. The arbor is part of a Damascus Baptist Church complex that includes a church (built between 1907 and 1909), education building, and

cemetery A cemetery, burial ground, gravesite or graveyard is a place where the remains of dead people are buried or otherwise interred. The word ''cemetery'' (from Greek , "sleeping place") implies that the land is specifically designated as a buri ...

.
Old Link
/ref> It was added to the

National Register of Historic Places The National Register of Historic Places (NRHP) is the United States federal government's official list of districts, sites, buildings, structures and objects deemed worthy of preservation for their historical significance or "great artistic v ...

in 1980.

Location and history

The Damascus Baptist Church Arbor, church, and cemetery are located in rural northwest Iredell County, North Carolina. Snow Creek and the town of Love Valley, North Carolina are nearby. The church was built between 1907 and 1909 and is east of the arbor. The cemetery is located southwest of the arbor on an open hillside. The cemetery contains about 200 markers, mostly fieldstones but some inscribed markers dating from at least 1857. The Damascus Baptist Church's roots go back to May 11, 1839, when a meeting of Baptists was held at the Damascus Meeting House across the Snow Creek from the current location of the church. The first minister of the church, William Garner, was called to service in February 1842. In November 1842, the church appointed managers to construct the arbor. While the congregation has constructed several church buildings, the arbor has remained in continuous use. Permanent, open-sided wood arbors were an outgrowth of brush arbors. They were used as places of worship before permanent churches could be built and as sites for camp meetings or

revival meeting A revival meeting is a series of Christian religious services held to inspire active members of a church body to gain new converts and to call sinners to repent. Nineteenth-century Baptist preacher Charles Spurgeon said, "Many blessings may come ...

s. Arbors were common in the

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region of the United States. These meetings were traditionally held in the summer and the open-sided arbor was a more comfortable location than the interior of a church.Elizabeth Simpson Smith, "Camp Meeting' Time", Historic Preservation Vol. XXX, No. 2 (April–June 1978) pp 20-23

References

{{National Register of Historic Places in North Carolina Baptist churches in North Carolina Churches on the National Register of Historic Places in North Carolina Churches completed in 1855 19th-century Baptist churches in the United States Churches in Iredell County, North Carolina National Register of Historic Places in Iredell County, North Carolina