Where was the Lebanon ARP Church located in Wilcox County, Alabama?

Bethel Reformed Associate Presbyterian Church

Longtime readers of this column know how much I enjoy hearing from readers, especially from those who have questions about Wilcox County history.

On Wednesday of last week, I received a nice e-mail from Sandra McCollum of Jackson, Miss. Sandra is descended from a number of early Wilcox County pioneers, including members of the McBryde, Stewart, Hanks and Patterson families. A number of her ancestors left Wilcox County in the early 1800s and settled in Tippah County, Miss.

All of her Wilcox County ancestors were Associate Reformed Presbyterians who moved to Wilcox County from Abbeville, S.C. Some of her ancestors lived at Oak Hill, but most of them attended an ARP church called Lebanon Church. Most of Sandra’s friends in Wilcox County have told her that no one knows where the Lebanon Church was located.

With that in mind, I set out to determine as best I could where this old church was located. My go-to source for such questions are historic maps of the county produced by the Department of Geography at the University of Alabama. These maps include the names and locations of many old forgotten communities, but, unfortunately, they contain no information about the location of Lebanon Church in Wilcox County.

The oldest reference to the Lebanon Church that I could find in archived editions of The Wilcox Progressive Era was in the July 3, 1913 issue of the paper. That day’s edition included an obituary for Confederate veteran William Norris Stewart, who died at Neenah in April of that year. His obituary mentions that he joined the Lebanon Church as a young man after moving to Wilcox County from South Carolina.

Later, I ran across a 1956 article that said the Bethel ARP Church at Oak Hill “had its origin in Lebanon church, located in Wilcox County, in 1822. In 1856, Lebanon divided into two churches to serve its widely scattered members. Bethel at Oak Hill became one of the two churches. Lebanon has disappeared, but Bethel continues and including its original status as a part of Lebanon, it has had a history of 134 years.”

Still later, I found a 1957 article that said that the old Lebanon ARP Church stood “near the present town of Camden.” Other than that small clue, I could find no additional details that specifically say where the Lebanon Church was located. To say that it was near Camden could mean it was possibly located in a wide variety of places, including the old Neenah community.

In the end, Sandra is planning a trip to Camden later this spring to do more research on her family. If anyone in the reading audience has any additional information about the topics mentioned above, especially the location of Lebanon Church, please let me know, and I’ll be happy to pass the information along to Sandra. With her deep family roots in county history, it would come as no surprise to learn that she is related to many of our knowledgeable local history buffs.