Mount Vernon News

DANVILLE — The North Bend Church of the Brethren, built near Danville on Orange Hill Road in 1870, is full of history. Literally.

Its attic — accessed through a small doorway placed high up in a second-floor Sunday school classroom wall, and necessitating a climb onto a chair to reach the door — contains Sunday school artifacts from long ago. There’s a Brethren Family Almanac dated 1888 and held together with string. There are boxes of old books and dusty hymnals, moldering church magazines and ... no bell.

Entering the bell tower requires a belly crawl under an attic wall and onto a tower floor layered with bird and mouse droppings, fallen leaves and the dust of history. Hardware bolted to the inside of the tower hints that it once held up a bell and its yoke or harness.

“There was a bell in it,” said Helen Kaylor, 76, who grew up in the church. “It’s disappeared, I guess. But I never remember hearing it ring, either.”

Like many a youngster, Kaylor neglected to pay attention when the old folks of her church told their stories.

“We forgot to listen to the history,” she said, shaking her head. Today, she encourages her own children and grandchildren to pay attention and appreciate what the elders have to tell them.

“Listen, ask questions and remember,” she said.

Now-deceased church member Mary Workman Hoagland put her memories on paper in 1967, and Kaylor has a copy. She also has a copy of a brief history compiled in 2000 by Jerry Keegan.

According to both authors, in the early 1800s, when Ohio was the frontier, settlers arrived here from Pennsylvania, Virginia and Maryland. In 1812, Joseph Workman, a German Baptist minister, homesteaded south of Danville and invited all of his neighbors to come to his house for hymns and prayers. He also donated land for Workman Cemetery and a church across from it on U.S. 62, which is now gone.

In 1822, the congregation organized as the Church of the Brethren, the denomination that began as the German Baptist Church.

Many years later, his son, Solomon N.C. Workman, purchased 1,000 acres in Brown Township and donated the land where the North Bend Church and its cemetery now stand. The church was constructed in 1870 and has been extensively remodeled over the years, including being turned from facing west to facing south.

In 1870, the women entered at the south door and sat on the right-hand side of the sanctuary; the men entered at the north door and sat on the left side. Today, additions and rooms have been added, as well as a kitchen and vestibule. In 1963, a basement was installed to hold more Sunday school rooms. And still North Bend outgrew its building.

“We had all these people coming to church,” said Kaylor, “over 200, and we didn’t have room for them. So we started a building fund. Then a church came up for sale between Butler and Bellville, so we bought it and started a second church.”

Patrick Bailey pastors both, driving between Danville and Butler every Sunday morning. The branch church, which holds services for around 300 people, is known as the North Bend Church of the Brethren Clear Fork Branch.

“Our church is thriving,” said Kaylor.

Over the years since its founding, the church had no paid pastor, but relied on elders and lay ministers who donated their time, including Columbus Workman, Mary Hoagland’s father. It wasn’t until 1926 that George Phillips became the full-time pastor.

“We always had a great Sunday school and great teachers,” recalled Kaylor, “but I especially remember the ice cream socials on the lawn. People came from all over for the great ice cream, the chicken sandwiches and the potato salad.”

Kaylor has a photo taken in 1935, when she was 4 years old and her sister, Carol Metcalf, was 6. The girls sit among the church members who posed for the photo in front of their church. She also has a program from a 1939 service in which the church said farewell to the Rev. Wayne and Carolyn Zunk. “Fare Ye Well!” the program reads. “It is with mingled emotions that we bid you adieu.”

The old church presides over the nearby hills and surrounding countryside, and the plexiglass-covered windows in the bell tower give a hazy view. The cemetery slopes down to a curve on Orange Hill Road, then the road curves upward again on an adjoining hill.

The Knox County On High series will continue on Monday, May 12, with a visit to the bell tower of the Brandon Baptist Church.