BRANDON — When the congregation of Brandon Baptist Church got together recently to strip the old wallpaper off the walls of the sanctuary, it found some precious treasures.
Long ago, members left their names on a wall beneath the faded old paper, and, up high on a door frame, had hidden some pennies atop a yellowed piece of paper with the words “Please leave here.” The paper, signed by the now-deceased Nelson Vannatta, trustee, who noted the painting of a pipe that day, is dated March 25, 1975.
Nearly everyone who signed the wall has passed on, but many of their descendants continue to attend church at Brandon Baptist. Member Brad Harrod’s great-grandfather, T.M. Harrod, signed the wall, as did R.L. Johnson, C.A. Dawson and others on June 6, 1940. On Oct. 1, 1964, Harold Ernest, Agnes Jacobson, Martha Stull, Agnes Ward, Ruth Dawson and the Rev. Lloyd Osborne (who added “Mt. Liberty” after his name) added their signatures to the wall. At the recent work day, church members signed their names too.
Brandon Baptist was founded in 1857, and the church was built in 1902 by Arthur Colgin as a Presbyterian church, according to a history booklet published in 1976. In 1915, Colgin built the Brandon Methodist Episcopal Church (now Brandon United Methodist) across Sycamore Road. The two structures are similar, with nearly identical bell towers and bell yokes.
The Baptist church, pastored today by the Rev. Marvin Haught, has its original stained-glass windows, including one donated by its sister church, Owl Creek Baptist near Morgan Center, and a colorful rendition of Jesus surrounded by sheep and lambs that was donated “In memory of William L. Wynkoop and Jennie M. Wynkoop.”
Roger Spearman, 80, is one of the older members. He has a Bible that was presented to his parents in 1939 on Family Day because the John Spearman family was the largest present. The price is still marked on the inside cover: $1.50.
“The boys and girls Sunday school classes were always separate,” said Spearman. “The men had Sunday school in the last pew on the right side, and the women met in the last pew on the other side. There was an outhouse back of the church, at the edge of the parking lot. We didn’t mind; that’s what we had at home, so we didn’t know any better.”
Spearman also remembers attending Bible school one summer.
“I was about 12 and I was the only boy, because my mother made me go. A Mr. Schwartz was painting the church. He was a pipe smoker and he laid his pipe on the window ledge. The girls dared me to take his pipe and hide it. I didn’t want to, but I did it. Then the teacher came into the room and said, ‘Mr. Schwartz knows someone in this group took his pipe, and he wants it back.’ All the girls whispered to me, ‘Don’t do it! Don’t do it!’ But I gave it back. Mr. Schwartz was pretty gruff about it.”
Brad Harrod and Dick Kirkpatrick led a climb to the bell tower, up a ladder placed against the entryway wall, where — balanced on the very top of the ladder — they hoisted themselves upward into the base of the tower that adjoins the cavernous attic. From there, they balanced on the hand-hewn oak timbers, so as not to fall through the old stamped-tin ceiling into the sanctuary. A rickety wooden ladder led to a vertical trapdoor that opened directly onto the steeply pitched roof; visitors squeezed themselves through it onto the roof and scrambled to their feet. The bell tower was just a few steps away.
The big old church bell, painted black, bears the number 40 and “Fredericktown Bell Co.” Next to it, visitors look down onto the houses in the village of Brandon and the Methodist church across the road, and wave at people watching them from the lawn below.
Harrod described “races” to the top of the tower in his younger days, when he and his friends competed to see who could get there first.
The climb back down is equally torturous. Visitors backed themselves through the small trapdoor, feet first, and made a blind climb downward to find the ladder rungs. They balanced on the timbers once again and dangled their feet through the larger trap door to find the rungs of the tall ladder against the entryway wall.
“We ring the bell every Sunday morning,” said Barb Spearman, Roger’s wife.
The belltones roll out across the village and the surrounding farmland, each booming toll accompanied by a loud squeak from the bell yoke.
Harrod said he spent every Saturday night of much of his childhood in Brandon at his great-grandmother’s house, after mowing her yard that day, and accompanied her to Brandon Baptist on Sunday mornings.
“There are tons of memories,” he said simply. “All good.”
Knox County On High will continue on Monday, May 26, and end with the ultimate on-high experience, a hot air balloon ride over the county next week. That adventure will be reported in the final story of the series on Monday, June 2.
