Years of history in McLain's Chapel

"There's a church in the valley by the wildwood --

No lovelier place in the dale.

No spot is so dear to my childhood

As the little brown church in the vale."

The color is different, but the feeling is the same as that expressed in the song "Church in the Wildwood" for the generations who attended McLain's Chapel from its mid-19th Century origin until it was closed in 1973.

ABOVE: The interior of McLain’s Chapel is seen through the gap in the exterior wall, Wednesday. BELOW: Light shines into the interior of McLain’s Chapel through a hole in the ceiling. (Laura Simon)

Staggered by termites, the white board structure -- opened in 1881 as a big improvement over the log building that had served since 1852 -- is toppling, and it will not be long until the former church in the foothills north of Cape Girardeau is just a memory. The congregation was moved to Wesley United Methodist Church at Fruitland, Missouri.

Having gone to the church as a girl and attended Indian Creek School nearby, LaFern McLain Stiver says its history is so rich as to bring tears to the eyes. Her father, Lawrence Jefferson McLain, ran the Oriole Store by the road until the family moved to Jackson when she was in the seventh grade.

"I had the world by the tail," said Stiver, 84. "We swam and fished in Little Indian and Big Indian creeks and gathered nuts on the hill across from the store. I'd go as far as I could, knowing no one would hurt me, and get back in time for the next meal.

"The men sat on the right side of the church and the women on the left. That strikes me as quite different, but that was the way it was back then. They had a wood-burning stove on each side, and we divided into groups for Sunday school with the smaller children close to one of the stoves."

Stiver said Andrew Hamilton, supporter of the Union side during the Civil War, was taken into the church and shot by bushwhackers.

Light shines into the interior of McLain's Chapel through a hole in the ceiling, Wednesday, May 28, 2014. (Laura Simon)

"It was said that no matter what they did, the bloodstains remained on the floor until the new church was built," she said.

Penny McLain Johns, great-great-great-granddaughter of American Revolutionary War veteran Alexander McLain, said an architect told her last year that the chapel could not be saved, though the school and store buildings are in good shape 10 miles north of Cape Girardeau on private property at Route Y and Big Foot Lane.

Alexander McLain came to this area in 1815, and one of his descendants, David M. McLain, donated the land to church trustees John A. McLain, William Abernathy and Thomas G. Phillips 162 years ago, according to records.

Noting that more than 300 descendants of the settlers lie in a cemetery just south of the church, Johns said her father, Ivan, would walk there with her and say, 'I remember these people.'

"All of them at one time had a connection to the church," she said. "The people who used to make donations to the McLain's Chapel and Iona Baptist Cemetery Association are becoming occupants. We average five burials a year. So we have got to get the new generation to make a commitment to give a little."

The interior of McLain's Chapel is seen through a hole in the exterior wall, Wednesday, May 28, 2014. (Laura Simon)

Johns said the picturesque two-acre hillside cemetery is mowed every other Friday by a crew from the Teen Challenge center, five miles southwest of there. "It's history," she said.

"There are a lot of photos of couples on the front steps of the church who had just been married."