SACTUARY FOR OLD CHURCHES

The Barks Chapel Church is still used despite a small list in the building. The church was organized in 1894 and is on County Road 394.

Rural churches. Often forgotten by the general public, they stand in splendid isolation along the country roads of Cape Girardeau County.

The frame and brick churches are simple structures compared to the towering cathedrals of Europe or even the ornate structures of this nation's large cities.

But to Delilah Tayloe and Southeast Missouri State University professor Michael Roark, the churches are part of the rich tapestry of the cultural landscape.

A sophomore at Southeast, Tayloe studied rural Protestant churches in Cape Girardeau County last summer for an American Cultural Landscapes course taught by Roark.

A historic preservation major, Tayloe lives near a rural church in Whitewater. Fittingly, she lives on Church Street.

Tayloe and Roark worry that America is losing its rural heritage.

"All of our heritage is being eaten up," she said.

Rural churches, she said, should be preserved as part of the cultural landscape. "Think how barren it would be without them."

Rural churches have small congregations. Fifty members would be a good size rural congregation, said Roark.

Rural churches reflect the heritage of the rural families that built them, maintained them and worshiped in them, Roark said. There is an intimacy to small, rural churches.

Tayloe and Roark said the rural church once was the center of social life in rural areas.

It remains one of the few social institutions left in rural America since the consolidation of country schools in the 1950s and 1960s, they said.

Early churches were log structures. One such Cape Girardeau County church survives today.

That church is Old McKendree Chapel near Jackson. The oldest Protestant church west of the Mississippi River was built in 1819. The congregation dates back to 1809.

Log churches were followed by frame, box-shaped, one-story churches. Barn-shaped churches came along in the 1870s and 1880s.

Barn-shaped structures were rectangular and larger than the box-shaped churches. They typically were a story and a half high.

Steeple-nave churches were built in the 1880s and 1890s in eastern Missouri, Roark said.

Churches with a tower nave were built between the 1890s and 1910. Many of the tower churches originally had bells.

The First Baptist Church in Whitewater dates back to 1908. The steeple-topped bell tower stands at the entrance to the white, frame church.

Near Whitewater on Highway N is another church known as the "Little German Church." The deed for Trinity Methodist Church dates back to 1893.

The narrow, steepled church stopped having regular services in the 1970s, Tayloe said. The church rests on stone piers.

But the church continues to be maintained because there is a cemetery on the grounds.

Churches that have cemeteries along side are maintained almost like funeral chapels, Tayloe said.

"Old churches without cemeteries don't get maintained," she said.

The small, brick German Evangelical Church near Dutchtown was built in 1887. The church was used for about 20 years. By 1909, it had been abandoned and a cemetery association was formed to maintain the church and adjacent cemetery.

No one has been buried in the cemetery since 1984, Tayloe said.

Passover Methodist Church sits on a wooded hill off County Road 392.

The barn-like, wooden church has fallen into ruin. Tayloe said the church may date back to the late 1800s. She said a farmer who once owned the abandoned church indicated the building was over 70 years old.

The church ceased services in the early 1960s, Tayloe said.

The church cemetery is more than a mile away. But unlike the church, the cemetery is well maintained, she said.

Barks Chapel near Crump was built in 1894. Area residents still worship at the wood-frame church.

The church sits on stone piers and leans about 10 degrees. Tayloe said a church member told her that as long as the church stands, the congregation will continue going there.

Services are held every other week at Gravel Hill Methodist Church.

Judging from its fieldstone foundation, the church at highways 34 and U dates back to the 1930s, Tayloe said. The church has an outhouse.

The church's few members are all elderly.

Tayloe said she hopes these rural churches will survive as part of the rural landscape.

"I think Americans have a hidden affection for these kinds of churches," she said.