Fredonia - part 2

To find if Fredonia was actually the first Universalist Church (as unlikely as that is), we have to keep resarching it. it might also help if we could find it! this this below written in the 1880s, but with first hand information.


""Up to the events of which an account was given in the last chapter, Rev. Allen Fuller was the only Universalist minister the writer (D.B. Clayton) had ever met. But the summer of 1842 bought him into contact with several others. The occasion was the annual session of the South Carolina State Convention of Universalists, which convened that year at Fredonia church, seven miles above Newberry Court House, some time during the month of August, if he is not mistaken. There were present at that meeting Revs. Allen Fuller, Spencer J. McMorris, L.F.W. Andrews, M.D., Philo Brownson, and John A. Chapman."... "Only the day before the commencement of that session of the Convention, Rev. Elijah Linch had been laid to his last rest."

"On the fifth Sunday in that month (October 1844) he had appointed to preach at Fredonia church, Newberry County, SC., which was forty-five miles from where he then lived. The distance was to be traveled on horseback. "

"the arrangement agreed upon (circa November 1844) required him to preach one Sunday in each month at each of the following places: Feasterville, Fairfield District, as the counties were then called; Huntsville, Laurens district; Partlow's, Abbeville District; the other Sunday alternating between Fredonia and Hartford churches, the former situated about seven miles northwest from Newberry C.H., and the later nearly as far southeast of that town, if memory is not at fault as to distances and courses. The last two churches had been served for a good many years previous to his death (in 1842) by Rev. Elijah Linch, and had since that event, had very little preaching. These houses were owned, as were also those at Feasterville and Partlow's, entirley by Universalists, that at Feasterville is the only one standing, the other three having gone into decay."

"In July (1845) he had appointed a three days' meeting at Fredonia church, in which Rev. Allen
Fuller promised to assist him. "

this from D.B. Clayton's memoirs...

this tells us that the church did exist from -1842-1845- and that it had been previously served by Rev. Linch. Linch is considered the minister who changed the demoniation (but not the doctrine) from Brethren to Universalist. It tells us that Fredonia is not any of the other Universalist Churches in the area. It shows that it is in Newberry county (or what was Newberry county in the 1840s). A story I left out, suggests that it was approachable by carriage. It was not an Union Church, and the building was gone by the 1880s.

so, it remains somewhere in northern Newberry County.....