Sharon Baptist Church in King William County occupies one of the most historic buildings in the Virginia Baptist family. If walls could talk, the stories would be worth the listening. Sharon — a church which is older than the Republic — acquired the building of Second Baptist Church of Richmond sometime around 1841. The Richmonders had outgrown their meeting house which had been constructed 20 years earlier.
Fred Anderson
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The Second Church stood on 11th Street between Main and Cary in the heart of what is now the high-rise business district of Richmond. The building was 50 by 60 feet and cost about $3,500 in 1822. It was brand new when the also new Baptist General Association of Virginia held its first meeting on June 7, 1823. Seven associations sent representatives yet the attendance was small with 15 messengers present.
The little group included some of the most prominent figures in the history of Virginia Baptists, including Robert Baylor Semple, who was appointed the first president, and Edward Baptist, who wrote the new organization’s constitution. Also present were two country preacher-boys who showed promise. They were Jeremiah Bell Jeter and Daniel Witt who as “the Bedford Plowboys,” were appointed as the General Association’s first state missionaries. An important guest was present inside those very walls: Luther Rice, the man who did more to unite Baptists under the banner of Christian missions than anyone else in America.
The walls also heard the deliberations which gave rise to Baptist education in Virginia. At 5:30 in the morning of June 8, 1830, a group of interested Baptists met at the Second Baptist Church to discuss the possibilities “for the improvement of the ministry.” Again, some of the most prominent Virginia Baptists of the times were involved: Edward Baptist, Jeremiah Bell Jeter, James B. Taylor (then pastor of Second), and Henry Keeling (a well-known Baptist layman). Inside those walls they conceived of forming the Virginia Baptist Education Society, from which sprang academies to teach ministers and, eventually, the Virginia Baptist Seminary, which evolved into the University of Richmond.
Sharon Baptist Church
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In 1840 construction began on a new, large and imposing building designed by a promising young architect, Thomas U. Walter, who later gained enough reputation to be the architect for an enlargement of the U.S. Capitol. The Second folks offered their vacated house to the Baptists in King William.
Today the drive from Richmond to King William is quick and easy along four-lane Highway 360. From Mechanicsville the highway leaves the ever-encroaching red lights and begins to go through open pastures and beside woodlands little changed across the years. The view from Broaddus Flats signals that the Richmond traveler is getting closer. At the large intersection known as Central Garage, the traveler turns eastward onto Rt. 30 and quickly makes another right-hand turn. Just across from the high school is the picturesque building. Its immediate landscape includes the church cemetery and a state-of-the-art playground for children.
But it was not so simple to travel in the days when the bricks of the Second Church building were carried so far into the country. Elizabeth Hawes Ryland, a Second member of the long ago, once wrote: “The building was taken down and the whole: bricks, woodwork, windows, doors, pews and pulpit, hauled to the present site of Sharon Church and there rebuilt in replica. The most convincing [evidence] comes from one who had it from the lips of the man who at that time was the oldest member of Sharon. This member, William H. Turpin, was the son of the venerated John O. Turpin, who for 43 years was pastor of Sharon. William Turpin, his daughters [told] me, was at the time of the rebuilding a child of five years old and with his small hands placed the first brick in position.”
Steven Colvin is a local historian in King William and he contributed to the new history book of Sharon which describes the journey to King William in the 1840s. “To reach the new location, wagons bearing this precious cargo from Richmond would have to negotiate the Mechanicsville Turnpike and cross the Pamunkey River at the Newcastle Ferry where a man with ‘one wagon, four mules and three servants’ had to pay forty cents to get to King William County.”
The Baptist church which would occupy the reconstructed building was already an old church. It originally was known as Upper College, and the second word had little to do with academia. It referred to the lands “appropriated for the use of the College of William and Mary.” Its “arm” was Lower College, now known as Colosse. At first the Baptists had a crude little wooden building. Later, Upper College Baptists met in one of the old Anglican churches — Cattail — which had been depleted after the disestablishment of the Anglican Church. A remnant of former Anglicans also met in Cattail as Episcopalians.
Upper and Lower College churches embraced the teachings of “the Reformer,” Alexander Campbell, and were excluded from the Dover in 1833. Churches and associations across Eastern Virginia experienced division during the Campbellite Controversy. After a year, the church was readmitted under a new name, Rehoboth. With a new building, there came a new name of Sharon and the little community was known as Sharonville. Today it is known as Central Garage.
Sharon has made much history on its own since it raised those walls about 1845. Inside those walls there have been marriages, funerals and a thousand different decisions made for the Kingdom of God. And they are still being made.
On Oct. 3 the church observed its 235th anniversary. If you missed the Homecoming service, you will have to wait three years until there will be another. But you can visit Sharon any Sunday and within those old walls you can hear a gospel message from Lytle Buckingham, pastor of the church since 2007, and Sharon’s choir under the direction of the pastor’s wife, Suzanne McSmith Buckingham, a gifted musician. The walls may speak of things past or even tell about current ministries including the His Hands Committee and their help to local individuals or the church’s responses to Haiti relief and to Liberia. If the walls do not speak, the Sharon folks will be glad to tell you!
Fred Anderson is executive director of the Virginia Baptist Historical Society and the Center for Baptist Heritage and Studies, located on the campus of the University of Richmond. He may be contacted at [email protected] or at P.O. Box 34, University of Richmond, VA 23173.