IRON STATION, N.C. (AP) - A stroll through the Iron Station-based Tucker’s Grove Camp Meeting brings forth a feeling of warmth, tradition and, most abundantly, faith.
For more 140 years, the campground listed on the U.S. National Register of Historic Places brings hundreds of people from around the region for the purpose of fellowship, family and friendship.
Chairman Lewis McLean has been involved with the camp meeting since he was a young boy. His grandfather, Albert Saunders, began bringing him to the camp meeting when he was about 5 years old.
“I can remember it like it was yesterday,” McLean said. “I still have a scar from playing football over there by those benches as a kid.”
McLean serves a multi-purpose function, as most who serve on the board of directors do. He is active in the community through the Rock Hill United Methodist Church and the Rock Hill Masonic Lodge in Lowesville. McLean joins a collection of 13 churches collaborating in a group called “United Methodist Friends” (UMF). The group repairs homes in Lincoln County for those in need, among other deeds.
While the camp meetings are held annually and traditionally in August, the responsibility of the board members runs throughout the year.
“For instance, last year we forgot to winterize the toilets so that they won’t freeze and we had a harsh winter,” he said. “We have had to buy new toilets and track down leaks. We have to make sure things are as we left them. Sometimes we have to contact tent owners about issues with their tent that may need to be repaired.”
Giving is a theme within the Tucker’s Grove Camp Meeting. The “tents” circle the arbor area of the grounds, which serves as a place for fellowship. The benches are well maintained and the structure has been repaired many times over.
“If you look closely, you can see tongue and groove style joints around the arbor,” McLean said. “We look to get back to that as we do future repairs.”
The tents are mostly handed down through families. Occasionally, one will come up for sale. Currently, there’s a waiting list of about 30 people seeking an opportunity to own a tent. Many of the original tents have been destroyed by fire. There have been at least three fires at the grounds in the more than century-old campground.
The land belongs to the campground and owners can’t dig or do construction without approval from the board.
The tents are square in design, with windows and even multiple rooms.
A rotation of pastors preach at the camp meeting.
“Every year we have to have a rotation of pastors giving us the word,” McLean said. “We could get the word from one pastor the whole week but we want each church to host a night and they pick a pastor and maybe a choir.”
The Rev. Albert Perkins has been a driving force behind the camp meetings and has been involved for more than 30 years.
Rudolph Young is considered a “historian” for the Tucker’s Grove Camp Meeting. Young has a passion for black history, especially as it relates to his home in Lincoln County.
Author and North Carolina native Alan Stoudemire served as the professor of psychiatry at Emory University in Atlanta. Stoudemire donated books that were sold to pay for a plaque to commemorate and celebrate the history of the park. Local merchants and schools chipped in to mount it on a rock next to the arbor in the early 1990s.
Young was a young boy when his father brought him to the camp meeting.
“This arbor started out around 1871,” he said. “Blacks attended Rock Springs at that time.”
Young said that W.G. Matton came from Ireland to organize freed blacks and bring them into the Methodist Church.
“He went to the Rock Springs Campground and he pulled a congregation out of Rock Springs based on denomination and not race,” he said. “He started the integrated Seven Springs Campground near Brevard chapel around 1869.”
By 1873, activities by the Ku Klux Klan and similar groups had influenced whites to pull out of Seven Springs.
Scheduled negotiations with a white landowner named William Clay Tucker were completed by his widow in 1875. Black worshippers finally had a six-acre plot of land to call their own and Tucker’s Grove was born.
“They had camp meeting in late August and people started showing up on the last Sunday and then they would come back to the arbor for services over and over,” Young said. “The trustees established a church in 1882 and then in 1883 the trustees from the campground separated from the church. The campground started the church, not the church starting the campground”
Trustee and treasurer Jerry Nixon hopes that the future of the campground and the meeting is in good hands.
“It is about honoring our history,” he said. “It is all about the message, the testimony of the saints and the gospel. My hope is that generations to come will keep it alive as those before them have done.”
Betty Gwynn remembers her childhood spent at the campground meeting. She still owns the tent her parents built in the early 1940s, just before she came into the world in 1945.
“I’m the oldest of 12,” she said. “We were farmers. We picked cotton and we had corn and wheat and sometimes sugarcane. I remember being here with my classmates all day and all night. School was out and we had a little community of townhouses. We took care of one another. We were very close.”
One thing sticks out in Gwynn’s mind more than anything else.
“I didn’t have to do chores that week,” she laughed. “I didn’t have to feed the chickens, feed the pigs and take the cows and horses to water. Camp meeting meant a lot of playtime and I love camping now because of those memories. It’s fantastic.”
Gwynn and Young a co-authoring a book on the Tucker’s Grove Camp Meeting called “Tucker’s Grove: Legacy of the Campground” that will be available in the coming months.
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Information from: Lincoln Times-News, https://www.lincolntimesnews.com/
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