History (taken from EARLY SETTLERS OF THE K-SPRINGS/CHELSEA AREA, by Shelba Shelton Nivens)

“I found me a girl today,” Young Clifton Kendrick told his sister, Flora, as they walked home from Sunday morning service at Pleasant Valley church close to a 100 years ago.

At a service a short while later, he found that the girl, Effie Stone, had noticed him, too. He smiled as he shared the memory a few years before his death in 1981.

“Effie and Lizzie Armstrong were down praying, and I saw her peeping through the crack in the bench. She asked ‘Who is that boy?’ She was always shy. Her daddy (George Stone) was hard boiled and wouldn’t let me stay at her house after dark.”

A church house was the place where many young people met -- and courted -- their future spouses in the early days of our community. They socialized while cranking old-fashioned ice cream freezers at ice cream suppers or while standing around a bonfire roasting wieners on forked sticks.

Singing Schools

Young people, along with the older folks, enjoyed “singing schools” held in church houses. Several early citizens of the area taught in these schools, using the old shape-note method to teach the rudiments of music.

The late Eunice Kendrick Minor, mother of Mickey Griffin who now serves as Director of the K-Springs Church preschool, was one of these teachers.

The late Edna Gilbert Moore recalled attending singing school in the early 1900s at a Methodist church, which was located across the road from the site of Chelsea Church of God’s new building. Her family lived about a mile southwest of the church in the older, white house that sets in the bend of the road and has been beautifully remodeled in recent years. From here, she and her sisters walked to the church where she met her future husband.

“Willis (Moore) taught singing school there, and Winfred (his brother) would be there,” she recalled before her death in 1978. She didn’t say so, but her tone and her smile implied that she was more interested in seeing Winfred than she was in learning to sing.

Church services and regular school classes, as well as singing schools, were often held in the same building.

Several early residents recalled that Center Institute was the first school at Chelsea. It was located near the Liberty Baptist Church and its first class, taught by a Mrs. Harper, was held in the church building in 1884.

East Saginaw/K-Springs Church of God

A few miles southwest of Liberty, in old East Saginaw community, which was located around the junction of present-day Highways 69 and 74, another group of worshippers began meeting in Morris School House in 1904. This little group would become the East Saginaw Church of God, then later the K-Springs Church of God. The founders included several members of the Moore and Kendrick families.

Beginning around 1902, the group first met in homes to share the message they’d heard preached by a group of black worshippers who met under the trees. After a Church of God husband and wife evangelistic team came and helped them form a Sunday School, they began meeting in the school house.

In 1911, Tom and Louizie Kendrick, parents of Eunice Minor, deeded land to the deacons of East Saginaw Church of God, and the congregation erected a building just across Yellow Leaf Creek (on the eastern side of the creek).

However, around 1927 businesses in the town of East Saginaw began to close down as people working in timber-cutting operations moved away with their work. So, the church group moved services to the K-Springs school house. They later bought the building, tore it down and erected a new one about 1936. In 1978 they moved into a new, brick facility across the road (Highway 39). Since that time, additional classrooms and offices, a new kitchen and gym/fellowship hall have been added. (See K-Springs Church of God web site for more information.)

Early residents of East Saginaw had a choice of at least two other churches in their area.

Mt. Calvary Missionary Baptist Church

Mt. Calvary Missionary Baptist, located near the junction of Highways 74 and 39, was founded in 1856 by members of the Mooney, Stone, Minor, Shaw and Moore families. Members of the Harper family were also early leaders in the church, and helped take care of the property after it was no longer used for regular services. For several years the building and grounds were used for “Homecoming” celebrations and various special services.

Mountain Chapel Methodist Church

The Mountain Chapel church was located a little farther south, near the mountain. A 1911 newspaper stated that Mr. John W. Minor, a Confederate War soldier, who “died a few days ago at age eighty…,” was a member of the Methodist church at Mountain Chapel. He is buried in Calvary Cemetery, located across Road 74 from the little, white Calvary Church building.

Chelsea Church of God

According to the recollections of Ninety-year-old Eunice Turner the Chelsea Church of God, held its first meetings at the Chelsea school. Rev. Frank Johnson and his wife, Emmie, conducted revival services in the school house around 1933, and the church evolved from those services.

Mrs. Turner recalls that the first pastor of the church was Bessie Holcomb Bristow. Rev. Oliver Kendrick, father of Dorothy Bradley, was also pastor for awhile in the 1930s, and some of his descendents are yet active in the church.

After meeting in the school building for a short time, the congregation moved services to Erwin Crane’s garage at Chelsea. Then, a short while later, members of the Chesser family donated land for a church building. Additions have been made to this building at the intersection of Highways 39 and 47 in recent years, and now the congregation is erecting a new and larger building a few yards to the west on Highway 39.