Eric Reece
In April 1897, two ladies from Robbinsville – Mrs. M.C. Foute and Mrs. Martha Barker – traveled to Waynesville to attend the meeting of the Asheville Presbytery. They petitioned the group for a Presbyterian Church to be started in Robbinsville.
The Rev. Robert Perry Smith – Superintendent of Home Mission Work – came and started a church and school in 1902.
Smith was filled with zeal to start churches and schools in mountain communities. He planted 14 churches and a number of schools. He followed a plan in many communities, start a church, start a school and go out into the community to bring the children in. Once the Robbinsville church and school was born, the school prospered.
In 1905, Smith wrote, “Some Results of Mission Work in the Mountains of North Carolina.”
“The next year, (1900) a school was organized at Robbinsville and a neat comfortable building was erected; one room being used for the school, the other for church services. The school has grown steadily year-by-year, and two more rooms have been added to accommodate the increasing patronage. The enrollment of students has reached 350, three teachers are actively engaged, a library of 600 volumes has been installed, a church and a Sabbath school organized, and a pastor employed. The people of the community have helped liberally with this enterprise and refer to this school as the greatest influence for good that has ever been established in that county.”
To help tell the story of the Robbinsville and other mountain churches in 1910, Our Mountain Work – a monthly newspaper – was published and soon was in every Presbyterian home in western North Carolina.
After a great start – for some reason – the school was discontinued and the Robbinsville School Committee bought the building to use as a school. The Robbinsville Presbyterian Church was dissolved in 1916.
Not to be forgotten, a new Presbyterian work began in 1938. The Methodist Church was building a new sanctuary (the present Hosanna Baptist) and sold their old building to the Asheville Presbytery, and the church was reborn. The congregation was described as “small but ambitious.” The minister of Andrews Presbyterian often served the Robbinsville congregation.
For a number of years, the preachers of the Robbinsville Presbyterian and Methodist Churches would alternate preaching Sunday afternoons at Fontana.
On Jan. 26, 1942, a Pulpit Bible was presented to the church by Mrs. R.B. Slaughter’s Young People’s Class and the Sunday School. It was first read by the Rev, R.D. Bedinger, former missionary in the Belgian Congo. The membership of the church was listed as 16 in 1951 and sadly dissolved again in 1959.
It is said that strange sounds would come from the old church at night as the wind whistled through the building. This led to the tale the building was haunted.
I don’t know if it was a Methodist or Presbyterian ghosts.
Not to be forgotten, the Presbyterians met at the Methodist Church on Sunday afternoons at 3 p.m. to worship up until the 1960’s.
While there is little evidence of the Robbinsville Presbyterian church today, the mission of educating children in the community set an example for all.
Eric Reece is the faith columnist for The Graham Star. He is pastor of Robbinsville United Methodist Church and can be reached via email, ereece@wnccumc.net.