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Walter Revere Marsh, 88, of Goochland has attended sessions at the Kirkland Campground revival center since he was 2.
The Kirkland Grove Campground Baptist revival center near Heathsville has hosted summer revival programs
Gloria Revere (left) and Elsie Scott, who are both |
EATHSVILLE--When Kirkland Grove Campground's hotels, cottages and outdoor tabernacle became the center of Northern Neck life in Robert Brann's youth, little else matched the two weeks he spent worshipping and socializing with thousands here at Baptist revivals.
"I'd rather have come here than gone to heaven," said the 79-year-old resident of Village in Richmond County, exaggerating just a little bit. "It was at a time on the farm when people could take a short break to come here. For two weeks, this was the place to be."
Brann was one of hundreds attending four nights of revivals last week on the site founded in 1892 and designated in 1991 as a Virginia Historic Landmark.
He said that when adults filled the tabernacle's rough pine benches in its heyday, young people spent many of the evenings "promenading" in a fenced-off area known as the bullpen.
"It was nothing more than a path lined with sawdust and stands that sold ice cream or candy, but each night we'd walk in circles for hours, seeing the girls and being seen," said Brann said.
He added, "A lot of young men met their wives there. Back then, there weren't many other places that could happen. There weren't movie halls or other places to gather in the Northern Neck, just country stores here and there."
I visited Kirkland Grove last week at the invitation of Reggie Brann, a high school friend who's now a member of the committee overseeing the campground for the Rappahannock Baptist Association.
Gone are the campground's hotels and its numerous "tents"--misnomers because they were actually 41 two-story wooden cottages that once ringed the 23-acre parcel of tall oaks.
Still remaining is the tin-roofed tabernacle building, 100-foot square with open sides, a shiny tin roof, a speaking platform and pillars hand-hewn years ago from trees on the property. The benches put in 100 years ago are comfortable curves worn into their backrests; one even has notches cut to mark the tabernacle's early days.
These days, the Baptist organization holds a week of revivals each year to carry on the tradition at Kirkland Grove, which served as a model for church camp meetings by Baptists and other denominations.
Albert Fisher of Heathsville served on the Kirkland Grove steering committee for nearly 30 years, stepping down just a few years ago.
At its peak, Fisher noted, the revival weeks at Kirkland Grove would draw up to 5,000 folks.
"For many of the people who owned the cottages or came to stay at the hotel here, this was the only vacation of the year," Fisher said. "People would share meals, kids would play in the woods and people would gather at night for the services. It was the biggest thing that happened all year."
Eighty-two-year-old Mirriam Medley, who now lives in Lottsburg, said nothing beat "promenading" in the area set aside for young people by a wooden fence.
"You'd walk for hours, stopping now and then at the concession stands they had down there for ice cream or Cracker Jacks," she said. "People would go off to college, but come home in the summer and back to Kirkland Grove. A lot of people met their husbands and wives here."
On its 100th anniversary in the early '90s, the Baptist group that still runs Kirkland Grove put together a booklet on its history.
The booklet noted that the meetings at Kirkland included "prayer services, special services for the children, including Vacation Bible School, regular worship services and song services by the choir. People made their decisions to become Christians and join a church of their choice when the invitation was given."
The booklet gives credit to the Rev. G. Albert Brown Jr., who in recent years had been a pastor in the Fredericksburg area, for reviving the campground in the 1960s while serving as a minister in the Northern Neck.
Looking over the tabernacle building last week, Fisher noted that the structure has been blessed many ways.
"If you left pieces of pine like these benches out in your yard for 100 years, the termites would get them for sure, but these don't have a mark on them," he said. "Makes you think someone's looking out for this place."
To reach ROB HEDELT: 540/374-5415 rhedelt@freelancestar.com
