Burnt Church Cemetery
Bryan County, Bryan County, Georgia
Marker Inscription
Burnt Church Cemetery. Near this site in 1830 the Bryan Neck Presbyterian Church was established, being the oldest organized congregation in Bryan County. The church served the numerous plantar families of lower Bryan, which had become one of the most productive agricultural sections on the south Atlantic coast. The church burial ground was adjacent to the wood-frame sanctuary. On these grounds are interred members of some of Bryan County's most prominent early families, including those of Clay, McAllister and Maxwell. The original church accidentally burned in 1882 and a new edifice was built in 1885 several miles east, near Keller.
Erected by Coastal Bryan Heritage Trail
The Story
Established near here in 1830, Bryan Neck Presbyterian Church was the oldest organized congregation in Bryan County, serving the planter families of a lower-Bryan coast that had become one of the most productive rice-growing districts on the south Atlantic. Its burial ground lay beside the wooden sanctuary, and here rest members of prominent early families such as the Clays, McAllisters, and Maxwells. After the church accidentally burned in 1882, a new building rose in 1885 several miles east near Keller.
Why it matters
The cemetery preserves the memory of Georgia's rice-coast plantation society—an economy of great wealth built on enslaved labor—in the ground its leading families left behind.
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Related people
- · Clay
- · McAllister
- · Maxwell
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Bryan Neck Missionary Baptist Church
Bryan County, GA
Organized in 1869, Bryan Neck Missionary Baptist Church is the oldest African American congregation in lower Bryan County. Its first building, a 'Prayer House,' rose in 1870 beside the white Presbyterian 'Burnt Church,' led by London Harris, a freedman and community spiritual leader who was among its founders and first pastor. The church was renovated and enlarged in 1939 with support from Henry Ford, then building the nearby Harbor school.
Bryan Neck Presbyterian Church
Bryan County, GA
On the plantation coast of lower Bryan County, a group of wealthy rice planters organized this Presbyterian congregation, certified by the Presbytery of Georgia in 1830 and built into a frame meeting house by 1839. Fire claimed the first sanctuary, and the present church—the oldest public building in the county—rose in 1885. The founders' world of tidal rice fields depended entirely on enslaved labor, and the old burial ground, Burnt Church Cemetery, still holds the graves of these prominent early families.
Canaan Baptist Church
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Canaan Baptist Church, a primarily African American congregation, was organized in 1913 by the Rev. David Boles, Sr. and Deacon Fred Gilbert—the only organized denominational church in what is now Richmond Hill in the early 20th century. Its present sanctuary was built with support from Henry Ford, who developed extensive holdings in the area. Many founding members descended from the enslaved people who had worked the antebellum rice plantations at nearby Cherry Hill and Silk Hope.
Ashantilly
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Built around 1820, Ashantilly was the mainland home of Thomas Spalding (1774–1851), a prominent antebellum planter whose principal estate lay on nearby Sapelo Island. Likely constructed by Spalding's enslaved workers, the house was made of tabby—a coastal building material of oyster shell, sand, lime, and water—and named for his family's ancestral home in Scotland. In the 20th century it became the home of the Ashantilly Press before being donated as a cultural center in 1993.