A church and its companion cemetery, and often the rural schoolhouse as well, was the center of farm communities. As the rural population left the land for cities and towns, many churches were abandoned. Yet a strong sense of place, even among distant generations, fostered the grassroots preservation of buildings such as Old Clifty Church in Greene County, pictured here. Ann Wilcoxson, who lives on a neighboring nearby farm she inherited from her aunt and uncle, says that the logs for the church were hewed before the Civil War, but the church itself wasn’t completed until the men returned from battle. By the 1940s, the church was long abandoned and in great disrepair. A local lawyer with family ties to the area bought the building for $250 and established the Old Clifty Memorial Association. Repairs thought to be good and appropriate in the 1940s have caused additional decay. “The old people that had the lasting relationship with [the church] are gone,” Ann says. This makes raising funds and volunteers a struggle. An annual reunion or “meeting” is held the second Sunday of August.
"[Log churches were similar in construction to log houses], except for two important details. First, their doors are never in the long walls as they are in log houses, but are instead in one of the gable-end walls. Usually the gable-end of the building with the door, or doors, in it faces the road. The interior lay-out of the churches seemingly dictates this door placement. The pulpit is at one end of the church, usually on a slightly raised platform that has space for a choir. Rows of benches occupy the floor in front of the pulpit. It is convenient, therefore, to have the entrance to the church in the wall behind the benches. In this way the seating arrangement is not broken up and late-comers to the service can enter the church at the rear without disrupting the service. Some churches have a single door in the center of the gable-end wall while others have two doors in this wall. In those churches with two doors the sexes were separated during the services."
Warren Roberts, Log Buildings in Southern Indiana,
1996, 149.
