The Adobe Flash Player is required to view this multimedia interactive. Get it here.

Keeping Hope(well) alive

Historic Hopewell Church finds new life after an eventful past

Bob Simpson has been involved in efforts to preserve the Hopewell Church and remembers when the Sunday services were held on the lawn because the floor was not safe. Now, the church is used every Sunday during the summer was area churches leading services. Contributed Photo by Kelly Kefauver

Kelly Kefauver Bob Simpson has been involved in efforts to preserve the Hopewell Church and remembers when the Sunday services were held on the lawn because the floor was not safe. Now, the church is used every Sunday during the summer was area churches leading services. Contributed Photo by Kelly Kefauver

ENLARGE PHOTO

High school delivers the goods: 4,207 cans
11/21/09
Cutting-edge command center now a dream, but EMA director will keep pushing for it
11/21/09
State jobless rate jumps to 10.5 percent
11/20/09
Committee recommends Miami increase room and board rates
11/20/09
MU junior expects big things from tiny robot
11/20/09
> More headlines

By Kelly Kefauver, Contributing Writer 5:05 PM Thursday, September 3, 2009

To the average observer, there is little north of Hueston Woods and west of Ohio 177 other than homegrown produce and the Indiana border.

Look closely, though, and you’ll find a significant piece of Ohio history.

Less than a mile out on Camden College-Corner Road in College Corner is a stone fence that opens up for a narrow gravel driveway encircling centuries-old graves. In the center stands a simple, single-room brick church.

On summer Sundays, you’ll find any one of 15 area congregations holding services in this historic spot. Sunday, Sept. 6, will be the final service of the 2009 summer season.

An early December Christmas service and a sunrise Easter service add to the list of this church’s functions, though it no longer has a congregation to call its own.

There’s something quiet about the air around and inside the Historic Hopewell Presbyterian Church in Preble County.

Originally, Hopewell was a log building, but as it gained members, the church replaced that structure with the brick one that stands today. Later, it started several daughter churches, one of which is in Oxford, according to church historian Bob Simpson.

From the outside of the building, you can see where what used to be two windows and a door have been patched up with a different color brick. Simpson said there is a funny story about that.

“The story goes that a young man who was church member had gone drinking on Saturday night and saw the door he usually went in was bricked up,” Simpson said. “He said, ‘No one’s gonna brick up my church!’ ”

“He took it upon himself to run the patch through with a log. Come Sunday morning, the bricks from the hole were still lying there, and the log, too. The boy who confessed to it was named Nathan Brown.”

Nathan has been immortalized in the church records for his single drunken, albeit well meant, exploit.

Despite its early popularity and avid members, Simpson said about half of Hopewell’s members left the church for daughter churches by the 1870s. The church closed shortly after the turn of the century.

A heavy iron bar and a lock are the watchmen for the big white doors of the old church since vandals sacked the place in the 1960s. Around the same time, Hopewell was presented with the threat of being destroyed. So, former members banded together to create Historic Hopewell Inc. to defend the place of worship.

Simpson, who volunteers for the nonprofit group dedicated to preserving the church, said Scots-Irish Presbyterians founded the church in 1808 after leaving the South in opposition to slavery.

“They had done that with another church — picked the whole thing up and moved it to another location in a park,” Simpson said. “All that was left was a little historical marker that said the church was there. We didn’t want that to happen here.”

Coinciding with the beginning of Historic Hopewell Inc. was the renewal of small services at the church, but they didn’t happen in the old structure.

“You couldn’t have service in here at that time,” Simpson said. “At one point, you couldn’t even walk on these floors. It was too dangerous. So, when I was a kid, we would have service out here on the front lawn.”

One could imagine that a 150-year-old church might have fallen into a little disrepair. The floors sagged dangerously and the décor was far from divine.

Members set out to give Hopewell a facelift a decade before the church’s 200th birthday. They replaced everything from the delicate gold design that borders the ceiling, to the pulpit, reconstructed into a beautiful white and wood masterpiece.

Inside, the honey-colored wood-plank floors look like they were taken from a 200-year-old manor house — but they’re new, at least for the church. The drastic renovation left the structure not only a safe place to congregate, but also a popular place for area weddings.

After all the group’s hard work, Hopewell was finally ready for its bicentennial. The site was awarded an Ohio historical marker and was put on the National Register of Historic Places.

»What’s happening in your community? Find out online at OxfordPress.com

»Looking for something to do with your extra time? Check out our complete listing online at OxfordPress.com/thingstodo

Share this article