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Taylor County
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Landmark Cedar Gap Church Finally Passes OnBy Ken Ellsworth / Abilene Reporter-News, October 1997CEDAR GAP - Cedar Gap, once named Coats, was never large and over the years it just became smaller and smaller. But once the community had a school, church, cemetery, post office, store, and blacksmith shop. Of those things, only the cemetery, school, and church still stand. Soon, though, there will be even less to remind locals of the old community, because all that will remain will be the pretty little Cedar Gap Cemetery and the old cinder block school. That is because the old Cedar Gap Baptist Church, which has been standing since 1897, though not so firmly in recent years, is coming down just one year shy of accomplishing the feat of lasting 100 years. Right now, the old church, long a landmark on U.S. Highway 83/84, just 12 miles south of Abilene, has been reduced to only a shell. It is slowly being carted away in pieces for its old lumber and other materials. Folks hate to see it go, but know there is no choice. For several years the building, covered by gray siding in the 1960s, has been listing badly to the south and has been in danger of falling. "We would love to have redone the building, but the doors and the front of the church had been changed and so it would not have qualified for a historical marker, even if we had done it," said Linda Spurlin, secretary/treasurer of the Cedar Gap Cemetery Association. "Besides that we just did not have the funds." The association, she said, though, was hopeful of erecting another roofed structure for funeral services. L.G. Smith is a native of Cedar Gap and the owner of the Hilltop Gas Station, located one mile north of the church. "Yeah, it makes me sad, but there was nothing else that could be done about it," he said of the church's demise. "When I was a kid growing up in the late '40s, I always went to church over there. We used to walk, joining other families as we walked along, including the members of the Graham family. It was B.F. Graham who founded the church, I think, and the land was given by the Kidd family. Well, it is sad, but it seems so long ago, it all seems like a dream." B.F. Graham's grandson, Thomas Graham, 80, still lives in the area, but is not too sad to see the old place go because his wife's grave and his own plot lie dangerously near the leaning building. Graham, who is the oldest surviving descendent of the founder, said he had a lot of good memories about the place. "You know, I think I might be the last member of that old church. When they stopped meeting some 30 years ago because only a few people were attending, everybody said they would change their membership to another church, but I never did change. So I guess that makes me the only member left," Graham said and chuckled. Graham's late wife, Inez Hinson Graham, wrote a short history of the church in 1976. "The building was always painted white until some newfangled siding was put on it during the fall of 1964," Mrs. Graham wrote, showing, I think, a certain distaste for the new gray siding. She also wrote this: "A complete record of the church has been kept, including minutes indicating that early members were 'churched' for dancing, gossiping, lying, and fighting." I asked Thomas Graham what being "churched" meant. "I think that means they expelled you. They were a lot stricter back then," he said. This column covers the cities and communities of this part of West Texas. To contact Ken Ellsworth, call (800) 588- 6397 or (915) 673-4271, Ext. 381, or write to P.O. Box 30, Abilene, TX 79604. Source: Abilene Reporter One time when Edward "Homer" Traylor was a young man the family went to a party at the home of Mrs. Harris. This took place near Christmas. Among those present was a Mr. Pruitt. Someone got out a French harp and several of the young people started dancing the figure 8. Mr. Pruitt gathered his family and went home. The next day there was a meeting of the deacons of the Church (Mr. Pruitt was a deacon) and they decided all the young people who were dancing should go before the church and apologize. Homer refused saying he had done nothing wrong. He was the only one who did not apologize, so the deacons decided to throw him out of their church, which they did. This was a Baptist Church. I do not know if he ever joined a Baptist Church again. [probably L.B. Pruitt, Bluff Creek area pre 1920] |
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