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Then and now
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Jackson County’s oldest church, Cullowhee Baptist, looked like this in the early 1920s (top photo). The white frame structure was located in front of the church cemetery between the present brick sanctuary and Baptist Student Union. Cullowhee Baptist organized in 1821 as Unity Baptist Church at the mouth of Love Branch on the Tuckaseigee River near Webster. The congregation moved to a log building at the mouth of Cullowhee Creek in 1830, and the church’s name was changed to Cullowhee Baptist sometime during that decade. Seeking relief from frequent flooding, the congregation in 1856 moved to higher ground near the church cemetery adjacent to what is now Western Carolina University. Constructed around 1918, the frame building in the top photo was the church’s third sanctuary in that area and was sold in 1931 to Eric Coward for $210. The congregation moved into the present-day brick Cullowhee Baptist (side wall is visible at left in lower photo), which was built on a parcel acquired from what was then Cullowhee State Normal and Industrial School, on July 20, 1930, according to retired Western Carolina University history professor John Bell. The church’s second building, completed in 1885, stood across Central Drive from the current church close to the Madison Memorial that’s located near the university’s steam plant. According to information Bell received from the late William Bird, a longtime WCU professor and administrator, that structure was used by the school after the church moved into the frame sanctuary in the photo above. – Herald file photo (top) and Herald photo by Nick Breedlove.
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