Page 55 - Spring 2021

“It made some towns and it broke some others,” Hubert said of the railroad, noting Bishop’s inverse growth.
While the stage coach’s discontinuation meant less travelers for the town, the impact was perhaps more acute for farmers, who then had to venture farther with their cotton.
Then, hardship struck again when a typhoid epidemic broke out in Salem during the early 1900s, killing many citizens and motivating others to move away.
Plague afflicted Salem along with Georgia and the rest of the South when the boll weevil descended on the area in the 1920s, decimating the town’s cotton crop and causing, in Hubert’s words, “the final blow.”
However, some good fortune came out of that period of decline. The late Mrs. Hale’s account also revealed how the church was rebuilt in 1896 due to the efforts of many congregants.
“The materials were donated. Needing long sills, rafters and the like, the trees were given and the people came together, cut the logs, hauled them to the saw mill, had them cut, then carried them to the church ground for the building,” she wrote. “A foreman was hired, but the rest of the labor was given.”
Salem’s most enduring inhabitants may be the former residents who found their eternal rest in a cemetery behind the church.
Bishops, Carsons, Hales, Hesters, Middlebrooks, O’Dillons and Thrashers rest here, among numerous other families.
Church legacy
Salem Methodist Church just turned 200 last year. The church held regular Sunday services until the 1980s for its elderly congregants, said Albert Hale, who grew up as one of the church’s few youth in the 1950s and 1960s.
Like other legacy churches in the area, the church has held homecoming-style reunion services every Mother’s Day. The only exception was last year’s planned 200th anniversary event, which was cancelled due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Hale said singing was a constant tradition.
“Several of us families had more than one who could sing,” he said. “My grandparents and great-grandparents grew up doing what we knew how to do...not many of us learned how to [play] instruments, but most of us could sing.”
A board of trustees owns the church now, and a fund keeps the building and cemetery grounds maintained.
Donations for the Salem Perpetual Care Fund can be sent to treasurer Stephanie H. Wright at 2511 Watson Springs Road in Watkinsville.
250 Gaines School Road • Athens, GA (706) 208-1708 www.jjinsure.com
Residential & Commercial Services
DON’T LOSE YOUR COOL!
With years of experience
our professionally trained crew can install, replace, service, maintain and repair ALL MAKES and MODELS of air conditioning systems.
D&D Heating & Air can handle the toughest heating and air jobs, large or small.
Locally Owned & Operated Since 1984
SPRING 2021 | OCONEE THE MAGAZINE | PAGE 53