The following history of Jackson Baptist Church is presented by John Kirkland, who also provided the photographs.

Screven County, named for Revolutionary War General James Screven, has been home to rich layers of history long before Georgia became a colony in 1752. The area around modern-day Sylvania was once home to Native Americans, the site of Revolutionary War battles such as Briar Creek (1779), a stop for President George Washington in 1791, and part of General Sherman’s infamous March to the Sea in 1864.

In the difficult years following the Civil War, eight local men and women came together to organize Jackson Missionary Baptist Church. Many of those founding families — Beard, Booker, Conner, and Smoak — now rest in the large cemetery beside the church, alongside early settlers and Civil War veterans. Rev. C. E. Barefield preached the congregation’s first sermon in November 1870 in a home known as the Brown House — a place where, according to local tradition, George Washington once stayed.

That December, William H. Beard Sr. donated land ten miles east of Sylvania along the old Savannah-Augusta Stage Road. The first church was named in honor of Rev. G. L. Jackson, and its founding presbytery included Rev. Jackson, Rev. M. N. McCall, and Rev. Barefield. As the congregation grew, a second building was commissioned in 1890 and completed in 1891 by contractor Alf Bryant, financed by deacon John Edenfield.

Jackson Baptist’s early members reflected the resilience of post-war Georgia. The Beard family, among its founders, were farmers and veterans of the Confederate cavalry- men who returned from war to rebuild lives in a land still scarred by conflict.

Over the decades, the church would produce pastors who carried its influence far beyond Screven County. Rev. Moses McCall spent thirty-nine years ministering in Cuba, helping establish the Havana Baptist Theological Seminary in 1906, while Rev. G. R. McCall served faithfully in Georgia’s pulpits and on the State Missions Board. Today, Jackson Baptist Church remains a symbol of endurance and devotion, a place where the faith, work, and memory of its founders continue to echo through the pines of rural Georgia.