Piney Grove Primitive Baptist is one of the old Wiregrass Primitive Baptist churches, part of a distinctive group concentrated in the sandy pine and scrub oak lands of southeastern Georgia, northeast Florida, and southeastern Alabama. The name “Wiregrass” comes from the coarse grass native to this region, and the churches here reflect that same hardy simplicity. Primitive Baptists emerged in the 1830s and 1840s from a schism among Baptists over the issue of missions and other practices not directly mentioned in Scripture. Those in favor of missionary work became known as Missionary or Southern Baptists, while those opposed took the name Primitive Baptists—“primitive” meant original or of long ago, not backward, though it has often been misunderstood.

In 1868, another controversy fractured the Primitive Baptists of southeast Georgia. The Georgia Homestead Act allowed individuals to restructure debts after the Civil War, a move some Primitive Baptists considered a breach of contract. The dispute created two factions within the Alabaha River Association: the Crawfordites, led by Elder Reuben Crawford of Shiloh Church, who supported the act, and the Bennettites, led by Elder Richard Bennett of Rome Church, who opposed it. Both factions continued under the Alabaha name, and even today, churches are often described by whether they belonged to the Crawford or Bennett groups. Only four Crawfordite churches remain active, with just three elders among them.

Piney Grove itself was part of these Crawfordite traditions, but eventually suffered its own internal split over the Sacred Harp singing style and other modernization issues. The disagreement left the church without an elder, and with a dwindling membership, it disbanded in 1996. Despite its closure, the building remains, thanks largely to the care of the Thrift family. The sanctuary has survived decades of neglect and even a fire set by vandals, who tried to burn the structure using dry palmetto leaves. Remarkably, the blaze burned out before consuming the heart pine timbers. Today, Piney Grove stands in a good state of preservation—a silent witness to the turbulent history of Primitive Baptists in the Wiregrass region and to the families who fought to keep its memory alive.