In the 1830s, a church called Rocky Mount was founded in what was then Dooly County. But when a division in the Georgia Baptist Association split its membership in 1838, some members went their own way. By 1848, eight of them had gathered to form Mt. Horeb Baptist Church. Their first sanctuary was a log building on the banks of the Flint River in a little community known as Pindertown, a stop along the stage road from Milledgeville to Tallahassee.

By the eve of the Civil War, Mt. Horeb had grown to 160 members. But tragedy struck soon after when the church building burned, leaving its future uncertain. That is, until 1868, when Mrs. Celia Evelyn Sutton Ross Buckalew donated land near Abrams Creek to rebuild the sanctuary as a memorial to her late husband, James F. Buckalew. By October of that year, a new Mt. Horeb stood on the site where it still stands today. The church’s struggles were not over. In the early 1900s, outbreaks of mosquito-borne hemorrhagic fever and poor drinking water drove many families away. Around 1902, services ceased, and the church sat silent, slowly deteriorating.

Hope returned in 1914 when two descendants of the founders, Mrs. Nettie Hall Woolard and Mr. Robert M. Deariso, called the families together. They decided to hold an annual homecoming service on the fourth Sunday in August, a tradition that continues to this day. Deariso, grandson of Mrs. Buckalew, even re-recorded the deed in 1915 to secure the church’s place in public record.

Today, Mt. Horeb remains much the same as it was in its heyday. According to Mrs. Nel Thompson, a descendant of the founding families, “We sit in the same pews our ancestors used and hear the same words of faith preached from the same pulpit they did. People with family names that appear in the records of Rocky Mount, Old Mt. Horeb, and Mt. Horeb Churches join together with the ghosts of the past on every fourth Sunday in August in the fellowship of ‘love to the cause of Christ.’”