Listed in Arkansas Register of Historic Places on 04/05/00
SUMMARY
Richwoods Church is the sole surviving structure from the early years of Richwoods Township. The church served many needs in the community as a religious, social, recreational and educational center. Richwoods Church continues to meet the religious needs of about twenty parishioners in the area. Besides serving a religious purpose the mere fact of its physical survival stirs memories for those who attended functions in the building and educates others about the history of rural churches and vernacular architecture in Arkansas.
ELABORATION
Richwoods was considered the largest township in Lawrence County. Originally a part of Campbell Township, by 1902 the Richwoods community had grown to the extent that it was declared a separate township, containing its own school, a church, a cotton gin, a grist mill and - at various times - four general stores. Richwoods was an agricultural community, made up primarily of farmers and farm laborers. About twenty houses formed a square with Richwoods School as the nucleus, with other houses scattered close to the community and throughout the surrounding rural area.
Until 1887 there was no church in Richwoods. In that year a log building was erected on land donated by Zacheus Phelps, Sr., his wife Victoria, (a member of the Methodist Episcopal Church South) and J.M. Phelps, a Civil War veteran, businessman, and one of the most prominent landowners in Lawrence County who owned over two thousand acres in the county. Zacheus Phelps was a partner in a Walnut Ridge mercantile called Phelps Brothers (later Z. Phelps and Sons). The Phelps stated that the land would be deeded to the trustees of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South under the stipulation that ...."the said premises shall be kept and maintained and disposed of as a place of divine worship for the use of the ministry and membership of the said Methodist Church South....." When the log church burned after 1907, the men of Richwoods Community constructed the current building circa 1913 east of the log structure.
As a church, Richwoods’ doors were open to preachers of all religions, whenever their circuits included the township. The nearby community of Clearlake was the site of baptismal ceremonies of new church members. Local church members and natives of Richwoods, Mae Arnold Spence and Lorene Tillman have stated that the church would overflow with people. Small children and babies would sit on the floor and lie on quilts in the aisle, while others would sit in their horse-drawn wagons at the windows of the church, looking in. Articles in the Star Herald newspaper, Pocahontas chronicle the church’s role as a focal point of Richwoods’ social life. The church served as a "stump" for political speeches by candidates running for office and as a theater featuring silent movies (admission ten cents). Ms. Spence, recalls how at age twelve, she and the other children would come flying out of their houses and race to the church when they heard the "ol rattlin buggy" of the traveling movie man, Mr. Brandenburg. The Woodmen of the World Lodge met and the Ladies Aid Society held quilting nights in the second story of the church. That floor has since been removed as its weight was causing the building to lean. The date of its removal is not exact, but oral interviews with a local resident reveal that she recalled being carried upstairs to the Woodmen of the World meeting room on the shoulders of her grandfather when she was about five years old, which would have been in 1929. After her grandmother’s death in 1936 she states that the upper floor had been removed. A wooden deck resting on the ground was situated in front of the main entry, which at the time was on the rear facade. This too was removed at an unknown date.
By the late 1940s the population of Richwoods community began dropping. The last general store closed down in 1956 and Richwoods School District #10 was annexed to Walnut Ridge School District #19 in January 1949. The church was a focal point of the community throughout the first half of the twentieth century, before the Richwoods school consolidated with Walnut Ridge school district; before the lush woods and timber businesses disappeared, and before small family farms were absorbed by larger agricultural corporations, depleting the means of livelihood for many residents and necessitating their relocation to other areas.
SIGNIFICANCE
Richwoods Church is the sole remainder of the Richwoods Township and even though it has seen significant alterations to its exterior and interior, it continues to demonstrate the essential character of early twentieth century Richwoods. For these reasons the Richwoods Church is being nominated to the Arkansas Register underCriterion C, Criteria consideration A for its Plain-Traditional architecture, a vernacular style that seldom survives in the rural areas of Arkansas.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Lucas, Reverence Silas Emmett, Jr. Goodspeed Biographical and Historical Memoirs of Northeastern Arkansas. Chicago, Nashville, and St. Louis: The Goodspeed Publishing Co., 1889.
McLeod, Walter E. Centennial Memorial Edition of Lawrence County. Russellville: Russellville Printing, 1936.
Pocahontas Star-Herald
, 6 April 1906, 20 November 1908.
Barr, Leona. Interview by Regina Horton, 14 December 1997, 24 August 1998.
Callie, Johnson. Interview by Regina Horton, 24 August 1998.
Lynch, Trish. Interview by Regina Horton, 30 May 1999.
Saylors, Erna. Interview by Regina Horton, 14 December 1997.
Spence, May Arnold. Interview by Regina Horton, 14 December 1997.
Tillman, Lorene. Interview by Regina Horton, 14 December 1997, 21 January 2000.
Turnbow, Sloan. Interview by Regina Horton, Spring 1998.
Turner, Jacqueline Hackworth. Interview by Regina Horton, 21 January 2000.