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Beulah Baptist Church (Site)

GPS Coordinates: 38.7696331, -77.1536229
Closest Address: 6811 Beulah Street, Alexandria, VA 22310

Beulah Baptist Church (Site)

These coordinates mark the exact spot where the church once stood. No visible remains exist.


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Here follows an excerpt from the "Franconia Legacies" newsletter published in 2005 by the Franconia Museum and written by Judy Hutchinson:

BEULAH BAPTIST CHURCH 1870-1954
This story is an excerpt from a booklet prepared in January 1976 by C.L. Bishop, Pastor, Franconia Baptist Church.

Franconia was an isolated community consisting of a cross roads, a railroad station and a general store in 1870. Only a few families lived here. Not all the land was cleared, but farming was the principal vocation.

The original record book has been preserved and from the minutes of business meetings we learn that The Church Covenant was adopted November 10, 1870, and for this reason we celebrate that date as the anniversary of our church.

First record of new members received was: Mrs. Jane Potter, George Lyles, John Hall, William Dove, Fred Lyles, William Devers, Mrs. Bin Devers, by letter; and two for baptism on the afternoon of June 25, 1871. Rev. C. H. Ryland was moderator and A. Martin was clerk.

J. T. Talbert was elected delegate to the association to be held at Berryville on July 18, 1871. Church discipline in the early years consisted of bringing charges, having committees to investigate and report. Some wayward members were dismissed, others who expressed repentance for their misdeeds were restored to the fellowship of the church.

The church sexton was paid $1.50 for his services May 22, 1872. The pastor's collection was $3.44. Rev. B. P. Dulin became pastor February 2, 1873. Pledges were taken for his salary and $67.50 was subscribed, J. T. Talbert, Clerk.

Rev. W. S. Kerns became pastor December 16, 1877, to preach two Sundays in each month. Baptizing in Backlick Run was conducted November 17, 1878 with seven believers being baptized.

On August 18, 1907, "The church having been without a pastor for quite awhile" called Rev. C. K. Hobbs. A revival was held with 29 professing faith and 17 baptized.

In 1908 one-half acre of land was purchased for $20 as a building site. Rev. W. E. Langford was called as pastor February 13, 1910. Rev. Clifton W. Storke became pastor in 1912.

Miss Georgia Talbert, who still lives in this community, led in taking an offering August 11, 1912, to complete payment on the church building. A total of $1,361.78 had been spent for construction of the new house of worship.

Rev. Gerald Payne became pastor March 16, 1915. Rev. Willis L. Wayts "was sent by the State Board" and served 12 months. He was succeeded by Rev. R. P. Rixey. Rev. O. P. Lloyd was pastor of the church for the first time in 1920. He was to serve two other periods of time for a total of 26 years, ending with his death in 1954. Rev. Henry Nichol, who was also pastor of Woodbridge, Dumfries and the mission called Smoketown, succeeded Rev. Lloyd in 1921.

A Baptist Young Peoples Union (BYPU) was organized in June 1921, following a study course taught by Rev. C. V. Hickerson. The wife of the author of this history, Mrs. Nora McGuire Bishop, was baptized by Rev. Hickerson during his pastorate of the First Baptist Church, Russellville, Arkansas.

Miss Iola Terry, sister of our Brother Shelton Terry, was the first president of the newly organized Baptist Young Peoples Union.

Mrs. Ethel Peverill, another faithful present member of the church, became church clerk in 1921. Rev. O. P. Lloyd was pastor again from February 16, 1922 until November 18, 1923. Rev. Ryland Dodge became pastor in 1924. He still lives in Alexandria.

During the year 1926, $204.82 was given to missions. Rev. Virgil Hobbs was pastor in 1928. A church piano and organ were purchased about this time. Also, the church building was repaired and painted at a cost of $72.

In 1931 Rev. O. P. Lloyd was called for the third time to be pastor of our church. This time he remained until his death in 1954.

July 25, 1937 entry concerning a two-week revival led by Rev. Walter Scott: "Additions by Baptism, 38 by letter 8. He (Rev. Scott) knew how to keep the children quiet."

During the last few years of Rev. Lloyd's pastorate the community began to grow rapidly. The completion of Shirley Highway, Interstate 95, and the start of a new town in Springfield gave indications of the expansion of Metropolitan Washington to include the territory served by this church.

Members from Beulah Baptist Church participated in the start of the Springfield Baptist Church. First pastor for this work was Rev. Henry Martin, later a missionary to Africa. The church was organized in a rented residence Sunday, July 4, 1954.

Mrs. O. P. Lloyd, who was dearly loved by the people in the church, preceded her husband in death by one year. With his homegoing in 1954 the church was without a pastor until my coming in September.

We owe much to the pioneers of the work in this community. They were a sturdy lot, people with deep convictions and loyalties. Without them, our church would not be as strong as it is today.


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Here follows an excerpt from the "Franconia Legacies" newsletter published in 2005 by the Franconia Museum and written by Judy Hutchinson:

HISTORICAL SUMMARY OF CALVARY ROAD BAPTIST CHURCH (FORMERLY BEULAH BAPTIST CHURCH):
Church Covenant of Beulah Baptist Church was adopted November 20, 1870.

Land was purchased on Beulah Road in 1908 to build Beulah Baptist Church. Final payment on the church building was made in 1912.

In 1957, land was purchased on Franconia Road, and a new church building was erected (Franconia Baptist Church.) Part of the congregation of Beulah Baptist Church went to the new building, and the rest of the congregation remained in the existing Beulah Baptist Church on Beulah Road.

The original church building on Beulah Road was destroyed by fire in November 1965.

Beulah Baptist Church was rebuilt, and the new building was dedicated August 6, 1967.

The church name was changed from Beulah Baptist Church to Calvary Road Baptist Church on November 23, 1971, under Reverend Samuel Edwards, Jr.

Calvary Road Baptist Church and New Life Ministries merged on June 10, 1979, with Dave Rhodenhizer as the new Pastor.

Calvary Road Baptist Church is located at 6811 Beulah Street in Franconia.


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Here follows an excerpt from the Fairfax Herald newspaper published on December 4, 1914:

Mr. and Mrs. Thomas Ogden and daughter, Miss Emma; Mrs. John Rogers, wife of Mr. John Rogers, section boss of Franconia section, and son and Mrs. Irving Tyler, of Lorton, paid a visit to Richmond, recently, and all seemed to enjoy their trip.

We are pleased to note the near completion of the new Beulah Baptist church, which is erected on a piece of land adjoining the old Beulah church lot, on which stood the old church, which, for some cause unknown to us, took fire on the night of May 5th, 1909, and was totally destroyed, with all its contents, on which there was no insurance. The old church had stood thirty-nine years and was the first house of worship I had the honor of helping to built, after the close of the Civil war. It was also used for a public school house for five years, or until the Franconia public school house was finished.

The new Beulah church has cost, up to the present time, about twelve hundred dollars, all of which has been paid, including a coat of paint on the outside.. The church still needs painting and finishing up on the inside, which we shall try and help out on. We feel confident that our friends will help out in this matter. Mrs. Sadie Ogden has presented the church with a handsome pulpit, at a cost of twenty five dollars, as a memorial to Rev. B. P. Dulin, who, at one time was pastor of the old Beulah church, who baptized Mrs. Ogden in Backlick run on the 15th of November, 1894.

We are pleased to note the wonderful improvements made on our county roads under their present management. The road leading from Simms’ corner to the Bone mill, which we shall name Magnolia avenue, when finished, will be the finest road in the district, notwithstanding the bond issue and the great amount of money being expended in other portions of the district for the benefit of the roads.

We may chronicle some few sales real estate: Mr. Jack Moore has sold his farm, back of the old Broders homestead, to Mr. Wm. Grehen. Mr. Lee Gorham has sold his lot and house to Mr. “Doc” Simms. Miss Carrie Talbott purchased of Mr. Rian a tract of land containing about thirty acres, on which she is erecting a fine residence.


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Howard and Ethel Gorham, Beulah Road Residents
Written By Ethel Virginia Adams Gorham

I was born on St. Asaph Street, in Alexandria, Virginia, on April 6, 1929. My mother, Mildred Pettit Adams, was born in Accotink, Virginia, in 1906, and my father, Mark Adams, was born in Arlington, Virginia, in 1903. I was one of nine children, and there are only two of us left now. We were all christened Episcopalian at the historic Christ Church on North Washington Street in Alexandria. We attended regularly, and my sisters and I sang in the choir.

I attended school in Alexandria, and graduated from George Washington High School. When I was 14 years old, I met Howard Gorham. He was visiting his brother, George, who lived next door to my family. Howard had just gone into the Army, because of World War II. I used to play with his brother’s children. I was just a kid myself, and he was, too.

Howard's father, Daniel “Lee” Gorham, and was born in Accotink, Virginia, around 1883, and his mother, Annie E. Taylor Gorham, born in Springfield, Virginia on April 10, 1889. Howard was one of 15 children. Lee Gorham worked for Fruit Growers Express in Alexandria, up on Telegraph Road. This company leased refrigerated railroad cars for transporting produce long distances around the country. The area is now townhouses, hotels and other businesses, but it was the railroad there in those days. A lot of the older men from Franconia worked for Fruit Growers Express. Clarence Gorham, Howard’s brother, also worked there. Lee and Clarence used to ride to work with some of the other Franconia men that worked for Fruit Growers Express. They worked for Fruit Growers until they retired and died.

When I was 16, and right out of high school, I took the Civil Service test. World War II was going on, and I went to work in the Pentagon. Construction of the Pentagon was finished in April 1945, and I started working there in July 1945. When I first went to work there, I worked for the Adjutant General's Office. We used to correspond with Fort Belvoir. At first I was a file clerk, and then I was in a secret area where we were making files and encoding data on the papers about the boys that were killed overseas. The papers would come in and we would have to fill those encoded papers out, but we weren't allowed to tell anyone. When I first went to work there they had these interpretive machines where all these cards had to be run through these machines. I had never seen one of those machines in my life before I went to work there.

I worked at the Pentagon for a little over a year, and I really loved it. Then when the war ended, I was laid off during a Reduction in Force. By that time I had gotten married, and was going to have a baby. Also, I didn’t have any means of transportation, so I never tried to go back. I still have my badge that I wore to get through the gate at the Pentagon, and it’s got my name and picture on it. I was supposed to turn it in, but I liked the picture and wanted to keep it. I have given it to the Franconia Museum to display, since it is an artifact.

Soon after I met Howard, he went off to war for two years. I was 16 years old when he came back home. When I was 17 years old, we got married on June 17, 1946. When we were first married, we lived in an apartment in Alexandria for 3-4 months. In November 1946, we moved to Franconia to a one-room house on Beulah Road.

A lot of the young people had gotten married around the same time, right after the war when the boys had come back home. Then they all started building their houses around the same time, and raising their families.

Howard's father gave us an acre of land, and we started building our house. We started out with two rooms. We went from an apartment, to one room, and then to two rooms with one child. We eventually had four children, and we built another room each time we had another baby. We ended up with five rooms, a bathroom, and a utility room.

Like so many of the young couples on Beulah Road at that time, we built our house ourselves, living in the house while we built it. For a time we had no water, no bathroom, not even any heat. We just kept at it as we worked our way up.

I had lived in the city all my life, and we always had indoor plumbing and running water. But as we were building our home, I had to wash clothes on a wash board, using water that I carried into the house, and heated. I never felt bad or embarrassed about it, but I did get tired of it. It made a woman out of me!

Howard and I never had a mortgage. We built onto the house as we could afford it, never going into debt. I remember when Howard found a picture window frame in a dump. It was in very good shape, so he cut it down to the size we needed, and then covered it with pasteboard. Each week he bought a new window until he had them all installed.

Mr. Gorham also gave Flemmie land on the front of his property, and gave Clarence land beside Flemmie, also on the front. He gave Eddie land on the back, with our land in between that of Clarence and Eddie. We were all building our houses at the same time, and were all living the same way – living in our houses as we built them. We were all raising our children at the same time, and all had gardens to help feed our families. At that time it was permissible to raise farm animals, and so we also raised hogs for food. There was a hog pen behind where Beulah Baptist Church was, and there were apple trees all along there.

The kids and I used to pick blackberries right there on Beulah Road, across from Brother Schurtz's house, where the old house used to be, and all out in back of my house. We went out there and picked the blackberries, and I used to make jam and all kinds of stuff. It was country back then.

Beulah Road was a narrow two-lane rural country road, and most of the people in the area lived in the same way. The houses along Beulah Road were spread out, and the area was heavily wooded. Most of the road had trees on both sides that leaned over the road, creating a sort of canopy of leaves.

Fleet Drive was a narrow dirt road, and Hayfield Road was a gravel road, badly rutted in washboard fashion. Any speed at all could bounce your vehicle right off the road into the ditch. Hayfield Road began where present-day Manchester Lakes Boulevard begins, going east off of Beulah, and then winding around southward and downhill, winding down to Telegraph Road, as it still does today. My father-in-law told me that his parents were buried on the hill at Hayfield Road, but he didn’t know exactly where. They died when he was very young. There was also supposedly a Rogers family burying ground on Hayfield Road, in the vicinity of where the IHOP is located today. Hayfield High School is built on a site that was marked as “Unknown Cemetery” on a Fairfax County map, and articles were published in local newspapers when skeletal remains were found while excavating in preparation for building the school.

Besides giving land to his children, Mr. Lee Gorham also donated land to be used for Beulah Cemetery, as well as for the building of the original Beulah Baptist Church.

His brother, Tom Gorham, owned land just south of Lee's land, on the opposite side of Beulah Road. Tom Gorham gave land to his children to build their homes, just as Lee Gorham had done for his children. The dirt road that led back to the homes of Tom Gorham's family was originally named Gorham Lane (later changed to Alforth Avenue when the townhouses were built). Because this area of Beulah Road was inhabited mostly by the families of the children of Lee Gorham and Tom Gorham, it was called Gorhamtown or Gorhamville by the local residents.

I wanted my children to go to church and learn about Jesus. I went to Christ Church for a long time, but when I moved to Franconia, I had no transportation to take them to an Episcopal church, so I sent them to Bradley Rogers' church, just a short distance up Beulah road from our house. It was called the Bethel Full Gospel Tabernacle. At the time they called it holy-roller, then it changed to Free Will Baptist or something like that, and my children came up with that religion. So as long as they knew about God and Jesus, I didn't really care what religion they were. The church changed again, and it is now Mount Calvary Community Church.

ABOUT ME

Award-winning local historian and tour guide in Franconia and the greater Alexandria area of Virginia.

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ADDRESS

Nathaniel Lee

c/o Franconia Museum

6121 Franconia Road

Alexandria, VA 22310

franconiahistory@gmail.com

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