FIRST
PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH
Phone 912.681.2053
The Burning of the Church on Broad Street.. &..
The Miracle of the Silver Communion Pitcher
A front page article in the BULLOCH TIMES on March 21, 1940, reports:
FIRE DESTROYS HOME; ALSO DAMAGES CHURCH
"Fire which originated from an unknown cause completely destroyed the home occupied by the J. F. Upchurch family, on Broad Street, at 1 o’clock Monday; destroyed also a number of nearby outbuildings; extended to the Presbyterian Church and badly damaged the roof of the building; burned the Sunday School Classroom, and seriously threatened other buildings in the same block facing on Zetterower Avenue. The house destroyed was the property of Mrs. H.D. Anderson. Houses on the opposite side of the block were the W. H. Sharpe home and the H.D. Anderson home. Mr. Upchurch stated that he was at home when the fire was discovered, but that it was so far advanced that it was impossible to save any furniture from the home. Two firemen, Hubert Davis and Ron Parker, were quite seriously burned while fighting the flames."
Our new member, Parrish Blitch, reports that he was a boy attending school at the school building on West Grady Street (about where the Police Department is now located) and could see the fire and smoke from school. Since his family’s home was on Zetterower Avenue very close to the Church, he was afraid that it was his house that was burning, and he ran all the way home from the school. He remembers that it was a very hot March day. One report that we received about the fire thought that it was caused by lightning, but that may not have been the case.
The late A.B. McDougald recalled the fire and told how he had helped to try to save some of the church hymnbooks.
Many items were saved, including the silver communion service and the case it was stored in. The silver Communion Pitcher, however, was lost. By the sheerest coincidence, that pitcher turned up forty-seven years later.
Virginia Russell reports in her book, A Century of Presbyterianism in Bulloch County, on page 157:
"In 1987, Mrs. L. Gordon Sawyer of Gainesville, Georgia, purchased an old silver pitcher at an estate sale. She wished to use the pitcher to hold flower arrangements in her activities as a Garden Club enthusiast. When she cleaned and polished the piece, she discovered the inscription, ‘Statesboro Presbyterian Church, 1900.’ Mrs. Sawyer knew that her fellow Garden Club enthusiast, Corlyn McCrosky, was a member of the Presbyterian Church in Statesboro and she shared the news of her interesting purchase with Corlyn. After some investigation, church members determined that the piece was indeed a part of the Church’s original Communion Service....”
Mrs. Sawyer very generously offered to return the piece to our church, and did so on July 12, 1987. Reverend Bauler now uses this beautiful Communion Pitcher in our Communion Services . I’m sure that the original donors who gave this silver service in 1900 would be happy to know that we still use it 105 years later, complete with the pitcher.
When the Church on Broad Street burned, it was so seriously damaged that it had to be torn down and work began immediately to build a new sanctuary on Savannah Avenue, next to the Manse which had been constructed in 1920. The “Laying of the Cornerstone” was held on the Fifth Sunday in August in 1941. The congregation had been graciously invited by the Statesboro Primitive Baptist Church to use their facilities until the new church could be completed. Sunday School was held at the manse, and in fair weather, the Adult classes met on the lawn of the manse.
Dot Odom,
FPC Historian