Robersonville Primitive Baptist Church, Robersonville, NC (2)
**Robersonville Primitive Baptist Church** - National Register of Historic Places Ref # 05000322, date listed 2005-04-20
107 N. Outterbridge St.
Robersonville, NC (Martin County)
Robersonville Primitive Baptist Church (ca. 1910) stands at Academy and Outterbridge streets' southwest comer, its front elevation approximately thirty feet from Outterbridge Street's curb. Robersonville Primitive Baptist Church's two founding members, M. T. Lawrence and Stephen W. Outterbridge, were both active members of the Kehukee Association, northeastern North Carolina's consortium of Baptist meeting houses formed in 1765.
The Kehukee churches generally shared the Calvinistic views of their eighteenth-century predecessors, the Particular Baptists. By 1910, many of the Kehukee Association's confrontational issues-particularly, the 1820s-1830s schism that led to this branch being called Primitive Baptist-had been put to rest. Consequently, the Association and its satellite churches had enjoyed nearly eighty years of solidarity. Unlike Missionary Baptist churches or other variations of the Baptist persuasion, Primitive Baptists did not support mission societies, or Sunday schools, the latter of which became more powerful in the late nineteenth century and instigated many church design changes.
As few other denominations can claim, nineteenth- and early twentieth-century meeting houses established by Primitive Baptists throughout North Carolina, as well as other parts of the South and Midwest, convincingly connect form with function. Eschewing worldly things, a Primitive Baptist meeting house, with its plain, front-gable form and double entrances, is the outward and visible sign of an intrinsic practicality where, though loved for its connection to earlier generations and its place as a sanctuary, the building is, nevertheless, a means to an end. In the words of a Primitive Baptist, "This is a building: we are the church." (1)
References (1) NRHP Nomination Form files.nc.gov/ncdcr/nr/MT0012.pdf
Robersonville Primitive Baptist Church, Robersonville, NC (2)
**Robersonville Primitive Baptist Church** - National Register of Historic Places Ref # 05000322, date listed 2005-04-20
107 N. Outterbridge St.
Robersonville, NC (Martin County)
Robersonville Primitive Baptist Church (ca. 1910) stands at Academy and Outterbridge streets' southwest comer, its front elevation approximately thirty feet from Outterbridge Street's curb. Robersonville Primitive Baptist Church's two founding members, M. T. Lawrence and Stephen W. Outterbridge, were both active members of the Kehukee Association, northeastern North Carolina's consortium of Baptist meeting houses formed in 1765.
The Kehukee churches generally shared the Calvinistic views of their eighteenth-century predecessors, the Particular Baptists. By 1910, many of the Kehukee Association's confrontational issues-particularly, the 1820s-1830s schism that led to this branch being called Primitive Baptist-had been put to rest. Consequently, the Association and its satellite churches had enjoyed nearly eighty years of solidarity. Unlike Missionary Baptist churches or other variations of the Baptist persuasion, Primitive Baptists did not support mission societies, or Sunday schools, the latter of which became more powerful in the late nineteenth century and instigated many church design changes.
As few other denominations can claim, nineteenth- and early twentieth-century meeting houses established by Primitive Baptists throughout North Carolina, as well as other parts of the South and Midwest, convincingly connect form with function. Eschewing worldly things, a Primitive Baptist meeting house, with its plain, front-gable form and double entrances, is the outward and visible sign of an intrinsic practicality where, though loved for its connection to earlier generations and its place as a sanctuary, the building is, nevertheless, a means to an end. In the words of a Primitive Baptist, "This is a building: we are the church." (1)
References (1) NRHP Nomination Form files.nc.gov/ncdcr/nr/MT0012.pdf