There’s a little known church in an even lesser known community in the Upstate of South Carolina and both have a past that screams to be heard. Perched high on a hill in the small community known as “Little Liberia,” Soapstone Baptist Church is as much a part of who we’ve been as a people as it is who we are today. The story behind this church and its forgotten slave cemetery will sprout goosebumps on your arms as this heartbreaking story of forgotten hardworking people brings a chill to your bones.
It's believed that the first 900 slaves in the Upstate of South Carolina were a part of this community.
Soapstone Baptist Church was established here in the early 1800s and was the first house of worship in the Upstate to welcome black parishioners. The current structure was built more than 50 years ago, after the first structure was burned in what was believed by many to be a fire that was purposely started.
The property also boasts a historic one room school house.
Some bill the old structure unofficially as the oldest one-room African-American schoolhouse in South Carolina.
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There's a modern-day cemetery adjacent to the church with gravestones dated in the 1900s. But it's the old hidden cemetery in the woods next door that'll give you the goosebumps.
Less than a decade ago the unmarked graves and modest soapstone grave markers of this forgotten slave and former slave cemetery were almost completely hidden.
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The gravemarkers, made out of the local soapstone like the one shown below, were buried under more than a century of overbrush and debris.
After they were discovered recently by a surveying company the community began to come together to bring the abandoned cemetery back to life, and to honor those ancestors laid to rest here.
This photo, taken in 2009, shows some of those modest soapstone headstones found in the slave cemetery.
Since this shot was taken, there's been a concerted effort to clean up the site. The local Boy Scouts along with Clemson University's anthropology club made great strides in clearing away the overbrush to make the area accessible.
Realizing the significance of this historical site, Pickens County has placed a marker at the entrance to the road leading to the old slave cemetery.
This recently found and rededicated, slave and former slave cemetery in the Upstate of South Carolina is as much a testament to the community that thrives in Little Liberia as it is to their hardworking ancestors who bravely and boldly endured a life we can't begin to imagine or understand.
The Clemson University anthropology club cleaned up the forgotten cemetery and released an informational video about the Soapstone Slave Cemetery.
Check out the youtube video below to learn more and see that footage from Clemson University.
According to their Facebook page, Soapstone Baptist Church holds service on Sundays at 10:30 a.m. and 11:30 a.m. The church is located at 296 Liberia Road in Pumpkintown, Pickens County.
