Providence Methodist Church & Schoolhouse

In 1828, Reverend John Wesley Norton left his native South Carolina with his family and a wagon train of followers, crossed into the Creek Indian Nation and the edge of what was then Pike County, and settled near the present town of Clayton, Alabama. He was then within or near the Chattahoochee Circuit of the Methodist Episcopal Church and became an important addition to that young and struggling circuit in a newly settled section along the borders of the Indian tribes. In 1835, he located near Batesville and established Providence Methodist Church and School, which thrived for many years until his death in 1862. Only the Providence Cemetery, four miles south, remains, where Norton, his wife Nancy Phillips Norton, and many of his church members and neighbors are buried. He was remembered as a man of few tears, solid piety, true benevolence, spotless character, and a real pioneer whose death brought an irreparable loss to those he left behind.

Alabama · United States