Little Ogeechee Baptist Church, the oldest congregation in Screven County, was organized in 1790, first worshiped in two log structures, met during the Civil War in a white clapboard building with a high-pitched roof and steeple, and built its present sanctuary in 1912. During the Federal army's March to the Sea in November and December 1864, Major General William T. Sherman expected a Confederate stand near Station Number 4-1/2, where the Louisville road and the Central Railroad crossed Little Ogeechee Creek between the Ogeechee and Savannah Rivers. By Friday, December 2nd, Henry C. Wayne, Georgia's adjutant and inspector general, had ordered the railroad bridge over the creek destroyed and began entrenching on the south bank with Georgia Military Institute cadets, various militia, and three cannon. On December 4th, Confederate Major General Lafayette McLaws arrived from Savannah with three brigades of militia, two regiments of state infantry, and one brigade of North Carolina veterans, assuming command of about 4,000 men. A Federal probing force led by Lieutenant Colonel Dennis T. Kirby and drawn from the more than 11,000 men of the 17th Corps encountered Wayne's cadets and suffered a few casualties; Kirby's shoulder strap was cut by a ball, and his men also rescued about 70 Federals who had advanced without orders and been surrounded. McLaws soon realized that Federal forces approaching from his right and west of the Ogeechee River could outflank him, so he ordered a nighttime retreat toward Eden on December 4th. The next morning, the 17th Corps advanced cautiously toward Station 4-1/2 and forded the creek without opposition. Sherman remarked on the meaning of a flank movement, while Major Henry Hitchcock observed Confederate earthworks and rails across the Louisville road and judged a second line of embankments and felled trees farther back to be stronger and potentially more troublesome. Sherman and his staff then rode on to Ogeechee Church, a large plain frame church in a grove of oaks, and Federal soldiers camped around present-day Oliver for two days before Sherman and the 17th Corps continued south on the Louisville road on Wednesday, December 7th.