Storm Branch Baptist Church began at or near this site in 1772 as a plantation chapel in what was Edgefield District until after the Civil War. Revs. Iverson L. Brookes and John Trapp, prominent ministers in the Savannah River region, preached here from the 1830s into the 1860s, and Brookes died in 1865. It became a wholly black church in August 1866 when Mrs. Sara Lamar, widow of planter Thomas G. Lamar, deeded this land to trustee Aleck Davis. About that same time the first permanent sanctuary was built. Rev. Robert L. Mabry, the longest serving minister, preached here from 1898 to 1943.