"Brushy Fork Primitive Baptist Church has closed."
Source credited: Harrisburg Daily Register, May 23, 2007, page 8A.
The Brushy Fork Primitive Baptist Church closed on Sunday, May 6, due to lack of membership. The church is located one half mile west of Harco. Elder John A. O'Dell had served as pastor of the church since March 1985.The following article has been taken from "Minutes of the Bankston Fork Baptist Church, 1854-1931" transcribed and indexed by Doris Nelson.
The minutes of the reorganized Bankston Fork Church presented here were recovered by Mr. and Mrs. Bernard Moore of Harrisburg. The old records had been lost for many years, and some of the later ones are known to have been destroyed by fire. The earliest minutes, dating back to 1820 or possibly even 1818, have been lost, but enough material is available from other sources to determine its early history.
Some have erroneously credited Bankston Fork's first years to Brushy Fork Primitive Baptist Church, claiming that Brushy was first called Bankston, but the name was changed because another building site was chosen. After careful scrutiny of original source materials, one can readily see that this was not the case. Bankston was a charter member of the Muddy River Baptist Association from 1820 to 1834, when it withdrew fellowship over the mission question. Brushy Fork became a member of the Muddy River Baptist Association in 1843. In 1843, at least two of the churches of the Muddy River Baptist Association sent committees to try to bring Bankston back into the association. Here we see the Muddy River Baptist Association recognizing both churches at the same time, so one could not possibly have been the other.
Where did Brushy Fork come from? The answer lies in the minutes of the Bethel's Creek Church for 1843. In March 1843, some of the members, those south of the Middle Fork of Saline, petitioned Bethel's Creek for letters of dismission in order that they might become a newly constituted church. This request was granted, and the following members were dismissed - Richard Isham, Piety Isham, William Abney, Rhoda Abney, Nancy Grisom, Winna Carney, Malinda Bond and Polly Murphy. At the next meeting of the Muddy River Association, 1843, the messengers from Brushy Fork were William Abney and Richard Isham. The 1849 membership list of the Brushy Fork Church contains six of the eight members who were dismissed from Bethel's Creek in 1843, so we must conclude that Brushy Fork was first an arm of Bethel's creek and that the church lettered them out for their constitution in 1843.
