The Congregational Church was organized at this place on October 15, 1885, under the superintendency of the American Missionary Association. The congregation was composed wholly of people from the Northern States, who had come to the mountains seeking health. These, to the number of about twenty-five families, form the neighborhood of Grand View. Outside of this place are to be found the people of the mountains, scattered across the mountain-top, in a little clearing here and another there. In the midst of the woods, during the summer, it is a "discovery" to find the log house, the home of the mountaineer. The occupation of all is farming. There is no other means for a livelihood.
Many of the church members own their own homes; usually two-story frame buildings.
During the present pastorate twenty-one have united with the church; fourteen by letter, seven by confession. Out of this number we have nine who are mountaineers, the first acquisition of the native element to the church. We have a small but neat building, seating 150, in which services are held every Sunday morning and evening. A Christian Endeavor Society embraces a large number of the young people for whom we labor.
This church is in connection with a large and flourishing school. The students come to us from three States, and thus the influence of the American Missionary Association is scattered far and wide. We are the center of a large but poor class of people who have no means to help themselves. If they are ever to help themselves, they must receive a start from outside. When they do get a chance they usually go ahead.
We have among our students many teachers of the public schools lifting the tone of the whole mountain. Last year about sixteen of the students taught school during the vacation, covering a territory from Red Belt, Georgia, to Cumberland Plateau, Tennessee. Several lawyers, former students, are now practicing at the bar in Tennessee and other States. To our honor one of our graduates is a missionary in China; many have gone forth to usefulness. Many, if not all, of these would have been unable to do anything for themselves but for the benevolence of the churches and the planting of the school and church in this place. The ideas with which the Association set out to work are no longer theories, but established facts.
The success of the Association, I believe, lies, next to God's blessing, in the fact that they realized that not only the school is needed to make better men and women, but also the church to fit these men and women for the struggles of life. Both together are needed to do the work.
In this place, where "the work which this society is doing touches every fiber of our national life," that which produced the sterling manhood of New England in the past days, and made our national life a possibility and then a fact, can, in a like manner in the future, produce such men and women on the mountains and in the valleys of the South.
Such a work should give hope and courage to every friend of this Association, and I believe that in the last day it will be a great surprise to many to know how many homes they have helped to brighten, and how many lives they have helped to bless, and how many souls they have helped to save.