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Based on Sara Mary Nash's "History of Lebanon United Methodist Church."
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I had long been intrigued by a rather poor photo posted on the Internet of the grave of Lt. John Camp, Revolutionary War soldier, buried near Greenville, SC at Lebanon United Methodist Churchyard.
Finally in 2003, I went to the South Carolina Research Room of the Hughes Library in Greenville to find out about our Kemp(Camp) family's involvement.
In the 1790 Census, Greenville County, Reedy River Area, he is listed as "Kemp(Camp), John" with a household of three males and four females. In nearby Laurens County the same 1790 census lists "Camp, Benjamin" with four males and two females. In the 1800 Census, Greenville County, Reedy River Area, he is listed in Household #1088 as "John Kemp (Camp)" with a wife and six children (three boys and three girls). Further down the page, in households #1154 and #1155 are relatives Thomas Camp (wife, two boys, one girl) and another John Camp (wife, one boy, one girl). |
"Lebanon stands in lower Greenville County near the 'Ancient Boundary Line' of Governor James Glen's 1755 treaty with the Cherokees. Here in 1784, when Greenville County was established from the Indian lands west of the boundary and opened for settlement, came a group of Virginia's families, Sullivans, Arnolds, Camps, Chandlers, Gores, Hamiltons, Martins, Ragsdales, Shipps, [and] others,.. who had shared the struggles of the Revolution in Virginia, Georgia, and the Carolinas. Some of them had lived for a while in Ninety Six District, in a part that became Laurens County in 1784/85. These settlers were already or soon became related and associated with Laurens County families....among them Andersons, Berrys, Boyces, Hollands...[and] other related families. At the same time some...joined waves of migration westward to Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, Tennessee, and other newly opened areas of settlement. |
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"The First Church - 'The Grove' (1785-1832) As soon as they had roofs over their head, the settlers west of the Reedy [River] acted to provide a church and a school....Peter Ragsdale...returning to Virginia to bring his family...was commissioned to find someone qualified to preach and teach.... Meanwhile, the settlers built a log cabin, their first meeting house and school. This land was given by Charles Sullivan, and took its name, The Grove, from his homestead near Reedy River, about one and one-fourth miles east of the present church building [modern day Lebanon United Methodist Church]. This 'pole chapel' was ready when Ragsdale returned...." ...from an obituary in an early newspaper, The Greenville Mountaineer, This ancient lady, widow of Peter Ragsdale, and her husband were founding members of the The Grove....Both husband and wife were buried in the Old Cemetery.... The Old Cemetery on Rocky Shoals near Reedy River has row upon row of the graves of these pioneers, most of them marked by native 'tomb rocks,' the inscriptions no longer legible. There were no 'boughten' tombstones in this back country until later. Twelve Revolutionary soldiers are said to have been buried here.... This Old Graveyard is all that remains to mark the site of this church, the earliest known Methodist Church in Greenville County." |
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| A plaque located near the back of the current Lebanon Churchyard points the way down the road a few hundred yards to another plaque on the left commemorating the Old Cemetery at 'The Grove.' Turn left and take that dirt road for a few more hundred yards and you'll dead-end into the colonial burial grounds. | ||||
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| A close look reveals that many of the markers are merely uninscribed fieldstones worn down by two subsequent centuries. In the back corner of the grounds are located some of the 'boughten' stones honoring John Camp's comrades in arms, some of which are seen here below. | ||||
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| Whether the remains of Lt. John Camp are still be buried here in the old cemetery or if they were removed to the Lebanon Churchyard a mile away, his commemorative marker stands at Lebanon near the D.A.R. monument erected by the Sullivan-Dunklin Chapter D.A.R. | ||||
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| Back up the road a mile is the Lebanon United Methodist Church. There are located the D.A.R. Monument, John Camp's marker, and several other notable burials. The DAR Monument seen here in obverse and reverse encapsulates the church's development and on the back lists "Revolutionary Soldiers & Heroines of the Lebanon Era." | ||||
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| Listed among the 1785 church organizers are Arnolds, Camps, and Ragsdales. Among the builders of the 2nd structure in 1832 is Benjamin Camp. On the reverse are 'soldiers & heroines,' notably Col. Benjamin Arnold, Lt. John Camp, Temperance Arnold and Thomas Camp. | ||||
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| Buried in the churchyard are many more patriots as well as the author herself - Sara Mary Nash (Dec. 17, 1898 - Oct. 10, 1994), Daughter of the American Revolution. Her Nash family plot overlooks the church whose people and history she loved and the monument and markers which perpetuate her record of it. | ||||
"...the building committee of the 1832 church, Benjamin Camp, Abijah Pinson, William Myers,...the builder, James Cowan. These receipts were sent to him by Mrs. Lou W. Willis, daughter of Col. Benjamin Camp:
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"John Camp, a Virginia Revolutionary soldier who rests in the Old Cemetery near the Reedy, married Mary Tarpley of a prominent Williamsburg family....Her younger brother, Joseph Tarpley, became a Methodist preacher in the South Carolina Conference. . . . Keziah, daughter of John and Mary Camp, married Benjamin Arnold, Jr., and their son Abner Camp married Elizabeth Ragsdale, daughter of Peter Ragsdale; another daughter Sarah Camp, married Thomas Graydon, who lived across the Reedy in Laurens. . . . [Among] members of the first Lebanon ('The Grove') Church were...John Camp, Revolutionary soldier, and wife Mary Tarpley, also his brother Benjamin Camp (boundaries of their land 'by Indian Boundary and Peter Ragsdale'). Others of the Camps intermarried with various families of this area.....the Sullivans and Arnolds....[who] were slow to embrace Wesleyan doctrines until their sons married into the families of...Camps and Dunklins.... Two of the daughters of Benjamin and Keziah Camp Arnold married sons of Hewlett and Mary Dunklin Sullivan. [Namely], Ann Hendrick Arnold married Dr. John C. Sullivan and Temperance Arnold married Joseph Sullivan, all of whom are buried in the Lebanon churchyard. Another daughter [of Benj. and Keziah], Sarah Arnold, married Abijah Pinson, one of the 1832 Lebanon building committee. [Still another] daughter, Winifred Washington Arnold became the wife of a relative, Benjamin Camp [referenced previously] .... In 1834, Benjamin Camp moved to Campbell County, Georgia, where he died in 1884 after a long and useful life....some who settled in Georgia [earlier] were... Thomas and Benjamin Camp.... Thus the Arnold and Sullivan [and Camp] families are strongly connected with this Church from its beginning as a log cabin in Bishop Asbury's time, then the new building when it was moved and given the name Lebanon in 1832 and the erection of the brick building in 1852...." |
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| Included is a program from the May 18, 1958 Revolutionary War Memorial Dedication; a photo of the S.C. Historical Marker Dedication of October 26, 1975; the S.C. Historical Marker for the Sullivan (Grove) Cemetery, dedicated in June 12, 1983; and a view of the Hughes Library in Greenville, South Carolina. | ||||
