Memories Series: Big Black Creek Historical Association: Denmark Presbyterian Church
By Anna Cooper—Associate Editor
As we explored in our February 2020 issue of Cypress, the Big Black Creek Historical Association is working to preserve our history and make it readily accessible to people.
Established in 2006, “with the express purpose to identify, preserve and promote historical sites within the communities of Denmark, Mercer, Leighton and Woodland, all small towns West of Jackson, TN.” Talking to Mr. Billy King about the history of the Denmark Presbyterian Church is a dream come true. Knowledgeable of the Native Americans that once inhabited the area, Denmark’s establishment itself, and the restoration of the Denmark Presbyterian Church, it’s taken King three whole books to summarize this rich, historic area. Learning about the small towns that make up our beautiful region is always so rewarding.
Denmark, located in Madison County, was incorporated in 1830. The first, or rather the original, residents were the Chickasaw Indians. Then, as Europeans settled West Tennessee, squatters took residence in the area, as they traveled—some stopping when they reached the Mississippi River and others continuing west. Manifest Destiny was the drive that led many from their original homesteads to our area and beyond. Much of the land in West Tennessee was deeded out to North Carolinians during the War of 1812. “Denmark was the largest town in West Tennessee in the 1820s when it actually started. Our post office across the street is the oldest continuing operating post office in Western Tennessee. It was set up in 1820, Andrew Jackson signed the treaty with the Chickasaw Indians in 1818. There were already enough squatters, so to speak, here to establish a post office.”
King explained a lot about the area where the Denmark Presbyterian Church is located. The now unincorporated community is, to our knowledge, completely unrelated to the country of Denmark in Europe. On average, in the past, there have been about 25-30 people who come by the town a month thinking there is a connection. While no one is quite sure where the name came from, one good guess is that surveyors learned the term in 1818. King furthered, “when the surveyors came in 1818 or 1820, they found a squatter living on this site. He told them that the Chickasaw Indians called this ‘den mark,’ two separate words, because there were animals in the neighborhood—it was their hunting ground.”
The road in front of the church is a part of the Estonallie trail, meaning “where we cross.” Nearby is the Big Black Creek Springs. In Denmark’s early days, these springs allowed flatboats enough room to travel up them to get to the Estonallie landing and enter the Hatchie River. The Estonallie trail goes from Denmark to Bertie County, North Carolina. The Bertie County settlers, King explained, “had been soldiers in the War of 1812, you could get free land, or if you had anything connected to the army you could get free land.” This is something we have seen time and time again in Cypress, the last instance was with our Randolph trilogy and before that with the Whitlock House in Millington, Tennessee. Land Grants, it seems, were a driving force in settling the great state of Tennessee, and indeed our entire country.
While the congregation was organized back in 1820, the Denmark Presbyterian Church wasn’t built until 1854. Originally there was a one-room, long log structure that served as a church. King painted the picture, “Baptist, Methodist and Presbyterian all three used that structure as a church-house. They met on different Sundays, but the story is that the Baptists got there on a Sunday that was supposed to be the Presbyterians. That upset the Presbyterians very much—they were old USA Presbyterians who believed in predestination and of course, the Baptists were ‘whosoever will, may come,’ the opposite of that exactly. It made the Presbyterians mad and they built a church in one week. So the first church building in Denmark was theirs;” it was referred to as Jonah’s Gourd since it was built in just one week. King’s book, Big Black Creek Vol. I give a complete picture of the “...long log schoolhouse erected next to what is now the Denmark Presbyterian Cemetery.”
At one point during the Civil War, the 30th Illinois camped behind the church in a grove of Mulberry trees. “In all probability, General Grant stayed here. The 30th Illinois was the major Civil War group that was in the area, and they were camped at Estonallie—it's about four miles from here down on the Hatchie River, sometimes with as many as 7,000 troops. General Grant was stationed in Jackson.” Which is only 13.5 miles away or about 20 minutes by car. “He thought Nathan Bedford was fixing to attack the city of Jackson. He sent for the 30th Illinois from Estonallie to come into Jackson to help protect it.” Nathan Bedford Forrest’s family were Denmark natives. The Forrest family still has deep ties to the area—in fact, they still own land in Denmark. A home that burned down across from Denmark Presbyterian Church has bricks that were laid by the Forrest family—they were brick masons by trade. King went on to mention Generals that have come to the states to study tactics used by Forrest in and around his family’s home turf because “he liked to harass the Northern Army more than anything else. He could come here and get on their land.” His family owned about 3,000 acres, “he was safe there. What he would do is get all-around Estonallie. The 30th, 17th, and 20th were encamped there, then he would get out in those woods at night, around them, and light these big bonfires. He would have maybe 50 troops and they would have 7,000, but seeing those bonfires, they just ‘knew’ they were surrounded.”
That wasn’t the only run-in between the 30th Illinois and Forrest. King went into detail about another meet-up between the opposing sides. “Grant sent for the 30th to come into Jackson. What had happened, Forrest told his troops to come also. Literally, the 30th came right out there,” King pointed to the land behind the church,” They camped on these grounds. The next morning when they started out, Forrest was sending his troops to Estonallie. Then over here on Britton Lane, the two armies ran into each other. Neither army was aware of the fact that the other was coming right toward them. The problem was, the 30th was the only ones that had cannons, but there was such a tremendous number on a little road, no bigger than that one right there” he explained, gesturing toward the one-lane drive butted-up right next to the wall of the church. The 30th Illinois, well, “they couldn't get the cannons up front, and so they fought for about three or four hours. Then both armies finally just backed away and ended. Eighty prisoners were brought here and put upstairs, and they stayed for three or four days.” However, as was typical for that period of the war, “they couldn't feed them—they couldn't do anything with them and turned them loose.”
The Big Black Creek Historical Association took their time with the restoration to ensure that even the tiniest of details were correct. Wall sconces, pews, and hymnals are just three more of the details that went into making sure Denmark Presbyterian Church had everything it could to be historically accurate—it is on the National Historic Database after all.
The Denmark Presbyterian Church is actually considered the Mother Church of Presbyterians, meaning local Presbyterian Churches are seeds of this particular one. The founding Pastor of Denmark Presbyterian was a man who went by MacMillan, “he and his wife both were teachers. This church had the first two schools in Madison County, or basically West Tennessee, a male Academy and a female, which is pretty common. He taught in the male academy and pastored this church.” Upstairs is a Masonic Lodge. “It was organized in 1828, making it the second oldest masonic lodge in West Tennessee. Jackson’s being the first one and then during the Civil War, nearly all of the members were killed. They all were members of the Denmark Danes which was the unit from Denmark. They were killed at Shiloh—at the bloody pond. They didn't have enough members to carry the lodge on, and so it ended at that time. But last year, they reactivated the lodge.” While the upstairs remains largely unfinished, King was able to track down some items to go toward refurbishing it along with the rest of the church. “They wouldn’t do it for a long time,” meaning reactive to the lodge, “because we couldn’t find furnishings of that era, and of course where are you going to find those furnishings? Then, the Masonic Lodge in Huntington and McKenzie merged. One of those Lodges had furniture in it dating to the 1820s, so they gave it to this Lodge. They renamed it to Denmark Danes and gave its original charter back to it. They meet on a regular basis—they've had permission during all this to continue meeting, so it has become a very big Lodge.” King also theorizes that, “when the Civil War broke out they would call the troop from Denmark the Denmark Danes, implying there was some connection to the Country of Denmark.”
Today, the church has been restored to look much like it did in years past. The Big Black Creek Historical Association has spent many hours of hard work to make sure all the details were correct. This project began when King was contacted by Louise Stevens, “She called me one day and said, ‘Can you meet me in Denmark?’ and I came over. She just said, ‘Please help me, Bill, and save the building!’ It was fixin’ to come down, a wall had separated from the building by about 25 inches and was getting ready to slip—the whole thing would collapse—that’s what was going to happen. What we did first, is just get possession of it, and then propped it up, literally propped it up, and began raising money then for the restoration. We spent over half a million dollars on this building, and now it's got reinforced concrete under it. It's got steel beams in the ceiling too, so it'll be here another 150 years.” King continued listing different things they initially looked at prices and all. He said, “The windows were gonna cost us $50,000.” Some of the windows that were still up, “had been put in the building in the 1950s, and I knew they were not original because they didn't have frosted glass in 1854, so we began looking and upstairs these windows were stacked up there. They’re hand-blown glass and I have the crate that they were shipped here to Denmark in when they were building the building. We got these down and the neighborhood kids restored them. We were able to save six of the original ones, and then we just left those alone.” Meaning the other windows, the frosted glass ones from the 1950s—since they didn’t have enough of the originals to replace all of them. “We did the same thing upstairs. We were able to save six of them up there also. So that began the project for the rest of the restoration.”
The Church has canvas portraits of various places significant to the history of the church; a couple in a field with an old wooden fence, another depicts cannons, and then a few have images of monuments that can be found around Madison County. In the back corner of the church, relics from the era have a home in a glass case. The Civil War heavily affected Denmark. Just before the war kicked off, the women of the town were worried, King explained. “They knew that the northern army would steal all of their silver—so they gave it all, had the bell cast in Philadelphia, and sent back here.” This heavy piece of history still has a clear tone and can be heard from up to four miles away! “They used this for everything, like to alert the town.
The Big Black Creek Historical Association can be found on bigblackcreekhistorical.com and on Facebook at Big Black Creek Historical Association. Mr. Billy King can be reached via email at bking49166@aol.com or by phone at (731) 234-3497. The third and final story in our trilogy about the Big Black Creek Historical Association will premiere in our April 2021 issue. We will explore the Mercer Cumberland (Ebenezer) Presbyterian Church and touch on what the renovations are like for association members. Thank you Mr. King for your patience and for lending us your knowledge and know-how!