COLUMBIA COUNTY’S OLDEST CHURCH St. Gabriel’’s in the Pines
BY: LINDA SONES
Recently, I had the pleasure of chatting with Julie Beishline and Meg Geffkin about the St. Gabriel Church in Benton. These ladies are part of the St. Gabriel Cemetery Association which manages the grounds at the church. What I Learned about this quaint little church was very interesting. In the year 1793, Columbia County was still very wild. A handful of settlers populated the area around Cole’s Creek north of today’s Benton. Every Sunday they would meet for church services at the “stone house” of Ezekiel Cole, for which the creek was named. The congregation’s first recorded service was in 1795. Their Reverend, Caleb Hopkins, was a Lieutenant in the Patriot Army of the Revolutionary war. He and his wife, Mary, were the first to service this small congregation and did so faithfully until 1824. In 1810, the people of the area decided they wanted a proper church and so, for $200, a pine log church was constructed next to the cemetery on land deeded to them by Ezekiel Cole for fifteen cents per acre. It would have a gallery on three sides, crude wooden benches, and a fire pit in the center for warmth. It was completed in 1812 and was the only church from Bloomsburg to the New York border and from Jerseytown to Wilkes-Barre. In 1818, the church was consecrated as “St. Gabriel’s Church” but was known locally as “St. Gabriel in the Pines”. On Palm Sunday, 1876, the fire pit was lit in preparation for services that morning. The smoke would escape through cracks and crevices in the roof and walls as it always had done, but on this day, sparks went through the cracks and landed on the roof, unnoticed by anyone until it was too late. The little church in the pine grove burned to the ground.
The congregation wanted to rebuild as soon as possible and by that autumn, a wood plank church was completed. The cornerstone from the log church was retrieved from the ashes and utilized in the new church. A memorial altar window, matching the window in the Christ Church in Oxford England, was donated by the Bernard family and placed in the chancel. A church bell was gifted to the congregation in 1884 by Mrs. Blanch Bernard and her sister, Mrs. Katherine Swartwart of Benton. The bell was cast in 1882 and brought in from Troy, New York. It was dedicated to the church on Easter morning at 6 a.m., 1884. The bell was mounted on a wooden frame and hung in a large pine tree. A major storm subsequently caused the old
21
Powered by FlippingBook