Talk:George Jones Memorial Baptist Church

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My reversion[edit]

I've reverted the recent edits for multiple reasons:

  • The only self-published source is the mensetmanus site, and the only bit being referenced from there is the photos. If images aren't original research, then photos on a self-published site shouldn't be considered problematic. The roantn site is quoting from a book, so that's not a problem unless we find the book itself problematic.
  • I understand that the site of Wheat is now part of Oak Ridge, but I couldn't find a source to that effect: its GNIS feature record says nothing about Oak Ridge (to my surprise), and the only other sources I can find to that effect are the self-published sources whose use would (altogether reasonably) be opposed.
  • "Rural" was not an attempt to describe the municipal status of the area (if I had meant to say that, I would have said "unincorporated") but rather the state of the surrounding vicinity. It's quite obvious that the area is altogether non-citylike except in its municipal status, looking like normal unincorporated countryside.
  • As far as I could understand, none of our reliable sources stated that it's the only building remaining; in fact, I don't even remember an unreliable source stating this. Google's satellite view shows a house just a tiny bit to the west, and (given the sources that are on the article) isn't it possible that this house was part of Wheat and wasn't destroyed? I'll not argue with any sources that say it's the only building, but I searched for such and couldn't find them.

Finally — surely there are print sources for this place. Could some be added? Nyttend (talk) 01:22, 9 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I live in Oak Ridge. I've been to this church -- more than once (although I've been inside it only once). It's in Oak Ridge -- not rural Roane County. It's on federal land that is undeveloped because it formed part of the buffer zone around the K-25 uranium enrichment plant, which is a short distance away from the church. I can certify that this is the only remaining building from the Wheat community. There's no house nearby -- I'm not sure what you are seeing in the satellite view. My personal knowledge is not a valid source for the article, but it's a solid basis for saying that some of what you wrote here was dead wrong.
You may recall that I did not think that this church deserved its own article separate from the Wheat article because the church is not particularly interesting for its architecture or the history of its congregation, but is of historical significance (and is a local landmark, visible from state route 58) as the only remaining reminder of Wheat, Tennessee. One reason is that I am aware that there is very little sourced information readily available, and I'm not nearly interested enough in this church to spend days in the library's local history archives to fill in the blanks.
I do not consider any of the cited sources (other than the NRIS, which provides coordinates and listing date) to be a particularly reliable source. The mensetmanus site is the source not only of photos, but some facts in the article are based on it. I think that website is generally reliable, although self-published. If you look closely, you will find that the roanetn.com site that is cited several places is the "Home page of Pat Roberts McDonald" -- another self-published source. Finally, http://www.roanetnheritage.com/research/towns/wheat/index.htm is slightly better, being the website of a local club, but it's not exactly a published source with a reputation for fact-checking.
Note that the statement that Wheat was vacated for "construction of the Manhattan Project (Oak Ridge)" should not be interpreted to mean that Wheat was vacated for the construction of Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL). During World War II the government bought a very large area, which it called "Oak Ridge" (and which is now the city of Oak Ridge) on which it established several discrete Manhattan Project facilities (Y-12, K-25, the X-10 site -- which later became ORNL, and S-50), as well as a residential area for workers that had a peak population of 75,000 people. Please do not persist in saying that this entire effort was the "construction of ORNL." --Orlady (talk) 18:55, 9 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]
PS - I believe that the feature you identified as a "house" to the west of this church is a water tower (and associated facilities) on government land. --Orlady (talk) 19:00, 9 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]
First off, thanks for explaining the water tower. Source for the church being the only thing remaining? After all, smaller buildings could be hidden by trees from the satellites. By the way, the object that I meant is located at 35°56′21.264″N 84°22′31.548″W / 35.93924000°N 84.37543000°W / 35.93924000; -84.37543000.
As far as the websites: why do you say that bits from the article were based on the mensetmanus? Can you give me an example of any part of the text that is based on it? I wrote the article, and I know that I intentionally did not use any of its words. Historical societies are generally considered reliable sources — how is this one different? Finally, regarding the roanetn site — are you stating that this is not a reliable transcription of the book, or that the book is not reliable? If you mean neither, then there's no reason not to trust the quotation from the book.
"Rural", again, does not refer to its municipal status, but to the state of the land around the church. Are you saying that it's in an urbanised area? Everything that I can find makes it seem to me that it's in an area we would talk about as "out in the country". Consider this image from Juneau, Alaska: Juneau is a unified city-borough (like a consolidated city-county), so as a part of Juneau, the scenery in this picture is in the city. Isn't it reasonable to say that this lighthouse is in a rural area, even though it's in a city?
As far as your last paragraph: thanks for explaining my error.
As far as the church not being significant: it's NRHP, why do you think that it's not notable? If we had the nomination form, we would have tons of extra information — as you can see here, it's not yet available online, but you can request a copy to be sent by mail; it's free. Moreover, for a nomination to be accepted, it must depend on multiple sources that we would consider reliable, so there's plenty of information about it in sources, whether or not they're local. Also, you note that it's not architecturally significant: the NRHP would disagree, as it's listed for architectural reasons as well as for social history. Nyttend (talk) 19:51, 9 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks for acknowledging the erroneous statements about ORNL, but those were not the only errors -- and they still remain in the article.
I don't know what I will need to do to convince you that this building is in Oak Ridge, not in a nameless area of rural Roane County. Prior to 1942, Wheat was a community in rural Roane County, but the Wheat community was obliterated and the area is now part of Oak Ridge. After 60-plus years of being off-limits to its former residents and the public at large, it no longer belongs to the rural county except in memory. It is a short distance from the former Oak Ridge Gaseous Diffusion Plant, a major government industrial facility (also off limits to the public) that is most emphatically in Oak Ridge.
You are right that the church is in a rural setting. However, you have not just said that the church is in a rural area, but you refuse to let the article say that it is in Oak Ridge (you say "Oak Ridge Area", apparently in reference to the Department of Energy's Oak Ridge Reservation) and you have removed the article from the Oak Ridge, Tennessee category.
If you want online verification that I actually know where my city's boundaries are, you might want to consult the city's GIS maps at http://cortn.org -- note that the GIS maps require Internet Explorer. Or you might want to consider the fact that the NRIS lists its location as "Oak Ridge."
The mensetmanus source is used in the article as the source for relatively inconsequential information about the gravel road on which the church is located. (Actually, that road is Wheat Road, being the historic main road through the community, and it is now accessible to the public as a bicycle and pedestrian route...)
As for the roanetn.com website quotation, what you are citing is a paragraph from a personally maintained website that says the information came from a book entitled "Origin of First Baptist Church of Oliver Springs 1846-1980" (publisher and date not stated -- probably published by the church). Under the circumstances, I would not list this as a citation to the original book, but as a citation to the website that in turn attributes the information to the book.
The "historical society" cited is not the type of scholarly organization that is normally assumed to be a reliable source, but rather is a local amateur history organization. Their work is likely to be solid, but it's a far cry from a peer-reviewed journal, and the specific page cited is pretty amateurish (e.g., it says "My grandmother was a graduate of Wheat High School and often recalls the times spent while playing basketball there"). More significantly, the page doesn't contain any information about this church.
I know that this the only remaining building in Wheat because I have discussed it with local historians working for the federal and state government who say they can no longer even locate the foundations of the other structures in the community. Also, I've walked through the area with some of the elderly people who were displaced from Wheat as children and young adults. They can point out where various buildings were, but the buildings are long gone, and foundations were lost relatively recently as a result of sloppy work by crews doing work like highway and transmission line right-of-way maintenance. There is a monument where the Crawford Presbyterian Church used to be, the Crawford cemetery still exists, and a few years ago DOE put up a monument at the site of an old slave cemetery, but this church is the only remaining building. Much of this information has been published in local news media at various times in recent years, but much is no longer online (I did locate a few such publications -- see below -- and this article states that the church is the only building still standing). I know (or used to know) some of the people who assembled the submission for the National Register listing, and I know I could find the form(s) in the Oak Ridge public library if I thought it was sufficiently important to try. (For what it's worth, they're in the Oak Ridge library because the listed sites are in Oak Ridge.)
I do think this church is a notable topic for discussion in Wikipedia. However, I believe that its significance is in connection with Wheat (which article is partly my work). Perhaps more important from the Wikipedia standpoint, I think we don't have enough sourced content specifically about the church to justify a stand-alone article about the church. I happen to part company with the active NRHP Wikiproject participants regarding the notability of National Register-listed properties; I do believe they all merit discussion in the encyclopedia, but I think there are many instances where that treatment should not be in a stand-alone article about the listed property. Sometimes (as in this instance), I think that the encyclopedia's purposes are better served if the listed property is discussed as part of a larger-scope article. (There are other instances where a single National Register listing is most appropriately covered in more than one article, but that's a topic for another discussion.)
I realize that you are more willing to trust your personal interpretation of an online photo or a personally maintained website than anything I might say. Here are a few online sources that you might find edifying (to generate working links to the Newsbank URLs, click on the URLs here, run an advanced search at the newspaper website, searching for "Wheat homecoming", and look for the entries with the additional details below):
ADDED: Also, the acreage is way too high (by about a factor of 3), even if for the entire Oak Ridge reservation. --Orlady (talk) 19:36, 10 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]
I hope I've addressed everything. I am restoring the "disputed" template to the article because I still do dispute some major factual points in the article. --Orlady (talk) 05:19, 10 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks so much for the links! I understand your meaning in every way. Nyttend (talk) 19:57, 10 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Citations for web sources[edit]

Since the newsbank pages have dynamic URLs, we can't link to them properly; accordingly, I suggest that we cite them as if they were only printed sources. Copied below are somewhat-MLA-formatted citations, as best as I can make them — I'm omitting the page numbers because I can't find them, but MLA provides for citing a page only accessible from a directory or search page.

I'll be adding the web citation details once I can dig out my MLA Handbook. Nyttend (talk) 20:11, 10 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I would identify Steve Goodpasture as a principal author of the historical piece in the 26 September 2006 article. D. Ray Smith wrote an introduction, but the remainder of the article is identified as being by Goodpasture. I believe that Goodpasture did the research. (Remember: I know these people.) --Orlady (talk) 20:20, 10 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Update — since I have no way to know what the volume is of these issues, I don't think it's that important to include it, especially since they're Internet-accessible. Nyttend (talk) 20:14, 10 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Anyway, The Oak Ridger is not big on using volume numbers. The paper's masthead gives its founding date (in 1949) and ISBN number, but it does not give a volume number. --Orlady (talk) 20:20, 10 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]
In response to your query on my talk page, the links to the "advanced search" page do work... --Orlady (talk) 20:23, 10 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Sources are now added to the article. What do you think? It's quite reasonable to rely on the church history for its membership, which is really the only thing that it and no other sources give; everything else, including the date and its original name, are in the other sources cited nearby. Furthermore, there is nothing dependent on the mensetmanus page except the restricted use and the gravel road, both of which are obvious from the photos. Also, please note that I've added Goodpasture; Smith of course wrote part of it, so he should be credited, and credited first because it's his name on the title. Nyttend (talk) 20:53, 10 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]
I removed the "disputed" template, but after making a few additional changes to the article.
I have no idea whether "the church history" is a good source for the history of this church, because the church history that's cited is the history for a different church in a different town. I have had the idea (because somebody told me once...) that the George Jones Church in Wheat was re-established in Oak Ridge as the Calvary Baptist Church, and I have found a newspaper article that supports that story. (To find it, do an advanced search on the Oak Ridger website to find an August 27, 1999 article entitled "Calvary to mark church start.") The article says that Calvary Baptist traces its origins to 1900 when the Rev. George Jones of the Wheat community donated five and a half acres of land for a church, with which was completed in 1904 with Jones as its the first pastor. It further says the church disbanded in 1942 when the U.S. government bought land, but reorganized in 1943 under the name "Calvary". There are enough commonalities between that version of the history and the one currently in this article to support the conclusion that they are talking about the same church, but there are also some significant differences. These are two different Tennessee Baptist churches giving slightly different accounts of the history of a third church (from which one of the two churches traces its origins) -- seeing the nature of the sources and the nature of the discrepancies, I can't help be repeat the question: Does this stuff belong in an encyclopedia? --Orlady (talk) 02:30, 11 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]
PS - Note that the sign on the church says "Est. 1901," which I would generally interpret to mean the establishment of the congregation, not the construction of the building. --Orlady (talk) 02:34, 11 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Given that congregations and their buildings are rather closely related, I can't see why it wouldn't be good to attempt to include some information on the congregation's history. However, I'm rather hesitant to trust that the Calvary story includes correct information about the church whose building is NRHP-listed. After all, the article says that the congregation began c. 1900 and its first building was completed in 1904, while the history that I've used as a reference for the membership says that it was nearly fifty years old when its second building was completed in 1901. NRIS agrees with the 1901 date, and one of the other sources (an Oak Ridger article; I don't feel like looking it up right now) agrees with the 1850s origin of the congregation. Jones himself donated land for the entire community; I don't find any problems with imagining that this is a different church, given the sources you've provided. Remembering what you've been told, I find that more of an issue, but the fact that the data in the "Calvary..." article don't line up with other data makes me wary to trust it. Nyttend (talk) 02:43, 11 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Aside: If you think there's a one-to-one correspondence between congregations and church buildings, you aren't very familiar with religion in small-town and rural America. Both historically and nowadays, it's not uncommon for new congregations to split off from existing churches, for congregations to meet in temporary quarters for many years, and even for multiple congregations to share one building (as in Wheat, which apparently had a Methodist congregation that met in one of the other congregation's buildings).
Where do you get the information that Jones donated land "for the entire community"? The "community" existed before he was born. What I read in the Goodpasture "History of Wheat" is that "In 1879, Reverend George and Lucinda Jones donated 250 acres to be used for religious and educational use" and that "one-half acre would be given to a person wishing to use it to build a house so students could attend school." That donated land certainly included the site of Roane College, as well as the Baptist Church and cemetery, possibly the Presbyterian church and cemetery, and possibly the Wheat High School that was built after the college closed. However, but the Wheat community was bigger than 250 acres -- for example, the name "Wheat" also included farms and orchards in the area -- and it had a general store and post office in addition to schools, churches, and homes. Anyway, my reading of the history suggests that the church was named for Rev. Jones because it was his church, not because he had donated land for various purposes. --Orlady (talk) 04:31, 11 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]
I began writing my long comment before you posted your note about "Est. 1901", so after reading it, I decided to search for the link. It's the "Wheat — Education, sacrifice and proud memories" page, written partially by Goodpasture. You say that you know him; if you get a chance, could you ask his opinion? Nyttend (talk) 02:51, 11 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]
By the way, the history page says that the name was changed in 1901; perhaps this could be related? Nyttend (talk) 02:56, 11 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]
I think your last theory on the "established" date is valid -- it's the date the new name was adopted. It's likely that the name change was more than a mere change of name, but reflected some sort of split in the congregation, or perhaps the unification of two congregations that were previously separate. The idea that the name change has more significance than a mere name might explain why both Steve Goodpasture and that church in Oliver Springs identify the founding date as 1854 and the successor church (Calvary Baptist in Oak Ridge) traces the founding to circa 1900 -- all versions may be right, at least to a degree. --Orlady (talk) 04:31, 11 June 2009 (UTC) PS - I still am skeptical that a Baptist church in Oliver Springs is an authoritative source of information about the history of the Baptist church in Wheat. --Orlady (talk) 04:33, 11 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]

arbitrary break for convenience[edit]

At the moment, the only unique information in this article coming from the church history is that of the 17 members and (perhaps; I can't remember if this is in any of the Ridger articles) the Sulphur Springs church. I believe that this is authoritative, because they're going to the primary sources: the 27 seems to come from a quote in the Sulphus Springs church meeting minutes (actually 26; I just discovered that 27 is a typo), saying that the following members were being released to form a new Mt. Zion church — I believe that this is a close paraphrase of the original because of the rare-except-in-official-documents usage of "said" in "to constitute into said church". Perhaps the 1901 name change is also not in the other sources, although I think that it is; at any rate, this is clearly a quote, so I believe that we can depend on it. Even if your split theory is correct (it sounds quite plausible to me), I don't think that really basic facts like this are likely to be questioned, since they happened nearly 50 years before the split. I think that if we had the entire book, we could compare it to W.M. Glasgow's History of the Reformed Presbyterian Church in America: he's good on many basics, but as is obvious from the bottom of PDF page 101 through most of 102 here, he's hardly a good source for basic facts about a church split in 1833 — the two sides of the split heartily contested the merits of the case, but both acknowledged (for example) the date when the denomination was founded. Likewise, if the Calvary/Oliver Springs issue is really a split, I'm sure that both would acknowledge that their church originated from the 26-member release in 1854. Nyttend (talk) 04:50, 11 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Check out the First Baptist of Oliver Springs website if you're interested. Nyttend (talk) 04:57, 11 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Did you find anything about church history on that website? (I did not.) I continue to not understand why the First Baptist Church of Oliver Springs is a source of info on the history of the Wheat church. --Orlady (talk) 11:21, 11 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]
I just realised that I'd not read your post of 04:31. I don't remember my source for him donating land for the entire community; perhaps that was something from one of the various self-published websites (I found lots of them when trying to compose this article), or perhaps I misunderstood the "Education, sacrifice, and proud memories" article. In connexion with this, note that the building was built in the same year as the name change: I find it possible that they built it on land that he donated.
As for your first paragraph in this post: I've worked a ton with the history of the historically-primarily-rural-and-smalltown Reformed Presbyterian Church of North America — you've probably not heard of this denomination because, being abolitionist from c. 1800, most of its members in the South moved to the North some decades before the Civil War — so I'm quite familiar with the way in which churches would split, join, rename, move, use different buildings, etc. I meant to say that, whether or not a congregation has a close connexion to its building, the history of the building is dependent on the history of the congregation that built it. Nyttend (talk) 05:26, 11 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]
No, I've not found information on the website — I posted the link before looking around there. I'm going to contact them to tell them that some of their links are broken, and to ask if they say that they're descended from GJMBC. At any rate, I believe that they're a reliable source for this because they're essentially going with the primary sources — I don't see how their connexion (or lack thereof) to GJMBC really matters for the reliability, since either they're right or they're wrong on the basic data that I decided to use, and I don't understand why they're not to be trusted to have properly transmitted the original data. Nyttend (talk) 14:01, 11 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]
The Oliver Springs First Baptist Church pre-dates the Wheat church, according to the following statement from http://www.roanetn.com/earlybap.htm (quoting Roots of Roane County, TN, by Snyder E. Roberts, pg. 105): "The Oliver Springs First Baptist Church was established in 1846".
I have no idea where "The Church of Christ at Sulphur Springs" would have been located, since I have never heard a "Sulphur Springs" place name in the local area (it's very possible that such a place existed at one time, though). That page that gives the founding date for the Oliver Springs church also says "The first organized Baptist church in Roane County was EAST FORK BAPTIST CHURCH, located just within the County near the point where the Oak Ridge Turnpike crosses the Roane-Anderson line." That location is about 3 miles from Wheat. Given the distances and the old road patterns, I would think it likely that people in Wheat would have had more interactions with the East Fork church than with any churches in Oliver Springs, which is a good bit farther away. --Orlady (talk) 15:16, 11 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Conversely, the Roberts page says that it was a "Church of Christ", so I'm guessing that it was a Restorationist congregation. GNIS has records of "Sulphur Springs" in relatively nearby counties for U.S. Geological Survey Geographic Names Information System: Sulphur Springs Hollow in Grainger County; U.S. Geological Survey Geographic Names Information System: Sulphur Springs in Hamblen County; U.S. Geological Survey Geographic Names Information System: Sulphur Springs Church in Hawkins County; and U.S. Geological Survey Geographic Names Information System: Rhea Springs (also known as "Sulphur Springs") in Rhea County. Nyttend (talk) 17:06, 11 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Rhea Springs (which I didn't find when I searched for "Sulphur Springs" in Tennessee) is the only one of those that's remotely close, and it's about 35 miles from Wheat. Also, although the Restoration movement was in full swing in the mid-19th century, it's not clear that the Churches of Christ were established that early. Regardless, it's not credible that back in horse and buggy days, a handful of people from a church (of whatever denomination) at that location would have split off to form a Baptist church in Wheat. (It's much more likely that there was a "Sulphur Springs" closer to Wheat.) Again, though, I question whether this detail is encyclopedic: (1) the nature and reliability of the source are unclear, (2) we don't know what it means (see above), and (3) the only reason that this church has an article at all is not that there was anything significant about its founding, but rather that through an accident of history its building survived when everything else in its community was destroyed. --Orlady (talk) 18:15, 11 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Found new info: This Geocities family history page says "The First Baptist Church in present Day Oliver Springs was established at the shelter near the Sulphur Springs on Monday, October 26, 1846 by Reverend Joshua Frost. ... The Sulphur Springs Church was the mother Church for a number of area Baptist Churches. These local churches had their origins as “arms” off the mother church." There are several references to "Oliver Springs Baptist Church at the Sulphur Springs" on the family history page http://www.roanetn.com/borumnot.htm and several other family history pages on the same website refer to "Sulphur Springs Church." Also, http://www.newfairview.org/history.html (history of another Baptist Church in Oliver Springs) says "According to extant records New Fairview Baptist Church was formed in 1857. The original church was called Poplar Creek Baptist Church and was an arm of the Sulphur Springs Baptist Church." It appears that the Oliver Springs First Baptist Church was formerly called the Sulphur Springs Church. --Orlady (talk) 18:30, 11 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]

[unindent] Thanks for the research! I got a message back from the Oliver Springs pastor saying, among other things, that this link was outdated; new one is www.firstbaptistos.com. The pastor continues, "...we weren't an offshoot from G. Jones Baptist. We came out of a church some 200 years ago called Sulphur Springs and then became FBC somewhere in the early 1900's I believe." As far as the distance — the Reformed Presbyterian Church that I mentioned above did operate in this fashion: well before 1830, various groups a couple of counties southeast of Pittsburgh and two counties northwest, more than two hours' drive away from each other today, were united until being split off from each other. I'm not familiar with how other kinds of Presbyterian churches operated during the frontier period, let alone non-Presbyterian churches.

At any rate, I heartily believe that the early history of a church is entirely relevant, and I'm inclined to trust this source because of its reliance on the primary sources; however, given that we can't figure out what this really means, I agree with your statement that we don't really understand the relations between these churches, I'll comfortably go along with your opinion that it doesn't belong. Nyttend (talk) 03:15, 13 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]

book source[edit]

The following is from "The Wheat Community" in These Are Our Voices: The Story of Oak Ridge 1942-1970 (Oak Ridge, Tenn.: Children's Museum of Oak Ridge, 1987). Patricia Hope is the section's author, James Overholt is the book's editor.

"Operated much as our high schools are today, the Poplar Creek Seminary was founded at Bald Hill in 1877. Reverend W.H. Crawford, a Presbyterian minister, was its founder, president, and teacher. By this time, another reverend, George W. Jones, a Baptist minister to the Mt. Zion Baptist Church (today known as the George Jones Memorial Baptist Church) was also becoming interested in furthering the educational process of the area. In 1879, along with his wife, Lucinda, Jones presented 200 acres to the seminary. This left the Joneses only fifty-three acres for their own use." p. 18

"The Joneses' generosity extended to their church also. When the congregation began to raise money for a new church building, they agreed to match dollar for dollar any sum the congregation could raise. The new church was named in their honor." p. 18

Hope this helps. Bms4880 (talk) 14:17, 11 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]

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