Anchors of Faith. Martha Dickson

      Preface

      I was born in Alabama and have lived most of my adult life in the Panhandle of Florida. As I grow older, I have become emotionally attached to the rural Deep South; its culture is so tenuous as rural areas empty out and cities fill up. For me, old wooden churches embody the will of those who built them and the faith of those who have worshiped in them for many decades. Once they were the centers of community life, but it seems that in today’s fast-paced world, the way of life these churches represent is endangered. Consequently, for two full years, 2008 and 2009, I traveled the back roads of the Deep South to document wooden churches, primarily old rural ones. On two- and three-day trips, covering thousands of miles, I searched for anchors of faith. I took four or five photographs of more than 450 church buildings, and selected 145 for inclusion in this book. My selection is meant to give a representative view of denominations and a degree of balance among the three states. The entire collection of early wooden church photographs is housed in the Wiregrass Archives at the Troy University Dothan Campus in Dothan, Alabama.

      This endeavor was not haphazard; rather my excursions were based on research: in denominational listings, in the National Register of Historic Places, in state historical commission records, and in the records of the Historic Chattahoochee Commission. A few churches had written histories, some of which were online; others

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