Report on the Archeological Investigations to Confirm the Location of the Original Beth-Salem Church and Cemetery, Oglethorpe County, Georgia

Beth-Salem Presbyterian Church was founded in December 1785 in a part of Oglethorpe County that was then in Wilkes County. The church hired Rev. John Newton as its first minister in 1786 and probably built a church in that same year. This was one of the first churches in the area and was a focal point for nearby early families of Oglethorpe County. Rev. Newton died in 1797 and was buried in the churchyard, almost certainly along with other church members. The church burned about 1812 and a second one was built, but the membership was dwindling. About 1821 Rev. Thomas Goulding revived the congregation and moved the church to Lexington, into a new building, renaming it Lexington Presbyterian Church. Goulding also created the first Presbyterian Seminary in Georgia next to the church in Lexington. In 1893 the small Lexington Presbyterian Church building was razed and replaced with the church building that stands today. In 1897, church members exhumed the remains of founder Rev. John Newton from the site of the original Beth-Salem Church and reburied his remains in the cemetery of the Lexington Presbyterian Church. The seminary moved from Lexington to Columbia, South Carolina, and then to Decatur, Georgia, where it flourishes today. The original seminary building in Lexington still stands, across from the Lexington Presbyterian Church.

Historians have never confirmed the location of the Beth-Salem Church. For several years various members of Historic Oglethorpe County (HOC) and descendants of the original Beth-Salem families have examined archival documents in an attempt to pinpoint the location of the church. The most concerted effort began in 2013 under the leadership of HOC member and church descendant Dan Dyer. Dyer gathered and organized information presented by others and, with HOC member Gary Doster, briefly looked through original church documents and examined deed records not described by others.

Information about the nature and location of the first two Beth-Salem Church buildings was contradictory, especially in regard to its location relative to Lexington and the railroad depot at Crawford. In 2013 Dyer, Doster and HOC president Tom Gresham began systematically examining tracts of land south of Crawford and southwest of Lexington for physical evidence of the original Beth-Salem Church. Believing that there would likely be almost no visible physical evidence of the church building itself, attention was focused on locating the well documented grave of Rev. John Newton and the presumed graves of his fellow church members who died between 1786 and about 1821, when Beth-Salem Church existed prior to being moved to Lexington. That is to say, the search on the ground for the Beth-Salem Church was really a search for its associated cemetery.

The cemetery and church occupy an area about 260 feet long by 150 feet wide (about an acre) adjoining a woods road that traverses a knoll top and saddle on a ridge crest that is composed mostly of hardwoods (Figure 8). The cemetery is in mature hardwoods and the church area in and west of the woods road is in young pines. The coordinates of Rev. John Newton's grave are 33°51 '31.8" North, 83°08' 35.2" West.