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A History of Columbia County Florida (1996) Edward F. Keuchel 82/340

An Expanding County in a Neto State

days’ meeting in his settlement on the 15th and 16th of August.”48
Besides Abram Isaac Robarts and his wife, Ann Andrew,
other names associated with Old Bethel Methodist Church in­
cluded Langley and Mary Bryant, William and Dennie Tyson
Niblack, John S. and Charity Crews Goodbread, C. H. B. and Mary
Ann Robarts Collins, Zachariah Randal and Mary Vinzant Han­
cock Roberts, Arthur and Rebecca Bryant Roberts, S. L. Spark­
man, James Bryant, Langley Bryant, Jr., and the Elijah Mattox
family. In 1856 the congregation of Old Bethel moved from their
log building and built the white church currently located on
highway 441 south.49

Tustenuggee Methodist Church was the outgrowth of a group
of Methodists in and around Fort White who initially met in a tool
house used by workcrews building the Bellamy Road (1835-1836).
In 1852, the Methodists living in Alligator purchased land and
erected a church on the property of the present Garden Club. The
church was officially opened in 1854. Also in 1854 Methodists in
the Mt. Tabor community organized a church which was later
destroyed in the hurricane of 1896.50
Even with established churches in communities such as Alli­
gator or near Fort White, Methodist circuit riders still had large
areas to travel in serving the rural folk. In 1850 the Reverend John
C. Ley was sent to Ocean Pond Mission embracing what is now
Columbia, Bradford, Hamilton, and Suwannee Counties. Ley’s
circuit extended from the “Okefinokee” [sic] Swamp in the north to
Fort White and “Echeetucknee” [sic] in the south.51

48 E. F. Montgomery, “Church History,” Lake City Reporter, December 13,1974;
Esther Bernice Haworth, “Old. Bethel” Religious Heritage (Lake City, 1961), n.p.n.;
John C. Ley, Fifty-two Years in Florida (Nashville, Tennessee, 1899), pp. 28-30.
49 Haworth, Old Bethel, n.p.n.
60Montgomery, “Church History.”
51 John C. Ley, Fifty-two Years in Florida, (Nashville, Tennessee, 1899), pp.
62-71.

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