Dancyville Methodist Church Where Rev. E.B. Rucker Preached his First Sermon

This quaint Methodist Church is on the Historical Register. It sits in the old historical community called Dancyville, in Haywood County, TN, where there are beautiful antebellum homes. No other house of worship in Haywood County can claim a richer heritage of lore and legend than this Methodist church, with the exception of Taylor's Campground.

It was in this church that my maternal grandfather came to his first charge, in November 1927. He was allowed to finish out his school teaching term in Gibson County, so from November until the school term ended he traveled by train each weekend to Stanton where a church member picked him up.

Dancyville Methodist is a white frame building with rows of six long windows on each side of the church building. There were two front doors with long steps across the front. In cold weather the church janitor, while my grandfather was pastor, would go to the church early and build fires in the large iron stove. He was called "Traz", descendant of a slave in that community. The church is crowned with a beautiful steeple that is visible for miles around. Most of the prominent families were laid to rest in the large sloping cemetery in front of the church. In the 1980's my mother and I stopped by the church and on the back row was a 1927 conference book containing a picture of my grandfather. My mother said that in the 1920's the community and church represented the last leg of southern gentility with a dying way of life that had fine mansions and black servants, proud of its past. But with the coming of times things began to change fast: the Great Depression, the War, minimum wage, cotton picking machines, and integration. These things wiped away the old Southern social class of rich and servants, with native sons moving to the cities, and the former mansions began to decline. But the Dancyville Methodist Church remains as it has been years before, with its corner stone of "Historical Register" imprinted. It is just as it was in my grandfather's time—as if time stood still. I love this little church.

My mother who was nine years old went with her father on the train to Dancyville to preach for the first time.