Location: SR 1206 (Eden Church Road) at SR 1207 (Hardy Store Road) northwest of Enfield
County: Halifax
Original Date Cast: 1966
The 1775 Mouzon map of North Carolina places an Anglican chapel near the present site of Eden Methodist Church on Beaver Dam Swamp northwest of Enfield. During the Revolution evangelists from Virginia, associated with the reform efforts led by the Reverend John Wesley, moved into Halifax County to conduct revival meetings. John Dickins (1764-1798), a friend of Bishop Francis Asbury, served the Roanoke Circuit of which Eden Church and Whitakers’ Chapel were members. Dickins in time moved to Philadelphia where he established the Methodist Publishing House in 1789. William Bellamy, Henry B. Bradford, and William Henry Wills were subsequent church leaders. The first deed for the church dates from September 20, 1803, when Jesse Hillman conveyed a tract to trustees. In 1828 Eden was one of eight Methodist Episcopal churches represented in the annual conference which met at Whitaker’s Chapel, six miles east of Enfield.
Like Whitaker’s Chapel, Bradford’s Chapel, and other nineteenth century churches, Eden had a school located near the house of worship. The present church building, the third in the church’s history, was built and first used around 1890. Church literature indicates that Eden was the scene of many varied activities—box suppers, ice cream suppers, Sunday School rallies, Mission Days, Children’s Day, quilt contests, and dinners on the grounds.
References:
Ralph Hardee Rives, “A Brief History of Eden Church,” commemorative program, October 2, 1966, copy in historical marker files, Research Branch, North Carolina Office of Archives and History Eden Methodist Church Collection, East Carolina University Manuscript Collection
W. L. Grissom, History of Methodism in North Carolina (1905)
Rocky Mount Telegram, November 14, 1965
Mouzon Map, 1775