This 1942 Baptist Church stands on the site of the original Schoolfield Baptist Church at 12 Schoolfield Drive, which was a wood structure (as most early churches in Schoolfield were) constructed in 1906 with the support of Dan River Mills management. The original church burned in February of 1941 and was replaced circa 1942 with the mixed Georgian and Colonial Revival building with brick exterior and detailing standing today. In 1960, an addition of similar stretcher bond brick exterior was constructed to the rear of the church.
Three churches were established in Schoolfield with the help of the mills in the early 1900s and were situated at the end of residential streets closest to the mill site in the southern section of the village. At the top of Baltimore Avenue stood the Presbyterian Church and Manse, the top of Hylton Avenue (then Richmond Avenue) was the Methodist Church and Parsonage, and at the top of Schoolfield Drive (then Washington Avenue) stood Schoolfield Baptist Church.
At the beginning of Dan River’s corporate life, supporting the spiritual life of Schoolfield was one of management’s many strategies for maintaining control over millhands, as the placement of these churches show. Dan River management gifted land to churches at strategic locations in the village at the head of residential streets, closest to the center of the village: the mill site itself. Just as workers would trapse uphill to their work at the mill, so too, would they trapse to church, establishing a routine and community that would encourage, as Dan River management might have thought, less “loafing” on the weekend by their workers, whose productivity management needed for the company’s bottom line.
However much influence management had or did not have in the spiritual life of Schoolfield does not matter much anymore, especially in the case of Schoolfield Baptist Church, which has created its own identity and community without Dan River’s help for decades as it continues to hold services today. While this church is representative of the extent of Dan River management’s desire to influence the spiritual lives of its workers, it also stands as a landmark for how Schoolfielders themselves created their own identity and spiritual community in the village.
“Schoolfield Baptist Church Destroyed.” The Bee. February 10, 1941, p 1.
Schoolfield Baptist Church as it stands today at 12 Schoolfield Drive. 2020 Photo on file with the City of Danville.
This 1940s photo shows a group of men, perhaps from the congregation at that time, standing in front of the newly built Schoolfield Baptist Church. Courtesy of UNC-Chapel Hill Wilson Library’s Southern Historical Collection Dan River Inc. Papers.
A 1910s Dan River Mills booklet showing two of the three churches in Schoolfield. Courtesy of Judy Edmonds.
A 1910s Dan River Mills booklet with summary of village community amenities. Courtesy of Judy Edmonds.
See also:
Smith, Robert S. Mill on the Dan: A History of Dan River Mills, 1882-1950. Duke University Press, 1960, p. 111.
“Schoolfield Baptist Church Destroyed; Firemen Hampered by Lack of Sufficient Water.” The Bee. February 10, 1941, sec. 1.
Thompson, Nell Collins. Echoes from the Mills. Roanoke, Virginia: Toler Printing Co., 1984, pp. 60-69.
schoolfieldvillage.com 