The Church on the Hill at Cairo

The church stands on a ridge above the old village, facing Cairo Road. The state's 1983 and 1994 surveys of old buildings describe it as brick over a stone foundation, with a front gable that rises into a parapet, brick buttresses, wide eaves on brackets, bead-board under the eaves, a single-pane window over the door, and double four-panel wooden front doors. The surveyors called the style "Spanish Mission influenced," unusual for a country church in Middle Tennessee. In 1956 Dovie Barnes wrote that it seated 150 and had two Sunday school rooms.

Built

1916; dedicated in early October 1916

Paid for by

the will of Henry H. Youree of Shreveport (died 1910): at least $5,000

Built under

his brother Patrick E. Youree Jr. of Cairo

In memory of

their parents, Patrick E. Youree (1812-1885) and Malvina Youree (1817-1883)

First trustees

P. E. Youree, T. W. Barnes, C. B. Pruitt, Dock Bandy, W. G. Schamberger

Seats

150, with two Sunday school rooms (1956)

Lot

3.6 acres on Cairo Road

The dedication

The Gallatin paper of Thursday, October 12, 1916, reported that "a large crowd gathered at Cairo Sunday to take part in exercises incident to the dedication of the new Methodist Episcopal Church." The new building was "a handsome brick structure." Not even half the crowd could get inside.

The stone over the door

A stone above the front entrance reads, as a 1987 newspaper copied it: "Built in memory of my parents Patrick E. Jr. and Malvina Youree by H.H. Youree in 1916."

The church lot

No one recorded who first gave the church its land. In 1953 the trustees, Tom Bradley, Roy Brown and Earl Fitzpatrick, settled the lot's boundary with the neighbors: the county school board (the Rosenwald School grounds), Lynn Anglea, and Mary E. and Leslie Hamilton. The agreement says the church had held the land openly "for a period of time of at least 40 years," that is, since before 1913. The county still lists the 3.6 acres simply as "Church Cairo Methodist."

Where the stories differ

• Who gave the money. Henry H. Youree's will (1910), the Shreveport and New Orleans papers (1910), the 1916 dedication report and his brother Patrick's 1923 obituary all say Henry. Two church histories of 1929 and 1931 credit "Mr. Peter Youree" (Henry's brother and executor), and Dovie Barnes in 1956 wrote "Patrick Youree of Shreveport." Henry is right.
• Who chose a church. The will let the executors (his widow Mary Rose and his brother Peter) choose "a Church or School House." Peter died in 1914. The 1916 report says it was Patrick, at Cairo, who decided on a church and directed the building.
• Henry's birth. His gravestone says August 2, 1856; a family sketch printed after his death says Waverly, Missouri, August 2, 1857.

1. 1806October: Jacob Young and William McKendree preach at Cairo on a Sunday, the oldest record of Methodists here.
2. About 1830Cairo has "an academy and church" among its thirty families.
3. 1828-1838"Gallatin and Cairo" (sometimes "Lebanon and Cairo") is a named preaching assignment of the Tennessee Conference.
4. 1844The Methodists split over slavery; the Tennessee churches, Cairo among them, go with the Methodist Episcopal Church, South.
5. 1876"Bethpage and Cairo," J. G. Ray, preacher.
6. 1878The county map marks the "M. E. Ch." in the village, and a "Col. Ch." for the Black congregation.
7. 1888A "Cairo Circuit" of its own, with R. M. Chennault as preacher. Afterward Cairo is served from Castalian Springs or the Sumner Circuit.
8. 1910Henry H. Youree's will leaves $5,000 for a church or school at Cairo.
9. 1916The new brick church is dedicated in October.
10. 1923Miss Sallie E. Bruce's gift of $7,277.93 gives the church a fund for its preacher's pay.
11. 1939The northern and southern Methodist churches reunite; it becomes "Cairo Methodist Church."
12. 1953The trustees settle the boundary of the church lot.
13. 1954Old Hickory Dam closes, and the river below Cairo becomes a lake.
14. 1968It becomes Cairo United Methodist Church.
15. 2016October 30: a homecoming for the building's 100th year.

Circuit riders

For most of its life Cairo did not have a preacher of its own. A preacher rode a circuit, a string of country churches, and Cairo got preaching on its Sunday in the rotation. From 1828 to 1838 the Tennessee Conference listed Cairo by name beside Gallatin or Lebanon. In 1876 it was "Bethpage and Cairo," and in 1888 there was briefly a "Cairo Circuit." Into the 1950s the church was served from Castalian Springs, the Sumner Circuit or the Gallatin circuit, and the circuit's quarterly meeting (a business meeting of all its churches) was sometimes held at Cairo.

Ministers named as pastor of the Cairo church in the newspapers include Rev. Mr. Haynes (1917), E. B. Troutt (1932), R. M. Johnson (1940), J. Marvin Sweat (about 1950) and Ron Wright (2022).

The endowment

Miss Sallie E. Bruce left half of what remained of her estate "to the trustees or proper officers of the Methodist Episcopal church at my old home Cairo ... the money or principal to be loaned and the interest paid annually and applied on the payment of the pastor's salary." On January 5, 1923, the trustees T. W. Barnes, C. B. Pruett, W. G. Schamberger, P. E. Youree and C. H. Newton signed for $7,277.93. A 1931 history called Cairo "the only endowed church in Sumner county."

Church life

The newspapers of the 1920s to 1950s show a country church at the center of a small community. Mrs. B. O. Donoho went from "the Cairo church" to the Woman's Missionary Society conference in 1921. There was a Children's Day program every May, a revival every July (1944, 1948, 1951, 1954), and a gospel quartet, the Crusaders, in March 1956. In 1946 the church was the polling place for the farmers' tobacco vote. The Cairo Community Improvement Club met in the church, and the old families held their funerals there before burial in the family graveyards around Cairo.

Members

1989

39 members; about 21 on a Sunday

2001

43 members

2010

35 members; about 17 on a Sunday

2020

25 members; about 14 on a Sunday

2025

27 members; about 13 on a Sunday

Drag the slider to see the village from the air. The yellow ring is the church. The roads of the old village, laid out in 1799, still meet below it.

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The wider view shows the Cumberland River in its old banks in 1950 and 1953, and then Old Hickory Lake after the dam closed in 1954.

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Old maps

From 1916 into the 1950s a few farm families ran the Cairo church, and they married into each other. The Barnes family had the old homestead and the store. The Preuetts had their own graveyard. John M. Johnson kept the grocery, and the Bradleys married into both the Barnes and the Preuett families. The same names fill the trustee lists, the Children's Day committees, the pallbearer lists and the community club minutes. Unmarried women held much of it together: Dovie and Martha Barnes, Belle Preuett and Thankful Johnson.

6Miss Sallie E. Brucedied about 1920Proven by records

She left half of what remained of her estate to "the Methodist Episcopal church at my old home, Cairo," to be lent out, with the interest going to the pastor's pay. The church received $7,277.93 in January 1923. The other half went to the Presbyterian church in Gallatin.

Sources: Her will (Sumner County, will book 7, p. 178) as quoted in the county court records of 1923 and 1924.

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7Thomas W. BarnesNovember 14, 1859 - January 1, 1933Proven by records

Born at "the old Barnes homestead near Cairo," the son of Samuel K. Barnes, whose name the state's survey of old buildings gives to the old brick store and saloon at 2501 Cairo Road. A trustee of the church in 1916 and 1923. In 1907 he signed for St. Mathews Chapel's building loan. His second marriage, to Emma Crutcher in 1917, was performed by the Cairo pastor, and his own funeral was held in the church.

Sources: His obituary (January 1933); Sumner County News, 1916 and 1917; county court and deed records of 1907, 1919 and 1923; 1860 census.

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8C. B. "Boud" PreuettNovember 6, 1872 - July 25, 1948Proven by records

A son of Paul P. and Louisa Preuett, whose family graveyard is at Cairo, and a trustee of the church in 1916 and 1923. Patrick Youree Jr. lived with the Preuett family for 29 years, and a brother, P. Y. Preuett, may have been named for him. Boud's sister Belle paid her dues to the church until she died in 1961.

Sources: His obituary (1948); Sumner County News, 1916; county court records, 1923 and 1958-61; Preuett Cemetery stones.

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9Tom Bradley and Homer BradleyTom: born about 1903. Homer: June 30, 1928 - 2022Proven by records

Tom Bradley, a grandson of T. W. Barnes, married Ethel Preuett, Boud Preuett's daughter, and was a church trustee in 1953. Their son Homer was a member of the Cairo church for more than 90 years and was known as Cairo's "unofficial mayor." The Tennessee Conference gave him its Allison Social Holiness Award.

Sources: 1953 boundary agreement; 1940 census; Gallatin News obituary of Homer Bradley, 2022; Sumner County Museum.

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10John M. Johnson and Thankful JohnsonJohn: May 20, 1857 - April 8, 1938. Thankful: November 4, 1901 - May 16, 1988Proven by records

John M. Johnson farmed, built two of the old houses on Cairo Road, and ran the grocery store at Cairo for seventeen years. "Funeral services were conducted from the Cairo Methodist Church of which he was a member." His daughter Thankful was secretary of the Cairo Community Improvement Club, which met in the church.

Sources: His obituary (1938); state survey of old buildings, 1982 and 1994; Gallatin newspapers, 1953 and 1958.

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11Miss Dovie Barnesborn about 1905Proven by records

A daughter of J. H. Barnes, she lived with her sister Martha in the old J. H. Williams house at Cairo. She served on the church's Children's Day committee in 1945 and collected dues for the church in the 1950s. She was also Cairo's historian: she wrote a "History of Cairo" for the Gallatin paper in 1956 and, with others, "A Brief History of Cairo Community" (1964).

Sources: Gallatin newspapers, 1945 and 1956; county court records, 1958-61; state survey of old buildings, 1982.

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Cairo's Black families built their own churches and school within a few hundred yards of the Methodist church. The 1878 map already marks a "Col. Ch." In 1881 the trustees of the Colored Methodist Episcopal Church at Cairo took title to a lot in town. By 1907 the members of St. Mathews Chapel needed a new building. They bought the lumber, borrowed for shingles, flooring and carpenters, and rebuilt. In 1909 the district conference of their church met at Cairo. Williams Chapel Baptist Church went up nearby in 1908. People at Cairo remembered Jeff Scott as the first pastor of both.

12The trustees of St. Mathews Chapel1881 and 1907Proven by records

Thomas Davis and others held the lot as trustees in 1881. In 1907 the trustees were Howard Mills, Gaston Harrison (the name is hard to read) and Wm Robb. The membership, the deed says, had "determined to tear down the old house of worship as the same is unsafe and to build a new one."

Sources: Sumner County deed records, 1907 (citing the 1881 deed); 1910 census; state survey of old buildings, 1983 and 1994.

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13Jack and Cornelia Wilkesborn about 1865 and 1866Proven by records

They built the log house of about 1915 at 2320 Cairo Road. Their son Andrew bought a lot in 1919 "bounded on the North [by] Church lot," and their daughter Mary E. and her husband Leslie Hamilton owned the land next to the Methodist church in 1953.

Sources: 1920 and 1930 censuses; county deed records, 1919 and 1953; state survey of old buildings, 1983 and 1994.

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14Charles Jackson Robbborn about 1896Proven by records

He ran Robb's Grocery with his farm, across the road from the school; until a well was dug in 1951 the schoolchildren carried their water from his house. His grandfather Jim Williams built the log house he lived in. In 1982-83 he told the state's surveyors the history of St. Mathews Chapel and Williams Chapel.

Sources: 1900 and 1950 censuses; National Register file for the Cairo Rosenwald School, 1996; state survey of old buildings, 1982-83.

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The Rosenwald School

The Cairo Rosenwald School was finished in 1923. It was built on the standard Rosenwald plan for a one-teacher school, with money from Cairo's Black families ($700), the state ($700) and the Rosenwald Fund ($500). It had electric lights in the 1940s and running water from a 365-foot well in 1951. It closed in May 1959 when the county consolidated its schools, and it has served ever since as the community's meeting place. The Cairo Improvement Club, led by Velma Brinkley and the school's last principal, J. Hutch Brinkley, had it listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1996.

Before 1865

Before the Civil War the farm families around Cairo held people in slavery. The 1860 census list of enslaved people for the district that took in Cairo shows Mary A. Youree holding five people, W. N. Robb nine and S. K. Barnes one, among fourteen households holding eighty people on that page. The list gives only ages, never names. In 1870 four Black Tennesseans lived in Patrick Youree's household at Cairo: Ann Stratton, a 30-year-old servant, and three children.

• The stone over the front door. Does it really say "Patrick E. Jr."? A clear photo of it would settle the question.
• The first church building. When the first Methodist meeting house went up at Cairo, and whether it stood on today's lot, isn't recorded. The 1964 booklet "A Brief History of Cairo Community" by Dovie Barnes and others may say; a copy is at the Tennessee State Library and Archives in Nashville.
• Who gave the land. No deed giving the lot to the church has been seen. The Sumner County Register of Deeds in Gallatin holds the deed books from 1793 on.
• Pastors from 1923 to 1988. The Tennessee Conference's yearly journals list every pastor and member count. Copies are at the conference archives and at Vanderbilt's Divinity Library in Nashville.
• The church's own records. Member rolls, minutes and the 1916 building accounts, if they survive, would be with the congregation or the Cumberland River District office.
• Rev. Jeff Scott. Remembered as the first pastor of the C.M.E. church and Williams Chapel. A Jeff Scott of the county's 4th district, with his wife Mattie and twelve children, may be him, but no record yet calls that man "Rev."
• Malvina Zimmerman's parents. She was born in Kentucky in 1817 and married in Pope County, Illinois, in 1833. Her parents' names aren't known.
• Henry Youree's estate papers. The Caddo Parish court file in Shreveport would show the $5,000 being paid out for Cairo.