South Asheville News

From February 11, 2023 post.

Mud Creek Missionary Baptist Church

Mud Creek Missionary Baptist Church was formally founded in 1868. In the years prior, the white Mud Creek Baptist Church allowed Black worshippers to use their meetinghouse for worship on designated Sunday afternoons. The group originally called itself “Hendersonville Colored Baptist Church” and later “Mud Creek Colored Baptist Church.” The congregation continued to worship for a time at the white Mud Creek sanctuary, in other white meetinghouses, in members’ homes, and beneath brush arbors. Members of the newly founded church bought a 1.5-acre parcel of the Heidelberg estate (modern-day Bonclarken) in 1889 and built a sanctuary in the 1890s. In 1929, with assistance from the Society of Necessity, the congregation bought land at the intersection of Roper and Mine Gap Roads and erected a new church there in 1932–33. Additions were made over time and the church was renamed Mud Creek Missionary Baptist, which at its peak claimed a membership of nearly 150.

Photos courtesy of the Henderson County Genealogical and Historical Society. Information compiled from Terry Ruscin’s Beyond the Banks series and A Brief History of the Black Presence in Henderson County

#BlackHistory #BlackHistoryMonth

Source can be found here.