PUMPIKINTOWN, SC – Soapstone Baptist Church is coming to Greenville.
On Saturday, April 19, Soapstone Church will host a “Hat Extravaganza and Dinner” featuring “Women of the Cloth” and Sam Brown, a noted hat designer and owner of Church Hats and More in Boston. The event will take place at the Phillis Wheatley Community Center beginning at 4 pm. For ticket information call 864-607-3493 or email soapstonechurchliberiaSC@gmail.com. The donation cost is $60.
This is the latest part of a campaign to permanently save the historic Black church located in northern Pickens County.
The event is the idea of member Charles Davis, hair stylist, florist, and fashion professional by training. He is also the husband of Mable Owens Clarke, the church’s matriarch whose fish fry dinners served as Soapstone’s main draw for more than two decades as she fed people from across the region. She will be providing the food for the April 19 event.
“For 22 years Mable hosted monthly fish fries ten months of each year that supplemented the gifts and offerings to ensure that we could pay the light bills and mortgage,” Davis said. “While the Soapstone Preservation Endowment is helping with buildings and grounds maintenance and historic restoration and promotion, it cannot pay for our basic needs. That’s up to us.”
The Soapstone Preservation Endowment was created less than three years ago and is on the final mile toward amassing a $1 million perpetual endowment.
“With cash in hand, confirmed but not yet received grants, and pledges, we are closing in on $850,000,” said Endowment Chair Carlton Owen. “We couldn’t be more pleased with the broad support and generosity of so many businesses, churches, foundations, and families who share the vision of the importance of protecting and promoting the story of Soapstone and the former Liberia Community in northern Pickens County.”
While the endowment is making great progress to ensure that the buildings and grounds are forever protected and will add to the variety of sites available for tourists visiting the Upstate, the historic church itself continues to struggle.
It lost twelve members to death in 2024. Clarke, who is the great granddaughter of the freed slaves who bought the land and donated it to the community where the church, cemeteries, and historic one-room school still sit atop a hill looking up to iconic Table Rock Mountain, said the church and the Liberia community will endure.
“We were once a vibrant community with dozens of Black families with Soapstone Church the center of it all,” she said. “Today we have less than ten members. But we are not discouraged about the future. God still has plans for Soapstone!”
Pastor Chet Trower said Soapstone is now seeing two to three times as many visitors than its members.
“We see our future as a multi-racial church that serves the spiritual needs of our ever-changing area, and we welcome that change,” Trower said.
Comments