Rock Creek History
From the Advertiser-Journal, October 20, 1938:
Spent Saturday and Sunday in this community. Attended services at old Rock Creek meeting house both days. Rev. Rowe Hood is the able pastor. Took part in the ordination of two deacons here Saturday: Eugene Barnes and Brad Haney. Rock Creek is the mother church of all the other Missionary Baptist Churches in the Clear Creek Association. Many eminent preachers have exhorted from behind its sacred desk. Rock Creek has often been assailed from within and from without but stands today, stronger than ever. Its Sunday School enrollment far exceeds in number, the entire membership of the church. This is due, in a large part, to the work of the Superintendent, Brad Haney, one of the most dynamic church workers in the county. He is ably assisted by a corps of efficient, conscientious teachers. On a knoll, which overlooks the surrounding country, is the cemetery. Here are buried many of the pioneer settlers of our county – Shipmans, Taylors, Steeles, Curtis’s, Martins, Adams, Blankenships, and others. Among them are the old war-horses of long-gone days when wild deer browsed in every hollow, and wild turkey gobbled from every ridge. It was here, nearly a quarter of a century ago, that your correspondent attended school and met the sweetest girl in the world – Mary Lyle, who, short off, became the missus and recently became a very young grandma. Amongst our classmates were the Burns boys and girls of the older set. Their grandfather, Uncle Frank Curtis, was one of my Foster fathers, and their mother, a kind-hearted woman, was my Foster mother. These children are scattered now. Meade is a federal lawyer in Tuscaloosa. John is practicing medicine in Russellville. Alice Jo is our county welfare director. Amy (Mrs. Alton Moore, of Haleyville) teaches at Delmar. Wash, Tom, and Ben died only a year or so ago. What memories these names bring to us now! A first-class graveled highway is being built from the Double Springs Highway at Shady Grove through this settlement on to the forest roads eastward. [Note: Rock Creek School was begun before 1906 and closed August 23, 1928, only to open again July 29, 1933 before it was consolidated with Double Springs on November 28, 1941. Also, the Clear Creek Baptist Association was organized at the church on October 9, 1874.]