The Hanceville Church

By LeRoy L. Albers
(Southern Tidings: Alabama-Mississippi News from the conferences, April 12, 1961)

Branch Sabbath Schools pay off, though it may take time. The story of the Cullman branch Sabbath School proves that determination will win.

One day in 1948 at the First Church in Birmingham, Alabama, Elder C. F. Graves made a call for a layman to conduct a Branch Sabbath School in Cullman. Taylor Hill, then a student at Southern Missionary College, responded. Brother Hill would come home every weekend from college and each Sabbath afternoon go to Cullman. At first there was just one Seventh-day Adventist, Mrs. D. C. (Mabel) Fuller and two or three non-Adventist friends who met in the little servant’s house on the Fuller estate.

In 1949 Mrs. J. M. Roper moved to Cullman (she was an Adventist) and joined the small group. Mr. and Mrs. Hill continued the regular 100 mile road trip to Cullman from Birmingham for over three years before any fruitage was realized. In 1952, two of the ladies who had been attending regularly, Mrs. Martha Steindorff and Miss Louise Grob, came into the church by baptism.

In this same year Albert Baggett and his family moved into the area, and Mrs. Charles Mayo (an Adventist and daughter of Mrs. Roper) had also joined the group. When the group started meeting in the servants’ house regularly, Mrs. Fuller’s husband, D. C. Fuller, then and officer of the Parker Bank, made some improvements on the house to make it more commodious. About 1954 the group became too large to meet there, and they moved to a room over Klein’s Dairy store. By this time there were 12 to 15 meeting regularly, including children.

In 1954 Mrs. Ola Quick and the Garald Chapman family came in by baptism. But it was not until 1956 that the Hanceville church was organized following a meeting held by Elder T. J. Mostert, pastor of the Roebuck church, in a little country church on Stout’s Mountain. Plan were immediately made to build a church and work was begun late in 1956 and completed in 1957. This beautiful little church, built by the labor and sacrifice of the members and the gifts of Mr. D. C. Fuller, is situated on Highway #31. The church was organized with 36 charter members. Membership at the end of October, 1960 was 45.

Taylor Hill said, “For five years it looked like nothing would result from the Branch Sabbath School. Many times there were only two attending and never over four or five for several years.” It took eight years for the Branch Sabbath School to materialize into an organized church.