Mt. Gilead Community

     It is with a heart of love that this site is published; a great love that we have for our community and the people down through the years that have made it such a wonderful place to call home. 

    When we study and learn about the past, we understand more of the hardships and sufferings our forefathers endured and it makes us appreciate our ancestors and who we are today. 

   Our roots run deep here as our ancestors were some of the first settlers in this community.  As time goes by, there will be less and less history known and we felt if things were written down, those future generations who are interested would have some history.  We request and encourage you to send us whatever information, pictures, etc. you might have on the people here and things that have happened in this community so we can post that too.          

    Mt. Gilead Community is located in the Northwest portion of Henderson County and borders with Carroll  and Madison Counties.   Mt Gilead is a Bibical name and it would be good to know the history of how and who named the community.  I'm sure it must have been a Christian.

     Some of the early settlers were Barrs, Barrows, Birchetts, Blackwells, Carys, Coffmans, Cooks, Douglass', Gateleys, Gatlins, James, McCoys, Meals, Peelers, Pegrams, Petersons, Poteetes, Sheltons, Singletons, Stewarts, Strattons, Utleys, Williams, Wilsons and others.

     All though no school is in the community now, in the past at various times there were several schools; Mt Gilead, Smith School, Moss' Rest, Sassafras Grove and Milam School.  About half way between Mt Gilead and Bargerton, at one time, there was a Meals Academy.

     At various times, we have had a post office in the communty, Atkins Post Office, Spain Post Office and I believe the Utley Post Office was located in this community.For many years, Juno served as the post office. Today we get our mail through a Carroll County post office at Cedar Grove.

     The community has several cemeteries with Pleasant Hill being the largest.  Others are Stewart, Spain,Bull's Hill and James Cemeteries.

     Down through the years, this community has had several different grocery stores.  Cook's Store has probably served our community longer than any other.  Other stores in the community through the years were McKee's, Johnny's, Coffman's, Blackwell's, Pierce's, Stanford's and others were run by Aundee Douglas, Amber Miller, Bertha Ivy and Jessie Wise.

     Churches in this area have been Hearn's Chapel Church of Christ which was moved to the Law Community and became known as Law Church of Christ.  Other churches were Sharon Methodist Church and Rhu Hammer Church.  Two churches serve our community today, Twin Oaks Baptist Church and Mt. Gilead Baptist Church.

     To get a more complete history of the above mention items,  please click on the links on the right.

     This endeavor is new to us and we ask forgiveness and help in correcting our mistakes and omissions.

   We know that there is a lot more information that should be added and we will add it as we receive the information. 

                         Bobbie & Tina

    This website was created to share a little history of the Mt. Gilead community and the people who first settled in this area.

     Our goal is to post information on as many families of the early settlers as we can find and also some history on the community, schools and churches in this area.

     This will be a continuing thing for quite some time; and we will be adding to it as information is available to us.

    We request your help in sharing your family's information with us through email or regular mail.

    The quality of some of the pictures is very poor, however if you click on the lower right hand corner of the picture it will enlarge and that will help.  If anyone has any original pictures from this time period that we could place on the site please let us know.

   Bobbie & Tina