Salem Church

This is Salem Church as I remember it in a photo I took sometime during the late 1970s when it still had an active contregation and was about a century old. This was an extremely simple building and had been altered very little.

The chain-linked posts in front of the church were put there so that horses could be tied up during services and this "fence" actually outlived the church, although it since has been replaced.

Spirea bushes bloomed along the north and south sides of the church and the churchyard, north and south of the building, was shaded by the trees you see here and a few massive old maples that probably were planted when the church was built. The cemetery was behind (east of) the building.

There was no water on the grounds and outhouses in the southwest corner of the churchyard (still there) served the congregation.

I wish now that I had attended a service here, but didn't. However, the church generally was unlocked so we sometimes went inside to look around. About the only interior change had been a new, dark ceiling that presumably kept plaster from falling onto the heads of those seated below and electric lights. The walls were papered above wainscotting and the floor, scrubbed planks that never had been varnished. Light flooded in through tall clear-glass windows over which venetian blinds had been installed.

The pews looked as if they could have been hand-made and had been painted, but that had worn through to bare wood here and there, polished by a century of use. A big wood stove stood in the northwest corner of the building, where the chimney was.

Up front, there was a platform, a piano and an handsome dark wood pulpit. And that was about it. I wonder how many 21st Century Christians would consider it suitable.