On September 23, 1862, President Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation, a document that freed slaves. This document did not become effective until January 1, 1863. Negroes tested their unfamiliar freedom by leaving the plantation and migrating to new areas. The Freedman Bureau, an organization created and funded by Congress, aided them in their efforts. The bureau helped to enroll black children in schools and represented blacks in courts of law. Most importantly, the Freedman’s Bureau provided refuge for blacks---a place where they could find sympathy, help and protection. Major changes had altered the lives of the freed men. Slavery was only a few years’ dead and most blacks were still poor, uneducated, and ruled by white society, yet their lives were vastly improved compared to life as a slave. They received wages or their labor and new Negro communities were crawling out of the ashes of slavery.

 

    The central institution in the Negro community was the church. A group of these Negros settles just Northwest of Cherokee Springs after being freed. In 1873, they began to have church service in a small building out in an open field call the “Pea House.”

 

    A white family living in the community, owning several acres of land came to their rescue after seeing their needs for a church. Mrs. Beckie Foster and her family told the group that she would give them one acre of land on which to build a church in exchange for name he church Foster’s Grove. They cut down some trees and built on the and where the cemetery is now located. The second church was then built near the same area; this building was made from boards and planks. They were nailed on a vertical angle and overlapped each other. This helped to keep the rain and wind out of the building.