Appalachian Churches Series – Chloe Creek Old Regular Baptist Church: The Campbell Family and a Pike County Congregation
Along Chloe Creek in Pike County, Kentucky, a small white church stands against the steep green hills that rise almost immediately from the valley floor. Its architecture is simple, with white weatherboard siding, a metal roof, a centered entrance, and no towering steeple to distinguish it from the homes and other buildings scattered along the creek. Above the front door, however, a sign gives the building its identity and a date that reaches back more than a century: “Chloe Creek Old Regular Baptist Church of Jesus Christ, Est. 1915.”
Two smaller signs on the church preserve more of the story. One states that Chloe Regular Baptist Church was organized in 1915 by Elder A.D. Campbell, Ida Campbell, and others. Another records that property adjoining the church building was donated in 2008 by David C. Campbell and Sophia Campbell. Together, those plaques preserve a remarkable thread of family and congregational memory stretching from the church’s organization into the twenty-first century.
The surviving documentary record available online is scattered, but it supports the larger story written on the building itself. Chloe Creek appears repeatedly in Old Regular Baptist records during the twentieth century, while the New Salem Association’s extensive surviving minutes offer the best possibility of carrying the history back toward the church’s first years. The research trail accompanying the photographs identifies association records at Berea College and FamilySearch as especially important for reconstructing the congregation’s past.
What emerges is the history of more than a building. Chloe Creek Old Regular Baptist Church belongs to a much older eastern Kentucky religious tradition, one that survived the coming of railroads, the rise of the coal industry, generations of migration away from the mountains, and the deaths of the people who first gathered there.
Organized in 1915
The strongest evidence presently available for the church’s exact beginning is found at the church itself. Its identification sign gives 1915 as the establishment date, while the separate historical plaque specifically states that the congregation was organized that year by Elder A.D. Campbell, Ida Campbell, and others.
That date places the organization of Chloe Creek Church at a moment when Pike County was undergoing one of the greatest transformations in its history. Pikeville had received railroad service in 1905, and coal development accelerated rapidly afterward. The City of Pikeville describes the railroad’s arrival as the event that opened the eastern Kentucky coalfields to large-scale development, while coal mining and related businesses increasingly reshaped the economy during the early twentieth century.
The hills had not suddenly become industrial, of course. Families had lived along creeks like Chloe long before the mines and railroads arrived. Yet by 1915 the world surrounding them was changing. New mines brought workers, outside companies, money, roads, stores, and population growth into a region where transportation had previously depended heavily upon rivers, footpaths, horseback travel, and rough wagon roads. The organization of a church in that setting was therefore part of an older Appalachian pattern occurring in a rapidly modernizing county.
The identity of Elder A.D. Campbell is particularly intriguing. Later records identify an Elder Alvin Duvall Campbell and his wife, Ida Chaney Campbell, whose family remained deeply connected to Chloe Creek. Their son David Curtis Campbell was born in Pikeville in 1929, and his obituary identifies his parents specifically as Elder Alvin Duvall Campbell and Ida Chaney Campbell. Their daughter Verna Campbell May, born in 1918, is likewise identified as the daughter of Alvin Duvall and Ida Chaney Campbell.
The matching names make it highly probable that the Elder A.D. Campbell and Ida Campbell named on the 1915 church plaque were Elder Alvin Duvall Campbell and Ida Chaney Campbell. A surviving organization record from 1915 or an early church deed would provide the best final confirmation, but the family connection becomes even stronger when the later history of Chloe Creek Church is followed.
Part of an Older Old Regular Baptist World
Although Chloe Creek Church dates its organization to 1915, the religious tradition from which it grew was already nearly a century old in eastern Kentucky.
The New Salem Association was constituted in eastern Kentucky in 1825. Berea College’s archival description records New Salem Church in Harold, Floyd County, as one of the original congregations associated with the new body, while the Kentucky Historical Society describes the original association as consisting of eight churches from Pike, Floyd, Perry, and Harlan counties. Over the nineteenth century, the association passed through several names before the designation Old Regular Baptist became established.
Pike County was part of that religious geography from the beginning. The Pike County Historical Society traces Old Union Regular Baptist Church on Indian Creek to 1820, showing that Regular Baptist congregations were already established in what became the county’s nineteenth-century religious landscape before Chloe Creek was organized.
Old Regular Baptist churches developed a religious life recognizable throughout the central Appalachian coalfields. Scholars Howard Dorgan and Jeff Todd Titon documented traditions that included intensely personal preaching, congregational participation, foot washing, creek baptism, and unaccompanied lined-out hymn singing. Titon described Old Regular Baptist singing in southeastern Kentucky as one of the region’s oldest surviving sacred musical traditions, with a leader lining a hymn one phrase at a time before the congregation carries the words together in a slow and ornamented melody.
Such practices helped churches maintain identities that depended less upon elaborate buildings than upon fellowship, memory, preaching, song, and the relationships joining neighboring congregations. Chloe Creek belonged to this larger mountain Baptist world.
The Association Minutes and the Search for Chloe Creek’s Early Years
One of the most valuable surviving sources for that world is the annual record of the New Salem Association of Old Regular Baptist of Jesus Christ.
FamilySearch catalogs the association’s minutes beginning in 1825 and preserves numerous twentieth-century volumes in digital or microform copies. The surviving catalog includes volumes from 1912 and 1913, then 1919, as well as later minutes from 1926, the 1930s, 1940s, 1950s, and succeeding decades.
Berea College holds an even broader archival run in the Elder Walter L. Akers Old Regular Baptist Research Collection. The collection contains minutes from twenty-three Old Regular Baptist associations and includes New Salem records for 1909 through 1914, material from 1916, and a substantial series covering 1916 through 1951. Another nine folders preserve New Salem material from 1952 through 1969.
The absence of a readily accessible 1915 volume makes the church plaque particularly valuable. The 1916 material at Berea may eventually provide the closest contemporary archival confirmation of Chloe Creek’s organization, perhaps by recording the new congregation among the churches, messengers, membership tables, requests, or correspondence of the association.
Even without that missing piece, later association records clearly demonstrate that Chloe Creek became an established part of Old Regular Baptist life in Pike County.
John M. Justice, Alvon Campbell, and the Church in the 1950s
One of the earliest specific references presently located concerns Dolly Rose Young.
Young was born in 1909 at Trace in Mingo County, West Virginia, and died in 1973. A transcription of her Old Regular Baptist memorial records that she was a member of Chloe Creek Church and that she had been baptized by Rev. John M. Justice and Alvon Campbell in September 1952.
The entry is important because it puts names to the congregation. John M. Justice appears again in Chloe Creek’s history, suggesting that he had a sustained ministerial relationship with the church rather than appearing there only once.
The reference to Alvon Campbell also deserves further study. It may represent another member of the Campbell family associated with the congregation, although the surviving evidence does not justify identifying him with Elder Alvin Duvall Campbell solely because of the similarity of the names. What the record does show beyond doubt is that by the early 1950s Chloe Creek had members whose religious lives were important enough to be preserved in the denominational memorial tradition.
Those memorials are among the richest sources for Old Regular Baptist history because they record details that ordinary government documents rarely capture. They tell when people joined churches, who baptized them, where their membership moved, which ministers served them, and how congregations remembered their dead.
Baptism at Chloe Creek in 1968
A later denominational record provides even more direct evidence.
The 2002 minutes of the Northern New Salem Association preserve a memorial for a woman identified as Sister Linda. According to the record, she professed a hope in Christ and was baptized at Chloe Creek Church in Pike County in May 1968 by Elders John M. Justice and Thaniel Thacker. Afterward she took her membership to Little Flock Church on Johnican Creek.
That single entry connects Chloe Creek with several themes in Appalachian religious history. It confirms the congregation’s continued activity in the 1960s, again associates John M. Justice with the church, and shows how membership moved among Old Regular Baptist congregations.
Sister Linda’s later life also illustrates the migration that carried eastern Kentucky families and their churches northward during the twentieth century. She moved her membership to Pleasant View Church in Litchfield, Ohio, in 1970 and later to Little Edna Church in Lorain, Ohio, in 1978.
Thousands of Appalachian families followed work north into Ohio, Michigan, Indiana, and other industrial states during the coalfield migration of the twentieth century. Old Regular Baptist religion traveled with them. New congregations appeared in communities where Kentucky, Virginia, and West Virginia families settled, while letters of membership continued connecting those churches to the mountain congregations from which their members had come.
In records like Sister Linda’s, Chloe Creek becomes one point in that much larger network.
Membership, Baptism, and Fellowship in the 1980s
The New Salem records continue to mention Chloe Creek later in the century.
An obituary for Brother Ruie Coleman in the 1989 New Salem Association records tells how Coleman was baptized on October 29, 1988, by Elders Ked Adkins and Clarence Bowersock at Fishtrap Dam. The memorial then states that Ruie and his wife, Annie, both took membership at Chloe Creek Old Regular Baptist Church.
The episode preserves something deeply characteristic of mountain Baptist history. A baptism in the waters around Fishtrap became linked to membership in a small congregation back along Chloe Creek. The church building was important, but the boundaries of the congregation extended far beyond its walls through ministers, association meetings, baptisms, funerals, and visits between churches.
A later Northern New Salem memorial records that an Elder Hiram served as moderator of several congregations during his ministry, including Elizabeth, Little Angel, Chloe Creek, and Ratliff. His service at multiple churches reflects the interconnected character of Old Regular Baptist congregations, whose elders often traveled substantial distances to preach and assist sister churches.
The Campbell Family Across the Generations
The strongest thread running through Chloe Creek’s known history may be the Campbell family.
The church plaque begins that story with Elder A.D. Campbell and Ida Campbell in 1915. Later family records identify Elder Alvin Duvall Campbell and Ida Chaney Campbell as the parents of a large family whose children included Verna Campbell May and David Curtis Campbell. Both children remained connected with the congregation established during their parents’ generation.
Verna was born in 1918, only three years after the church’s stated organization date. She graduated from Pikeville High School and Pikeville College, became a teacher, and eventually retired from education. Her obituary describes her as a faithful member of Chloe Creek Old Regular Baptist Church. When she died in 2014 at the age of ninety-six, her funeral was held at the church, followed by burial in the Campbell Cemetery on Chloe Road.
Her brother David Curtis Campbell became an educator and served in the United States Army. The plaque now attached to the church records that David C. Campbell and Sophia Campbell donated adjoining property to Chloe Regular Baptist Church in 2008.
Four years later, in November 2012, David’s own funeral was held at Chloe Creek Old Regular Baptist Church. Glen Hall, Teddy Honaker, Bob Justice, and other ministers officiated, and David was buried in the Campbell Cemetery on Chloe Road. His obituary explicitly identifies him as the son of Elder Alvin Duvall Campbell and Ida Chaney Campbell.
Taken together, the evidence forms an unusually strong chain of memory. The church’s plaque remembers A.D. and Ida Campbell at the organization in 1915. Later records identify Elder Alvin Duvall and Ida Chaney Campbell. Their daughter became a faithful member. Their son and his wife donated adjoining property in 2008, and both children eventually had funerals connected with the congregation their parents had apparently helped establish.
Few written histories could express continuity more clearly.
A Place for the Living and the Dead
Like many old Appalachian churches, Chloe Creek has served as both a house of worship and a place where the community gathers at death.
Foster Lee Huffman, born in 1922, was a World War II veteran, retired Columbia Gas employee, and member of Chloe Creek Old Regular Baptist Church. When he died in 2013, his funeral was held at Chloe Creek before burial in the Nancy B. Justice Cemetery on Kendrick Fork of Chloe Creek.
David Campbell’s funeral had been held there the previous year. Verna Campbell May’s followed in 2014. Through services such as these, the church remained part of the passage between generations, a place where families who had known one another for decades gathered again to sing, preach, remember, and bury their dead.
A 2017 obituary for Robert Justice identifies the site of his funeral as “Upper Chloe Creek Old Regular Baptist Church.” The available evidence does not yet establish whether this was simply another local name used for Chloe Creek Church or a distinct congregation farther along the creek, so the two names should not automatically be treated as interchangeable. The reference nevertheless shows how closely Old Regular Baptist identity remained tied to the geography of Chloe Creek itself.
The Church That Stands Today
The present Chloe Creek Old Regular Baptist Church is modest in scale. Its white exterior and front gable face the narrow road, while later portions of the building extend behind the original-looking front section. A metal roof covers the structure, ramps and handrails provide access along the side, and grave markers can be seen climbing the nearby hillside.
Nothing visible on the exterior alone can establish that every portion of the present building dates to 1915. Mountain churches were frequently enlarged, repaired, sided, roofed, and rebuilt as congregations found the money and labor to do so. The 2008 property plaque itself demonstrates that the church grounds continued evolving long after the congregation was organized.
Geographic records place a feature named Chloe Creek Church at approximately 37.4523 degrees north and 82.4763 degrees west in Pike County, firmly identifying the church with the creek valley south and east of central Pikeville.
Yet the building’s simplicity may be part of what makes it historically significant. There is little about Chloe Creek that attempts to compete with the mountains surrounding it. Its importance comes from the people who entered its doors.
More Than a Century on Chloe Creek
Chloe Creek Old Regular Baptist Church is easy to pass without realizing how much history is gathered inside and around it.
Its own markers remember an organization in 1915 led by Elder A.D. Campbell, Ida Campbell, and others. Association memorials preserve members from the 1950s onward. John M. Justice and Thaniel Thacker appear in its baptismal story. Ruie and Annie Coleman carried their membership there after a baptism at Fishtrap. Old Regular Baptist elders traveled between Chloe Creek and neighboring congregations. The Campbell family remained connected to the church across generations, eventually donating additional property almost a century after its organization.
Behind those names stands a much older tradition. Chloe Creek grew from an eastern Kentucky Baptist culture whose organized association history reaches to New Salem in 1825 and whose worship survived enormous changes in the mountains. Scholars have documented the lined hymns, foot washings, creek baptisms, preaching, fellowship, and association meetings through which Old Regular Baptists carried that tradition from one generation to another.
Pike County changed dramatically after 1915. Coal towns rose and declined. Railroads and highways replaced older routes. Families left for Ohio and Michigan, while others returned home. Pikeville grew from a small mountain county seat into a regional center.
Through those changes, the little church on Chloe Creek remained.
Its history survives in association minutes, family memorials, funeral records, cemetery stones, photographs, and two simple signs attached to its white walls. Together they tell the story of a congregation rooted not in wealth or grand architecture, but in family, faith, and the enduring Old Regular Baptist tradition of the eastern Kentucky mountains.
Sources & Further Reading
New Salem Association of Old Regular Baptist of Jesus Christ. Minutes of the Annual Session of the New Salem Association of Old Regular Baptist of Jesus Christ. Paintsville, KY: New Salem Association of Old Regular Baptists of Jesus Christ, 1825–. FamilySearch Library. Accessed July 27, 2026. https://www.familysearch.org/tl/search/catalog/172333
New Salem Association of Old Regular Baptists of Jesus Christ. Minutes of the Annual Session of the New Salem Association of Old Regular Baptist of Jesus Christ, including digitized volumes from 1904 through the twentieth century. FamilySearch Digital Library. Accessed July 27, 2026. https://www.familysearch.org/library/books/
Berea College Special Collections and Archives. “New Salem Association, 1909–1911, 1913–1914, 1916.” Series 1, Box 5, Folder 4. Elder Walter L. Akers Old Regular Baptist Research Collection, BCA 0159-SAA 161. Accessed July 27, 2026. https://bereaarchives.libraryhost.com/repositories/2/archival_objects/157496
Berea College Special Collections and Archives. “New Salem Association, 1916–1951.” Series 1, Box 5, Folders 5–15. Elder Walter L. Akers Old Regular Baptist Research Collection, BCA 0159-SAA 161. Accessed July 27, 2026. https://bereaarchives.libraryhost.com/repositories/2/archival_objects/157497
Berea College Special Collections and Archives. “New Salem Association, 1952–1969.” Series 1, Box 6, Folders 1–9. Elder Walter L. Akers Old Regular Baptist Research Collection, BCA 0159-SAA 161. Accessed July 27, 2026. https://bereaarchives.libraryhost.com/repositories/2/archival_objects/157508
Berea College Special Collections and Archives. “New Salem Association: Queries, Resolutions and Requests Brought to the New Salem Association of Old Regular Baptist of Jesus Christ, From the Year 1825 through the Year 1969.” ca. 1969. Series 1, Box 5, Folder 1A. Elder Walter L. Akers Old Regular Baptist Research Collection, BCA 0159-SAA 161. Accessed July 27, 2026. https://bereaarchives.libraryhost.com/repositories/2/archival_objects/157492
Berea College Special Collections and Archives. “Old Regular Baptist Associations.” Series 1. Elder Walter L. Akers Old Regular Baptist Research Collection, BCA 0159-SAA 161. Accessed July 27, 2026. https://bereaarchives.libraryhost.com/repositories/2/archival_objects/93115
New Salem Association of Old Regular Baptist of Jesus Christ. “Brother Ruie Coleman.” In 1989 New Salem Association Obituaries. Transcribed by Floyd County KYGenWeb. Accessed July 27, 2026. The memorial records Ruie and Annie Coleman taking membership at Chloe Creek Old Regular Baptist Church. https://kygenweb.net/floyd/records/obituary/church-records/new-salem-assoc-obit-1989.html
Northern New Salem Association of Old Regular Baptist of Jesus Christ. Minutes of the Forty-Fifth Annual Session, 2002. Memorial recording a May 1968 baptism at Chloe Creek Church in Pike County by Elders John M. Justice and Thaniel Thacker. Accessed July 27, 2026. https://northernnewsalem.com/2000/2002.pdf
Northern New Salem Association of Old Regular Baptist of Jesus Christ. Minutes, 2007. Memorial recording Elder Hiram’s service as moderator of Chloe Creek, Elizabeth, Little Angel, and Ratliff churches. Accessed July 27, 2026. https://northernnewsalem.com/2000/2007.pdf
J. W. Call Funeral Home. “David Curtis Campbell Obituary.” 2012. Records Campbell as the son of Elder Alvin Duvall Campbell and Ida Chaney Campbell and notes that his funeral was held at Chloe Creek Old Regular Baptist Church on November 7, 2012. Accessed July 27, 2026. https://www.jwcallfuneralhome.com/obituaries/David-Curtis-Campbell?obId=1927037
“Verna Campbell May Obituary.” Tribute Archive. 2014. Identifies May as a daughter of Alvin Duvall and Ida Chaney Campbell and a faithful member of Chloe Creek Old Regular Baptist Church. Accessed July 27, 2026. https://www.tributearchive.com/obituaries/1927023/Verna-Campbell-May/
Lucas & Son Funeral Home. “Foster Lee Huffman.” November 2, 2013. Identifies Huffman as a member of Chloe Creek Old Regular Baptist Church and records his funeral there in November 2013. Accessed July 27, 2026. https://www.lucasandsonfh.com/obituaries/2312716
Pike County Historical Society. “A Brief History of Old Union Regular Baptist Church.” Accessed July 27, 2026. Useful for the older Regular Baptist and New Salem religious tradition in Pike County, including Old Union’s 1820 establishment. https://pikecountykyhistoricalsociety.com/a-brief-history-of-old-union-regular-baptist-church/
Pike County Historical Society. “Appalachian Authors and Historical Collections.” Accessed July 27, 2026. The collection includes historic Regular Baptist material and church-minute resources useful for comparative Pike County church history. https://pikecountykyhistoricalsociety.com/appalachian-arts/
Titon, Jeff Todd. “Old Regular Baptists of Southeastern Kentucky: A Community of Sacred Song.” Smithsonian Folklife Festival, 1997. Accessed July 27, 2026. https://festival.si.edu/articles/1997/old-regular-baptists-of-southeastern-kentucky-a-community-of-sacred-song
Dorgan, Howard. The Old Regular Baptists of Central Appalachia: Brothers and Sisters in Hope. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1989; paperback edition, 2002. https://utpress.org/9781572331600/the-old-regular-baptists-of-central-appalachia/
Dorgan, Howard. Giving Glory to God in Appalachia: Worship Practices of Six Baptist Subdenominations. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1987. https://utpress.org/title/giving-glory-to-god-appalachia/
McCauley, Deborah Vansau. Appalachian Mountain Religion: A History. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1995. https://www.press.uillinois.edu/books/?id=p064142
Kentucky Department for Libraries and Archives. “Research Guides.” Frankfort, KY. Accessed July 27, 2026. Particularly useful for locating Pike County deeds, wills, order books, court files, and other governmental records that could document the church property and Campbell family. https://kdla.ky.gov/Archives-and-Reference/Pages/Research-Guides.aspx
Kentucky Department for Libraries and Archives. Kentucky Deed Records. Archives and Records Management Division, updated June 11, 2025. Useful for tracing the Chloe Creek church parcel backward through grantor and grantee indexes. https://kdla.ky.gov/Archives-and-Reference/Documents/Handout-DeedRecords.pdf
Kentucky Department for Libraries and Archives. County Records Inventory. Frankfort, KY. The inventory confirms extensive surviving Pike County marriage, deed, order book, will, and court holdings useful for deeper research. Accessed July 27, 2026. https://kdla.ky.gov/Archives-and-Reference/Documents/County%20Records.pdf
Pike County Public Library District. “Genealogy and Digital Library Resources.” Pikeville, KY. Accessed July 27, 2026. The library maintains genealogy resources and local collections that may contain church, cemetery, newspaper, and family material relating to Chloe Creek. https://www.pikelibrary.org/
Author Note: I photographed Chloe Creek Old Regular Baptist Church while documenting the historic churches of Pike County and was struck by how much of its history survives on the building itself. I hope this article helps preserve the names, records, and Old Regular Baptist traditions connected to this small mountain congregation for future generations.