From church to smokehouse to chapel: the story of Friedens “Little Chapel”

Story by: Andrea Kelley

Photos by: Nash Consing

Graphic by: Chel Wock

GIBSONVILLE, N.C. — Tension was building in Guilford County in 1775. The men worked the fields, talking politics while stacking hay. Notes passed from hand to hand, quietly arranging meetings and spreading news of what was happening up North. Families eyed each other across the town streets, nodding politely and wondering if their neighbors were for liberty or for England.

But at church, at least, loyalists and patriots could gather in harmony.

“Friedens,” they’d named this church. The German word for peace.

Coming from a war-torn Germany, the settlers saw the colonies as a safe haven. A mix of Lutherans and Reformed Church members, the families built the log church together in 1745 and used it to hold their separate services.

The 276-year legacy of that original log church remains today on Hwy 61 N in this town straddling the Guilford-Alamance County line, and its story spans 10 generations. But let’s not get ahead of ourselves.

In 1771, they outgrew the building, tore it down and dragged the hand-hewn logs to one of the church members so he could use them for a smokehouse. They built a larger frame church in its place.

That was four years ago, and yet the timbers were still new, shining with promise. And now the young men who had helped frame them were off to build something bigger – an independent nation. When the Revolutionary War ended, the congregation welcomed home some of its soldiers and laid others to rest in the ground outside the church.

The next few decades were comparatively uneventful. In the early 1800s the Reformed congregation built its own churches, so Friedens became home to the Lutherans only. By 1830, the congregation had begun using English instead of German for its services.

After the Civil War, the congregation decided it was time to expand. They acquired land across the road from the church and got to work, completing the new brick church in 1871. Time passed and the church remained steadfast, supporting its members through a world war and the Great Depression.

On Jan. 8, 1939, disaster struck. Friedens Lutheran Church caught fire and burned almost to the ground, leaving nothing but a brick shell, shards of stained glass, and a distraught congregation. 

“BLAZE DESTROYS HISTORIC CHURCH,” the headline in the News & Observer in Raleigh read. According to the article, the fire originated from “an overheated furnace, which was discovered by the janitor of the church about 9 o’clock in the morning,” an hour before the Sunday service was supposed to start. 

Local lore has it that the janitor saw the smoke and returned to the church, cresting the hill just in time to see the roof cave in. 

It was devastating to the community where Friedens had served as a historic landmark for almost 200 years. The congregation immediately began making plans to rebuild.

“This congregation was a bunch of farmers, a bunch of doers,” said Pastor Bill Zima, who has been the pastor at Friedens since 2009. “They got together and they started making bricks and they started lumber…and by Easter they had a functional worship building.”

Meanwhile, the logs from the original church, the one built nearly 200 years earlier, were still part of the smokehouse the Wagoner family had used for decades. 

The Wagoner family had been members of Friedens for years, and in the mid-1900’s, when they tore down the smokehouse, they donated the logs back to the church.

And there they sat, until 1961 when church member Roland Summers had an idea. What if they used the logs from the 1745 church to build a chapel that looked just like it? 

Summers recruited the young adult Sunday school class to help. The class used stories about the original church that had been passed down for generations to design and build the chapel.

“I don’t know if it’s exactly to scale, but it’s pretty close,” Zima said. The class added an altar and pews from the past. Four pews, to be exact, each no more than two feet wide. 

The chapel itself might stand 12 feet tall, not counting the steeple. Its snug log walls also contain one half-burned candle keeping watch over the altar Bible, and a slightly dusty guest book tucked away in the corner. 

Friedens “Little Chapel” is on its third guest book since Zima has been the pastor.

Church members feel such a deep connection to their roots that they have a Gechichtsraum, or history room, in the Fellowship Hall building. 

Here a person can comb through the centuries, from last year’s 275th anniversary cookbook to an 1892 altar Bible that’s so delicately moldy it might crumble with the slightest touch. 

More pieces of history are assembled around the room: a hand-embroidered quilt, newspaper clippings, a money box that survived the fire. And there, in the glass case, a brick from the 1871 church, marked with one dainty paw print. Maybe 19th-century Germans had some fun after all. 

The chapel and church aren’t the only bearers of Friedens history. The cemetery across the road tells a rich tale, safeguarding soldiers, pastors, and even a few small stones inscribed in 18th-century German. 

In the middle, a stone tower rises proudly above the headstones to mark the site of the original Friedens church. The monument rests on a large stone slab that used to be the church step. The top is laid out like an altar, with depressions for candles and a large concrete Bible in the middle that reads

 ORIGINAL SITE 

 FRIEDENS CHURCH

1745-1871

From the cemetery grounds to a smokehouse, and from the smokehouse to a tiny chapel, Friedens Lutheran Church has made quite a journey. But no matter their form, its logs maintain their sacredness. 

“Everybody has a different way they approach reverence, or holiness,” Zima said. Whether they came to Friedens to walk in the cemetery or are visiting the chapel to pray, “people are treating it as a place where, I think, they can meet God.”

In Matthew 18:20, Jesus says, “For where two or three gather in my name, there I am with them.”

…and the chapel does have room for four.