Mt. Olive Baptist Church is a small Baptist country church in Clark County, Kentucky.
Contents
Formation
The church's history dates back to 1845 when the Unity Baptist Church and the Indian Creek Baptist Church joined to become the new Mt. Olive Baptist Church. The first church building was built in 1845. The frame construction stood in the same place as the church is today.
In the years after its construction, the church prospered. The church consisted mainly of three big families, and today there are still members of these families attending the church.
The church became the cultural center of southern Clark County. Its membership was 172, about five times as high as today. At that time, Mt. Olive Baptist Church was the second-largest in the Boone's Creek Association, an association of churches in Clark County and adjacent counties.
Re-building
On December 20, 1936, a fire destroyed the building. It took about five months to build a new church. In contrast to the old building, which had two separate doors for men and women (and a back door for African Americans in the time before the Civil War), the new one has only one door and is facing East instead of South.
A remarkable aspect about this building and Mt. Olive Baptist Church is that it has preserved its unique character over its long history. Although its numbers of memberships fluctuated over the years it always remained part of the countryside in southern Clark County. It is a great example of the typical little country church, as known from the movies. It shows that there still are some idyllic places left in Kentucky.