Community of Marion County, Tennessee

Ebenezer

A Sequatchie Valley farming community around a nearly two-hundred-year-old church

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Last updated: April 22, 2026

Ebenezer is a rural community in the Sequatchie Valley just north of Jasper, tied closely to the congregation of the same name. The church, organized around 1830 on land donated by John and Mary Oats Hoge, is believed to have been the first Cumberland Presbyterian congregation in the Sequatchie Valley. A small cluster of farms, a long-running school, and a handful of scattered homes have shared the Ebenezer name ever since. Today the surrounding valley floor is mostly agricultural land and cattle pasture, with the church building and its cemetery as the most enduring public landmarks.

Ebenezer Cumberland Presbyterian Church, Marion County, Tennessee
Ebenezer Cumberland Presbyterian Church, near Jasper. The present building dates to around 1914, replacing a structure lost in a 1909 storm. Photo: Upstateherd, 2025 (CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons).

The church and its congregation

The Cumberland Presbyterian denomination was born in the same revival waters that produced Tennessee's first common schools and circuit-riding churches. Ebenezer Cumberland Presbyterian was organized around 1830 on land across the road from the present church building, on property donated by John and Mary Oats Hoge. It is believed to have been the first Cumberland Presbyterian church in the Sequatchie Valley, and the denomination spread to Whitwell, Dunlap, and the rest of the valley within about twenty years.

The congregation has lost its building twice. In 1854 and again in 1909, the church was destroyed by what local newspaper accounts variously described as cyclones, hurricanes, and tornados. The present building, constructed around 1914, is built in a vernacular style with pointed stained-glass windows that suggest Gothic Revival detailing, and is unusual in Tennessee for its pyramidal roof atop a roughly square plan with a corner entry. Congregants saved the pot-bellied stove and pews from the second destroyed building and reinstalled them in the 1914 replacement, where they remain in use.

Ebenezer Cumberland Presbyterian Church was listed on the National Register of Historic Places on June 15, 2020.

Ebenezer School

Ebenezer School served the farming families of the community through the era of one-room and small community schools. It appears in the TNGenWeb Marion County schools roster and in Nonie Webb's in-progress catalog Old Schools, Teachers, & Students of Marion Co., Tennessee, where it is flagged as the subject of a forthcoming school-history book. Exact opening and closing dates for the Ebenezer school building are not confirmed in available public sources; like most of the county's rural schools, it would have consolidated into the Marion County Schools district between roughly 1940 and the early 1960s. See the historical schools page →

The Hoge family and the land

John and Mary Oats Hoge donated the land for the original Ebenezer church building around 1830, placing them among the earliest settler families in the north Sequatchie Valley end of Marion County. Church records from 1889 to 1918 include Hoge family records going back to 1794, which suggests continuity between the community's founding families and the valley's first-generation settlers. A fuller account of the surname lines in the valley is on the first settlers page.

Present-day Ebenezer

Ebenezer today is a residential and agricultural community along Griffith Highway between Jasper and the Sequatchie community, with the church building (3040 Griffith Highway) and its cemetery as the most visible public landmarks. Students attend schools in the Marion County Schools district. The county's historical marker program recognizes the church as a site of local significance.

Related

Religious history of Marion County →
Historical schools of Marion County →
First settlers of Marion County →
Jasper →
Sequatchie community →

Sources