Culture of Marion County, Tennessee

Chapel on the Hill

An 1888 Primitive Baptist sandstone chapel on Clute's Hill in South Pittsburg

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Last updated: April 27, 2026

Front of the Chapel on the Hill, showing the sandstone walls, peaked entrance arch with vintage wooden door, and the Southeast Tennessee Heritage Religious Trail interpretive sign at the right
The restored Chapel on the Hill at the corner of Elm Avenue and Eighth Street, South Pittsburg. The interpretive sign at right marks the chapel's place on the Southeast Tennessee Heritage Religious Trail. Photo: Tyce H, 2026.

The Chapel on the Hill is the restored 1888 Primitive Baptist sandstone church that sits on Clute's Hill at the corner of Elm Avenue and Eighth Street in South Pittsburg. Built by an in-migrating group of Primitive Baptists who carried letters of standing from the older congregations at Sweeten's Cove and Jasper, it served as the South Pittsburg Primitive Baptist Church for ninety years before declining membership ended regular services in 1979. After two decades of vacancy and a 2001 transfer to the City of South Pittsburg, the South Pittsburg Historic Preservation Society (SPHPS) led a restoration that has kept the chapel in continuous use since 2003 as a public events space. The building is a contributing structure within the NRHP-listed South Pittsburg Historic District and a stop on the Southeast Tennessee Heritage Religious Trail.

Founding (1886)

On November 20, 1886, a small group of Primitive Baptists held a worship service in a frame schoolhouse at the corner of Cedar Avenue and Fifth Street in South Pittsburg. During the service, the members signed a church covenant formally establishing a permanent Primitive Baptist congregation in the city. The founding members carried letters of standing from the Primitive Baptist churches at Sweeten's Cove (organized 1821, the oldest Primitive Baptist congregation in Marion County) and at Jasper. The new South Pittsburg congregation was, in practice, an industrial-era extension of the older valley denomination into the new iron boomtown four miles to the south.

Construction (1888 to 1889)

In 1888, Owen Russell Beene, who owned land near the old Gunter Cemetery on Clute's Hill, hired contractor Angus McRae of Sewanee, Tennessee to build a permanent stone meeting house on the property. The sandstone blocks were quarried at Sewanee, on the plateau north of South Pittsburg, and hauled to the site by horse-drawn wagons over the Monteagle Mountain road. By the spring of 1889 the building was complete and ready for worship.

On May 17, 1889, Beene transferred ownership of the building and property to the church's trustees, W.O. Patton, Angus McRae, and J.C. Beene, for the sum of one dollar. The deed carried a deliberate restriction: if the trustees or their successors ever failed to maintain the church organization for a continuous five-year period, the property would revert to Beene or his heirs. The clause would prove decisive ninety years later.

Operation as the South Pittsburg Primitive Baptist Church (1889 to 1979)

For ninety years the building served as the regular meeting place of the South Pittsburg Primitive Baptist Church, with one significant interruption. In 1954, a fire destroyed the roof and the frame bell tower above the sandstone walls. The congregation rebuilt the roof, but the bell tower was not replaced; the chapel's bell survived the fire although its rocking wheel was burned away. The building was used through the rest of the 20th century as a Primitive Baptist meeting house, although the congregation gradually declined as the South Pittsburg population fell from its 1960 peak.

In 1979, with regular Sunday services no longer being held, the congregation effectively dissolved. Per the 1889 deed restriction, ownership of the building and the property reverted to the heirs of Owen Russell Beene. The chapel sat out the next two decades in private hands, used only intermittently.

Restoration as the Chapel on the Hill (2001 onward)

In 2001, Beene's heirs transferred ownership of the chapel to the City of South Pittsburg. The South Pittsburg Historic Preservation Society, in cooperation with the city, began a restoration project that continues to the present, funded by donations, grants from the Marion Natural Gas System and the Sequachee Valley Electric Cooperative, fundraisers, and in-kind work from students at the neighboring South Pittsburg High School. The chapel was incorporated into the existing South Pittsburg Historic District on the National Register of Historic Places, which had been listed October 25, 1990; the chapel is a contributing structure within that boundary.

The condition the SPHPS inherited was poor. Photographs taken in April 2000, just before restoration work began, document interior plaster damaged by decades of roof leaks and by moisture penetrating the mortar joints of the sandstone walls. By February 2001, workmen photographed by the South Pittsburg Hustler were near completion of stripping the old roof and decking in preparation for a new roof. One Hustler photograph showed Society member Bebe Fuqua standing inside the building looking up through the removed ceiling at the open sky, the first time natural light had entered the chapel from above since the roof and ceiling had been rebuilt after the 1954 fire. The new ceiling installation followed in July 2002, by which time the interior plaster had been patched and repainted.

The restored chapel made its public debut on December 8, 2001, on the Society's first annual Christmas Tour of Homes, with newly installed stained-glass windows visible. A second public showing followed on December 8, 2002. The first wedding rental in the restored building took place on October 1, 2003, beginning the model of self-funding maintenance through event rentals that the SPHPS has used to sustain the chapel since. In December 2003, Shaw Industries Inc. of South Pittsburg donated a new blue carpet for the sanctuary.

On March 4, 2004, a sandstone Chapel on the Hill identification sign was erected in front of the building. Sam Hunter donated the stone; Jim Rogers donated the transport to and from the engraver; SPHPS historian Dennis Lambert broke ground for the footing; Carolyn Millhiser, Doris Durham, and Susan Mack documented the work. Rogers Funeral Home of South Pittsburg used a burial-vault crane to set the stone into the prepared concrete footing.

In October 2007, an interpretive sign arrived for the chapel's designation to the Southeast Tennessee Heritage Religious Trail, paid for jointly by the Southeast Tennessee Tourism Association and the SPHPS. The trail sign was installed on Sunday afternoon, December 2, 2007, by Dennis Lambert, with Bob Hookey (SPHPS chairman) assisting on the concrete work and stone furnished by Carolyn Millhiser used to dress the base. Other Marion County and adjacent stops on the trail include Christ Church Episcopal at 3rd Street and Holly Avenue in South Pittsburg, Holly Avenue United Methodist Church at 415 Holly Avenue, Our Lady of Lourdes Catholic Church at 700 Holly Avenue, the Virgin of the Poor Shrine at New Hope, and Saint John the Baptist Church on Ladd's Cove Road near Martin Springs.

On January 15, 2016, the chapel's old bell, whose rocking wheel had burned off in the 1954 fire, was lifted out through a temporary opening in the roof by the City of South Pittsburg Street Department and Caps Roofing. The SPHPS planned to restore the bell and build a stand for it, dedicated to a late member of the Society who had been instrumental in launching the chapel restoration. A new roof was installed on the chapel by Caps Roofing on January 21, 2016, replacing the older roof before it could begin leaking.

Donor windows

During the restoration the chapel's stained-glass windows and pews were named for individual and family donors. The window inscriptions, taken together, are a small roster of South Pittsburg's late-20th-century civic life. The named windows are:

The pews carry additional family inscriptions for the Brown, Clay, Beene, Peek, Haynie, Tills, Lehman, Lysne, and related families. The combined window-and-pew inscriptions are the closest the project has to a primary-source roster of South Pittsburg's preservation-era donor families.

The chapel today

The chapel is rented for weddings, receptions, family reunions, and award ceremonies. Rental income goes to a maintenance fund that has supported the bell restoration, the replacement roof, the new sandstone identification sign, and the heating and air conditioning installation that made year-round use possible. The chapel is open to the public during the SPHPS Christmas Tour of Homes each December. Bookings and society contact information are available through the SPHPS at historicsouthpittsburgtn.org.

Related

Churches of Marion County →
Religious history of Marion County →
Marion County cemeteries (including the old Gunter Cemetery near the chapel) →
About South Pittsburg →
About Sweeten's Cove (the lineage congregation) →
The Old South Pittsburg Hospital (whose six doctors are honored on a Chapel donor window) →

Sources