Old Jersey Church, Lower Turkeyfoot Township

The Laurel Highlands Trail has a parking lot and entry point along the remote Jersey Hollow Road, just northwest of the village of Confluence.  This is rugged and beautiful country with unexpected vistas along the narrow, winding lanes.  

The semi-derelict church sitting in a cemetery on Jersey Hollow Road seems to go by several names: Old Jersey Church, Jersey Settlement Baptist Church, Turkeyfoot Baptist Church.  It was a Baptist congregation, obviously, which is somewhat rare in rural Pennsylvania.  Most of your far-flung country churches in these parts are Methodist, Lutheran, or Presbyterian.  Founded in 1788, it served settlers from New Jersey.  

I don't know if they still hold services here.  There's a portable outhouse out back, which was clean and well maintained, and a furnace in the dirt-floor basement.  An electric line runs to the building, and when I peeked inside I saw all the traditional accoutrements of a country church: American flag, Christian flag, faded old hymnals.  And yet, there's no place to park--aside from a tiny pull-off beside the road, big enough for three cars at the most.  And surely people don't walk to this place.

There was a grassy area next to the building where people might park, but it looked pretty untrammeled.  See the furnace inside the padlocked cellar?  The only thing separating this basement from the outdoors is a strong wire screen in the door and all windows--to keep the critters out.

The cemetery here is pretty large, and there's a newer one across the road with a sign advertising plots for sale.  

My guess is that there's a group of elderly folks who come back every now and again to clean the place up and do whatever quick repairs they can.  I don't know, maybe they hold a service here on a summer's afternoon with some retired Baptist minister who drives up from West Virginia.  But they're all getting a little too old for to keep coming back here to look after the church where they grew up, got married, and where they buried their parents and loved ones.  They'd like it if some younger folks stepped up to help keep the place from falling into ruin.  But the youngest folks alive who have fond memories of this little country church are in their late 60s.  You can only expect people to care about a place like this if they have sweet memories of it, and it apparently hasn't had a congregation in decades.  

Sic transit gloria mundi.