Officials investigating fire at historic, now empty, Scott County Black church.
Scott County Fire Department officials are investigating after a historic Black church, which is now privately owned, was destroyed by a fire early Sunday morning.
The fire was the third attempt to burn the former Watkinsville Baptist Church on Watkinsville Lane in rural Scott County near the Stamping Ground community.
Fire officials were called around 10:30 p.m. on Saturday when a door and other parts of the church were on fire. The fire was extinguished at that time. Scott County fire officials remained at the scene with owner Alan Covington for more than an hour after the fire was out. Covington stayed much later to clean up the debris from the fire.
“I stayed there until at least 2:00 a.m. because I had to board up the door,” Covington said.
Then shortly after 8:30 a.m. Sunday morning, Covington was notified by a neighbor the church had burned down.
“Someone had come back and had set fire to it again,” Covington said.
Scott County Assistant Fire Chief Jim Kanavy said both fires were intentionally set. The second fire early Sunday morning was not a re-spark or a restart of the previous fire.
“We are asking anyone with any information to please come forward,” Kanavy said. Anyone with information should contact the Scott County Fire Department at (502) 863-7853.
The Watkinsville Baptist Church was built in the late 1800s by freed Black slaves.
Covington said in the 1950s and 1960s the church was thriving. Its revivals would bring hundreds of people to the area, sometimes backing up traffic in the area for miles.
Covington’s father purchased the farm adjacent the church in 1964. Covington built his home on land next to the church in 1978. Over the years, Covington became the official caretaker of the building as church membership started to dwindle. As attendance dropped, services moved from once a week and to once a month.
When only a handful of parishioners remained about five years ago, the church board approached Covington, and he purchased the building.
Sunday night was not the first time someone has tried to burn the building.
In February 2017, someone threw a Molotov-style cocktail through a church window. That fire was extinguished before it could spread.
There was a camera on the back of the church, Covington said. Unfortunately, the recording device for that camera was destroyed in Sunday morning’s early morning fire. No one was in the building at that time. Covington had converted the back of the church into an apartment. But no one was renting the apartment at the time of the fire.
Covington said it’s unlikely that the building was specifically targeted because it was once a Black church.
Still, the church meant a lot to Scott County’s Black community.
“It meant a lot to a lot of people,” Covington said.
This story was originally published June 19, 2020 at 3:54 PM.
