Barton Chapel
Barton Chapel is a church in Robbins that is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. It was built in 1926.
See Also: Scott County’s Historic Places
Beginnings
Barton Chapel Congregational church began as the First Pilgrim Congregational Church. It was organized as the population of Robbins grew as a depot on the Cincinnati Southern Railroad in the 1880s and 1890s. It was started by members of the families of A.C. Ellis, Adam Ott and A.J. Robbins, among others.
The first meeting house was built across the railroad from where Barton Chapel is currently located, near where the First Baptist Church of Robbins is now located. The land for the building was donated by A.C. Ellis. The first church was a white frame church.
The first pastor of the Congregational church was William Eleazar Barton (1861-1930), an Illinois native for whom Barton Chapel was eventually named.
Barton first visited Robbins while he was a student at Berea College in Kentucky. After graduating in 1885, he returned to Robbins to pastor the church. He also served as a circuit rider, visiting churches in communities like Deer Lodge, Lansing and Glenmary.
Barton left Robbins after a short time to attend theological seminary in Oberlin, Oh.
The new church
The two-story brick building at the corner of U.S. Highway 27 and School House Road in Robbins was completed in 1926. It was designed by Knoxville architecture firm Barber & McMurry. It included a sanctuary, along with a wing that served as a parsonage.
The land was donated by Jasper Hughett, who had been the first postmaster at Hughett (Slick Rock) before moving to Robbins.
The church was built using brick from the nearby Robbins Brick Yard, the manufacturing plant of the Southern Clay Mfg. Co. Southern Clay donated the brick, and the exterior walls of the church were laid three bricks thick.
The interior of the church was furnished with a podium and two altar chairs from the First Congregational church of Oak Park, Ill., which Barton pastored for 25 years. The church burned in 1912 and the furniture donated to Barton Chapel was the only items saved from the building.
Barton returned to Robbins in 1926 to lay the cornerstone for the new building.
William Barton
Barton was the son of Jacob Bostedo Barton and Helen Methven Barton. He married Esther Treat Bushnell in 1885, the year he graduated from Berea College.
After leaving Robbins, Barton pastored Shawmut Church in Boston, Mass. for six years before spending 25 years at First Congregational church of Oak Park, Ill. He later returned to Tennessee as a lecturer at Vanderbilt University’s School of Religion. He also pastored Collegeside Congregational Church in Nashville. His wife had died by that time.
Barton died December 7, 1930 in Brooklyn, N.Y. He is buried in Foxborough, Mass.
Barton wrote 15 books during his life, including books about President Abraham Lincoln and theology. His son, Bruce Barton, was an even more popular writer, penning The Man Nobody Knows and The Book Nobody Knows.
A Community Center
From the beginning, Barton Chapel was more than just a church. It was also a community center. Women worked in the basement of the church to make clothes, and the church raised money to purchase food and clothing, and to pay for hospitalizations and doctors for those who needed health care.
George L. Day served as the first pastor at Barton Chapel, from 1926 until 1935, when he and his wife left Robbins to move to Soddy Daisy, Tenn. Subsequent pastors included, in order: Carl Dollar, David L. White, Orval W. Sampson, Charles C. Haun, William Schorman, R.H. Lasseter, Henry Weaver, Annie Campbell, Lynn Taylor, Hugh Lassiter, Larry Belleniene, Mark Frey and Ralph Galt.
Historic Registry
Barton Chapel was placed on the National Register of Historic Places on July 12, 1984.
The church’s organ was donated in 1987 by Ella Kline in memory of her father, C.L. Kline. The church’s red tile roof was added in 1989.
It was not until 1991 that the basement floor of the church was poured in concrete and the parking lot was paved. Central heat and air conditioning were installed a year later. Hubert Terry was pastor at the time.