DRIVING DOWN the paved road that winds through the Pee Dee River portion of Georgetown County is like stepping back in time.
This area has a remote and mysterious air, heightened by the fact that one can drive for miles, through towering pines, without seeing another soul. Just off the road, in an area that is now completely isolated from human activity, an old church once stood that was the center of the plantation community. Although, only the foundation of the church and a lonely belltower still remain in this dark and desolate place, spirit voices can still be heard echoing from walls that crumbled long ago.
Along the road through this area are small, modest wooden signs that announce romantic-sounding names such as Nightingale Hall, Dirleton, Arundel, Chicora Wood, and Springfield. Each small sign marks the entrance to the plantation of a former Pee Dee River rice baron. Behind every name lies what was once a closely knit society of antebellum wealth. Most of these rice barons were Episcopalian, and the church played an important role in day-to-day life.
In the early eighteenth century, when the Pee Dee River area became established as an elite and thriving plantation community, Prince George, the Episcopal parish to which it belonged, divided.
The Pee Dee community became the center of the newly formed Prince Frederick parish. The Prince George parishoners built a new church in Georgetown, but the Prince Frederick congregation continued to worship at the old church on the Black River.
As the community grew, a new church for the Prince Frederick parish was begun in 1859 in the midst of their own spreading lands.
In mid-1860, progress on the new church’s construction received a terrible blow. When Union ships blockaded Georgetown harbor, precious goods shipped from Europe for the church’s completion were lost in the confusion.
Work on the church came to a complete halt later in 1860 when the head architect, Mr. Gunn, slipped on the high, incredibly steep roof and fell, screaming, to his death. The unfinished church, its massive bell tower rising above the tree tops, was temporarily abandoned.
Damage incurred during the war years added to the work that would be required to complete the structure.
In the decade after the Civil War, there wasn’t enough money left in the once-prosperous community to complete construction of Prince Frederick’s Church. However, donations from wealthy New York businessmen and other churches enabled work on the ill-fated church to conclude.
With their large and exquisite church completed, the planters of Prince Frederick parish now had a fine church of their own.
For a time, the church flourished. It was especially known for its choir of exceptionally talented voices. The choir, which practiced at dusk nearly every night, could be heard from miles around.
Sadly, though, the church soon fell on hard times. Antebellum days had ended, and poverty forced many formerly-rich rice planters to move away to find other ways of life and livelihood. The remaining parishioners could neither fill their lovely house of worship nor afford to keep it up. They were forced to move to a smaller, less beautiful, chapel.
For many years, Prince Frederick’s was used on special occasions, such as Easter, and left unused the rest of the year.
The glorious choral voices no longer echoed through the forest.
Finally, services at Prince Frederick’s Church, Pee Dee, were stopped altogether. The house of worship fell into a state of disrepair. In the last several decades, the remains were torn down after the main body burned.
All that remains now of the lovely gothic structure, begun in the age of opulence, are the ruins of the church foundation and the bell tower that still rises high into the sky above the towering pines.
Today this lonely keep, with only the ancient cemetery behind it, is the site of very strange and eerie occurrences.
Many believe that Mr. Gunn, the architect who tumbled to his death while building the church, still haunts the grounds. Gunn’s spirit is said to be so prevalent in and around the tower that the belfry and church ruins have come to be known as the Old Gunn Church.
Georgetonians have told of seeing lights moving in the totally inaccessible upper portion of the tower during the night. Others have heard the bloodcurdling, horrible scream of Mr. Gunn, the architect, as he relives his fatal fall.
Mr. Gunn is not the only spirit that roams the grounds of the old church. The choir, that once resounded through the trees like a chorus of heavenly voices, still sings, although the choral members are all long gone. That magical time between sundown and dark, when their practice reached its crescendo, is exactly the time they are still ocassionally heard.
The choir’s melodious voices are not loud. Rather they are unmistakably sweet, rising above and then blending into the wind as it sweeps through the tall surrounding pines.
The remains of Old Gunn Church
are located on SC 22-4 off of U.S. 701,
approximately 16 miles north of Georgetown.