{"nrhp_refnum":"01000643","name":"McCanaan Missionary Baptist Church and Cemetery","other_names":["First McCanaan Baptist Church"],"category":"building","location":{"address":"McCanaan Church Rd.","address_restricted":false,"city":"Sardis","county":"Burke County","state":"GA","lat":32.98443550800005,"lon":-81.70218031599995,"geom_source":"nps_gis"},"listed_date":"2001-06-14","is_nhl":false,"nhl_designated_date":null,"areas_of_significance":["Architecture","Black"],"significance_levels":["local"],"summary":{"what_it_is":"A rural African-American Baptist church and adjoining cemetery about two miles east of Sardis in Burke County, Georgia. The wood-framed Gothic Revival-style church was built in 1912.","why_significant":"The nomination argues the church is an excellent example of a rural African-American church with a cemetery, with a single side tower and simple Gothic Revival detailing. It is also significant for ethnic heritage as an institution that gave sharecropping families religious, educational and social autonomy in rural Georgia.","narrative":"McCanaan Missionary Baptist Church and Cemetery sits on about two acres in rural Burke County, Georgia, near Sardis. The congregation was organized in 1875 by Rev. Frank Cooper, who went on to found five churches and the Frank Cooper Missionary Baptist Association. Its first building burned in the early 1890s, a prayer house followed, and the present church was built in 1912 from locally cut timber. The one-story, wood-framed building has weatherboard siding, a metal roof, a conical-roofed side tower, lancet windows and a diamond-patterned wooden ceiling inside. Many members were sharecroppers at nearby Millhaven Plantation. A school for grades one through six once stood behind the church but was demolished in the 1930s. After a flood cut access to the earlier burial ground at Millhaven, burials moved to the church grounds in the early 1930s. The property was listed for its architecture and for its role as a rural African-American institution.","period_of_significance":"1912 - 1951","architect_builder":null,"architectural_style":"OTHER: rural vernacular church (side-steeple type with Gothic Revival features)","criteria":["A","C"],"status_note":"Church and cemetery remain in religious and funerary use; a noncontributing modern auxiliary building stands beside the church.","vacant_flag":false,"machine_generated":true,"model":"claude-sonnet-5-5","prompt_version":"v1.0-2026-10-29","generated_at":"2026-10-29 02:55:43.326261-05","source_pdf":"https://s3.amazonaws.com/NARAprodstorage/lz/electronic-records/rg-079/NPS_GA/01000643.pdf"},"photo":{"url_800":"https://nationalhistoricalregister.com/media/01000643/b7591fec59-800.webp","url_1600":"https://nationalhistoricalregister.com/media/01000643/b7591fec59-1600.webp","licence":"CC BY-SA 4.0","author":"Jud McCranie","credit_html":"<a href=\"https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:McCanaan_Missionary_Baptist_Church,_Sardis,_GA,_US.jpg\" rel=\"noopener\">Jud McCranie</a>, <a href=\"https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0\" rel=\"license noopener\">CC BY-SA 4.0</a>, via Wikimedia Commons","source_page":"https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:McCanaan_Missionary_Baptist_Church,_Sardis,_GA,_US.jpg"},"district":null,"sources":{"nps_snapshot_date":"2026-05-22","nara_catalog":"https://catalog.archives.gov/id/93207177","wikipedia":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McCanaan_Missionary_Baptist_Church_and_Cemetery","wikidata":"https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q16894878"},"indexable":true,"url":"https://nationalhistoricalregister.com/georgia/burke-county/mccanaan-missionary-baptist-church-and-cemetery-01000643/"}