CANTON — Beech Plains Free Church, an unassuming chapel that rises up out of the pine in West Pierrepont, is shining a little brighter lately.
The clapboard country church recently received a much-needed coat of fresh white paint — not to mention some new attention from the community, which hopes to rehabilitate the 133-year-old building.
"I was married in this church, and my brother is buried next door in the cemetery. It's always been here, since I was little, for my father and my grandparents," said Cathy L. Connolly of Potsdam, president of the church's board of trustees. "I want to see it continued for the next generation."
People pulled into the small churchyard Sunday to admire the $8,000 paint job and raise money for the next phase of rehabilitation.
Tents were set up for a bake sale and silent auction, and historical registers were open for perusing inside the church door.
"We're just trying to get it back," Mrs. Connolly said. "It's the simple country church — that's how I always think of it."
The building has a quiet grace, with its silver weathervane and green shutters. Inside, the walls and ceiling are still lined with their original stained wood paneling.
Services haven't been held regularly at Beech Plains Church for at least 20 years.
The hymnals in each pew date from the 1970s, and a sign behind the pulpit has blank spaces where the rolling record of how many people attended used to be displayed.
"The congregation was a lot of older people, and they started dwindling until we couldn't afford to have a minister," Nancy F. Tuttle said.
Every once in a while, a couple marries here or a family holds a funeral. But ever since a floor joist cracked during a funeral, people have had to stop at the threshold.
The rotting wood beams beneath the floor are just too dangerous to walk on.
So now, the trustees and the Ladies' Aid Society, which was originally founded in 1883 to help furnish and carpet the church, have banded together to raise the money to fix the floor — though it's not yet clear how much that will take.
"My husband's whole family used to worship here," said Susan K. Matthews, president of the Ladies' Aid Society. "It has a lot of sentimental value."
According to church records, the early settlers of Beech Plains came by ox team from Vermont, and conducted religious services in a large barn before setting the foundation for the church in 1875.
There was a dedication service in July 1877 with a picnic in the woods, and the first funeral was held in May 1879, with makeshift pews made of planks placed across overturned sap buckets.
Over time, the congregation remained mostly Presbyterian, but Methodist ministers sometimes led services.
"We were the first in the north country to have sunrise service on Easter Sunday. There'd be a pancake breakfast afterward," said Elizabeth E. VanBrocklin. "As long as I can remember as a kid we went here."
For information about donating to the church, call Mrs. Connolly at 268-0862.