Damascus Baptist Church Arbor

The Damascus Baptist Church Arbor, church, and cemetery are located in rural northwest Iredell County, North Carolina. Snow Creek and the town of Love Valley, North Carolina are nearby. The church was built between 1907 and 1909 and is east of the arbor. The cemetery is located southwest of the arbor on an open hillside. The cemetery contains about 200 markers, mostly fieldstones but some inscribed markers dating from at least 1857.^[2]

The Damascus Baptist Church's roots go back to May 11, 1839, when a meeting of Baptists was held at the Damascus Meeting House across the Snow Creek from the current location of the church. The first minister of the church, William Garner, was called to service in February 1842. In November 1842, the church appointed managers to construct the arbor. While the congregation has constructed several church buildings, the arbor has remained in continuous use.^[2][3][4]

Permanent, open-sided wood arbors were an outgrowth of brush arbors. They were used as places of worship before permanent churches could be built and as sites for camp meetings or revival meetings. Arbors were common in the Piedmont region of the United States. These meetings were traditionally held in the summer and the open-sided arbor was a more comfortable location than the interior of a church.^[5][4]