County of church: Cooper County
location of church: MO Hwy E & Mt. Nebo Church Lane, about ½ mile E. of MO-135, and 1 mile S. of Pilot Grove
Built: 1857
Architectural Style: Greek Revival
Number of graves: 300 apx.
"Mount Nebo Baptist Church is located on State Highway E near the town of Pilot
Grove, in southern Cooper County, Missouri. The church is a rectangular
one-story frame building designed in a restrained version of the Greek Revival
Style of architecture, with no basement and an exterior steeple which emerges
through the roofline to terminate in a tin tower spire shaped with four small
spirettes.
"The primary (south) facade contains the only original entrances to the church.
The two original entrance doors are identical paired Doric doorways whose
cornices and crossettes are outlined by simple moldings. The double-leaf doors,
each leaf decorated with four panels, are recessed beneath. The cornice returns on
this facade complete the vernacular Greek Revival design.
" ... The paired entry doors so common in churches of this
era invariably echo the common antebellum custom of segregating the sexes. The
interior partition that provided more emphatic separation of males and females in
the Mt. Nebo building before its removal is a construction feature that has not
survived in any known example in Missouri. Nor is it common to encounter slave
galleries still intact. The gallery in Mt. Nebo is only partially intact." ~ NRHP Nomination Form
"Two-Door Churches:
"Two-door churches are not considered a separate property type, but an interesting
phenomenon in the survey. Based on extant examples and historic photographs, rural
churches in the county often had two entrance doors of equal prominence on the facade—
one for women and one for men. ... with a central
exterior entrance leading to a small foyer at which point men and women traditionally
entered the church through separate doorways to sit in segregated pews.
"The segregation of the sexes was, ..., “the Presbyterian way” at least for a time in the 19th century. The tradition of
segregated entrances and seating was not limited to Presbyterians, but was common
among evangelical churches in the mid-19th century. ...
To classify as a “two-door” church, the buildings had to have two exterior
entrances treated “identically in terms of their placement in the façade, their size, and
their architectural styling and details.” In the study, examples were associated with
several Protestant denominations including Christian (a.k.a. Church of Christ/Disciples of Christ), Presbyterian, and Baptist churches.
"This resulted in many buildings constructed with separate entrances and segregated
interior seating. Though segregated, in most cases women were not relegated to the back
of the church nor was the status of women in the church diminished by providing
entrances of a different scale or decoration.
"The construction of two-door churches was by no means universal among frontier
Baptist, Christian and Presbyterian churches in Kentucky or Missouri. However, there is
evidence in historic photographs and the design of extant churches that two-door
churches were historically more common in Callaway County than they are today.
According to the Kentucky study, the use of two-doors was in decline by the end of the
19th Century evidenced by the modification of many church facades to close one entrance
or to rebuild with a single central entrance. This seems also to be the case in Callaway County as the construction of two door churches (or hybrid examples such as White
Cloud) dwindled after c. 1900. Also, it is likely that some Callaway County churches
with early 20th century front foyer additions were originally two-door churches." ~ Rural Church Types Survey, Missouri Department of Natural Resources, PDF page 22