Mt. Enon Baptist Church was organized in 1856 in the Gum Pond community of Mitchell County, a few miles east of present-day Baconton along the old Stage Coach Road that connected Albany to Thomasville. The church began with seven charter members—six women and one man, the Rev. Curtis Nelms. Membership grew quickly, and within a few months there were thirty members, including four of Rev. Nelms’s enslaved servants. By 1863, the Black congregation numbered 113, enough that the pastor preached separate services: mornings for whites and afternoons for Blacks. After the Civil War, Mt. Enon deeded land for a Black congregation, giving one acre for a church and another for a cemetery, where Salem Missionary Baptist Church was soon established.

The original Mt. Enon building was a simple log structure that doubled as a community meeting house, school, and theater. In 1864, Dr. Shaler Hillyer, an educator and minister, opened Ravenwood Academy there with fifty students. Its curriculum was remarkably broad for a frontier school, including Latin, Greek, rhetoric, higher mathematics, botany, French, history, piano lessons, and the standard McGuffey’s Reader and Blue Back Speller.

The present sanctuary was built in 1889, but by 1928, after decades of declining membership, the congregation voted to disband. A brief revival came in 1950 when Baconton entered Georgia Power’s Better Hometown Contest, choosing Mt. Enon as its focus for preservation due to its historic role and location. Repairs gave the old church a new lease on life, but by 1967 the congregation again voted to close. The building remains furnished with its pulpit, hymnals, heaters, fans, and piano—frozen in time.

Beside the church, the cemetery has served Baconton since the 1860s. Poor record-keeping and the loss of early markers led to confusion, with gravediggers sometimes striking unexpected coffins. In 1956, Mt. Enon established a perpetual care fund, along with improvements like a new fence, ironwork, and brick masonry.

For a more complete history, see From Stage Coaches to Train Whistles: History of Gum Pond, Mt. Enon, Baconton in Mitchell County, Georgia; 1856–1976 by Mildred Jackson Cole, which served as the foundation for this summary.