Down a lonely dirt road in rural Terrell County stands what remains of Red Hill AME Church, also known as Turner Chapel. Like so many small African American churches scattered across Georgia’s countryside, it now sits silent—its walls weathered, its cemetery slowly being reclaimed by weeds—but its story still echoes through time.

We believe the congregation was organized in the early 1890s, based on the oldest known burials in the cemetery. The graveyard reflects the difficult economic realities of its early members, mostly sharecroppers and subsistence farmers, but also their faith and determination. Among the modest markers are a few remarkable headstones, most notably those in the Flewellen family plot.

The patriarch, Jacob “Sam” Flewellen, was born enslaved in 1845. By 1865, at the age of twenty, he was free but illiterate and without a last name. Census records later show that he learned to read and write by 1910, acquired land, borrowed money, and even paid a poll tax to vote—a powerful testament to resilience and self-determination. A 1910 county map marks both Red Hill Church and School, alongside Flewellen’s property. Nearby, another freedman, Wesley Randall, was listed in the 1870 census as “attending school” at age 25—likely one of the earliest African Americans in the area to pursue formal education.

The name Flewellen traces back to a local slaveholding family, one of whom—James Theweatt Flewellen—was a wealthy planter and Confederate officer. Yet from that painful history rose men like Sam Flewellen, who built new lives and communities on the very soil where they had once been enslaved. Though Red Hill’s sanctuary is fading, its cemetery remains a sacred link to those who forged freedom, faith, and identity out of hardship. She may be almost gone, but she is not forgotten.