Union Church

Cornelius Grafton took the pulpit of Union Church Presbyterian in 1873 and held it, with Ben Salem in Lincoln County, until he died in 1934. His sermons overlapped with the fundamentalist movement, and he defended Mississippi's racial hierarchy as ordained by God, yet he opposed lynching as a violation of the Sixth Commandment. After the 1919 lynching of Dock Gordon in Union Church, he asked his congregation to stand in a Sunday sermon and confess the sin done among them. In 1916 Southern Presbyterians elected him moderator of their general assembly.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Homochitto National Forest — 21 mi
  A 191,839-acre national forest in seven southwest Mississippi counties, replanted by the Civilian Conservation Corps, with Clear Springs and the 1,075-acre Okhissa Lake.
• Mount Locust — 24 mi
  A 1780s Natchez Trace inn and cotton farm at milepost 15.5, with an enslaved people's cemetery of 43 graves and a brick kiln behind the house.
• Alcorn State University and Oakland Memorial Chapel — 25 mi
  The 1871 Reconstruction college on the old Oakland College campus, first led by Hiram Revels, with the 1838 chapel built by Black craftsmen.
• Windsor Ruins — 27 mi
  Twenty-three standing Corinthian columns left by an 1890 fire, the largest antebellum mansion in Mississippi, built with enslaved labor on a 2,600-acre cotton plantation.

More markers nearby

• Red Lick Presbyterian Church — 15 mi
• The Birthplace of C Spire — 16 mi
• Henry Dee and Charles Moore — 16 mi
• Thomas Hinds — 16 mi