Cypress Baptist Church

K-154

Cypress Baptist Church, one of the oldest African American churches in Surry County, traces its origin to the autumn of 1866. Irene George, who had been free before the Civil War, organized the congregation at the home of Easter Eley in Isle of Wight County. The church moved here in 1867 and formally purchased the property in 1874. The Rev. Baylor (Bailey) Wyatt, who had escaped from slavery to Union lines during the Civil War, was the church’s first pastor and a strong advocate for the region’s freedpeople during Reconstruction. The church later joined the Lebanon Virginia Baptist Association, a regional organization established in the 1880s.

Department of Historic Resources, 2025

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References/Bibliographic Citation:

Records of Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands Surry County Deed Book 16:125-126. Bayley Wyat, “Bayley Wyat’s Speech (December 1866),” Encyclopedia Virginia, Virginia Humanities, 2020. Norfolk Virginian, 20 Sept. 1872. Cypress Baptist Church, 140th Anniversary pamphlet (2006). “Cypress Baptist Church Centennial Anniversary,” 1966 W. Herbert George, The History of Negro Churches in Surry County, Virginia (Smithfield, VA: Modlin Printing, 1964). Stephen E. Harris, “Surry County, Virginia, Education/Churches, 1607-1870,” 2003. Benjamin Andrew Swenson, “Postbellum Education of African Americans: Race, Economy, Power, and the Pursuit of a System of Schooling in the Rural Virginia Counties of Surry and Gloucester,” (M.A. Thesis, College of William and Mary, 2004).