A Little Church on Bear Creek

For generations Pleasant Springs Church has stood at the bend of Bear Creek — gathering the living, remembering the dead, and quietly bearing witness to the resurrection hope.

85 Bear Creek Road · Pinson, Tennessee 38366

The place

Pinson sits on Highway 45 between Jackson and the Mississippi line, where the railroad once carried cotton, timber, and people through the small heart of West Tennessee. Surveyors named the spot for an early settler — Joel Pinson — after they discovered a six- or seven-foot mound and a spring just off what is still called Bear Creek.¹ By 1834 there was a post office. By 1866 there was a town. The first churches were a Baptist meeting and, soon after, a Methodist one.

Pleasant Springs Church grew out of that Methodist root. Generations of farming families built the sanctuary, taught Sunday school in it, and were carried to rest in its cemetery just behind the building. The county records still list the property as “Pleasant Springs Methodist Church on Bear Creek.”² The road has been widened, the pews have been replaced, the sanctuary has been renovated more than once — but the spring still runs and the church still gathers.

The cemetery we steward

Walk fifty paces past the front door and you are among the headstones. There are 481 memorials and counting at Pleasant Springs Cemetery — soldiers, mothers, infants, deacons, ordinary saints. Some stones lean. Some have weathered to the bare suggestion of a name. Every one is a person God remembers.

Caring for a country cemetery is unromantic work. Mowing. Resetting fallen markers. Repairing fence line. Cleaning lichen. Ordering new bronze for graves that lost theirs to the rain. We do it because the dead in Christ are not forgotten, and because the families who entrusted their loved ones to this ground entrusted them to us.

Search the records

Looking for an ancestor? The full burial index is searchable, with photographs, dates, and family notes when we have them.

Open the cemetery search →

What is Decoration Day?

Long before there was a federal Memorial Day there was a Decoration Day — a Southern Protestant tradition older than the Civil War, in which a community gathers at its cemetery to clean the grounds, decorate the graves with fresh flowers, hold a worship service, and share a meal together on the lawn.³ Each cemetery keeps its own day on the calendar, so families can travel from one to the next through May and June and never miss kin.

It is a folk liturgy, really — a yearly enactment of the communion of saints. Folklorists Alan and Karen Singer Jabbour, who spent years documenting it across the southern Appalachians, describe the same pattern we keep on Bear Creek: final dressing of the graves; mingling and reflecting; gospel singing; preaching; more singing; and finally the “dinner on the ground” at outdoor tables under the trees.³ Tennessee writer Lillye Younger captured it from the inside fifty years ago, and almost every line is still true today:

“After the morning service, the people gather on the church lawn and the women begin filling a fifty-foot table with food from their cars … fried chicken, thick slices of ham, potato salad, cole slaw, sandwiches, a variety of pies and cakes … gallons of iced tea. ‘Help yourself,’ some self-appointed hostess will say. ‘There is always plenty of food left over.’ It’s a small example of the five loaves and two fishes which Jesus blessed and fed the five thousand … When the service is over it is not always time to go home. There is no hurry to leave the dead. People stand among the graves which have previously been decorated with spring flowers. Exchanging memories. Some have come a long way. Everyone is kin to somebody living or dead.” — Lillye Younger, People of Action (1983)

Why this tradition continues

In a culture that hides its dead, Decoration Day insists on the opposite. We come back. We say the names. We sing the resurrection over the graves. We remember that the gospel is not a private spiritualism but a promise made to flesh-and-blood people who are buried in flesh-and-blood ground — and who will be raised the same way.

“Behold, I tell you a mystery. We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed … the dead shall be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed.” (1 Corinthians 15:51–52, ESV) «Ιδου μυστηριον υμιν λεγω· παντες μεν ου κοιμηθησομεθα, παντες δε αλλαγησομεθα» (LXX/NT Greek)

It continues because every generation needs the same lesson: that we are not orphans in time. The faith was given to us; we did not invent it. The bench we sit on, the hymnal we hold, the patch of ground where our grandparents rest — these are gifts from people we will not meet this side of glory. Decoration Day is how we say thank you, and how we promise to hand the gift on.

Decoration Days this year

All three days are open. Come for any of them, all of them, or just an hour. Bring flowers if you have them; we’ll have extra if you don’t. Lunch is potluck — bring a dish to share or just bring yourself.

May 8Friday

Cemetery cleaning & grounds work. Bring gloves, a rake, clippers if you have them. We start mid-morning and finish when it’s done.

May 9Saturday · Today

Family decoration day. Come place flowers, walk the rows, find the names you remember. Fellowship throughout the day.

May 10Sunday

Worship service in the morning, dinner on the ground at noon, gospel singing in the afternoon. Plan to stay.

Can’t make it? Send a flower from afar.

Every dollar you give helps us mow the grounds, repair leaning headstones, maintain the fence, and keep the records online for families searching from out of state. The cemetery has no membership dues. It runs on the love of the people who remember.

Donate to the Cemetery — ps-church.com/give Search Records

What your gift does

Mowing & groundsSpring through fall, every two weeks — a country cemetery does not maintain itself.

Headstone repairResetting leaning markers, cleaning lichen, replacing lost bronze plaques.

Fence & gateWire and posts on the back line, gate hardware at the road, fallen-limb cleanup after storms.

Records onlineHosting the searchable database so families anywhere can find their kin.

Decoration DayTents and tables, flowers for unmarked graves, hospitality for travelers.

The next generationChildren growing up knowing where they come from — and Whose they are.

Community · Home · Unity · Relationship · Care · Hope

If your people are buried here, this is still your church. If they are not, you are still welcome. Come home.

¹ “The Heart of Pinson,” from the 1992 Pinson School Annual and Historic Madison (Madison County Historical Society, 1946; Jackson Service League, 1972). ² Pleasant Springs Cemetery listing, TNGenWeb Cemeteries Project. ³ Alan Jabbour and Karen Singer Jabbour, Decoration Day in the Mountains: Traditions of Cemetery Decoration in the Southern Appalachians (UNC Press, 2010); Lillye Younger, People of Action (Decatur County Printers, 1983).