By Jason Evans
Staff Reporter
jevans@thepccourier.com

PICKENS — An effort to build a $1 million endowment to protect and promote the legacy of Soapstone Baptist Church is officially a success.

For more than 150 years, the church has been a cornerstone of Pickens’ Liberia community, founded by freed slaves after the Civil War.

For years, the future of the church, the restored slave cemetery on its grounds and the soapstone outcropping that gave it its name were in doubt, as the deadline on the church’s mortgage was soon to come due.

That could have put the church, with its beautiful view of Table Rock, in danger of being purchased, razed and developed.

A fundraising campaign that went global allowed the mortgage to be paid off.

An additional layer of protection was laid over Soapstone with the placing of a

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