Some three miles southeast of Douglas, overlooking a cypress pond on the Orson Adams Farm, the oldest standing Mormon-affiliated structure in the state of Georgia stands in defiance of time and nature. Its name is Cumorah, honoring the birthplace of the Latter-day Saints faith, and its story is that of 'a peculiar people' with many familiar faces in Coffee County, Georgia. 

 

Summer, 1907:

Soaked with sweat and travel-weary from the day’s canvassing, Elders Charles L. Foote and George L. Tate met with Mormonism's movers and shakers in Coffee County, Georgia. Under the roof of Joseph Adams, and in the company of men like Daniel P. Lott, William Mills, and other prominent converts to the Latter-day Saints, the meeting eventually came to focus on the need for a house of worship north of the Satilla River, the chapel at Little Utah having been built on the south bank a few years earlier. Before the close of discussion, a plan was agreed upon for the building of a chapel nearby, on land given to the Church by Adams, made with Lott's lumber, which would be hauled to the site by Mills and his sons.

 

Almost as an afterthought, Elder Tate offered his recommendation that the church should be given a special name, instead of using its geographical location as an official name, as was standard. His suggestion was Cumorah, after the location of the Prophet Joseph Smith's discovery of the golden plates, with which he would divinely dictate the contents of The Book of Mormon. The name was adopted, and has been associated with the little chapel ever since.

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