Martha Community

Railroad was built. During the push-boat period a small steamer by the 

name of "Fannie Dugan", owned and operated by Captain J. T. Wentz plied 

the river, sold goods, and traded in produce. 

The timber business on this river was great, thousands of rafts were run 

every year. The dams became a nuisance and were blasted out by the state. 

This Dusenberry family were strong Baptists and built the first church 

house in Martha Community. In 1853 or 1854 Bloomingdale Baptist church was 

organized. The writer's father and mother were in this organization. This 

church house stood on the hill in a cluster of cedar trees about three 

hundred yards from the Dusenberry home, which is now owned by Baily Wentz. 

This organization went down during the Civil War. After the war the church 

was re-organized and moved to the forks of Heath's Creek at which place it 

still remains a Baptist Church. 

In 1890 twenty-two or twenty-three members of Bloomingdale, by consent of 

the church, organized Elmwood church and built the house they now occupy 

on a lot given by Martha Morris, who with her family belonged to the 

organization. Only a few who were in this organization are living. 

Martha is among the better communities in the state. The first school 

taught in this neighborhood was in a small house near the railroad station 

at Martha where Boyd Williams now lives, by William Bramlet about 1858. 

Later in the sixties a school house was built at the mouth of Swamp 

Branch. The first teacher there was William Algoe, father of our William 

Algoe who lives on the Turner farm. Later the Bootens Creek and Mill 

Branch houses were built. A steady growth of population has continued 

until we have a densely populated community of energetic, high minded, 

enthusiastic people, capable of supporting schools, churches and hard-

surfaced roads, and of owning good homes and automobiles. Our community is 

improving every year and is becoming in every respect an up-to-date 

community. 

During the Civil War a small skirmish occurred here. The Confederate 

forces were on the hill opposite the store at Martha Station and the 

Federal soldiers in the road near Dusenberry's mill. The house, recently 

repaired by Mr. Wentz showed some bullet holes in the weather boarding 

made by Confederate bullets, but no one was hurt. Adjoining this 

Dusenberry land on the south was the Thompson farm of about three hundred 

acres. It passed into the hands of J. S. Brady from Ireland, who married 

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