Methodists gather yearly on Smith Island

Families reunite to worship God and remember their heritage.
EWELL, Md. (AP) -- Every summer for 116 years, churchgoers have either walked -- or caught a boat "over home" -- to the annual camp meeting on Smith Island in Chesapeake Bay.
It began as a way for Methodists to convert their neighbors, but evolved over the last century into a homecoming for old crabbers and the families that moved away from the island to find work or a less-isolated lifestyle.
"I live in Easton, but I'm a Smith Islander. I've only lived on the mainland 20 years," said Dixie Larrimore, 64. She describes herself the way many islanders do: "I have mud between my toes."
Such meetings started about 1800, but most faded away in the early 1900s, when America became more mobile, said Philip Lawton, a historian of Methodism. People began traveling to resorts instead of religious retreats for vacation.
Commitment
On Smith Island -- population 295 -- it takes a special commitment for nonresidents to attend the camp meeting. The island can't be reached by car, so there's the boat trip over -- 12 miles from the southern tip of the Eastern Shore. Then, there's the overnight stay -- usually at a relative's house or one of two small inns.
For non-islanders, it's a real break from the routine. For people who live here, it's easier to stay for the camp meeting than go somewhere else.
The unique setting of the tiny island makes the meetings quieter, more hallowed.
"There's no Hollywood to it," said Steve Eades, innkeeper, charter boat captain and general store owner on the island. "That helps with the religious part of it. Once you're there, there are no distractions."
Gathering
On the first day of this summer's camp meeting, about 130 people gathered inside a low, dark tabernacle that is opened yearly only for this occasion. The day's events were much like the days that followed: testimony meeting, morning worship, song service and a nightly service.
Sitting on the wooden pews, their hymn books lit by hanging light bulbs, congregants brought their own Bibles and rested their Sunday shoes on a dirt floor covered with sawdust and cedar shavings.
The week's events opened with a prayer, thanking God for "the crabs, the fish and the oysters."
History
Many decades ago, families camped out in shacks that circled the tabernacle, originally built in 1902. But in 1937, a new furnace in the next-door Ewell United Methodist Church sparked a fire that destroyed the church, the tabernacle and the shacks.
The next year, despite the Great Depression, islanders rebuilt the church and the tabernacle, but not the shacks.
A few still recall the late-night music in those days, the crabbers' storytelling, the cooking fires and families mixing together. They had no running water or electricity, but the camp meetings still were a treat.
"Crabbers would pull their boats up to the island," said Jennings Evans, 73, a former waterman who traces his Smith Island roots back to 1686. "They didn't want to miss a meeting."
After 1938, in the new tabernacle, organizers kept the camp meetings going through the Depression, wars and more than one island exodus as the bay's blue crab population dwindled, rebounded and dwindled again.
"We'll try to keep it alive as long as we can. It's something that was passed on to me, and I'm trying to pass on as much as I can to my kids," said Jennifer Dize, 53, a lifelong islander. "It's something our forefathers sacrificed a lot to give us."
Remembering family
After services, people visit family grave sites just a few feet outside the tabernacle. There are about 400 islanders buried in this yard -- more people than live on the island.
Most of the tombstones are etched with the same names -- Evans, Tyler, Harrison and Bradshaw -- families still living here that trace their ancestors back as far as 11 generations.
"It is unique. We're probably raised differently from anywhere else in the world," said Junior Evans, 63, a crabber who still works the Potomac River every day of the year.
"Our fathers set an example for us, and they expect us to follow them," he said. "That's what brings us back."
XVisit: http://www.smithisland.org.