Mt. Olive District Orientation

The Mt. Olive District was established when Reverend Daniel Hickman and twenty-five families came with the second wave of settlers to Nicodemus in the spring of 1878. This community developed its own school, church, and cemetery. The church and school no longer exist, but the cemetery remains, and descendants continue to use it for family burials. Reverend Hickman’s large headstone marks his plot in the southwest part of the cemetery. Perry Bates homesteaded in the are His white, military, curved headstone is located in the first row. Although Perry settled this area, his son James Perry and Family, who are also buried here, homesteaded 2 miles east on this road in the Nicodemus District.Reverend Daniel Hickman and his congregation established a sod church on this site in 1878 near the present flagpole. The church was named after his former church in Georgetown, Kentucky, and served the community until the 1920s. A limestone structure that replaced the original sod building burned in the 1930s when an intentionally set grass fire in the cemetery flared out of control.“…...those old slave people built that church out there, and it was a good sized church. And they even made the benches to put in there.” Hattie Burnie