The hymn “The Church in the Wildwood” was written in 1857 by Dr. William S. Pitts following a coach ride. Pitts was on his way to Fredericksburg, Iowa to visit his fiancé. The ride stopped in Bradford, Iowa, and Pitts was able to wander around the area a bit to enjoy the nearby woodlands. The beauty of the area was so moving to him that he was inspired to write a song about what he saw. Dr. Pitts wrote a song about a church that he envisioned in a beautiful valley near the town. Pitts later said that he wrote the song because he couldn’t get it out of his mind, and after writing it, “only then was I at peace with myself.”
Years after he married, he and his wife returned to Fredericksburg to settle near her elderly parents, and he was surprised to find that a church just as he imagined it was being erected in the same spot he envisioned five years before. The church was even being painted brown as the one in his song was. Later on, the church was actually built there and it became known as “the Little Brown Church.” In the winter of 1863, Pitts taught a singing class at Bradford Academy and had the people in his class sing the song when they dedicated the new church later in 1864. That performance was the first time the song had ever been sung by anyone other than Dr. Pitts himself.
When Pitts moved to Chicago in 1865 to attend medical school, he sold the rights to the song for $25 to a music publisher and used the money to pay his enrollment fees at school. The church ended up closing 1888 as a result of a decreased population caused by a railroad expansion, and the song was largely forgotten until it was performed by a group of traveling singers called the Weatherwax Quartet. When they were traveling through the U.S. and Canada in the 1920s and 1930s, one of the songs they performed was “The Church in the Wildwood.” When they sang the song, they relayed the story of the little brown church in the woods.
At some point, the church reopened and is now a popular tourist spot. Every year, thousands of visitors travel to the spot to get married in “the little brown church in the vale.”
Little Brown Church
In the video below, you can re-live the crew from “The Andy Griffith Show” as they sing the beautiful hymn “The Church in the Wildwood.” The video includes Andy (Andy Griffith), Barney (Don Knotts, Mr. Tucker (Robert Emhardt), and Gomer Pyle (Jim Nabors). This was 1963 and episode 16 of season three. The title of the episode was “Manin a Hurry,” and was written by James Fritzell and Everett Greenbaum, and was directed by Bob Sweeney. As one of the comments on the YouTube video mentioned, this is one of the few episodes that reveal what an amazing singer and harmonizer Don Knotts was.