Settlers from South Carolina established the Shiloh community in 1828 and held their first annual camp meeting by 1832. Typically a weeklong event in late summer or fall, a camp meeting was the primary vehicle for Methodist evangelization, spiritual revival, and socializing in rural districts. Around the brush arbor or tabernacle ( pictured), members raised canvas tents, later replaced by more permanent wooden structures, also called tents, and held prayer meetings, hymn sings, and preaching services day and night. Tents at Shiloh are generally front-gabled with undercut front porches and back rooms that are essentially screened sleeping porches. The cottages face inward on three sides around the tabernacle (the third, built 1925), while the church building (the fourth, built in 1997) closes the square. Pine knots on high scaffolds lit the grounds during the evening, and each year members renewed the tabernacle’s sawdust floor and whitewashed the tents and tree trunks. The cemetery across Shiloh Road dates to at least 1828.