When Dr. and Mrs. Charles Mercer Irwin were married on 11 November 1834, Mercer University was about a year and a half old, and Jesse Mercer, for whom the school was named, was almost 65. The groom turned 23 that day. Two days later, the Baptist church in Madison was organized.
The circle of Baptist life in Georgia took one more step towards weaving a tight web in support of the unseen but highly expected future for believers of that persuasion in the state. That fall, now 177 years in the past, was very much alive to those gathered at Powelton Church in Hancock County, GA.
Considered handsome and brave, Charles Mercer Irwin was the oldest son born to socially and financially settled Isaiah Tucker and Isabella Bankston Irwin. The couple were pious and benevolent, and it was reported that Charles was consecrated by his mother in prayer as on the day of his birth she had pleaded that he might become a minister. She proceeded to shower him with a childhood that prepared him for that eventuality. The Irwins were the best of people. "Col Irwin, father of Rev. C. M. Irwin, was a prince in person and intellect and heart," wrote Dr. James S. Lawton in 1885. "Georgia never possessed a nobler citizen, nor the Baptists a more worthy representative. He was wealthy, lived in a princely style, and with his noble wife delighted in dispensing a munificent hospitality."
Charles Irwin was baptized in 1829 at age sixteen by Enoch Calloway and joined Sardis Church in Wilkes County, which had been the first pastorate of Jesse Mercer years before. In 1830 Isaiah and Isabella sent Charles to Powelton for education under Rev. Otis Smith, who would in the next decade become the second president of Mercer University. Irwin studied with Smith until entering the University of Georgia on 1 July 1832; he left UGA to study law at the University of Virginia and was admitted to the bar in Warrenton, GA, the month before his wedding. It was a breathtaking time!
Irwin's bride was Harriett Ellen Andrews Battle of Powelton, GA. Harriett was five years younger than Charles and the daughter of Reuben Taylor Battle and Bethia Castellaw Alexander. Did they meet while he was in school at Powelton? It's likely.
Harriett was the niece of Governor and Baptist chorister William Rabun and his wife Mary Battle Rabun, and she had two sisters, Amanda Melvina Fitzallen Battle (Mrs. Judge Eugenius A.) Nisbet and Mary Lucinda Battle (Mrs. W. J.) Harley. Jesse Mercer had baptized her father Reuben, who became an active and influential member of the Powelton church and a promoter of education. Reuben's guiding hand and generous nature helped form the community into a bastion of education, particularly with Baptists. Reuben Battle's ancestors were Baptists who fled England to avoid persecution and he was a hospitable man who took pleasure for thirty years serving his local Baptist church as a deacon; he shared his affluence and his spiritual persuasion with those who were sick, sorrowing, destitute or otherwise needy.
Charles and Harriett were wedded, we can be sure, in a ceremony that pulled out all the stops. Attendants were from the best families in the area and included (later Gen.) Paul Semmes (C.S.A.), James Hodge, Frank Nisbet, Dr. W. D. Battle, and Misses Anna Wooten, Fanny Wingfield, Mary Battle, and Ophelia Reid. Candleholders were Mary Jane Battle, sister to Archibald Battle who was president of Mercer University in Reconstruction, and Mat Irwin who married Col. O. L. Battle.
The story of the day was recorded for posterity after their 50th anniversary in the 18 November 1884 Atlanta Weekly Constitution. It says in part: "In those days brides wore tightly-fitting kid gloves of gauntlett (sic) fashion, extending up to the elbows. When old Father Mercer said join hands, seeing the gloves, he remarked, 'I do not marry gloves.' So the bridesmaids rushed forward and tore the glove from the right hand." What fodder for local raconteurs back then and for decades to come.
After the wedding Charles devotedly practiced law in Washington, GA, where he lived with utmost esteem of those who knew him. "He was a young man of comparative wealth and high scoial position, ambitious of political eminence, and exceedingly popular," wrote Baptist historian Samuel Boykin in 1881. "He entered, with ardor, into the political campaigns of the day, with an eye to place and power; but his refined nature revolted at the election concomitants of that day. He retired from politics, purchased a plantation in Hancock county, on which he settled with his family, and permitted the quiet duties of a successful planter's life gradually to absorb the aspirations of ambition. He became more and more interested in church matters. His fine vocal powers and fondness for singing made him a useful church member."
As clerk and deacon at Powelton Church, Irvin often led the Wednesday night prayer meetings which called him to embrace a previously stifled desire to assume the ministerial role his mother desired. "In 1839," added Boykin (who married Harriett's niece Laura Nisbet), "conscience took him to task for stifling his convictions and disobeying the call of duty, and pointed out to him the comparative barrenness of a life that might be fruitful of good works. ... He began to pray for light, and to advise with judicious friends (and) at length the clouds dispersed; he was enabled to recognize and obey his call to the scared work of the ministry." He was ordained at Powelton in 1844 by a presbytery of Billington Sanders, William H. Stokes, Vincent R. Thornton, Jesse B. Battle, and Radford Gunn. Jesse Mercer had died three years hence or he would have been there, too.
After ordination Irvin arranged for his planting interests to be handled by others and he began to travel and preach in many places including destitute ones without ministerial services. In time he pastored a number of churches including those at Louisville and Powelton and then Madison where he moved his family in 1848. Irwin was a fund-raiser and instrumental leader in establishing the Baptist Female College in Madison in 1849. This excellent school was supplied with scientific apparatus often neglected with young women and was staffed with a competent faculty. Hundreds of parents sent their daughters there for a well-rounded education and it was something of a competitor to the Penfield Female Academy adjacent to Mercer.
For a few months in 1854-1855, Irwin was the first pastor to Atlanta's Second Baptist Church though he resigned when the death of his father required him to take on executive duties. Next he was pastor in Albany where the opening of war in 1861 found him. That May Irwin, together with Samuel Boykin, purchased the Christian Index, the official newspaper of the Georgia Baptist Convention, and co-edited it until the paper was sold to J. J. Toon in Atlanta in 1866. During those years, he lived in Lee County on his plantation, preaching gratuitously and assisting families in need. When the war ended, he explained the changes of their world to his then-freed workers and counseled them about pecuniary and educational opportunities.
A short time in 1869 he pastored Macon's Second Baptist Church but resigned due to ill health; he tried then to pastor again at Madison when he was forced to resign again so that he returned to his home in Lee County to recover. In 1872 Irwin was appointed state agent for foreign missions by the Georgia Baptist Convention and the Southern Baptist Convention Foreign Missions Board. In December 1873 and January 1874 he was too sick to work though he was thereafter back in the saddle. He urged giving to missions even from his sick bed: "I ask the earnest co-operation of every brother and sister," he wrote. "Our Foreign Board is in great need of funds now to sustain our missionaries. Pastors, please bring the subject before your churches at once, and send on your funds--ten cents, quarters; any amount." In this position Irwin, despite his likable character, was not always welcomed as some churches were hostile to those making the rounds for collections. In 1875, for example, Hightower Association in North Georgia refused to allow Irwin to even speak before their annual meeting and then reconsidered and gave him a few minutes to talk though they refused to appoint a committee to consider his words or to take up missions money.
Irwin was for fourteen years assistant clerk to the Georgia Baptist Convention, the meetings of which he attended for four decades. He served churches in Bethel, Central, Georgia, Houston, Mell, Stone Mountain, and Washington associations.
Irvin's family ties to Mercer University went far beyond having its namesake perform his marital rites. Irwin's father, Isaiah, was on the first board of trustees for the school in 1838; Charles Irwin's sister Martha's husband (O. L. Battle) was a trustee in 1851-57; and Charles Irwin's daughter Mary Isabell married Rev. M. B. Wharton, a Mercer trustee from 1875-1884. Charles Irwin was trustee from 1845 to 1890, serving with distinction and being most commonly remembered as the man who in 1870 made the resolution at the Georgia Baptist Convention in Newnan to move the school from Penfield to Macon.
Boykin near the end of Irwin's life described him: "In advancing his own opinions he is fearless but not forward, his manners being ever polite and refined. Quiet and rather taciturn by nature, he speaks seldom, but always to the point. A keen sense of the ridiculous pervades his being, and he excels in telling a good story. Judicious, thoughtful, the soul of honor and faithful as a friend, he is kind and indulgent as a husband and father. As a preacher, he was measurably careful in the preparation of his sermons, and very effective and sometimes passionately impetuous in their delivery, never railing to please and interest, on account of his melodious voice and earnest manner in the pulpit."
Another Baptist biographer and Mercer University professor extolled Irwin's "wonderful ability" as a pastor. Wrote Shaler Granby Hillyer: "In this sacred office he had no superior and few equals. His easy and unaffected yet graceful manners, dominated by sincere sympathy and Christian gentleness, qualified him to be a welcomed visitor in every household. The rich found in him an equal whom they could honor, and the poor found in him a friend whom they could trust and love. With such qualities he mingled freely with his people. With him his pastoral visits were second only to the claims of the pulpit. ... The secret of his success was found in his loving visits to his people."
When Charles and Harriett celebrated their Golden Anniversary in 1884, friends won over the years gathered to fete them and wish them many more. Guests brought "handsome" gifts and were entertained by "Mr. and Mrs. Hurst of the Hurst homes" in what was called "a very enjoyable affair indeed." And, with Charles' natural wit and propensity for storytelling, it seems likely the tale of the gloves surfaced again.
Many more did not, however, happen. Harriett died on 19 January 1886 in Maysville in Banks County and Charles died 23 February in Mount Airy in Habersham County. Burial was in Mount Airy Cemetery in Habersham County for these two distinguished though all but forgotten Baptists of yore who gave their hands--gloved and otherwise--to any who needed them.
Compiled with the help of Peer Ravnan and written by Arlette Camp Copeland
Sources: William Cathcart, The Baptist Encyclopedia, 1881; "The Golden Era," Atlanta Weekly Constitution, 18 November 1884, 2; Bartow D. Ragsdale, A Story of Georgia Baptists; Samuel Boykin, History of the Baptist Denomination in Georgia With Biographical Compendium, 1881; "Ordination," The Christian Index, 12 March 1842; Second Ponce De Leon Baptist Church Centennial Year 1854-1954, 7-8; Sixty Years of the Life of a Country Village Baptist Church, Dahlonega, GA, 1837-1897 by a member who joined it fifty years ago, 31-32; Mildred Jackson Cole, From Stage Coaches to Train Whistles, History of Gum Creek, Mt. Enon, Baconton Churches in Mitchell County, 52; Marion Luther Brittain, Semi-centennial history of the Second Baptist Church, Atlanta, GA, 9; "To Georgia Baptists," The Christian Index, 29 January 1874; Shaler Granby Hillyer, Reminiscences of Georgia Baptists, 1902, 234; Mr. and Mrs. J. T. Peacock, History of First Baptist Church Madison, Georgia, 6, 13; Ancestry.com; Dr. James S. Lawton, The Baptist Centennial Volume, 1885, 154.
