One hundred and twenty-eight years ago this week John Henry Seals sat down at his desk to write a wistful column of reminiscences prompted by a visit to Penfield, GA.
The “cool shades, green lawns, and restful quiet” of the community led his “overworked brains” back to early childhood scenes and “a thousand incidents.” Seals, an 1854 graduate of Mercer University, was brilliant. We can say that without hesitation because the word was repeatedly attached to his name by, it seems, everyone who described him. It ran in the family; his older brother William was considered brainy, his younger brother Thomas was valedictorian of Mercer's 1856 class, and John Henry's son was ... brilliant.
Initially educated at Powelton Academy, John Henry Seals received an A.B. and A.M. from Mercer. He only took third honors at graduation though, it was said, he could easily have taken first had he cared to do so. "He was not ambitious ... and being naturally lively and fun-loving, and fond of society, he did not devote his entire time to his books," wrote journalist and biographer Wallace Putnam Reed in 1899. "It was easy for him to master a lesson at a single reading, and his exceptionally fine memory never failed him. When other students were burning the midnight oil this bright youngster was enjoying himself after the fashion of the average light-hearted college boy. He felt that he could afford to do it for his experience had assured him that a glance at his text books would enable him to hold his own with the brightest members of his class."
Born in Warren County, he was the son of a planter father, Thomas Seals, and a mother with a respected lineage of her own, Mary Ann Burnley. John Henry, like his siblings, did the family name proud. He married the daughter of Mercer's first president Mary Ellen "Mamie" Sanders; their only child was tragically killed in 1876 when he fell off an excursion railroad train crossing a bridge near Port Royal, SC. In his "eighteenth year," Henry Millard Seals was considered "one of the most brilliant youths of the State" and if all reports are true, he was. His parents were understandably crushed.
Brokenhearted or not, the ever impressive Mercerian found value in the life given to him and contributed broadly to his community and the state as a writer, editor, educator, publisher, and lawyer, never wavering from his public duty until his death in 1909.
Career for John Henry Seals began upon graduation from Mercer when he purchased a weekly newspaper, The Temperance Banner, then published at Penfield, and moved it to Atlanta. He changed the name to The Georgia Literary and Temperance Crusader. Despite youthfulness, Seals succeeded "brilliantly" as he took over both the editorial and business departments.
Contributors flocked to him and before long the temperance aspect of the paper was fading fast. "Stories, sketches, essays and poems of more than average merit were furnished by southern writers, and some of these contributors were destined to be come famous," said Reed. "Editor Seals was the master spirit of the enterprise. His genius, tact, ready sympathy and cultured taste brought him in touch with his writers, and his kindly words of encouragement had judicious praise had the effect of developing and bringing to the front a new school of story-tellers and poets."
This ascendancy was interrupted as a national war of words lead to a conflict much more deadly and devastating to the South Seals knew and loved. During the 1860s war years, he suspended the paper's operation and ran a publishing house for the Confederate government, furnishing printed matter for the post office and the military. He was known for publishing the first code of Georgia which was the work of Thomas R. R. Cobb, Judge David Irwin, and Judge Richard H. Clark. When the war ended, Seals read law and was admitted to the bar in Greensboro. Prosperity came again though he was unhappy as he "cared little for such triumphs in a distasteful profession."
Turning to education, Seals established the Robert E. Lee Academy at Greensboro and subsequently was principal of the Cuthbert Male High School. Following a few pleasant years in this field, he returned to Atlanta in 1874 and in November published the first issue of a literary weekly known as The Sunny South. After almost bankrupting himself with the first issues, money began to pour in and the enterprise turned golden for Seals who reveled in the opportunity to paint the "local color and flavor" of the South for a national audience. With long a full mustache and goatee, Col. Seals wrote, edited, and spoke with natural-born enthusiasm and gusto for readers and hearers on a vast scale. His dashing self was considered a one and only.
With the newspaper booming, he and Mamie sent their son to Macon for his sophomore year of college. Predictably Millard was dogged by consummate good fortune as he was roundly approved socially and academically; he took first honors. For reasons now unknown, Millard did not return to Mercer the next year but joined his father's business and it was during that intermission of education he took the fateful trip.
His father eventually regained himself and continued his life's pursuits, apparently never letting his broken heart tarnish his ability to touch his world. "The personality of Colonel Seals is striking and attractive," said Reed of Seals when he was 60ish. "Tall, slender and graceful, of the brunette type, with flashing eyes, animated features and a ringing, musical voice, he never fails to sway and please his hearers. Time and again he has followed some dull speaker who has nearly emptied the hall, and in a few moments the crowd returned, packing the house and applauding the silver-tongued orator to the very echo. He has received so many invitations to speak that he has missed hundreds of barbecues simply because he did not like to be almost forced to make an off-hand speech at a time when he was seeking rest and recreation."
Mamie died first and her husband, who was always partial to outdoors activities such as hunting and fishing, lived as a widower on the outskirts of Atlanta in Chamblee where he was allowed the luxury of chickens, cows, and pigs. Throughout his life he remained "thoroughly versed" in worthy reading material--he adored Shakespeare and Milton--and disdainful of the "trashy fiction" popping up in post Reconstruction and turn-of-the-century Georgia. With his interest in and knowledge of politics, business, and industrial development, Seals was asked to run for mayor of Atlanta though he withdrew his name.
His giftedness, his tender heart, and his achievements are impossible to summarize or detail. We get a glimpse into the man when we read his written words. When he sat down in 1883 to review his life at Penfield and the recent visit there, his emotion took over the retrospection and the ardor of his heart was revealed.
Wrote Seals: “The warm grasp of the good old citizens and the bright eyes of hundreds of jolly college mates he could see, and feel as of yore. As he sat again in the familiar old chapel and gazed once more upon the solemn cenotaph of the venerable Mercer, he could hear in imagination, the fiery, Demosthenic eloquence of the boys, and the persuasive eloquence of the grand old preachers, all of which were delivered from the same rostrum. And more than this, he could hear too, the indignant voices of Mercer, Billington M. Sanders, Absalom Janes, Vincent Thornton, Thomas Stocks and others crying aloud: ‘Beware O, ye my descendants! Beware how ye pull down the work of our hands. Yea, let it be established and nurture ye this tree where we have planted it!’ But the old halls are deserted, the college has long since been removed, and a solemn stillness broods in unbroken monotony over the once gay and beautiful campus.”
From this it is obvious Seals, though it was more than a dozen years after the removal of Mercer University to Macon, GA, still regretted the university's change of venue from Greene County's jealous environs and regretted its loss to the affectionate ones who dedicated their lives to the school's cherished care.
While there Seals visited some who remained from the old guard including Mrs. Billington (Cynthia) Sanders, Nathan Hobbs, J. R. Sanders, Benjamin Spencer, and W. A. Colclough and mentioned prominent “solid” younger leaders such as Charles M., Jerry, and Dr. Joseph Sanders; Joe, William, and Luther Boswell; Felix Malone, Doc Champion, and Jesse Fluker. He ended the column with a promise of more on Penfield and said those current “random thoughts” had been delayed by severe illness.
Life had moved on, and John Henry Seals--like all of us--knew the cost of passing years in a way he could not have imagined at college graduation time. We cannot find a follow-up by Seals with additional Penfield reflections. By that time he had sold the newspaper and was working diligently every day in the production of the literary periodical which became almost synonymous with his name. Today a glimpse into the life of this one and others who wrote copiously of their thoughts and lives can be found by us mostly by scanning microfilm or online digitized copies of literary documents.
Here and there are a few originals exist, kept by people of the past so that people today can "see" their lives more than a century and a quarter later. And we thank all those who have a part in holding up the line of preservation so these glimpses are available to us. What a trip it is when we are conducted through time by the engineers who mapped the way when they gave to us, saved and sealed, that time machine known as a newspaper. John Henry Seals was a brilliant conductor on the train of time.
Sources: Sarah Donelson Hubert, Genealogy of Part of the Barksdale Family of America, 1895, 30-31; Georgia Marriages, 1699-1944 (online database); U.S. Federal Census 1860, 1870, 1900; "A Visit to Penfield," The Sunny South, John Henry Seals, 15 September 1883, 4; "Some Georgians of Our Day," The Sunny South, Wallace Putnam Reed, 15 April 1899, 7; Mercer University Triennial Register; Henry Millard Seals and John Henry Seals biographical files, Mercer University Tarver Library Special Collections.
Compiled by Arlette Camp Copeland with information researched by Arlette Copeland and Peer Ravnan, Special Collections assistants.
Monday, September 12, 2011
Thursday, September 8, 2011
A Golden Era
Erasmus Zerulus Franklin Golden.
Can you imagine learning to write that across your school slate? Superfluous though it seems today, E.Z.F. Golden took his somewhat excessive name with him on a path that was meaningful, passionate, and consequential to people across a swath of Southern states. Proud though he probably was of each section of his appellation, Golden went by his initials as a general rule.
Born on a mid-May day in 1853 near McIntyre in Wilkinson County, GA, E.Z.F. Golden was one of at least eight children whose births were celebrated in the home of William Harvey and Elizabeth Manderson Golden. He was, according to a daughter, actually the third to the youngest of fifteen children born to his father who married E.Z.F.’s mother after the loss of his first wife. The 1860 U.S. Census shows Erasmus (spelled Evasing by the census taker) as the second of three sons coming after four daughters to that union. Four years lapsed between son Andrew and Erasmus so a child may have been born who died in that period. Father Golden was a farmer, and the family lived in a farming community in the county’s Bloodworth district. Evenso, Bess Golden Dunston said her grandfather was a farmer-teacher and a great reader who named all his children for scholars.
Subsequent nineteenth century census reports are missing for E.Z.F. though by the turn of the century we see the adult Erasmus married to the former Mattie Elizabeth Ross of the respected Ross family in Georgia’s peach district. Born in Carsonville, GA, on New Year’s Day 1858, Mattie was the daughter of Dr. Benjamin Lafayette and Louisa Frances Mangham Ross. Family tradition says the dashing, mustachioed Erasmus met Mattie when she accompanied her father to a Southern Baptist Convention meeting in Savannah in 1881; nuptials were on 25 July 1883 in Houston County. Their first child, daughter Louise, was born in 1885, and from there regular additions followed—Bessie, E.Z.F. Jr., Ross, Lafayette, Marye/Marie, and a son who died as an infant in 1897. All six children, said Dunston, “lived to be good citizens and good Baptists.” The last federal census to list Erasmus was in 1920. He and Mattie lived in Pleasant Grove, FL, with daughter Bessie, then 28. E.Z.F. died in Leon County on 3 July 1927.
In the interim—that segment known as “life”—E.Z.F. and Mattie Golden knew a full one. A graduate of Mercer University in 1876, E.Z.F. was ordained at Liberty Baptist Church in Wilkinson County around the time he was graduated. The presbytery consisted of E. J. Coats, G. B. Hughes, and J. M. Hall with Coats preaching “a most able and interesting” ordination sermon. While at Mercer, Golden gathered bouquets of good wishes from those who taught and knew him. He was a student under the presidency of Archibald Battle whose nephew Henry remembered hearing his uncle speak with glowing words of Golden. Said Henry: “… long before I had grown to manhood, the name E. Z. F. Golden wore in my imagination a very tender and lustrous halo. … I seem to hear again the words of my uncle … extolling him as a student and Christian young gentleman almost without a peer. I matriculated at Mercer years later, but the fragrance of his college life, in class room and family circle, lingered to inspire and delight.”
In subsequent years of the nineteenth century, Golden served churches in Georgia’s Bethel, Ebenezer, Mercer, New Sunbury, Piedmont, and Rehoboth associations, and in the first decade of the twentieth century pastored in Hephzibah and Western associations. His ecclesiastical leadership encompassed Irwinton, Bethel, Central/Atlanta, Cuthbert, Hephzibah, Louisville, South Macon, Thomasville, and West Point churches in Georgia.Golden was instrumental in organizing Valence Street church in New Orleans, moving from there to Texas for several months.
In his four years at Thomasville, which began in 1879, Golden persuaded the congregation to build a parsonage in the rear of the church and started the people towards long-range plans for a new church building before the roof of the old building fell into such a state that it had to be replaced. Wherever he went he inspired enthusiasm and activity that lead to attempts towards the best programs and progress for Christian expansion. He was often called on to perform wedding ceremonies, too, and online lists of marriages repeat his name frequently in Glynn County between 1889 and 1904. The Goldens moved there in 1887 as he became pastor at Brunswick. According to the church history, his annual salary was $750 and pastoral garb of the day was a tall beaver hat, a frock coat, a white shirt, and black tie.
By 1894 Golden was pastor at Cuthbert where his salary increased to $1,000 a year in a congregation with a membership of 150. A sermon by Golden published in the 13 September 1894 Christian Index was accompanied by a line drawing of him—a handsome man with large, soft eyes, close cut dark hair, a thick mustache, and Burnside-type sideburns. The next year the church purchased a pastorium for $1,700, indicating a booming time as the church had long wanted to make this move. The next year, however, those attending the January conference voted to read out loud in February the names of members in arrears on their pastor’s salary pledges. After he’d been there four years, the church had a new building completed—constructed in front of the 1852 wooden structure—with a cornerstone engraved with the name of the pastor and the building committee. On 12 June 1898, Golden preached at the opening services in the new building and the next month he resigned, effective 1 November.
While at Cuthbert, Golden voiced his opinion on the subject of allowing female students at his alma mater. Wrote Golden in June 1895: “When a woman has determined from choice or necessity to enter business or professional life she should be freely admitted to all the means of preparation and qualification. She should not be discriminated against on account of sex. As she must succeed or fail on her own account she should have an equal chance. The University courses should be open to her. Any woman wishing to study law, pedagogy, business etc., should be admitted.” That was as far as he could stretch his feministic bounds. Golden was against women mixing with undergraduate men because co-education would stir up much opposition and because the “physical development of the sexes require different conditions.” Besides that, women should be prepared for their expected positions in the “refinements of home.” Apparently the university was quite pleased with his opinion as he was awarded an honorary D.D. degree that year.
When Golden left Cuthbert, appreciative notes were published in the Macon Telegraph and the Index. “No one,” wrote the Index editor, “has contributed more of his time and substance than did Mr. Golden towards its (the new building’s) successful beginning and completion. It will ever stand as a living monument of his very faithful pastorate … Mr. Golden has many strong friends not only in his own but other churches here, as well as the people generally, who will regret to see him leave.”
Golden then sought to fulfill his lifelong dream of operating a denominational newspaper and he opened the Baptist Mirror which published on Thursdays. His aspirations were dashed as hoped for support from the Christian Index was not forthcoming and the paper’s cashier absconded with their funds leading to a folded pursuit. This was not his first writing endeavor for in 1896 he had published Uncle Tommy Muse: a pioneer preacher of southwest Georgia, but journalism was not to be his career at this juncture.
Returning to the pastorate, Golden served churches in Georgia, including one at West Point where his ministry brought increased mission activity as he and Mattie launched full force into evangelistic efforts. Mattie organized the Royal Ambassadors in 1910, the first such group for young boys in the state, and reorganized the Young Women’s Auxiliary. The church history extols the goodness of the Golden years: “A two week revival was planned during Dr. Golden’s pastorate,” wrote H. E. Barkley. “At the end of the two weeks, spirits were still high and crowds were overflowing the sanctuary. So, the revival was extended another week and moved to the City Auditorium to accommodate the crowds. … dish pans were used as offering plates.”
One of the most memorable events in the couple’s life must have been the wedding of oldest daughter Louise. According to Barkley, Mattie Golden started planning that wedding at the child’s birth. By the time Louise married James C. Ramsey on 24 February 1910, the event was “the most unusual and elaborate wedding to be held in the church and probably the Chattahoochee Valley.” Continued Barkley: “There was some dissension between the pastor and his wife over whether the minister should wear formal clothes during the ceremony or a business suit. Dr. Golden refused to wear formal clothes because it was not in the best Baptist tradition and despite repeated pleas from his wife he stuck to his guns … Highlights of the wedding included a ‘cupid’ dressed in pink tights, complete with bow and arrow, who ‘shot’ the couple with no unfortunate results. As the wedding party left the church, legend says a flock of white doves were released. … Apparently a lot of money had been spent on clothing for the bridesmaids and flower girls, for there was a lot of marching in and around the church that day. A long music program preceded the actual ceremony with solos, duets, and four-man choruses, as well as music from a hand-pumped organ. The ceremony itself was of little note but afterwards, the wedding party and guests walked on a ‘white covering’ that began in the church aisle and extended to the parsonage next door. The porch was enclosed with green blinds and the entire ceiling of each room was covered with smilax with mistletoe hanging in little clusters.”
That fall Golden took a congregation in Enterprise, AL, followed by a pastorate in Arcadia, FL, where his journalistic expertise was employed again as Golden was several years editor and business manager of the Florida Baptist Witness. The demanding position for a turn as pastor at Leesburg, FL. In retirement Golden supplied the church at Williston, FL, until he died. He was buried on 4 July 1927 in Lone Oak Cemetery in Leesburg though later his body was removed to the Ross family burial lot in Oaklawn Cemetery in Fort Valley, GA, to lie by the side of his mother who outlived him eleven years. His exaggerated name takes up two full lines across the substantive granite marker. His dear Mattie lived until 22 August 1938.
When Golden passed, his death was mentioned multiple times in the Christian Index as Baptists sought to commemorate a life well spent. A telegram prompted the first notice, published on 7 July 1927; he was called a “beloved man” who endeared himself to countless people. Henry W. Battle wrote: “I think of him as having completed a flawless life, and fallen on sleep when the tired and pain-racked body, long tossed on troubled waters longed for relief; I think of him as laying down a crown of thorns to put on a crown resplendent with precious stars of redeemed spirits; I think of him as entering, with inexpressible joy and fadeless vigor, upon a sphere of service beyond the reach of mortal comprehensions; I think of him as kneeling at the Savior’s feet, and mingling with the fathers who have gone before. Who would call him back?” Battle described Golden as a scholar, a gentleman, and an unostentatious “good minister of Jesus Christ” who left a priceless heritage and example worth imitating.
Charles M. Brittain, another Mercerian, remembered Golden as “the old school type which is rapidly passing away” and a man easy to know and easy to love. “He was warm and affectionate in his make up,” said Brittain. “His sympathetic manner of greeting friends and even strangers, was a quality possessed rarely by men in public today … He faithfully and powerfully preached the word of God as long as he could stand in the pulpit. He possessed a keen spiritual insight into all things that related to the work of his beloved denomination. … Our hearts are sad at the passing of Dr. Golden. His character like his name was golden. His public messages were golden, and now he passes on to receive at the hands of his Master, whom he loved and served so well, a golden crown.”
Contributed by Arlette Camp Copeland; information compiled by A.Copeland and Peer Ravnan
Sources: A History of Mercer University 1833-1953, p. 404; The Christian Index 26 October 1876, 13 September 1894, 6 June 1895, 7, 14, and 21 July 1927, 11 and 18 August 1927; History of the First Baptist Church of Cuthbert, Georgia 1831 to 1981, unnumbered pages; Links of God History of the First Baptist Church West Point, Georgia, pgs. 81-84; The Macon Telegraph, 26 July 1898 and 1 November 1898; Mercer University Catalogues and Triennial Registers; N.W. Ayer & Son’s Newspaper Annual 1898, p. 114; U.S. Census, 1860, 1900, 1910, 1920; One Hundred Years of the First Baptist Church Brunswick, Georgia 1855 1955, pgs 9-12; Thomas County 1865-1900, p. 163.
Can you imagine learning to write that across your school slate? Superfluous though it seems today, E.Z.F. Golden took his somewhat excessive name with him on a path that was meaningful, passionate, and consequential to people across a swath of Southern states. Proud though he probably was of each section of his appellation, Golden went by his initials as a general rule.
Born on a mid-May day in 1853 near McIntyre in Wilkinson County, GA, E.Z.F. Golden was one of at least eight children whose births were celebrated in the home of William Harvey and Elizabeth Manderson Golden. He was, according to a daughter, actually the third to the youngest of fifteen children born to his father who married E.Z.F.’s mother after the loss of his first wife. The 1860 U.S. Census shows Erasmus (spelled Evasing by the census taker) as the second of three sons coming after four daughters to that union. Four years lapsed between son Andrew and Erasmus so a child may have been born who died in that period. Father Golden was a farmer, and the family lived in a farming community in the county’s Bloodworth district. Evenso, Bess Golden Dunston said her grandfather was a farmer-teacher and a great reader who named all his children for scholars.
Subsequent nineteenth century census reports are missing for E.Z.F. though by the turn of the century we see the adult Erasmus married to the former Mattie Elizabeth Ross of the respected Ross family in Georgia’s peach district. Born in Carsonville, GA, on New Year’s Day 1858, Mattie was the daughter of Dr. Benjamin Lafayette and Louisa Frances Mangham Ross. Family tradition says the dashing, mustachioed Erasmus met Mattie when she accompanied her father to a Southern Baptist Convention meeting in Savannah in 1881; nuptials were on 25 July 1883 in Houston County. Their first child, daughter Louise, was born in 1885, and from there regular additions followed—Bessie, E.Z.F. Jr., Ross, Lafayette, Marye/Marie, and a son who died as an infant in 1897. All six children, said Dunston, “lived to be good citizens and good Baptists.” The last federal census to list Erasmus was in 1920. He and Mattie lived in Pleasant Grove, FL, with daughter Bessie, then 28. E.Z.F. died in Leon County on 3 July 1927.
In the interim—that segment known as “life”—E.Z.F. and Mattie Golden knew a full one. A graduate of Mercer University in 1876, E.Z.F. was ordained at Liberty Baptist Church in Wilkinson County around the time he was graduated. The presbytery consisted of E. J. Coats, G. B. Hughes, and J. M. Hall with Coats preaching “a most able and interesting” ordination sermon. While at Mercer, Golden gathered bouquets of good wishes from those who taught and knew him. He was a student under the presidency of Archibald Battle whose nephew Henry remembered hearing his uncle speak with glowing words of Golden. Said Henry: “… long before I had grown to manhood, the name E. Z. F. Golden wore in my imagination a very tender and lustrous halo. … I seem to hear again the words of my uncle … extolling him as a student and Christian young gentleman almost without a peer. I matriculated at Mercer years later, but the fragrance of his college life, in class room and family circle, lingered to inspire and delight.”
In subsequent years of the nineteenth century, Golden served churches in Georgia’s Bethel, Ebenezer, Mercer, New Sunbury, Piedmont, and Rehoboth associations, and in the first decade of the twentieth century pastored in Hephzibah and Western associations. His ecclesiastical leadership encompassed Irwinton, Bethel, Central/Atlanta, Cuthbert, Hephzibah, Louisville, South Macon, Thomasville, and West Point churches in Georgia.Golden was instrumental in organizing Valence Street church in New Orleans, moving from there to Texas for several months.
In his four years at Thomasville, which began in 1879, Golden persuaded the congregation to build a parsonage in the rear of the church and started the people towards long-range plans for a new church building before the roof of the old building fell into such a state that it had to be replaced. Wherever he went he inspired enthusiasm and activity that lead to attempts towards the best programs and progress for Christian expansion. He was often called on to perform wedding ceremonies, too, and online lists of marriages repeat his name frequently in Glynn County between 1889 and 1904. The Goldens moved there in 1887 as he became pastor at Brunswick. According to the church history, his annual salary was $750 and pastoral garb of the day was a tall beaver hat, a frock coat, a white shirt, and black tie.
By 1894 Golden was pastor at Cuthbert where his salary increased to $1,000 a year in a congregation with a membership of 150. A sermon by Golden published in the 13 September 1894 Christian Index was accompanied by a line drawing of him—a handsome man with large, soft eyes, close cut dark hair, a thick mustache, and Burnside-type sideburns. The next year the church purchased a pastorium for $1,700, indicating a booming time as the church had long wanted to make this move. The next year, however, those attending the January conference voted to read out loud in February the names of members in arrears on their pastor’s salary pledges. After he’d been there four years, the church had a new building completed—constructed in front of the 1852 wooden structure—with a cornerstone engraved with the name of the pastor and the building committee. On 12 June 1898, Golden preached at the opening services in the new building and the next month he resigned, effective 1 November.
While at Cuthbert, Golden voiced his opinion on the subject of allowing female students at his alma mater. Wrote Golden in June 1895: “When a woman has determined from choice or necessity to enter business or professional life she should be freely admitted to all the means of preparation and qualification. She should not be discriminated against on account of sex. As she must succeed or fail on her own account she should have an equal chance. The University courses should be open to her. Any woman wishing to study law, pedagogy, business etc., should be admitted.” That was as far as he could stretch his feministic bounds. Golden was against women mixing with undergraduate men because co-education would stir up much opposition and because the “physical development of the sexes require different conditions.” Besides that, women should be prepared for their expected positions in the “refinements of home.” Apparently the university was quite pleased with his opinion as he was awarded an honorary D.D. degree that year.
When Golden left Cuthbert, appreciative notes were published in the Macon Telegraph and the Index. “No one,” wrote the Index editor, “has contributed more of his time and substance than did Mr. Golden towards its (the new building’s) successful beginning and completion. It will ever stand as a living monument of his very faithful pastorate … Mr. Golden has many strong friends not only in his own but other churches here, as well as the people generally, who will regret to see him leave.”
Golden then sought to fulfill his lifelong dream of operating a denominational newspaper and he opened the Baptist Mirror which published on Thursdays. His aspirations were dashed as hoped for support from the Christian Index was not forthcoming and the paper’s cashier absconded with their funds leading to a folded pursuit. This was not his first writing endeavor for in 1896 he had published Uncle Tommy Muse: a pioneer preacher of southwest Georgia, but journalism was not to be his career at this juncture.
Returning to the pastorate, Golden served churches in Georgia, including one at West Point where his ministry brought increased mission activity as he and Mattie launched full force into evangelistic efforts. Mattie organized the Royal Ambassadors in 1910, the first such group for young boys in the state, and reorganized the Young Women’s Auxiliary. The church history extols the goodness of the Golden years: “A two week revival was planned during Dr. Golden’s pastorate,” wrote H. E. Barkley. “At the end of the two weeks, spirits were still high and crowds were overflowing the sanctuary. So, the revival was extended another week and moved to the City Auditorium to accommodate the crowds. … dish pans were used as offering plates.”
One of the most memorable events in the couple’s life must have been the wedding of oldest daughter Louise. According to Barkley, Mattie Golden started planning that wedding at the child’s birth. By the time Louise married James C. Ramsey on 24 February 1910, the event was “the most unusual and elaborate wedding to be held in the church and probably the Chattahoochee Valley.” Continued Barkley: “There was some dissension between the pastor and his wife over whether the minister should wear formal clothes during the ceremony or a business suit. Dr. Golden refused to wear formal clothes because it was not in the best Baptist tradition and despite repeated pleas from his wife he stuck to his guns … Highlights of the wedding included a ‘cupid’ dressed in pink tights, complete with bow and arrow, who ‘shot’ the couple with no unfortunate results. As the wedding party left the church, legend says a flock of white doves were released. … Apparently a lot of money had been spent on clothing for the bridesmaids and flower girls, for there was a lot of marching in and around the church that day. A long music program preceded the actual ceremony with solos, duets, and four-man choruses, as well as music from a hand-pumped organ. The ceremony itself was of little note but afterwards, the wedding party and guests walked on a ‘white covering’ that began in the church aisle and extended to the parsonage next door. The porch was enclosed with green blinds and the entire ceiling of each room was covered with smilax with mistletoe hanging in little clusters.”
That fall Golden took a congregation in Enterprise, AL, followed by a pastorate in Arcadia, FL, where his journalistic expertise was employed again as Golden was several years editor and business manager of the Florida Baptist Witness. The demanding position for a turn as pastor at Leesburg, FL. In retirement Golden supplied the church at Williston, FL, until he died. He was buried on 4 July 1927 in Lone Oak Cemetery in Leesburg though later his body was removed to the Ross family burial lot in Oaklawn Cemetery in Fort Valley, GA, to lie by the side of his mother who outlived him eleven years. His exaggerated name takes up two full lines across the substantive granite marker. His dear Mattie lived until 22 August 1938.
When Golden passed, his death was mentioned multiple times in the Christian Index as Baptists sought to commemorate a life well spent. A telegram prompted the first notice, published on 7 July 1927; he was called a “beloved man” who endeared himself to countless people. Henry W. Battle wrote: “I think of him as having completed a flawless life, and fallen on sleep when the tired and pain-racked body, long tossed on troubled waters longed for relief; I think of him as laying down a crown of thorns to put on a crown resplendent with precious stars of redeemed spirits; I think of him as entering, with inexpressible joy and fadeless vigor, upon a sphere of service beyond the reach of mortal comprehensions; I think of him as kneeling at the Savior’s feet, and mingling with the fathers who have gone before. Who would call him back?” Battle described Golden as a scholar, a gentleman, and an unostentatious “good minister of Jesus Christ” who left a priceless heritage and example worth imitating.
Charles M. Brittain, another Mercerian, remembered Golden as “the old school type which is rapidly passing away” and a man easy to know and easy to love. “He was warm and affectionate in his make up,” said Brittain. “His sympathetic manner of greeting friends and even strangers, was a quality possessed rarely by men in public today … He faithfully and powerfully preached the word of God as long as he could stand in the pulpit. He possessed a keen spiritual insight into all things that related to the work of his beloved denomination. … Our hearts are sad at the passing of Dr. Golden. His character like his name was golden. His public messages were golden, and now he passes on to receive at the hands of his Master, whom he loved and served so well, a golden crown.”
Contributed by Arlette Camp Copeland; information compiled by A.Copeland and Peer Ravnan
Sources: A History of Mercer University 1833-1953, p. 404; The Christian Index 26 October 1876, 13 September 1894, 6 June 1895, 7, 14, and 21 July 1927, 11 and 18 August 1927; History of the First Baptist Church of Cuthbert, Georgia 1831 to 1981, unnumbered pages; Links of God History of the First Baptist Church West Point, Georgia, pgs. 81-84; The Macon Telegraph, 26 July 1898 and 1 November 1898; Mercer University Catalogues and Triennial Registers; N.W. Ayer & Son’s Newspaper Annual 1898, p. 114; U.S. Census, 1860, 1900, 1910, 1920; One Hundred Years of the First Baptist Church Brunswick, Georgia 1855 1955, pgs 9-12; Thomas County 1865-1900, p. 163.
Thursday, September 1, 2011
Looking Back
With the coming of the 150th anniversary of America's Civil War, people who haven't given that conflict the time of day since high school now are doing imaginary time travel to get a glimpse of life in those olden days.
In that vein, think of yourself in Georgia's Hall and Gwinnett counties on Saturday, 24 August 1861.
On that day, Archibald Harrison Holland, who had turned 17 three weeks before, attended an enlistment rally for the Confederate Army that became a turning point for him and a juncture of anguish for his mother. How did it feel to be him ... and her? He was caught up with the excitement of it all, but she refused to let her oldest son go gently into the environs of what was shaping up to be a nasty war.
“He became so enthused on this occasion that he immediately joined Company I, 24th Ga. Regiment, Wofford’s Brigade, Longstreet’s Corps, Lee’s army,” wrote Gwinnett County historian James C. Flanigan years later. “His mother, hearing of her son’s joining the army, mounted a horse and started after him, but was not able to catch up with the young soldier. He, together with the other volunteers, spent the first night at the Lawrenceville campground, and then moved on to Virginia.” They stopped first at Lynchburg and then were sent to North Carolina for coast guard duties.
Little is known now of Holland’s mother other than that she was fiery enough to make a last ditch effort to pull her oldest son from the clutches of a fate she feared maybe worse than death. Fortunately, Arch Holland lived to tell his war tales and marry three times and have numerous children—and to become a Baptist preacher, a farmer, and a man with a desire to help others help themselves.
But on that hot day, Arch was bound for some kind of glory! The what ifs of an indefinite battlefield loomed far more real in the mind of his mother than in his as he carefully considered the discourse he'd been hearing of late. Just the day before, the Georgia Telegraph had published an editorial reflecting the high tide of confidence in which his fellow Southerners were reveling. Right then Holland was feeling the emotion generated by recruiters and politicians to possess many a young man and he was thinking “If I don’t go now, I might miss the whole war!”
Wrote the Telegraph editor: “Three months of field warfare with the Northern hosts have been followed with results as favorable as any Southern patriot could ask.—Three months of actual campaigning have covered the South with glory, and filled the North with shame and confusion. An enemy which started out ninety days since, confident of overrunning and subjugating the whole country … is now doubtful and despondent—ready to admit that they cannot cope with us on equal terms and extremely doubtful whether they can successfully met us at all. Three months of campaigning end with the Southern blood up at fever heat, and volunteers rushing to our victorious standards with unsurpassed numbers and ardor.”
Ebullient rhetoric had prevailed at the spirited rally Arch attended, and, like others, he was swept up on a forceful wave of exuberant patriotism. He became, then, one of hundreds who couldn’t wait to join the regiment being recruited from White, Banks, Towns, Rabun, Gwinnett, Elbert, Habersham, and Hall counties.
Arch Holland’s left-behind family, on the other hand, worried greatly as Holland launched forth. He left full of the concern of parents Isaiah Samuel and Malissa Bennett Holland (married 31 March 1838 in Forsyth County) and the love of seven siblings ranging from older sister Elizabeth to baby Edward. Born 2 August 1844, Arch was the second child born to the couple and the first in a string of seven boys. One more daughter joined the circle during the war. In the meantime, father Sam—born in Pendleton, SC, in 1824—continued offering his services as a wheelwright erecting wheat/corn mills around Hall County’s Hog Mountain community and mother Malissa, of course, kept caring for the family at home.
As son number one signed on a fateful dotted line, Malissa Holland, who was about five years older than her husband, brimmed with dread, clinging to hope and uttering prayers. Soon a second son followed his older brother to war. Did mom let him go willingly? No story survives of that parting.
Happily, both sons returned and married and raised children for the grandparents to love. Sam Holland died in 1873 and Malissa in February 1896. She was buried at New Bethany Baptist Church on Holiday Road in Hall County’s Oakwood community where son A. H. Holland--about fifteen years down the road from when he went off to war—became pastor.
--Submitted by Arlette Camp Copeland
Sources:
“24th Georgia Volunteer Infantry,” Wikipedia.
Archibald Harrison Holland biographical file, Mercer University Tarver Library Special Collections, Macon, GA.
“Forward to Washington,” The Georgia Telegraph, 23 August 1861.
History of Gwinnett County Georgia 1818-1960, J. C. Flanigan, 1959, page 489.
New Bethany Baptist Church, Hall County, Microfilm Reel 659.
In that vein, think of yourself in Georgia's Hall and Gwinnett counties on Saturday, 24 August 1861.
On that day, Archibald Harrison Holland, who had turned 17 three weeks before, attended an enlistment rally for the Confederate Army that became a turning point for him and a juncture of anguish for his mother. How did it feel to be him ... and her? He was caught up with the excitement of it all, but she refused to let her oldest son go gently into the environs of what was shaping up to be a nasty war.
“He became so enthused on this occasion that he immediately joined Company I, 24th Ga. Regiment, Wofford’s Brigade, Longstreet’s Corps, Lee’s army,” wrote Gwinnett County historian James C. Flanigan years later. “His mother, hearing of her son’s joining the army, mounted a horse and started after him, but was not able to catch up with the young soldier. He, together with the other volunteers, spent the first night at the Lawrenceville campground, and then moved on to Virginia.” They stopped first at Lynchburg and then were sent to North Carolina for coast guard duties.
Little is known now of Holland’s mother other than that she was fiery enough to make a last ditch effort to pull her oldest son from the clutches of a fate she feared maybe worse than death. Fortunately, Arch Holland lived to tell his war tales and marry three times and have numerous children—and to become a Baptist preacher, a farmer, and a man with a desire to help others help themselves.
But on that hot day, Arch was bound for some kind of glory! The what ifs of an indefinite battlefield loomed far more real in the mind of his mother than in his as he carefully considered the discourse he'd been hearing of late. Just the day before, the Georgia Telegraph had published an editorial reflecting the high tide of confidence in which his fellow Southerners were reveling. Right then Holland was feeling the emotion generated by recruiters and politicians to possess many a young man and he was thinking “If I don’t go now, I might miss the whole war!”
Wrote the Telegraph editor: “Three months of field warfare with the Northern hosts have been followed with results as favorable as any Southern patriot could ask.—Three months of actual campaigning have covered the South with glory, and filled the North with shame and confusion. An enemy which started out ninety days since, confident of overrunning and subjugating the whole country … is now doubtful and despondent—ready to admit that they cannot cope with us on equal terms and extremely doubtful whether they can successfully met us at all. Three months of campaigning end with the Southern blood up at fever heat, and volunteers rushing to our victorious standards with unsurpassed numbers and ardor.”
Ebullient rhetoric had prevailed at the spirited rally Arch attended, and, like others, he was swept up on a forceful wave of exuberant patriotism. He became, then, one of hundreds who couldn’t wait to join the regiment being recruited from White, Banks, Towns, Rabun, Gwinnett, Elbert, Habersham, and Hall counties.
Arch Holland’s left-behind family, on the other hand, worried greatly as Holland launched forth. He left full of the concern of parents Isaiah Samuel and Malissa Bennett Holland (married 31 March 1838 in Forsyth County) and the love of seven siblings ranging from older sister Elizabeth to baby Edward. Born 2 August 1844, Arch was the second child born to the couple and the first in a string of seven boys. One more daughter joined the circle during the war. In the meantime, father Sam—born in Pendleton, SC, in 1824—continued offering his services as a wheelwright erecting wheat/corn mills around Hall County’s Hog Mountain community and mother Malissa, of course, kept caring for the family at home.
As son number one signed on a fateful dotted line, Malissa Holland, who was about five years older than her husband, brimmed with dread, clinging to hope and uttering prayers. Soon a second son followed his older brother to war. Did mom let him go willingly? No story survives of that parting.
Happily, both sons returned and married and raised children for the grandparents to love. Sam Holland died in 1873 and Malissa in February 1896. She was buried at New Bethany Baptist Church on Holiday Road in Hall County’s Oakwood community where son A. H. Holland--about fifteen years down the road from when he went off to war—became pastor.
--Submitted by Arlette Camp Copeland
Sources:
“24th Georgia Volunteer Infantry,” Wikipedia.
Archibald Harrison Holland biographical file, Mercer University Tarver Library Special Collections, Macon, GA.
“Forward to Washington,” The Georgia Telegraph, 23 August 1861.
History of Gwinnett County Georgia 1818-1960, J. C. Flanigan, 1959, page 489.
New Bethany Baptist Church, Hall County, Microfilm Reel 659.
Wednesday, August 31, 2011
Tools of the Trade
“Our young Brother Singleton,” identified as a theology student at Mercer University, gave “an interesting discourse” to the congregation at Bethesda Baptist Church in Greene County, GA, on 19 April 1862.
He was sponsored, one would surmise, by Pastor Henry Holcomb Tucker, who doubled as university professor of metaphysics and belles-lettres. Besides a letter granted to member Sarah Jones, no other business was brought before the assembled and they left, going about their own business, according to clerk William A. Overton who recorded minutes at the church’s monthly meeting.
Singleton wasn’t the average student in the small university community of Penfield and was newly established there if in fact he was officially a student or resident at all. Why he was described as “our” remains a mystery.
Born in Northampton, England, in 1830, Singleton was a skillful cabinet maker with “ordinary” education who immigrated to this country at age twenty with a chest of tools for his trade. The 1841 England Census shows a 10-year-old William Singleton living in Kettering, Northamptonshire, with parents Thomas and Percy Singleton and two brothers and two sisters ranging in age from 16 to 3. We can't be positive this is "our" William, but it could be.
Singleton's cabinetry proficiency eventually landed him in Augusta, GA, after years of big city life northward, beginning in New York. “His life for several years was a mixture of business and pleasure,” wrote Baptist biographer Jesse Campbell, who was Singleton’s contemporary in Georgia Baptist service. “His wages were good, but he spent them freely and saved but little.”
In due time, Singleton married and had two children. In the midst of that life evolved for him the accepting of a call to baptism and preaching in the Baptist church. Under spiritual conviction, Singleton professed “a change of heart” that seemed “real and radical” to everyone, it was said, who knew him. Alas, metamorphosis was followed by the death of his dear family, beginning with his wife. In the 1860 U.S. Census, on 6 July Singleton was caring for a son, Thomas B., aged 2, and a daughter, Margaret K., three months. His wife may have died from the common experience of complications related to childbirth. Sometime between the day the census enumerator arrived at his Ward 2 home and the day he preached the sermon at Bethesda, Singleton’s children died. Rather than devastating him to despair, these bereavements “deepened the impressions of his call to the ministry, and removed the earthly obstacles to his consecration to the work,” observed Campbell.
Singleton was licensed to preach by Greene Street Church in Augusta before moving to Penfield for theological training, a change of venue Campbell said happened in June 1862—six weeks or more after this sermon. Whenever it was he arrived on his new field of endeavor, from all appearances it was a removal with bright expectations for Singleton and those he intended to serve. Many, it seems, recognized in him an unusually prayerful young man. Then-Mercer President Nathaniel Macon Crawford described his new friend: “His feelings were tender, his sympathies easily flowing, and, at the same time, deep, his faith strong, his hope firm, and his consecration unaffected and unfaltering. He was remarkable for what was called ‘a gift in prayer.’”
Prayer is always a desired commodity in a religious community and was particularly so at this juncture since the United States had just passed the one year marker for the beginning of the nation-rending 1860s war between the states. Soldiers aligned with the Union/North/Federal side faced off against their brethren—sometimes literally—on the Confederate/Rebel/Southern side. Six days after the sermon at Bethesda, New Orleans, that jewel of the South, was captured by forces under Union Adm. David Farragut. In quick succession the Confederate garrison at Fort Macon, NC, surrendered on 26 April; the ironclad CSS Virginia was scuttled in James River north of Norfolk, VA, on 11 May; and Georgians fought with abandon among the 40,000 Confederates assembled to face an equal number of federals in the Battle of Fair Oaks on 31 May to 1 June. Subsequent battles proliferated across the land that spring and early summer—the Battle of Memphis on 6 June, Battle of Cross Keys on 8 June, and Battle of Mechanicsville on 26 June.
Every conflict was accompanied with injury, death, and privation, and the gift of prayer was a welcomed tool in the hands of those skillfully and thoughtfully fashioning and shoring up the spiritual lives of believers in states North and South. Singleton stepped in wherever he could to lift loads and smooth broken edges of hearts and minds as life—and war—rocked on the remainder of that year and into the next. Green Street Church ordained him in January 1863, and more than ever Singleton found his ministerial service in demand as the ranks of ministering folk were reduced by those headed to or serving in the killing fields.
During his time at Mercer, Singleton lived with respected Baptist deacon, Mercer trustee, and distinguished Greene Countian Thomas Stocks and his wife. For a couple of years the tender and spiritually-minded young Brit studied and preached and ministered to that corner of the Confederacy not yet invaded or touched by the feet of an invading army. Despite that “blessing,” his realm of parishioners engulfed those who mourned and many, no doubt, with high fears of the future as Singleton went about his duties at neighboring Friendship, Macedonia, and Shiloh churches.
When the Georgia Baptist Convention met on 24 April 1863 at Griffin, Singleton was one of few still studying theology—or anything—at Mercer. Full-fledged war mode gripped the nation as the second anniversary of the firing on Fort Sumter came and went, and most 30-ish young Southern men were conscripted to or had volunteered for service on battlefields or in some camp attached to them. Ministerial student Joseph Blitch was still at Mercer with Singleton though theology student J. K. Cowan had left to become a minister and students Thomas J. Beck and James A. Garrison had enlisted as chaplains in Georgia regiments fighting in Virginia.
Newspaper accounts kept Greene County residents aware of war developments, albeit sometimes it took a while to disseminate news. Soon they would have learned that just after the Griffin meeting Union Col. Abel Streight moved from Tennessee across Alabama to northwest Georgia on a course that lead to a raid on Rome, GA, on May Day. True, the famed Confederate cavalry of Nathan Bedford Forest drove Streight out a few days later, but it was unnerving to most Georgians to realize the war was closing in on them. Prayer services were surely called when news of that and of the massing troops around Chancellorsville, VA, came in and of course when the sad reports from Gettysburg drifted South, Greene County, like Georgia as a whole, had sons fighting and dying in far off places which in itself brought the war so much closer to home than most wanted it to be.
Through it all, Singleton, it seems now, drew best responses from those who knew him, and we can only think that surely he was a mainstay for agitated, dismayed, and worried parishioners. A contemporary called him “the most spiritual member of the church” and a person with a “good, rather solid” mind. President Crawford said Singleton developed his prayer life after reading the Apostle Paul’s remonstrance to “covet the best gifts” and follow the “more excellent way” that leads to “nearness of approach to the mercy seat in prayer.” Added Crawford, “(Singleton decided to) covet that, and ask God to give me the grace of prayer.”
Since Crawford was also Mercer’s professor of systematic theology and Hebrew, we can surmise that he, Tucker, and their favorable student spoke earnestly and regularly on many subjects. It’s easy to imagine them seeking quite spots to converse on what in other years would have been hailed as balmy spring days or sitting on the front porch of the president’s home on warm moonlit nights studying academic exercises. By a stroke of luck, the ledger Singleton used to work out mathematical equations survives today and his elaborate algebraic forms provide proof of studious diligence. With elegant handwriting Singleton manipulated numbers and letters to find answers to problems on amounts of pears and apples, on barrels of port, sherry, and Madeira, on how much hourly progress was made by a worker, or on how many copper or silver coins were used in a transaction. He made determinations about gallons in a “small cask,” yards of cloth obtained, and days required for travel, and without doubt he was as meticulous in his academic preparations as he was in deepening his prayer life.
The significance of the worn leather ledger is tri-fold, and we know it was treasured then as now. Thomas Stocks purchased the 8-by-14-by-2-inch volume, inscribed “Office Greensboro” on the spine, around 1829. He used seven pages for recording “discounted notes” falling due on certain dates and the names thereon are a who’s who of the financially affluent around him. Surnames of Abercrombie, Alford, Askew, Beman, Binion, Boswell, Burke, Butler, Campbell, Cobb, Colquitt, Dawson, Duggan, Foster, Gordon, Green, Grimes, Hall, Hart, Heard, Hunt, Longstreet, Lumpkin, Macon, Mallory, Pierce, Porter, Redd, Seymour, Southerland, Stewart, Stokes, Weaver, West, Williams, and Wright reside there amongst others.
More than three decades passed while the book presumably sat idle in Stocks’ home or office before he made it a gift to Singleton whose gratitude was obvious. He wrote with a flourish: “Hon. Thos Stocks gave me this book,--and it was brought to me by Dr. Crawford. W. Singleton.” On the next page he wrote, “Principle weighs men she does not count them. Wm. Singleton Penfield 1863.” More than an inch of pages follow filled with math equations. Intermingled with mathematical sentences Singleton interjected quotes and philosophic observations, made notes of assistance from Tucker and Crawford, and reminded himself of mistakes made and corrected.
Suddenly the discharge of academic duties ended. In the midst of academic rigour, William Singleton was taken with an attack of “malignant bilious fever” for which there was no recovery. His dear friends gave Singleton every comfort possible to a dying man in a war-depleted land depleted. The childless older couple attended their young boarder and friend assiduously and probably with some apprehension for in the last weeks of Singleton's life fears of “Yankees—in Georgia!”came true. The forests of Greene County shielding Singleton were skirted by the 60,000 marching troops of William Tecumseh Sherman though residents knew the anguish of waiting for the sound of horses’ hooves and the mostly inevitable destruction that followed.
In that uncertainty sometime in the month of November 1864 Singleton’s earthly endeavors ceased. Though we are left without an exact date of death and no obituary, we can confidently assume William Singleton was mourned widely. His name was called by friends in memorial on 9 October 1865 at the Georgia Association annual meeting at Bairds Church in Oglethorpe County and in the April 1866 convening of the Georgia Baptist Convention (the 1865 meeting was cancelled).
When Singleton’s charitable, empathetic heart stopped beating, undoubtedly someone noted that not all sadness and loss of young lives in war is due the battlefield for war or not life—and death—continue a steady course. The 34-year-old English-born cabinet builder who had come to this country to seek his fortune had become an earnest, self-giving, and needed prayer warrior. His status as such was exercised we imagine by the concerns of those who knew and depended on him while the people in and around Penfield, GA, lived out their lives in days of national uncertainty with immediate and important issues ever before them.
Inside of six months, the destructive war was over and proponents of education turned their eyes again to empty classrooms with hopes and dreams of filling them with a new generation of learners. Mercer’s advocates joined that bandwagon and thus the third use for the beloved volume of mathematical equations was born when the university’s new president, Henry Holcomb Tucker, took it in hand to record matriculation information on students making their way to the school Singleton held precious. With the South in Reconstruction and supplies of everything diminished, Tucker at some point wrote, “The following is a list of the students who have entered since my administration” and then in pen and pencil memorialized those students by term, name, age, parents’ name, and place of residence from Spring Term 1867 through Fall 1870. The value of these pages goes beyond usual means of communicating worth. The university had no printed Catalogue from 1860-1861 until 1869-1870 so without Tucker’s enumeration a fairly accurate roster was unavailable.
Lastly, Tucker’s inventory has immeasurable meaning as it extends through some of the last days of Mercer’s existence in Penfield. In 1871 the school moved to its present location in Macon, GA. Fortunately when that transposition occurred someone packed up this glimpse into the past so that now—140 years later—we know a man named Thomas Stocks recycled a book he could no longer use by giving it to a hopeful young student named William Singleton who apparently left it to an esteemed educator and mentor named Henry Tucker.
And the ability to preserve and pass along to forthcoming generations of scholars this kind of inspirational bit of history is the reason there exists university archives and people who gladly protect the past and make it available to the future. At Mercer we are thankful every day for those who went before us who looked out for us, making it possible today to piece together the tale of our two locations and the people who made it happen.
-- Arlette Camp Copeland Singleton wasn’t the average student in the small university community of Penfield and was newly established there if in fact he was officially a student or resident at all. Why he was described as “our” remains a mystery.
Born in Northampton, England, in 1830, Singleton was a skillful cabinet maker with “ordinary” education who immigrated to this country at age twenty with a chest of tools for his trade. The 1841 England Census shows a 10-year-old William Singleton living in Kettering, Northamptonshire, with parents Thomas and Percy Singleton and two brothers and two sisters ranging in age from 16 to 3. We can't be positive this is "our" William, but it could be.
Singleton's cabinetry proficiency eventually landed him in Augusta, GA, after years of big city life northward, beginning in New York. “His life for several years was a mixture of business and pleasure,” wrote Baptist biographer Jesse Campbell, who was Singleton’s contemporary in Georgia Baptist service. “His wages were good, but he spent them freely and saved but little.”
In due time, Singleton married and had two children. In the midst of that life evolved for him the accepting of a call to baptism and preaching in the Baptist church. Under spiritual conviction, Singleton professed “a change of heart” that seemed “real and radical” to everyone, it was said, who knew him. Alas, metamorphosis was followed by the death of his dear family, beginning with his wife. In the 1860 U.S. Census, on 6 July Singleton was caring for a son, Thomas B., aged 2, and a daughter, Margaret K., three months. His wife may have died from the common experience of complications related to childbirth. Sometime between the day the census enumerator arrived at his Ward 2 home and the day he preached the sermon at Bethesda, Singleton’s children died. Rather than devastating him to despair, these bereavements “deepened the impressions of his call to the ministry, and removed the earthly obstacles to his consecration to the work,” observed Campbell.
Singleton was licensed to preach by Greene Street Church in Augusta before moving to Penfield for theological training, a change of venue Campbell said happened in June 1862—six weeks or more after this sermon. Whenever it was he arrived on his new field of endeavor, from all appearances it was a removal with bright expectations for Singleton and those he intended to serve. Many, it seems, recognized in him an unusually prayerful young man. Then-Mercer President Nathaniel Macon Crawford described his new friend: “His feelings were tender, his sympathies easily flowing, and, at the same time, deep, his faith strong, his hope firm, and his consecration unaffected and unfaltering. He was remarkable for what was called ‘a gift in prayer.’”
Prayer is always a desired commodity in a religious community and was particularly so at this juncture since the United States had just passed the one year marker for the beginning of the nation-rending 1860s war between the states. Soldiers aligned with the Union/North/Federal side faced off against their brethren—sometimes literally—on the Confederate/Rebel/Southern side. Six days after the sermon at Bethesda, New Orleans, that jewel of the South, was captured by forces under Union Adm. David Farragut. In quick succession the Confederate garrison at Fort Macon, NC, surrendered on 26 April; the ironclad CSS Virginia was scuttled in James River north of Norfolk, VA, on 11 May; and Georgians fought with abandon among the 40,000 Confederates assembled to face an equal number of federals in the Battle of Fair Oaks on 31 May to 1 June. Subsequent battles proliferated across the land that spring and early summer—the Battle of Memphis on 6 June, Battle of Cross Keys on 8 June, and Battle of Mechanicsville on 26 June.
Every conflict was accompanied with injury, death, and privation, and the gift of prayer was a welcomed tool in the hands of those skillfully and thoughtfully fashioning and shoring up the spiritual lives of believers in states North and South. Singleton stepped in wherever he could to lift loads and smooth broken edges of hearts and minds as life—and war—rocked on the remainder of that year and into the next. Green Street Church ordained him in January 1863, and more than ever Singleton found his ministerial service in demand as the ranks of ministering folk were reduced by those headed to or serving in the killing fields.
During his time at Mercer, Singleton lived with respected Baptist deacon, Mercer trustee, and distinguished Greene Countian Thomas Stocks and his wife. For a couple of years the tender and spiritually-minded young Brit studied and preached and ministered to that corner of the Confederacy not yet invaded or touched by the feet of an invading army. Despite that “blessing,” his realm of parishioners engulfed those who mourned and many, no doubt, with high fears of the future as Singleton went about his duties at neighboring Friendship, Macedonia, and Shiloh churches.
When the Georgia Baptist Convention met on 24 April 1863 at Griffin, Singleton was one of few still studying theology—or anything—at Mercer. Full-fledged war mode gripped the nation as the second anniversary of the firing on Fort Sumter came and went, and most 30-ish young Southern men were conscripted to or had volunteered for service on battlefields or in some camp attached to them. Ministerial student Joseph Blitch was still at Mercer with Singleton though theology student J. K. Cowan had left to become a minister and students Thomas J. Beck and James A. Garrison had enlisted as chaplains in Georgia regiments fighting in Virginia.
Newspaper accounts kept Greene County residents aware of war developments, albeit sometimes it took a while to disseminate news. Soon they would have learned that just after the Griffin meeting Union Col. Abel Streight moved from Tennessee across Alabama to northwest Georgia on a course that lead to a raid on Rome, GA, on May Day. True, the famed Confederate cavalry of Nathan Bedford Forest drove Streight out a few days later, but it was unnerving to most Georgians to realize the war was closing in on them. Prayer services were surely called when news of that and of the massing troops around Chancellorsville, VA, came in and of course when the sad reports from Gettysburg drifted South, Greene County, like Georgia as a whole, had sons fighting and dying in far off places which in itself brought the war so much closer to home than most wanted it to be.
Through it all, Singleton, it seems now, drew best responses from those who knew him, and we can only think that surely he was a mainstay for agitated, dismayed, and worried parishioners. A contemporary called him “the most spiritual member of the church” and a person with a “good, rather solid” mind. President Crawford said Singleton developed his prayer life after reading the Apostle Paul’s remonstrance to “covet the best gifts” and follow the “more excellent way” that leads to “nearness of approach to the mercy seat in prayer.” Added Crawford, “(Singleton decided to) covet that, and ask God to give me the grace of prayer.”
Since Crawford was also Mercer’s professor of systematic theology and Hebrew, we can surmise that he, Tucker, and their favorable student spoke earnestly and regularly on many subjects. It’s easy to imagine them seeking quite spots to converse on what in other years would have been hailed as balmy spring days or sitting on the front porch of the president’s home on warm moonlit nights studying academic exercises. By a stroke of luck, the ledger Singleton used to work out mathematical equations survives today and his elaborate algebraic forms provide proof of studious diligence. With elegant handwriting Singleton manipulated numbers and letters to find answers to problems on amounts of pears and apples, on barrels of port, sherry, and Madeira, on how much hourly progress was made by a worker, or on how many copper or silver coins were used in a transaction. He made determinations about gallons in a “small cask,” yards of cloth obtained, and days required for travel, and without doubt he was as meticulous in his academic preparations as he was in deepening his prayer life.
The significance of the worn leather ledger is tri-fold, and we know it was treasured then as now. Thomas Stocks purchased the 8-by-14-by-2-inch volume, inscribed “Office Greensboro” on the spine, around 1829. He used seven pages for recording “discounted notes” falling due on certain dates and the names thereon are a who’s who of the financially affluent around him. Surnames of Abercrombie, Alford, Askew, Beman, Binion, Boswell, Burke, Butler, Campbell, Cobb, Colquitt, Dawson, Duggan, Foster, Gordon, Green, Grimes, Hall, Hart, Heard, Hunt, Longstreet, Lumpkin, Macon, Mallory, Pierce, Porter, Redd, Seymour, Southerland, Stewart, Stokes, Weaver, West, Williams, and Wright reside there amongst others.
More than three decades passed while the book presumably sat idle in Stocks’ home or office before he made it a gift to Singleton whose gratitude was obvious. He wrote with a flourish: “Hon. Thos Stocks gave me this book,--and it was brought to me by Dr. Crawford. W. Singleton.” On the next page he wrote, “Principle weighs men she does not count them. Wm. Singleton Penfield 1863.” More than an inch of pages follow filled with math equations. Intermingled with mathematical sentences Singleton interjected quotes and philosophic observations, made notes of assistance from Tucker and Crawford, and reminded himself of mistakes made and corrected.
Suddenly the discharge of academic duties ended. In the midst of academic rigour, William Singleton was taken with an attack of “malignant bilious fever” for which there was no recovery. His dear friends gave Singleton every comfort possible to a dying man in a war-depleted land depleted. The childless older couple attended their young boarder and friend assiduously and probably with some apprehension for in the last weeks of Singleton's life fears of “Yankees—in Georgia!”came true. The forests of Greene County shielding Singleton were skirted by the 60,000 marching troops of William Tecumseh Sherman though residents knew the anguish of waiting for the sound of horses’ hooves and the mostly inevitable destruction that followed.
In that uncertainty sometime in the month of November 1864 Singleton’s earthly endeavors ceased. Though we are left without an exact date of death and no obituary, we can confidently assume William Singleton was mourned widely. His name was called by friends in memorial on 9 October 1865 at the Georgia Association annual meeting at Bairds Church in Oglethorpe County and in the April 1866 convening of the Georgia Baptist Convention (the 1865 meeting was cancelled).
When Singleton’s charitable, empathetic heart stopped beating, undoubtedly someone noted that not all sadness and loss of young lives in war is due the battlefield for war or not life—and death—continue a steady course. The 34-year-old English-born cabinet builder who had come to this country to seek his fortune had become an earnest, self-giving, and needed prayer warrior. His status as such was exercised we imagine by the concerns of those who knew and depended on him while the people in and around Penfield, GA, lived out their lives in days of national uncertainty with immediate and important issues ever before them.
Inside of six months, the destructive war was over and proponents of education turned their eyes again to empty classrooms with hopes and dreams of filling them with a new generation of learners. Mercer’s advocates joined that bandwagon and thus the third use for the beloved volume of mathematical equations was born when the university’s new president, Henry Holcomb Tucker, took it in hand to record matriculation information on students making their way to the school Singleton held precious. With the South in Reconstruction and supplies of everything diminished, Tucker at some point wrote, “The following is a list of the students who have entered since my administration” and then in pen and pencil memorialized those students by term, name, age, parents’ name, and place of residence from Spring Term 1867 through Fall 1870. The value of these pages goes beyond usual means of communicating worth. The university had no printed Catalogue from 1860-1861 until 1869-1870 so without Tucker’s enumeration a fairly accurate roster was unavailable.
Lastly, Tucker’s inventory has immeasurable meaning as it extends through some of the last days of Mercer’s existence in Penfield. In 1871 the school moved to its present location in Macon, GA. Fortunately when that transposition occurred someone packed up this glimpse into the past so that now—140 years later—we know a man named Thomas Stocks recycled a book he could no longer use by giving it to a hopeful young student named William Singleton who apparently left it to an esteemed educator and mentor named Henry Tucker.
And the ability to preserve and pass along to forthcoming generations of scholars this kind of inspirational bit of history is the reason there exists university archives and people who gladly protect the past and make it available to the future. At Mercer we are thankful every day for those who went before us who looked out for us, making it possible today to piece together the tale of our two locations and the people who made it happen.
(Sources: Conference Minutes of Bethesda Baptist Church Union Point (Greene County) Georgia August 1817 to December 1866, Transcribed and Indexed by Vivian Toole Cates, 238; Jesse H. Campbell, Georgia Baptist Historical and Biographical (1874), 398-399; Robert L. Robinson, History of the Georgia Baptist Association, 1928, 236; 1850 U.S. Federal Census Ward 1 Eastern Division New York, New York; 1860 U.S. Federal Census, Augusta, GA, Ward 2; 1862-1865 Georgia Baptist Association Minutes; 1866 Georgia Baptist Convention Minutes, 18; William Singleton Personal Papers, Mercer University Tarver Library Special Collections, Macon, GA; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1862.)
Monday, August 22, 2011
Seeking the lost
In Baptist circles, the term "seeking the lost" reflects evangelism pure and simple. In Baptist genealogy, that expression becomes a euphemism for the persnickety search of finding members and pastors of churches long since passed from the realm of the living.
We do a fair amount of that here in the archives that houses the Georgia Baptist History Depository. Last week, for example, I began a search for the life of Richard B. Brooks, a typical exploration that sent me rummaging through stored collections scrutinizing and inspecting records and pursuing any inkling that might lead to something more. A descendant living in another state initiated the investigation.
Our first line of offense in a biographical search takes us to finding aids which reveal where and when ministers pastored churches, names and dates for marriages and death notices in the Christian Index, card files from the 1970s that indicate places to find names of ministers in books and other references in our collection, and items pertaining to the university such as lists of pre-1950 students, alumni directories and magazines, trustees and faculty lists, catalogs, and yearbooks. In addition, we search online and we look into items which we personally think might hold something based on our own "well" of knowledge. We make pertinent photocopies and put those in a folder in the biographical file; the next time we have a request for that person the material is ready for copying to be mailed or to be viewed by an on-site visitor.
Following is a summary of the information found on this search to provide an idea of how it goes.
Richard B. Brooks was, it seems, born 1 January 1817 in South Carolina to Robert Brooks (1781-1848) and Catherine Beauchel Brooks (1786-1868). Did his “B” stand for Beauchel? We could not determine that. Maybe but maybe not. Richard had a brother named Nicholas Beauchel Brooks born 15 July 1821 and while it was not common it was certainly not rare for families to give two children the same familial name. Brother Nicholas bore his maternal grandfather’s complete name, and, it turns out, moved to Milledgeville in 1843, married Mary Ann Worsham on 13 July 1848, and became a master carpenter, a businessman, a judge of the Inferior Court, and a Justice of the Peace. He also ran for mayor in 1875 before dying three years later. He was the Brooks in Brooks & Ellison Grocery in Milledgeville.
Just after his 20th birthday, Richard Brooks married Neata/Niata Fowler (1820-1844) of Forsyth County as can be established by a license to marry signed by county clerk/ordinary D. McCoy on 4 January 1837 and solemnized on 8 January by Rev. Drury Hutchins. The couple seem to have had three daughters—Mary Catherine, born in 1839; Susan Ann in 1841; and Nancy C. in 1843. The U.S. Census shows the family in Forsyth County in 1840. Daughter Mary Catherine, who died in Barbour County, AL, married Cicero Gravitt (1832-1863) and bore at least three girls beginning in 1855. This Gravitt likely was related to her father’s brother-in-law, John S. Gravitt (1818-1900), husband to his sister Susan Brooks (1819-1902).
Neata/Niata died, and on 22 August 1844, the young Richard Brooks married Martha Hadder (1829-1865) of Forsyth County. She was the daughter of Nehemiah Nimrod Hadder (born about 1782 in Maryland) and his wife, nee Mary Palmer (born 1787 in North Carolina). Their wedding license was dated three days before the wedding by the same McCoy, and the ceremony was performed by Justice of the Peace Hammond. In quick succession, Martha Hadder Brooks gave Richard Brooks three sons—John H., born in 1846; Solomon (K or A) in 1847; and William H. in 1848.
From 1846 until 1857, Richard Brooks served churches in Hightower Baptist Association after his ordination in 1846. His mailing address during those years was at Cumming, Social Hill, Troy, and Hartford, GA; he served churches at Coal Mountain from 1846-1848; Bethlehem, 1848-1853; Salem in 1848; Providence and Shady Grove, 1850-1852; Mount Zion, 1852; Canton, 1853; Mount Vernon, 1854; and Bethel, 1855-1856. During those years, he baptized some 200 people into the churches he pastored. In 1846 though he served the congregation at Coal Mountain, when it came time for the association’s annual meeting on 14-17 August, Brooks (spelled Broox in the Minutes) was a delegate from Beaver Ruin Church. He was appointed to attend the association’s second district meeting at Concord Church in August 1847, the third district’s meeting at Sharp Mountain in May 1847, and to go with three other ministers—including Drury Hutchins—in October 1846 to Chattahoochee Association’s meeting in Gainesville. Similar activities continued in the ensuing years. Indication of his activity comes also by a notice in the 4 July 1850 Christian Index which published a small blurb by Brooks announcing a Camp Meeting at Bethlehem beginning the Thursday before the first Sabbath in August. He requested “ministering brethren” to attend.
The family in 1850 lived in Cherokee County, Ga. with a blended family of the six Brooks children and Israel S. Hadder, who is 15 and a “farmer” by occupation; Israel was probably Martha’s brother. Listed on the census as Rucker Brooks rather than Richard, this is nonetheless him as the head of the house is a Baptist minister born in Georgia and the wife and children’s names and ages match. Odd spellings is one of many questionable bits included in census records and pursuing lots of avenues is the name of this game.
Brooks became pastor at Bethel Baptist Church in 1852 and early that year a marriage announcement in the Christian Index shows he joined Dr. Newport H. Campbell of Shady Grove in Forsyth County to his bride Narcissa Melvina McGinnes, daughter of Stephen McGinnes, of Gwinnett County on 8 December 1851.
Soon enough Brooks was a widow wedding again. On 21 May 1856 Brooks married Martha Duke Burruss (1831-1904) as evidenced by the signing hand of Ordinary H. Barker and the admired Rev. F. M. Hawkins. This third wife was born in Louisa, VA, on 5 September 1831 as the middle of nine children of John Henry Burruss (1794-1864) and wife Lucinda Nuckolls Burruss (1798-1849). In 1857 Richard Brooks was an ordained minister in Lawrenceville Baptist Association with a post office address of Ashland.
In the 1860 Census the Brookses lived in Barbour County, AL, (Eufaula post office) with five Brooks children ranging in age from 12 to 19 and Martha Brooks’ brother, M.C. Burriss, age 18--another changed spelling. The first of the three daughters born to Richard Brooks with his second Martha, Louisiana (Anna), joined the family in 1861 followed by Emma on 8 March 1865 and Julia in 1868. Emma eventually married Stephen A. Newman and had six children whereas Julia in 1883 married Edward Amos and had a son, Paul Mason Amos, born in 1895; Julia died at age 28 on 28 September 1897.
On 20 October 1863 Brooks performed a wedding ceremony for J. Douglass Norton to Cornelia Francis Bradbury at the home of the bride’s mother in Barbour County, AL. Though no more nuptials were in line for Rev. Brooks himself, a lot of changes occurred in the Brooks household that decade as younger children married and moved into their own places of life.
In the 1870 federal census, Richard and Martha D. Brooks lived in Geneva, AL, with their three girls, aged 3 to 9. For reasons unknown to us, he is listed as a lawyer. Those were difficult times by any definition in the South. With nothing more to substantiate it, we can't tell if the census enumerator made a mistake or if Brooks really hung out a shingle in law. According to Baptist records, he was still preaching. He served churches in Middle Cherokee Baptist Association from 1875 to 1886, and from 1880 until his death he served churches in Oostanaula Association. The 1880 federal census shows the couple at Stamp Creek in Bartow County where Brooks was listed as a farmer rather than a minister, another mysterious entry. Their youngest girls lived at home—ages 12 and 15. Brooks was 63 and Martha was a young 42.
Because the 1890 Census was destroyed, no such “authority” exists on the family’s composition and whereabouts. However, we surmise from other sources that Brooks died at age 74 in Bartow County, GA. The 1892 Georgia Baptist Convention meeting in LaGrange 5-9 April noted the death of the “old and infirm” Brooks who had served under state and association mission boards. When Oostanaula Association met 31 August-2 September 1892, that body gave their esteemed friend attention in the Minutes, calling him one “we all loved so well.” Wrote M. A. Reece: “Brother Brooks was sound in the faith, and ever ready to preach the Gospel. He has been called from his labors here to his reward at God’s right hand. Our dear Brother has already heard that welcome applaud, come up higher, I will make the ruler over a few things. Brethren, our loss on Earth is Heaven’s great gain. Let us live every day like it was our last day here on earth.”
The cemetery marker for Rev. Brooks—giving his name to the ages as Richard D.—is in Oothcalooga church yard near Adairsville; it shows he died 30 November 1891. His daughter Julia is interred in the same cemetery. Proof of the consequences of Julia’s death popped up when the 1900 federal census taker came around. The widowed Martha Brooks, age 68, was caring for her pre-school aged grandson Paul. It must have seemed strange after decades with a home teeming with activity though likely the child was a strong comfort to Martha in the absence of her husband and daughter. Even that arrangement didn’t last long. Martha was interred near her husband after she died 19 July 1904; a tall stone marker designates the place.
And what happened to young Paul Amos? That is a question for a family researcher. We, due to necessity of time and space, limit our research to that of Baptist leaders and to people related to Mercerians. If we can assist you with a research question, let us know. Our guidelines and fees are listed on our web site at http://libraries.mercer.edu/tarver/archives.
We do a fair amount of that here in the archives that houses the Georgia Baptist History Depository. Last week, for example, I began a search for the life of Richard B. Brooks, a typical exploration that sent me rummaging through stored collections scrutinizing and inspecting records and pursuing any inkling that might lead to something more. A descendant living in another state initiated the investigation.
Our first line of offense in a biographical search takes us to finding aids which reveal where and when ministers pastored churches, names and dates for marriages and death notices in the Christian Index, card files from the 1970s that indicate places to find names of ministers in books and other references in our collection, and items pertaining to the university such as lists of pre-1950 students, alumni directories and magazines, trustees and faculty lists, catalogs, and yearbooks. In addition, we search online and we look into items which we personally think might hold something based on our own "well" of knowledge. We make pertinent photocopies and put those in a folder in the biographical file; the next time we have a request for that person the material is ready for copying to be mailed or to be viewed by an on-site visitor.
Following is a summary of the information found on this search to provide an idea of how it goes.
Richard B. Brooks was, it seems, born 1 January 1817 in South Carolina to Robert Brooks (1781-1848) and Catherine Beauchel Brooks (1786-1868). Did his “B” stand for Beauchel? We could not determine that. Maybe but maybe not. Richard had a brother named Nicholas Beauchel Brooks born 15 July 1821 and while it was not common it was certainly not rare for families to give two children the same familial name. Brother Nicholas bore his maternal grandfather’s complete name, and, it turns out, moved to Milledgeville in 1843, married Mary Ann Worsham on 13 July 1848, and became a master carpenter, a businessman, a judge of the Inferior Court, and a Justice of the Peace. He also ran for mayor in 1875 before dying three years later. He was the Brooks in Brooks & Ellison Grocery in Milledgeville.
Just after his 20th birthday, Richard Brooks married Neata/Niata Fowler (1820-1844) of Forsyth County as can be established by a license to marry signed by county clerk/ordinary D. McCoy on 4 January 1837 and solemnized on 8 January by Rev. Drury Hutchins. The couple seem to have had three daughters—Mary Catherine, born in 1839; Susan Ann in 1841; and Nancy C. in 1843. The U.S. Census shows the family in Forsyth County in 1840. Daughter Mary Catherine, who died in Barbour County, AL, married Cicero Gravitt (1832-1863) and bore at least three girls beginning in 1855. This Gravitt likely was related to her father’s brother-in-law, John S. Gravitt (1818-1900), husband to his sister Susan Brooks (1819-1902).
Neata/Niata died, and on 22 August 1844, the young Richard Brooks married Martha Hadder (1829-1865) of Forsyth County. She was the daughter of Nehemiah Nimrod Hadder (born about 1782 in Maryland) and his wife, nee Mary Palmer (born 1787 in North Carolina). Their wedding license was dated three days before the wedding by the same McCoy, and the ceremony was performed by Justice of the Peace Hammond. In quick succession, Martha Hadder Brooks gave Richard Brooks three sons—John H., born in 1846; Solomon (K or A) in 1847; and William H. in 1848.
From 1846 until 1857, Richard Brooks served churches in Hightower Baptist Association after his ordination in 1846. His mailing address during those years was at Cumming, Social Hill, Troy, and Hartford, GA; he served churches at Coal Mountain from 1846-1848; Bethlehem, 1848-1853; Salem in 1848; Providence and Shady Grove, 1850-1852; Mount Zion, 1852; Canton, 1853; Mount Vernon, 1854; and Bethel, 1855-1856. During those years, he baptized some 200 people into the churches he pastored. In 1846 though he served the congregation at Coal Mountain, when it came time for the association’s annual meeting on 14-17 August, Brooks (spelled Broox in the Minutes) was a delegate from Beaver Ruin Church. He was appointed to attend the association’s second district meeting at Concord Church in August 1847, the third district’s meeting at Sharp Mountain in May 1847, and to go with three other ministers—including Drury Hutchins—in October 1846 to Chattahoochee Association’s meeting in Gainesville. Similar activities continued in the ensuing years. Indication of his activity comes also by a notice in the 4 July 1850 Christian Index which published a small blurb by Brooks announcing a Camp Meeting at Bethlehem beginning the Thursday before the first Sabbath in August. He requested “ministering brethren” to attend.
The family in 1850 lived in Cherokee County, Ga. with a blended family of the six Brooks children and Israel S. Hadder, who is 15 and a “farmer” by occupation; Israel was probably Martha’s brother. Listed on the census as Rucker Brooks rather than Richard, this is nonetheless him as the head of the house is a Baptist minister born in Georgia and the wife and children’s names and ages match. Odd spellings is one of many questionable bits included in census records and pursuing lots of avenues is the name of this game.
Brooks became pastor at Bethel Baptist Church in 1852 and early that year a marriage announcement in the Christian Index shows he joined Dr. Newport H. Campbell of Shady Grove in Forsyth County to his bride Narcissa Melvina McGinnes, daughter of Stephen McGinnes, of Gwinnett County on 8 December 1851.
Soon enough Brooks was a widow wedding again. On 21 May 1856 Brooks married Martha Duke Burruss (1831-1904) as evidenced by the signing hand of Ordinary H. Barker and the admired Rev. F. M. Hawkins. This third wife was born in Louisa, VA, on 5 September 1831 as the middle of nine children of John Henry Burruss (1794-1864) and wife Lucinda Nuckolls Burruss (1798-1849). In 1857 Richard Brooks was an ordained minister in Lawrenceville Baptist Association with a post office address of Ashland.
In the 1860 Census the Brookses lived in Barbour County, AL, (Eufaula post office) with five Brooks children ranging in age from 12 to 19 and Martha Brooks’ brother, M.C. Burriss, age 18--another changed spelling. The first of the three daughters born to Richard Brooks with his second Martha, Louisiana (Anna), joined the family in 1861 followed by Emma on 8 March 1865 and Julia in 1868. Emma eventually married Stephen A. Newman and had six children whereas Julia in 1883 married Edward Amos and had a son, Paul Mason Amos, born in 1895; Julia died at age 28 on 28 September 1897.
On 20 October 1863 Brooks performed a wedding ceremony for J. Douglass Norton to Cornelia Francis Bradbury at the home of the bride’s mother in Barbour County, AL. Though no more nuptials were in line for Rev. Brooks himself, a lot of changes occurred in the Brooks household that decade as younger children married and moved into their own places of life.
In the 1870 federal census, Richard and Martha D. Brooks lived in Geneva, AL, with their three girls, aged 3 to 9. For reasons unknown to us, he is listed as a lawyer. Those were difficult times by any definition in the South. With nothing more to substantiate it, we can't tell if the census enumerator made a mistake or if Brooks really hung out a shingle in law. According to Baptist records, he was still preaching. He served churches in Middle Cherokee Baptist Association from 1875 to 1886, and from 1880 until his death he served churches in Oostanaula Association. The 1880 federal census shows the couple at Stamp Creek in Bartow County where Brooks was listed as a farmer rather than a minister, another mysterious entry. Their youngest girls lived at home—ages 12 and 15. Brooks was 63 and Martha was a young 42.
Because the 1890 Census was destroyed, no such “authority” exists on the family’s composition and whereabouts. However, we surmise from other sources that Brooks died at age 74 in Bartow County, GA. The 1892 Georgia Baptist Convention meeting in LaGrange 5-9 April noted the death of the “old and infirm” Brooks who had served under state and association mission boards. When Oostanaula Association met 31 August-2 September 1892, that body gave their esteemed friend attention in the Minutes, calling him one “we all loved so well.” Wrote M. A. Reece: “Brother Brooks was sound in the faith, and ever ready to preach the Gospel. He has been called from his labors here to his reward at God’s right hand. Our dear Brother has already heard that welcome applaud, come up higher, I will make the ruler over a few things. Brethren, our loss on Earth is Heaven’s great gain. Let us live every day like it was our last day here on earth.”
The cemetery marker for Rev. Brooks—giving his name to the ages as Richard D.—is in Oothcalooga church yard near Adairsville; it shows he died 30 November 1891. His daughter Julia is interred in the same cemetery. Proof of the consequences of Julia’s death popped up when the 1900 federal census taker came around. The widowed Martha Brooks, age 68, was caring for her pre-school aged grandson Paul. It must have seemed strange after decades with a home teeming with activity though likely the child was a strong comfort to Martha in the absence of her husband and daughter. Even that arrangement didn’t last long. Martha was interred near her husband after she died 19 July 1904; a tall stone marker designates the place.
And what happened to young Paul Amos? That is a question for a family researcher. We, due to necessity of time and space, limit our research to that of Baptist leaders and to people related to Mercerians. If we can assist you with a research question, let us know. Our guidelines and fees are listed on our web site at http://libraries.mercer.edu/tarver/archives.
Tuesday, August 2, 2011
The preacher gene: Wiley Preston Holland carrying on a family legacy
When the Baptist preacher gene comes from more than one ancestral line, you wonder how much chance descendants have of avoiding that profession.
Born 17 May 1891 in Jackson County, GA, to Joseph Henry and Nancy Nemeris White Holland, Wiley Preston Holland was such a man. And it caught up to him.
Both Holland’s parents were born in Jackson County, too, and while family information on his mother is scarce, his father’s lines are easily discovered with today’s web genealogy search engines. For instance:
- Joseph Henry Holland was born to Samuel Mayfield and Mary Ann Stephens Holland, who were both born in South Carolina and who both died in Jackson County, GA.
- Samuel Mayfield Holland’s parents were Henry B. and Delilah Mayfield Holland, who were both born in Pendleton District, Anderson County, SC, and who both died in Cartersville, GA.
- Great-great grandfather James Holland of Charlotte, Virginia, married Nancy Vandiver, of South Carolina; both died in Georgia with James passing away in 1831 before his wife entered the Cherokee Land Lottery which accounts for her death in Cobb County.
- Moses Holland, born 17 November 1758 in Cumberland, VA, first (he married two others) wedded Mary Barton of Virginia; he died 8 September 1829 in Anderson, SC. Elder Moses Holland’s name stands out from the middle of a roadside marker for Big Creek Baptist Church, organized in 1788; Holland was pastor to the Anderson County church for more than four decades. Picturesquely situated in Williamston, Big Creek was mother church to several others and its rambling cemetery holds soldiers from five wars as well as the mother of Dr. James Bruton Gambrell, president of Mercer University soon after Wiley P. Holland was born. Moses Holland founded Saluda Baptist Association on 5 November 1803 at a meeting of sister churches at Salem Church, Anderson County. Moses Holland’s tombstone says he founded perhaps twenty-six churches though it names only Big Creek, Hopewell, Neal’s Creek, Friendship, Barker’s Creek, Washington, and Standing Spring.
- Moses was born to John Holland in Essex/Caroline County, VA, while John was born to William Holland, born in the same location though he died in Cumberland County, VA. Wives’ names are less certain though John married a Sarah and William wed a Margaret.
- The earliest Holland in this line in this country is Peter, born in the mid-1600s near Lancashire, England. Peter Holland died in the British colony of Caroline in the mid 1740s.
Did Peter Holland bring Baptist convictions from England? We don’t know. Moses could have been carrying on a family religious affiliation or may have been touched by the fiery preachers of the Great Awakening. Though subsequent Baptist memberships are not readily available, it isn’t too far a stretch to expect the Hollands passed along that spiritual persuasion for the next century-plus until Wiley P. was old enough to grasp it.
But the Hollands were not the only influence. Wiley Holland’s great-great grandmother Nancy Vandiver descended through a rock-strong Baptist family, too. Consider:
- Nancy was the daughter of Edward Vandiver—born in 1748 in Crock Creek in Prince George’s, MD—and Helena Frost Turley of Fairfax, VA. Edward moved to Fairfield District, SC, in 1768 and to Pendleton in 1795 some years after fighting the patriot cause in the Revolutionary War during which he served under Gen. Nathaniel Greene at Eutaw Springs. Helena Turley married Edward in the midst of that war in 1778 as his second wife; they said “I do” in Cameron Parrish, Loudon County, VA, and Nancy was the second of their six children. Vandiver Baptist roots show up early as Edward is listed as a charter member of Neal’s Creek Baptist Church in South Carolina. At age 83 Edward Vandiver died on Thursday morning, 20 July 1837, leaving (of his twenty-one children) a dozen sons, six of whom were Baptist preachers.
- Edward Vandiver was the son of George and Anna Harbin Vandiver. George was born in Prince George’s, MD, in 1727, and Anna was born in Maryland; both died in Virginia. Before that George was another George with the surname Vandevour who married Elinor Hollingsworth; both were born in Maryland though the elder George died in Delaware.
Did Edward learn his Baptist faith from his parents or grandparents? We don’t know. Again he could have or he, too, may have been overwhelmed with the evangelistic preaching of the day. Either way, these were strong Baptist genes and traditions being passed along!
That other Hollands were strong Baptists is easily discerned. For instance, there is another Baptist W. P. Holland in South Carolina overlapping the life of Wiley P. in Georgia. That W. P. was Willam Perry Holland, son of Elijah M. Holland who was also a descendant of Moses Holland. Elijah and William Perry were members of Neal’s Creek Church and are both buried there. Elijah, who owned a farm one mile from the church, was the community postmaster and kept the post office in a room attached to his home.
So what do we know about Wiley P. Holland whose ancestry may have predisposed him to Baptist preacherhood? When 1900 U.S. Census enumerator A. B. Hosch knocked on the door at the Joseph Holland home in June, Wiley P. was eight years old and the youngest of five children of a farming family in Hoschton District. Joe and Nancy Holland, who had ten children, were 50 and 51 years old with other children still at home aged 20, 17, 13, and 11. Ten years later when enumerator Charles Williams approached the farm in April 1910, the household included Wiley Preston at age 18, his parents, and paternal grandfather, 85-year-old Samuel M. Holland.
On 19 September 1915, Holland married Lillian Ma(i)e Baird, and the two were blessed with a son, Henry Horace Holland, on 4 August 1916, and a daughter, Damaris, on 17 September 1918. The couple was married in Hoschton where their daughter was born; their son was born in Winder. On 5 June 1917—about midway between the births—Holland registered for the draft. At the time he was of medium height and build with dark hair and brown eyes and employed on his father’s farm. In the next U.S. Census, Wiley and Lilly Holland lived at Braselton with their children. Wiley was a farm “helper” though his father had died three years before so it is unclear who he worked for.
Somewhere around then, Wiley Holland felt a call to preach which lead him that fall to enroll as a part-time “special” student at Mercer University in Macon—quite a distance from northeast Georgia. Did that mileage figure into his abbreviated educational experience or was advancing his education too much for a man supporting a wife and children? In spring 1921 when the Mercer yearbook, the Cauldron, was published, Holland was in Mercer’s School of Christianity.
The next year he was not a student though he shows up during as an ordained minister in the Atlanta Baptist Association as a member of Grant Park Church. He kept that status with ABA most of the decade. Georgia Baptist Convention Minutes show him with a mailing address at Monroe, GA, in 1928-1929, at Flowery Branch from 1930-1934, and at Braselton in 1935. There he remained until 1942 when he moved to Winder where the family lived until 1950, moving to Hull and living there until his 1958 retirement. Then he moved back to Winder. Holland’s pastorates included Academy Church in Burke County; Union Church at Winder; Union Grove; Bogart First Church; and Pleasant Grove at Hull. The Union Church history shows that in 1939 his annual salary was $202, thirty members joined, Sunday School attendance averaged fifty, and the church was wired for electricity. While he was at Bogart, the church history shows the congregation gathered for worship on the second and fourth Sundays of the month.
Holland retired the same year the Anderson (SC) County Historical Association erected a roadside marker highlighting his great-great-great grandfather Moses Holland’s devoted service. Not one to sit around idly, Wiley P. Holland imitated Moses Holland by continuing to preach. He held interim pastorates in the ensuing years and was for a while Winder First Church minister of visitation. In May 1971 the Winder congregation observed Wiley P. Holland Day, honoring him as pastor and friend to many over half a century.
On 6 July 1972, Holland, aged 81, died. Survived by his children and a brother—Samuel F. Holland of Clermont, NC—and six grandchildren, he was buried at Rose Hill Cemetery in Winder. The Georgia Baptist Convention meeting in mid-November at Savannah acknowledged his death in memorials presented by Appalachee Association.
Before, during, and after the time Wiley P. Holland loyally and compassionately served churches, numbers of other pastors with the same surname are listed in the annals of Georgia’s Baptists. Were they of the same lineage? Only more research can tell. If you’re a Holland and a Baptist in Georgia or South Carolina–or even Virginia–there’s a good chance your religious heritage is entertwined with that of this Baptist who came by his convictions honestly.
--Arlette Copeland, Special Collections Assistant
Sources:
Wiley P. Holland biographical file, Mercer University Tarver Library Special Collections, Macon, GA.
Thursday, July 28, 2011
A lively chase -- the life and times of Robert Duncan Hawkins
“Following the fight at Lovejoy, four of my company were cut off from our forces and given lively chace (sic) for some two or three miles. One of the four was killed, another captured.”
Thus begins an account of Confederate soldiers tearing across the country after in an encounter around Lovejoy Station, GA, in 1864. Written fifty-five years later by Robert Duncan Hawkins, the rousing account awakens the imagination so you can almost hear thumping hoof beats. Hawkins, who joined the cavalry at age 17, doesn’t indicate which fight at Lovejoy though clues indicate the 16 November action there.
“Paul Bryan and I barely escaped, he on his horse, which was more fleet than mine; I jumped from my horse and dodged into a thicket just in time to escape,” wrote Hawkins. “… After the chace I set out to get back to my company and found the camp late in the night, after another narrow escape from capture. By order of my Captain E. P. Bedell I proceeded on foot to Macon, along with the waggon (sic) train. At Macon, the company again present, we drew rations and while eating, a few shells from Sherman’s army made it necessary for immediate action. Our captain ordered those of us who were dismounted, to recross the river on the pontoon bridge, which we did with the waggon train.”
Camped near the river (presumably the Ocmulgee) with poor provisions for the cold, the men were anxious, and some “proved to be very much of a mob.” Continued Hawkins: “If any orders or report came from our command I knew nothing of it. Of course we were restless. We knew that a few men were left in our former camp at Athens, where we might fare better in winter weather.” Without “orders or permission from anyone” four headed towards Athens via Milledgeville. The one on horse left the three on foot who found out their lieutenant was at his home. “We went at once to him and gave a full account of ourselves,” wrote Hawkins. “He sent us home to clean up, for we needed it badly, and to report at Gainesville where he could keep in touch with us.” In days, Hawkins was among a squad organized by Dr. T. C. Gower and sent to North Georgia to suppress bushwhackers.
How did a nice youth like Hawkins get into a hotbed of politics and war like that? Born at Haynesville, Lowndes County, AL, on 8 May 1846 to Wilbert Ashley Hawkins and wife Amanda Melvina Mayne, Hawkins had largely grown up with his maternal grandparents in Hall County, GA. Records show Hawkins enlisted on 2 April 1864 at Mossy Creek Campground in White County, a Methodist revival meeting place near Skitt Mountain where a park/camping area is today. He probably enlisted with the 30th battalion Georgia Volunteer Cavalry, formed in May 1864. That battalion consolidated with four other companies on 14 November 1864, and the resulting formation was the 11th Georgia Cavalry Regiment; Hawkins was in Company B, also known as the Chattahoochee Rangers and Chattahoochee Mounted Infantry. Eleventh Georgia Cavalry members were issued Cook & Brother carbines during the unit’s organization in Athens, and the regiment was assigned to the Department of South Carolina, Georgia, and Florida. Though the major part of the regiment went on to fight (and many to die) in Georgia and South Carolina, some details were dispatched to the mountains of Northeast Georgia and East Tennessee to diminish the actions and impact of bushwhackers, federal raiders, and Union sympathizers. Writing in 1920, Hawkins mentioned Lieutenant Gilmer, Capt. Trammell, and Findley’s Regiment though he does not otherwise identify these men. Many—maybe most—of those in the 11th Cavalry were teen-agers, and it is worth noting soldiers detailed to this mountain duty often were involved in brutal partisan encounters. These young men were impacted for life.
When the war ended, 18-year-old Robert Hawkins surrendered and was paroled with others at Kingston, GA. Like soldiers nationwide, Hawkins gladly took the road toward home; for him that was the farm where he grew up with his maternal grandparents in Hall County. His paternal grandparents had been William Eaton Hawkins and Permelia Carr Duncan who moved from Greenville, SC, to southwest Missouri; there they raised a family of eight sons and three daughters. Hawkins’ father, Wilbert Ashley, was the third of those children and found his way to Georgia to sell goods for an uncle, John E. Brown. Wilbert met Amanda Mayne, daughter of Matthew and Elizabeth Buckner Mayne who had moved to Hall County from Morgan County in 1839. Wilbert and Amanda married in 1843 and soon after Robert Duncan was born the couple moved to Alabama. There Amanda died after the birth of their second child. For unexplained reasons, Wilbert Hawkins returned to Missouri, leaving his two young children with his in-laws. Wilbert married two more times and fathered sons and daughters with each additional wife so that in total he had a dozen children.
Meanwhile, Robert Hawkins turned 19 on 8 May and, once home began working the farm with his grandfather, then about 74 years old. He was soon warming the seats of a Baptist church again, too. Both sides of the family were apparently Baptist which meant when Hawkins answered the bugle call he went with that training to sustain him. A connecting strand of Baptist affiliation ran through Hawkins’ ancestors at least to his paternal great-grandparents, William Eaton and Catherine Bolling Hawkins, who were buried at Reedy River Baptist Church cemetery in Travelers Rest near Greenville, SC. On the day he was racing for his life on a slow horse in Clayton County, GA, Hawkins probably invoked every bit of prayer life he knew in a desperate attempt to flee, hide, and live to fight another day. A biographer called Hawkins “a veteran of two wars”—that one where he served in Wheeler’s Cavalry and the holy war of a Christian. Likely, it was no surprise in August 1866 when Hawkins joined a local church.
Besides getting married in 1870 to Martha Ann McMillan and furthering his education by attending a year at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, KY, in the years after the war Hawkins shared his knowledge by teaching English grammar “in institutes where (less educated) brethren were gathered.” He farmed, too, because initially he and Martha lived with Grandfather Mayne. U.S. Census records show Martha kept house while the men, as well as a 12-year-old Leander Hawkins, worked the fields. In January 1879 the farming ended as Hawkins was ordained by Amy’s Creek Church in Habersham County with a presbytery of Dr. A. F. Underwood, and Reverends J. P. Osborne, H. H. Harris, Green Trotter, and Samuel Byers.
The 1880 Census shows Robert and Martha Hawkins as boarders with Henry and Cintha Brownlow in Mossy Creek community. The Brownlows, who were farmers, were a little younger than the Hawkinses and had two daughters. When 1900 rolled around, the Hawkinses had a home in Toccoa in Habersham County; living with them were Uncle John J. Mayne and a niece, Clara Brown, 12. At the next national census, Robert and Martha Hawkins, then 64 and 65 years old respectively, were boarding with Hannah C. Bennett and her four children in Quillians, Hall County. Before 1920, Martha died and Robert moved in with his sister, Elizabeth Millicent Rives, and her daughter and two grandchildren; two boarders lived with them. Tracing these records it is easy to see the family lived inter-generationally much of Robert's life, probably from financial necessity and for companionship. Robert and Martha lived as boarders and took in boarders during a time when extra income was a boost and apartment rentals were non-existent in rural areas.
As a Christian and as a minister Hawkins was mentored by his brother-in-law, well-known orator and preacher John E. Rives. Hawkins called Rives a “spiritual father” to the family. One of Hawkins’ half-brothers, William Benjamin Hawkins, became a Baptist preacher in South Carolina. Baptist life did seem to engulf the family, and the nature of the maturing indicates it was preferable to that early life in the military saddle. Robert Hawkins served in Chattahoochee, Clarksville, Sarepta, and Tugalo Baptist associations in Georgia, and some of the Georgia churches he served were Academy, Amy’s Creek, Blue Creek, Candler’s Creek, Center Grove, Clarksville, Concord, Damascus, Gillsville, Harmony, Level Grove, Line, Maysville, Mount Airy, Nails Creek, New Holland, Oconee, Toccoa, and Webb’s Creek. His South Carolina churches were at Little River, First Creek, and Williamston. In 1888 Hawkins preached the sermon organizing Clarkesville Baptist Church, and when he was called as pastor in 1893 Hawkins was given $50 per year in salary. During the Centennial session of Sarepta Baptist Association—held at Maysville Church in 1899—Hawkins presented a fifth of the history of the organization, focusing on “The Present Aspect of Missions.”
Robert and his two wives--Martha McMillan and Letha Ethel McKinney--gave themselves tirelessly to the churches Hawkins pastored for five-plus decades and to his role as superintendent of the Georgia Baptist Orphans Home in Hapeville. He and his first wife were known to sing in the evenings as they enjoyed their latter years. After Martha died, Hawkins (on 21 December 1921 in Spartanburg, SC) married one who, much like himself, was devoted to helping people whose lives were in “constant struggle for existence.” Letha Hawkins was a “constant inspiration” to others as she worked actively in state missions, in developing women’s contributions to Baptist life and missions, and in a home for motherless children in South Carolina. The widow of W. W. Finley, Letha Finley Hawkins is buried by her first husband in Landrum, SC.
After an equally self-sacrificing life, Hawkins—like many veterans of the 1860s war—entered old age financially drained. In 1919 and 1920 he made applications for a pension and sought confirmation of his service to gain that recompense. Given that it was fifty-five years past, Hawkins was hard-pressed to find men to vouch for him. “Doubtless some are living who were in that service but I do not know who or where they are,” he wrote. “So I can’t find any one who ‘of his own personal knowledge’ can give the testimony you require.” He had a letter from two siblings of the man who recruited him for bushwhacking duty and letters from a soldier paroled with him and two he served with. Hawkins summarized: “I have stated facts … I want the pension, I need it. If I can’t get it on the truth, I won’t lie to get it. I put the matter in the hands of those who know me and will cheerfully abide the decission (sic).” The pension was granted.
When he died on 22 February 1934 at age 87, Hawkins’ obituary extolled him as “one of the most loyal veterans of the cross,” a distinguished Confederate veteran, a writer of “helpful tracts” distributed without charge, and one who contributed to the “educational advancement of the community and section.” Said the writer: “In the city of Gainesville, where most of his beautiful life was spent, he has left a good name which is better than great riches. The Index extends the sympathies of the brotherhood to his loved ones.” B. J. W. Graham in Baptist Biography described Hawkins as “a man with a golden heart” who took every opportunity offered for furthering his education and sharing what he knew with others. “R. D. Hawkins is a man of high moral worth and noble spirit,” said Dr. Graham. “His greatness of spirit has been exemplified n the unselfish zeal he has shown for the larger cause. To gratify a selfish ambition, seek an advantage, or nurse a whim, has never appealed to him.”
When he died, Hawkins was memorialized by the Chattahoochee Baptist Association which set aside 30 minutes for “special thought” to his lifelong services during the 10-11 October 1934 meeting.
Hawkins was buried in Laurel Grove Cemetery in Cornelia, GA, with the Veterans Service Office spending $100 on burial expense because Hawkins “left no widow and no estate of any kind or value sufficient to pay the expenses of last illness and funeral.” Going home from the war was only the beginning of living with the impact the war had on his state. Little could he have known when he got his parole that seventy years later he would be buried with funds coming to him because of a year of military service he gave as a teen-age boy.
Compiled by Arlette Camp Copeland, Special Collections, Mercer University Tarver Library
Sources:
“Battle of Lovejoy’s Station,” Wikipedia
“Hawkins,” The Christian Index, 30 August 1928, 31
.
“R. D. Hawkins,” The Christian Index, 22 March 1934, 11.
Confederate Soldier’s (Pension) Application for Robert D. Hawkins
Application for Payment of Expenses of Last Illness and Funeral for Robert Duncan Hawkins
Certificate of Death, Georgia State Board of Health, Robert Duncan Hawkins
“Robert Duncan Hawkins,” Baptist Biography, volume II, edited by B. J. W. Graham, 138-141.
Seventy Years in Clarkesville Baptist Church, Mary L. Church, 1.
History of the Sarepta Baptist Association 1799-1999, 87.
1934 Chattahoochee Baptist Association Minutes, 20.
Robert Duncan Hawkins biographical file, Mercer University Tarver Library Special Collections, Macon, GA.
Thus begins an account of Confederate soldiers tearing across the country after in an encounter around Lovejoy Station, GA, in 1864. Written fifty-five years later by Robert Duncan Hawkins, the rousing account awakens the imagination so you can almost hear thumping hoof beats. Hawkins, who joined the cavalry at age 17, doesn’t indicate which fight at Lovejoy though clues indicate the 16 November action there.
“Paul Bryan and I barely escaped, he on his horse, which was more fleet than mine; I jumped from my horse and dodged into a thicket just in time to escape,” wrote Hawkins. “… After the chace I set out to get back to my company and found the camp late in the night, after another narrow escape from capture. By order of my Captain E. P. Bedell I proceeded on foot to Macon, along with the waggon (sic) train. At Macon, the company again present, we drew rations and while eating, a few shells from Sherman’s army made it necessary for immediate action. Our captain ordered those of us who were dismounted, to recross the river on the pontoon bridge, which we did with the waggon train.”
Camped near the river (presumably the Ocmulgee) with poor provisions for the cold, the men were anxious, and some “proved to be very much of a mob.” Continued Hawkins: “If any orders or report came from our command I knew nothing of it. Of course we were restless. We knew that a few men were left in our former camp at Athens, where we might fare better in winter weather.” Without “orders or permission from anyone” four headed towards Athens via Milledgeville. The one on horse left the three on foot who found out their lieutenant was at his home. “We went at once to him and gave a full account of ourselves,” wrote Hawkins. “He sent us home to clean up, for we needed it badly, and to report at Gainesville where he could keep in touch with us.” In days, Hawkins was among a squad organized by Dr. T. C. Gower and sent to North Georgia to suppress bushwhackers.
How did a nice youth like Hawkins get into a hotbed of politics and war like that? Born at Haynesville, Lowndes County, AL, on 8 May 1846 to Wilbert Ashley Hawkins and wife Amanda Melvina Mayne, Hawkins had largely grown up with his maternal grandparents in Hall County, GA. Records show Hawkins enlisted on 2 April 1864 at Mossy Creek Campground in White County, a Methodist revival meeting place near Skitt Mountain where a park/camping area is today. He probably enlisted with the 30th battalion Georgia Volunteer Cavalry, formed in May 1864. That battalion consolidated with four other companies on 14 November 1864, and the resulting formation was the 11th Georgia Cavalry Regiment; Hawkins was in Company B, also known as the Chattahoochee Rangers and Chattahoochee Mounted Infantry. Eleventh Georgia Cavalry members were issued Cook & Brother carbines during the unit’s organization in Athens, and the regiment was assigned to the Department of South Carolina, Georgia, and Florida. Though the major part of the regiment went on to fight (and many to die) in Georgia and South Carolina, some details were dispatched to the mountains of Northeast Georgia and East Tennessee to diminish the actions and impact of bushwhackers, federal raiders, and Union sympathizers. Writing in 1920, Hawkins mentioned Lieutenant Gilmer, Capt. Trammell, and Findley’s Regiment though he does not otherwise identify these men. Many—maybe most—of those in the 11th Cavalry were teen-agers, and it is worth noting soldiers detailed to this mountain duty often were involved in brutal partisan encounters. These young men were impacted for life.
When the war ended, 18-year-old Robert Hawkins surrendered and was paroled with others at Kingston, GA. Like soldiers nationwide, Hawkins gladly took the road toward home; for him that was the farm where he grew up with his maternal grandparents in Hall County. His paternal grandparents had been William Eaton Hawkins and Permelia Carr Duncan who moved from Greenville, SC, to southwest Missouri; there they raised a family of eight sons and three daughters. Hawkins’ father, Wilbert Ashley, was the third of those children and found his way to Georgia to sell goods for an uncle, John E. Brown. Wilbert met Amanda Mayne, daughter of Matthew and Elizabeth Buckner Mayne who had moved to Hall County from Morgan County in 1839. Wilbert and Amanda married in 1843 and soon after Robert Duncan was born the couple moved to Alabama. There Amanda died after the birth of their second child. For unexplained reasons, Wilbert Hawkins returned to Missouri, leaving his two young children with his in-laws. Wilbert married two more times and fathered sons and daughters with each additional wife so that in total he had a dozen children.
Meanwhile, Robert Hawkins turned 19 on 8 May and, once home began working the farm with his grandfather, then about 74 years old. He was soon warming the seats of a Baptist church again, too. Both sides of the family were apparently Baptist which meant when Hawkins answered the bugle call he went with that training to sustain him. A connecting strand of Baptist affiliation ran through Hawkins’ ancestors at least to his paternal great-grandparents, William Eaton and Catherine Bolling Hawkins, who were buried at Reedy River Baptist Church cemetery in Travelers Rest near Greenville, SC. On the day he was racing for his life on a slow horse in Clayton County, GA, Hawkins probably invoked every bit of prayer life he knew in a desperate attempt to flee, hide, and live to fight another day. A biographer called Hawkins “a veteran of two wars”—that one where he served in Wheeler’s Cavalry and the holy war of a Christian. Likely, it was no surprise in August 1866 when Hawkins joined a local church.
Besides getting married in 1870 to Martha Ann McMillan and furthering his education by attending a year at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, KY, in the years after the war Hawkins shared his knowledge by teaching English grammar “in institutes where (less educated) brethren were gathered.” He farmed, too, because initially he and Martha lived with Grandfather Mayne. U.S. Census records show Martha kept house while the men, as well as a 12-year-old Leander Hawkins, worked the fields. In January 1879 the farming ended as Hawkins was ordained by Amy’s Creek Church in Habersham County with a presbytery of Dr. A. F. Underwood, and Reverends J. P. Osborne, H. H. Harris, Green Trotter, and Samuel Byers.
The 1880 Census shows Robert and Martha Hawkins as boarders with Henry and Cintha Brownlow in Mossy Creek community. The Brownlows, who were farmers, were a little younger than the Hawkinses and had two daughters. When 1900 rolled around, the Hawkinses had a home in Toccoa in Habersham County; living with them were Uncle John J. Mayne and a niece, Clara Brown, 12. At the next national census, Robert and Martha Hawkins, then 64 and 65 years old respectively, were boarding with Hannah C. Bennett and her four children in Quillians, Hall County. Before 1920, Martha died and Robert moved in with his sister, Elizabeth Millicent Rives, and her daughter and two grandchildren; two boarders lived with them. Tracing these records it is easy to see the family lived inter-generationally much of Robert's life, probably from financial necessity and for companionship. Robert and Martha lived as boarders and took in boarders during a time when extra income was a boost and apartment rentals were non-existent in rural areas.
As a Christian and as a minister Hawkins was mentored by his brother-in-law, well-known orator and preacher John E. Rives. Hawkins called Rives a “spiritual father” to the family. One of Hawkins’ half-brothers, William Benjamin Hawkins, became a Baptist preacher in South Carolina. Baptist life did seem to engulf the family, and the nature of the maturing indicates it was preferable to that early life in the military saddle. Robert Hawkins served in Chattahoochee, Clarksville, Sarepta, and Tugalo Baptist associations in Georgia, and some of the Georgia churches he served were Academy, Amy’s Creek, Blue Creek, Candler’s Creek, Center Grove, Clarksville, Concord, Damascus, Gillsville, Harmony, Level Grove, Line, Maysville, Mount Airy, Nails Creek, New Holland, Oconee, Toccoa, and Webb’s Creek. His South Carolina churches were at Little River, First Creek, and Williamston. In 1888 Hawkins preached the sermon organizing Clarkesville Baptist Church, and when he was called as pastor in 1893 Hawkins was given $50 per year in salary. During the Centennial session of Sarepta Baptist Association—held at Maysville Church in 1899—Hawkins presented a fifth of the history of the organization, focusing on “The Present Aspect of Missions.”
Robert and his two wives--Martha McMillan and Letha Ethel McKinney--gave themselves tirelessly to the churches Hawkins pastored for five-plus decades and to his role as superintendent of the Georgia Baptist Orphans Home in Hapeville. He and his first wife were known to sing in the evenings as they enjoyed their latter years. After Martha died, Hawkins (on 21 December 1921 in Spartanburg, SC) married one who, much like himself, was devoted to helping people whose lives were in “constant struggle for existence.” Letha Hawkins was a “constant inspiration” to others as she worked actively in state missions, in developing women’s contributions to Baptist life and missions, and in a home for motherless children in South Carolina. The widow of W. W. Finley, Letha Finley Hawkins is buried by her first husband in Landrum, SC.
After an equally self-sacrificing life, Hawkins—like many veterans of the 1860s war—entered old age financially drained. In 1919 and 1920 he made applications for a pension and sought confirmation of his service to gain that recompense. Given that it was fifty-five years past, Hawkins was hard-pressed to find men to vouch for him. “Doubtless some are living who were in that service but I do not know who or where they are,” he wrote. “So I can’t find any one who ‘of his own personal knowledge’ can give the testimony you require.” He had a letter from two siblings of the man who recruited him for bushwhacking duty and letters from a soldier paroled with him and two he served with. Hawkins summarized: “I have stated facts … I want the pension, I need it. If I can’t get it on the truth, I won’t lie to get it. I put the matter in the hands of those who know me and will cheerfully abide the decission (sic).” The pension was granted.
When he died on 22 February 1934 at age 87, Hawkins’ obituary extolled him as “one of the most loyal veterans of the cross,” a distinguished Confederate veteran, a writer of “helpful tracts” distributed without charge, and one who contributed to the “educational advancement of the community and section.” Said the writer: “In the city of Gainesville, where most of his beautiful life was spent, he has left a good name which is better than great riches. The Index extends the sympathies of the brotherhood to his loved ones.” B. J. W. Graham in Baptist Biography described Hawkins as “a man with a golden heart” who took every opportunity offered for furthering his education and sharing what he knew with others. “R. D. Hawkins is a man of high moral worth and noble spirit,” said Dr. Graham. “His greatness of spirit has been exemplified n the unselfish zeal he has shown for the larger cause. To gratify a selfish ambition, seek an advantage, or nurse a whim, has never appealed to him.”
When he died, Hawkins was memorialized by the Chattahoochee Baptist Association which set aside 30 minutes for “special thought” to his lifelong services during the 10-11 October 1934 meeting.
Hawkins was buried in Laurel Grove Cemetery in Cornelia, GA, with the Veterans Service Office spending $100 on burial expense because Hawkins “left no widow and no estate of any kind or value sufficient to pay the expenses of last illness and funeral.” Going home from the war was only the beginning of living with the impact the war had on his state. Little could he have known when he got his parole that seventy years later he would be buried with funds coming to him because of a year of military service he gave as a teen-age boy.
Compiled by Arlette Camp Copeland, Special Collections, Mercer University Tarver Library
Sources:
“Battle of Lovejoy’s Station,” Wikipedia
“Hawkins,” The Christian Index, 30 August 1928, 31
.
“R. D. Hawkins,” The Christian Index, 22 March 1934, 11.
Confederate Soldier’s (Pension) Application for Robert D. Hawkins
Application for Payment of Expenses of Last Illness and Funeral for Robert Duncan Hawkins
Certificate of Death, Georgia State Board of Health, Robert Duncan Hawkins
“Robert Duncan Hawkins,” Baptist Biography, volume II, edited by B. J. W. Graham, 138-141.
Seventy Years in Clarkesville Baptist Church, Mary L. Church, 1.
History of the Sarepta Baptist Association 1799-1999, 87.
1934 Chattahoochee Baptist Association Minutes, 20.
Robert Duncan Hawkins biographical file, Mercer University Tarver Library Special Collections, Macon, GA.
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