Project #3613
W.
W. Dixon, Winnsboro, S. C.
FAIRFIELD COUNTY
George Gregg Mayes
(white) 72 Years Old [?]
George Gregg Mayes D. D., a retired
Presbyterian minister, is a resident of the town of Winnsboro,
Fairfield County, South Carolina. He is held in high regard by all
classes of people in this section of the State.
"I was born at Mayesville, South
Carolina, September 18, 1866. My father was Robert Peterson Mayes, a
son of Peterson Mayes, for whom the town of Mayesville was named.
Grandfather was a signer of the Ordinance of Session, by which South
Carolina withdrew from the Union of States then composing the United
States of America. The War Between the States, and its attendant
circumstances, deprived my father of a college education, but he was
possessed of a fine mind, sound principles, and lots of common
sense. He was a good all around business man and a safe counselor
among his associates who bore the brunt of the difficult times
following the Civil War. He was prominent in the Red Shirt movement,
which, as you know, resulted in the election of Wade Hampton and a
return of white supremacy and good government to South Carolina. He
died in 1881, when I was fifteen years of age.
"My mother was Caroline Chandler Mayes.
She was a very remarkable woman and a devout Christian. The home she
made for father and her children was a happy peaceful one and a
haven for the ministers of her church and the returned Confederate
soldiers. She wanted her children to learn in this way about God,
the Father of us all, and the true motives of patriotism that
actuated the soldiers of the South in sacrificing their lives and
property in defense of what they deemed moral and right.
"Of the ministers who frequented our
home, I remember Doctor James McDonald, Doctor W. J. McKay, Doctor
J. S. Cosby, Doctor W. W. Mills, and the Reverend William Cuttino
Smith. Association with such men early turned my mind toward a life
work in the ministry of the Gospel. My mother encouraged me in this
thought and bent all her tremendous energies to give me, as a basis
for the work, a good education. Oh, the anxiety of a mother's heart!
Who can measure it or sound its depth in sacrificial love? She was
overheard asking one of the godly men who visited us, 'Do you think
there is a promise of usefulness in Christ's service in George?' I
had weak lungs and was predisposed to tubercular trouble in boyhood
days, and she was anxious concerning my physcial as well as my moral
and mental fibre to undertake so great a work in the Master's
service for a whole lifetime.
"I attended the ordinary school in the
village of Mayesville for eleven years. Miss Sallie Leland was my
primary teacher. I was afterward prepared to enter the freshman
class of Davidson College. I spent one year at Davidson College and
then entered the sophomore class of the South Carolina College, now
the University of South Carolina. I was graduated in the class of
1888, with 'Magna cum laude' written on my diploma.
"My favorite studies always have been
history and philosophy, but the philosophy being taught at South
Carolina College was not altogether true. It stimulated me, however,
to seek for and find the truth.
"It was while there that I came to know
Doctor James Woodrow, and the power of his personality influenced
and continues to influence my thought and life. I consider him, bar
none, the greatest teacher I ever had. He knew of my mother's and my
design to become a minister of the Gospel and was kind enough to
give me extra help in my research for spiritual truth, and, above
all, he encouraged me to think for myself.
"While in college, I took an active part
in college Christian work. I was for two years head of the Y. M. C.
A. I was sent by the association as the student's representative to
the first students gathering at Northfield, Massachusetts. That was
in 1886. From there, I went to the 'Meeting of the Nations,' as
their first conference came to be known. I was one of the fifteen
students who met at sunrise during the conference one morning for
prayers and started the 'Students' Volunteer Movement for Foreign
Missions.'
"In the fall of 1888, I entered Princeton
Seminary and also Princeton University for post graduate study. Here
I was under such master minds as Patton, Warfield, Wm. H. Green, and
others. The life at Princeton did not rob me of my Southern
convictions and sentiments but rather intensified them in philosophy
under Professor Patton and Professor McCash. When I received my
certificate from the seminary, I also received my Master of Arts
degree from the university.
"In the summer of 1890, I was licensed to
preach by Harmony Presbytery.
"In March, 1891, I received a 'call' to
supply three churches in Sumter County. I next supplied, during the
summer, three churches in Anderson County. Shortly afterwards, I
received a call from the Presbyterian Church at Walhalla, South
Carolina. On the advice of Doctor John B. Adger, I accepted it and
arrived there on June 5, 1892, without an acquaintance of anyone in
the congregation. They had called me 'sight unseen.' They seemed
disappointed that I, in appearance, was a mere boy. The next day the
Presbytery met and confirmed the call. I remained in this pastorate
six years, and then I was sent by the Presbytery to the Edgefield
group of churches as a Home Missionary. I remained there 18 months,
when the second Presbyterian Church at Greenville, South Carolina,
prevailed upon me to accept their call.
"In Greenville, I had no easy task. It
was a struggling congregation, heavily in debt, but in six years we
climbed out of its difficulties and paid its debts. The work was too
hard a field for my dear wife, so we left Greenville for Concord and
Blackstock churches in Bethel Presbytery. These churches are in
Fairfield County. We remained in charge of Concord and Blackstock
congregations for five years, and then I was called to the
superintendency of the Home Mission work. It was a work congenial to
my taste. For six years I was engaged in this position. It took me
to all parts of South Carolina, and well-nigh into every pulpit of
the Presbyterian Church within the bounds of the State.
"The close attention and family demands
caused me to relinguish this special work, in 1915, and accept the
call of Sion Church at Winnsboro, South Carolina. On the 7th of
November, I entered upon the duties of the pastorate, and for
twenty-three years I have ministered and labored in this
community.
"I took an active part in the various
World War activities in drives to raise funds, sell bonds, and
conduct stamp sales of the government. The night of the armistice I
led a parade up and down Congress Street in Winnsboro. It was the
largest crowd ever assembled in Winnsboro. I also led in a prayer of
thanksgiving for victory and peace at a service conducted at the
foot of the Confederate Monument at the intersection of Washington
and Congress streets.
"After the World War, I busied myself to
help secure from the War Department one of the Y. M. C. A. huts at
Camp Jackson, Columbia, South Carolina, and to transfer it to
Winnsboro as a community house for the town and surrounding county.
I was successful in doing this, and I superintended the removal and
reconstruction of it.
"During my twenty-three years of
pastorate at Winnsboro, a new church building was erected and paid
for. The membership of the church increased by 33 1/3
percent.
"I was one of the youngest moderators the
church has ever had to preside over the Synod. I represented our
church in its General Assembly eight times and was a member of the
board of trustees of the Presbyterian College at Clinton, South
Carolina, for twenty years. This college conferred on me the
honorary degree of Doctor of Divinity.
"When I reached the age of seventy years,
I carried out a long declared purpose of resigning the active
pastorate work of the denomination. After one year, and six months,
the church and the Presbytery consented to the release. On the 14th
of October, 1891, when I was at the pastorate in Walhalla, South
Carolina, I married Alethea S. Cosby, a daughter of Doctor J. S. and
Mary Low Cosby. Through the many years that have followed, she has
proven to be a true helpmate, the chief adviser and counsellor of my
life.
"To us have been born six children, two
sonas and four daughters. Our first born son died in infancy the
other son, F. B. Mayes, has been ordained to the Gospel ministry and
is the pastor of the Presbyterian Church at Beaufort, South
Carolina. Mary, Mrs. J. M. Workman, is a resident of Winnsboro.
Alethea is married to Doctor. R. T. Douglas, and lives in Winnsboro.
Carrie, wife of C. M. Turner, lives in Ellenton, South
Carolina.
"Customs? When I was a boy, no
instrumental music was permitted in the home, except Watts' Hymns. A
ride on a railroad train was a sure sign that you were on the road
to perdition. One's hands would go up in horror at a golf game,
{Begin deleted text}[?]{End deleted text} a pavilion dance, or a
theater show on Sunday. Sight-seeing in conveyances and swimming at
a public resort or beach would have been scored as as partaking of
the world, the flesh, and the devil. These things are toned down
now, in the light of the age. They are classed as innocent pleasures
by the general public and many church members. My opinion has
suffered little change from what they were deemed in the old
days.
"I have been asked many times why there
is a decrease in church attendance on the Sabbath and at prayer
meetings in mid-week. 1. The radio sermons have had something to do
with the decrease. 2. Sunday sermons in Newspapers. 3. The disparity
between the rich and poor, as to members, is greater. There are
fewer well-do-do people of leisure now and more hard-laboring folks
than there used to be. The latter really need a rest, or think they
do, when Sunday comes around, and many of the whole number are at
work on prayer meeting nights. Some have schooled themselves that
God didn't consider it of such importance as to ordain and provide
for prayer meeting night. 4. The multiplicity of social clubs and
card parties in another hindrance. 5. Ministers are somewhat to
blame, too. Many of them are place hunters and are not capable of
holding the membership of the church to regular periods of formal
services nor the congregation to continued church sermons from
Sabbath to Sabbath throughout the year.
"One thing worthy of notice, along this
line, is that from year to year Church membership increases in spite
of all the foregoing enumerated causes that militate against its
increase. I think that the regulation of all sumptuary laws and
rules of society for its government should have been left primarily
to the family and secondarily to the church, instead of to the State
legislature.
"One thing I have observed about
legislaturing morals with the public is that it is done at the
expense of the home, the church, and the school governments. And
when there are too many such enactments by the legislature, it
diminishes the respect for the whole body of the law, and the
individual gets into the habit of selecting the ones he intends to
respect and the ones he is going to disregard. And he winds up by
ignoring them all, when any one of them runs counter and
contrari-wise to his or her self-interest.
Source: Library of Congress - American Life
Histories: Manuscripts from the Federal Writers' Project, 1936-1940.
