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Trinity United
Methodist Church
Newberry, SC
1835 -
1985
By Charlie M. Senn
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The Circuit
Riders
Trinity United Methodist Church stands
in a pleasant rural area about ten miles southwest of
the county town of Newberry, western South Carolina. The
spacious grounds of the church lie on the crest of a
low, sandy ridge on the watershed between the eastern
and western forks of Beaverdam Creek.
A highway,
called Trinity Road, follows the ridge in a north and
south direction and bisects the church lands. The
handsome brick parsonage, surrounded by shrubbery,
lawns, and hardwoods, lies west of the road. East of the
road, but not quite opposite the parsonage, stands the
brick sanctuary, beautiful in its simplicity. A large
educational annex, with its long axis at right angles to
that of the sanctuary, lies at the back. Around these
structures is a broad, rolling lawn, with a large grove
of hardwood trees on the lower slope of the ridge in the
rear.
At the southern end of the church property
is a low hill which is crowned by an extensive cemetery.
This area is sometimes used for Easter sunrise services.
Many visitors have remarked that Trinity has one of the
prettiest church sites in western South
Carolina.
Trinity's name originated because three
pioneer churches combined to form the present church. It
was in 1835 that two early churches, Kadesh and Moon's
Meeting House, decided to join forces in order to
enhance their Christian witness, and also to ease the
burden of the over-worked Circuit Riders, who had many
small churches in their charge.
At a spot which is now in the northern part of the
cemetery, volunteers from the consolidating churches met
to cut down the forest trees and build a house for the
worship of God. The new church was first called Kadesh,
the name of one of the original churches. But two years
later, after the accession of Shady Grove, another small
church, the new house of worship was called Trinity.
The story of Trinity church properly includes an
account of the three original churches. It should also
include the story of the Circuit Riders, or itinerant
Methodist preachers, who came into the back country of
the upper Carolinas in the days immediately following
the American Revolution.
The first Circuit Rider in South Carolina was the
Rev. James Foster, a native of Virginia. In Virginia and
in Maryland Foster had manned several vast circuits of
preaching places. Making it a rule never to miss an
appointment to preach, he had ridden far over the
countryside in all kinds of weather. Conscientiously and
eloquently this gifted man had proclaimed the word of
God until he was regarded as one of the leading
preachers of America.
Overwork and grief because of the death of his
beloved wife had finally ruined Foster's health. With a
Bible and a few personal belongings in his saddlebags,
the sick man mounted his faithful horse and rode away
southward into the wilderness. The pathway that he
followed was an old buffalo trail which had been used by
the Indians and which the white pioneers were slowly
widening to make a wagon road.
For many days Foster rode southward across rolling
hills and beneath the great trees of the primeval
forest. Occasionally he stopped at some lonely cabin.
Often he camped at night amid the dark shadows and the
mysterious sounds of the forest. As he rode his strength
came back and his health returned.
After many days the lonely traveller came to the land
of the friendly Catawba Indians. Just beyond this area
flowed a great river. To the Indians this was
Esaw-Huppedaw, the Line River. Foster forded the great
stream, which white men were beginning to call Broad
River.
Beyond the river a trail led onward into the hills.
But the lonely horseman followed another trail that
turned to the right. At last axes were heard ringing in
the forest. Several big hunting dogs rushed out, barking
furiously.
Several stalward pioneers, clad in homespun garments,
lowered their axes and glanced anxiously at the muskets
which they had stacked against a tree nearby. Then, with
a glad cry, a big man dropped his ax and strode forward
to grasp the preacher's hand.
Foster had found some of his former neighbors, of old
Virginia, who had preceded him along the wilderness
trail. The settlers asked the wandering preacher to
begin holding church services for their families. Soon
the Rev. James Foster became widely known in the
scattered wilderness settlements along Broad River and
in the adjacent hills.
This area had recently became known as Newberry
District. In another generation it would be called
Newberry County. But Foster soon established a vast
circuit of preaching places that extended far beyond the
bounds of Newberry. It is thought that he sometimes
preached in the western Newberry area. Old records show
that an early settler gave two acres of land, near the
later Chappell's Ferry, for the establishment of a
Methodist Church, to be known as Trinity. But the church
was probably never built.
Foster's health was declining because of the strain
of overwork. Some of the settlers wrote letters to
Methodist leaders in Virginia and Maryland and asked
that more preachers be sent to South Carolina. These
letters were seen by an Englishman, Francis Asbury, who
had come to the New World as a missionary. Asbury had
remained in the new country during the Revolution and
had become an American. Now, to this earnest, eloquent
preacher, these calls for help from the South were like
the Macedonian vision of St. Paul.
A few months later, at the famed Christmas
Conference, in Lovely Lane Chapel, in Baltimore, in
1784, the Methodist Episcopal Church of Ameriea was
established. Francies Asbury was elected one of the
first Bishops. Soon Bishop Asbury and several preachers
were riding southward on horseback.
On this trip the new Bishop started Methodist work in
the South Carolina coastal towns. He also set up the
North Carolina Conference. James Foster's vast Broad
River Circuit, in upper South Carolina, became part of
the North Carolina Conference.
The Rev. James Foster, despite failing health,
continued to preach until March 22,1787, when the South
Carolina Conference was established. After this the
veteran Circuit Rider, aged before his time, spent his
few remaining days wandering about among his many
friends. Everywhere he was received as a welcome guest.
Somewhere in the great Broad River valley, in an old
family cemetery lost in the forest, lies sleeping a
Prince of Israel.
Other Circuit Riders took up the work of James
Foster. Some of these men had been soldiers of the
American Revolution. They faced hostile mobs and braved
the dangers of the many outlaws and bandit gangs lurking
in the deep woods along the lonely trails.
Miserably paid, with salaries of only about 80
dollars or less, annually, and furnishing their own
horses, these hardy men kept their preaching
appointments even if it meant riding through rainstorms,
snow, and sleet. In bad weather it was said that nothing
would be abroad except crows and Methodist
preachers.
Under such circumstances, most of the Circuit Riders
were necessarily bachelors, as St. Paul had been.
Like the early monks of the Middle Ages, who went out
to bring the heathen north of Europe to Christ, these
sturdy missionaries forded, or swam, unbridged and
swollen rivers. In frontier regions, where less than six
percent of the people belonged to any Christian Church,
these brave Circuit Riders proclaimed the word of God in
taverns, blacksmith shops, and log cabins. Often they
preached beneath the great oaks of the primeval
forest.
Where ten or more regular hearers could be assembled,
Methodist Societies were formed. Many of these societies
developed into churches. These churches usually met in
some settler's log cabin. But soon log meeting houses
with dirt floors and rude benches were built.
In a frontier land where most people were illiterate,
the Circuit Riders sold cheap but well-chosen books to
the few who could read. They also encouraged the people
to set up private schools in Methodist Church buildings
or in nearby homes.
By March 17, 1789, a series of daring and
self-sacrificing Circuit Riders had added so many
preaching placed to the Broad River Circuit that it
reached from the Dutch Fork to Pacolet, near
Spartanburg. It took weeks for the pastor to make his
rounds, even though he preached almost every day. So it
became necessary to break up the Broad River Circuit. In
this process, most of Newberry District became part of
the new Bush River Circuit.
Another series of able Circuit Riders soon expanded
the new Bush River Circuit until it reached almost to
the Savannah River and also to the present site of
Clemson College. With a senior Circuit Rider and one or
two junior ministers travelling separate routes, it
still took weeks of almost daily church services to make
the rounds of the circuit. Most of the preachers died in
their thirties because of overwork and exposure to the
elements while travelling on horseback.
Officials called Class Leaders were appointed in
every church. These men substituted for the absent
pastor, gave religious instruction, and tried to
cultivate the spiritual life of the community. They also
led the people in helping sick neighbors, whether
Methodists or not. These early church members of the
frontier would plant the crops of those who were sick or
injured. They cultivated the fields, harvested, chopped
the firewood, did the washing, and nursed the sick.
Early in the 1790's, while George Washington was
President, the Circuit Riders of the Bush River Circuit
were gratified by the appearance of a young medical
docror, from Scotland.
St. Luke, the good physician, could have been
scarcely more welcome than was Dr. Meredith William Moon
in that land where doctors were very scarce and poorly
trained. Dr. Moon settled on rented land on Goose Pond
Creek (now Sharp's Creek), near Chappell's Ferry, in
western Newberry District. Work quickly spread that the
young doctor was very good. On horseback, in wagons and
in ox carts patients came from 60 miles
away.
In bad weather the doctor himself rode many miles to
visit bed-ridden patients. Much of his scanty
pay was in farm produce. But in a few years the young
doctor bought the farm that he had rented. Payment was
in English pounds, which were still in general
circulation.
But Doctor Moon was shocked to see that many of
the wounds and injuries that he repaired and many
of the illnesses that he treated were caused by
drunkenness, inexcusable violence, brutality, and
licentious living. Some of the ignorance and
poverty had the same causes. These people needed a
physician for their souls as well as a medical doctor
for their bodies.
The young doctor began to make preaching appointments
and to conduct church services when his busy schedule
permitted. Word spread that Dr. Moon was a good
preacher. Several preaching places developed. One of
these, near Goose Pond Creek, became permanent.
Eventually Dr. Moon bought additional land two miles
from historic Saluda Old Town. There, within the memory
of people still living, the powerful Cherokee Indians
had met an English colonial Governor of South
Carolina and had made a treaty by which they turned the
Newberry area over to the white men.
Dr. Moon moved to his new land and built there a
large, two-story house so that his many patients from
distant areas could spend the night. Nearby, with the
aid of neighbors, the Doctor built a stout, log
Church. There, at last, the congregation that had
assembled on Goose Pond Creek had a permanent house of
worship. This church soon became known as Moon's Meeting
House. Sometimes it was called Moon's Chapel.
Dr. Moon soon became well known as a good Methodist
local preacher. Another good local preacher, the Rev.
William Harmon, who was a local farmer, filled the
pulpit when Dr. Moon's patients kept him
away.
To the Moon Home and to Moon's
Meeting House the famed Bishop Francis Asbury came once
annually for many years during his long horseback
journeys from Maine to Georgia and across the western
mountains. It was at Moon's Meeting House that the aged
bishop preached his last sermon in South Carolina on
Sunday, Nov. 26, 1815.
Later Bishop Robert R. Roberts visited the Moon
house. There, too, came the great evangelist James
Russell, the Billy Sunday or Billy Graham of his
time. Rev. Russell was mortally ill when he stopped at
the Moon home. The Moon family detained him and cared
for him until he died Jan. 16, 1825. The great
evangelist lies buried in the Moon cemetery.
During his journeys through Newberry District, Bishop
Asbury found a large and flourishing Quaker settlement
that extended for many miles along Bush River valley and
which was expanding into the adjacent hills. These were
good people and very good citizens. But many non-Quaker
families also lived in this Quaker settlement and around
its fringes.
In an effort to minister to these many families who
were not Quakers, Bishop Asbury, on Jan. 1, 1800,
sent Moses Wilson and Jeremiah Russell to the Bush River
Circuit.
Rev. Russell began to hold meetings on the property
of a Quaker friend, on the extreme western edge of the
Quaker settlement. This area adjoined a large spring
called White Licks. There the deer often came to lick
the whitelooking soil, which evidently contained small
amounts of salt, or gypsum.
Soon Jehue Inman, the owner of the property, deeded
four acres of land to the Society of Friends for use in
establishing a meeting house to be known as White Licks
Meeting. The Methodist neighbors probably helped build
the house, which was a good log structUre. The
Methodists were allowed to use the building when the
Quakers were not having service.
Soon, however, a great catastrophe occurred. There
was a famed Quaker preacher named Zachary Dicks, who was
believed to be a prophet. In 1804 this man came to
Bush River Meeting, located on the present Dennis Dairy
Road. There, at a great meeting, Friend Dicks warned the
Quakers to flee from this land which was becoming
contaminated by slavery. He told them to go to another
land where all men were free. Friend Dicks also foretold
a great war and said that the child was then living who
would see it.
Within a dozen years the Quakers of Newberry sold
their land, sometimes at one-fifth its value, loaded
their families into covered wagons, and moved to Ohio,
where they founded the town of West Milton, west of
Dayton. A few families went. to Clinton County, in
southeastern Indiana. Only about a dozen families, or
less, remained in Newberry, where they gradually became
Methodists, Baptists, or members of other churches.
Meanwhile Methodist services continued at White Licks
Meeting House. But the need of a private school was very
acute. As a result, the Methodists joined their
non-Methodist neighbors in buying the meeting house from
the Quaker trustees. The structure was disassembled and
moved to a more convenient location, where it was again
erected.
The new site of the meeting house was about a mile
west of the present Silverstreet, a short distance south
of a modern-day railway crossing now remembered as the
scene of a terrible school bus wreck. A big chipping
mill stands there now.
Opposite the resurrected meeting house stood a large
plantation house belonging to the Billy Coates family,
the original owners of the site of Newberry Village. As
a result, the log meeting house became known as Coates
Meeting House, although some people called it White
Licks for a long time. The place was now a private
school, a forerunner of the later Deadfall School. The
Methodist continued to use the structure. Indeed all
denominations could use the building when school was not
in session.
Soon, however, the Methodists decided to move to
another site two miles further north, where the road
from Coates Meeting House intersected the east and west
Laurens Courthouse Road. This is nearly two -miles
northwest of the present Silverstreet. There four acres
of land were secured.
Since there were many great oak trees on the site,
the church was named Shady Grove, its third name. A
cemetery was started on a long hill that sloped
gradually down to a little stream behind the church. The
oldest readable date in the cemetery is 1807. But there
are many graves that are probably older.
Because of the Methodist emphasis on education, a
small private school was started in the church building.
There a long succession of pedagogues held sway. They
maintained strict discipline and kept order with liberal
use of elbow grease and hickory oil. With little
equipment other than oldfashioned slates and soapstone
pencils, they taught the three R's and good
penmanship.
Shady Grove Church faced grave difficulties at its
very beginning. Some of the best families in the
vicinity had been dedicated Tories during the American
Revolution; others had been equally dedicated Whigs.
Although the war had ended a generation earlier, old
hatreds still lingered.
Gradually, however, old inherited grudges faded and
new friendships were formed as good people worked
together in the church and as boys played together
during recess at the day school.
But very soon another serious problem developed. The
old families began to move away and to follow the good
Quakers across the mountains and through the wilderness
to the new lands beyond the Ohio River. This migration
to the northwestern territories continued for many
years.
As the old families moved away, others came into the
community to buy or rent the vacant lands. But some of
these people had originally come from areas in Europe
where rulers and wealthy people, who made a great show
of being religious, had oppressed and exploited the poor
families on their lands. As a result, many of these
families had a tradition of prejudice and antipathy
toward the church. Several times the congregation at
Shady Grove was menaced by disorderly bands of
rowdies.
But the church persisted. Its influence became like
the leaven which, in one of Christ's parables, a woman
hid in three measures of meal until all was leavened. As
they saw the good work of the church the newcomers lost
some of their hostility. Some of them became Christians
and began to join the church.
But there were many disappointments. There was often
some backsliding, and sometimes there were cases of
going at full speed in reverse.
Near the church lived one very notorious old
reprobate whose chief distinction was his profane,
blaspheming mouth. One summer, during revival meeting,
this hardened old sinner attended service at Shady Grove
one night simply because all his neighbors were doing
so. There was a wonderful, soul-shaking sermon, and the
old man's heart was touched. Swept by emotion he
resolved to turn over a new leaf and lead a better life.
He even went so far as to make a noisy profession of
religion. He promised fervently never to curse
again.
For some time the new convert actually lived a much
better life. But he went home one day and found that a
big, old hog had broken out of her pen and had made a
complete shambles of his potato patch. A young neighbor
came to help get the run-away porker back into her pen.
But the old hog had no intention of returning to her
pen. She led the two panting, perspiring men on a merry
chase through half the thorn-thickets and brier-patches
of the countryside.
The old man became so angry that he forgot himself
and began to say terrible things. The young friend
listened to these lurid, brimstone-burning outbursts in
amazement. At last he said, "I thought that you told the
preacher that you would never curse again."
The old reprobate uttered another terrible blaspheny.
Then he said that he wished that the pig were down
below, in the inferno, with the preacher tied to her
tail.
Despite such disappointments, however, the good work
of the church continued. Ignorance and wickedness both
shrank into the background as the message of the gospel
and the church-sponsored school did their work. Shady
Grove community became a good place in which to
live.
The Daniel Stewart family furnished much of the
leadership at Shady Grove.
At the turn of the century there was a large area
west of Newberry Village where there were no churches.
In 1912, as the storm clouds of a second war with
England were gathering, the two Circuit Riders of the
Bush River Circuit, John S. Capers and Allen Turner,
came into this area. On the Belfast Road, seven miles
west of Newberry Village, a series of meetings was held.
A Methodist Society was formed. A church soon developed.
Land was secured from William Plunkett, who deeded two
acres on a wooded hill. Mrs. Plunkett, who was
illiterate, signed the deed with a cross.
The name chosen for the new church was Kadesh. This
ancient word, which means "holy" had been the name of an
oasis which had been frequented by the wandering tribes
of Israel in the wilderness and which, afterward, was
pleasantly remembered. This was a good name for the new
church. The families that first joined Kadesh, like the
tribes of ancient Israel, had come from far.
The Plunketts, who were originally from Ireland, had
been captains of tall, square-rigged ships engaged in
the China trade. The Gilders, who had recently come from
Philadelphia, had also been sailors and sea-captains.
The Cromers were from the state of Baden, in Germany,
near romantic Heidelberg. The Murdocks were from the
Highlands of Scotland, and the Jones family was from
Wales.
Colonel James L. Moseley Gilder, who was born in
Philadelphia, taught a school in Kadesh Church many
years. Kadesh soon became a very good community in which
to live.
In 1816 weather was so bad and so cold that the year
was almost literally without a summer. As a result,
there were extensive crop failures. Famine was narrowly
averted in America. This catastrophe was apparently
caused by clouds of volcanic dust resulting from the
explosion of the volcano of Tamboro, on the island of
Sumba, in the East Indies, in 1815. But the time of
scarcity passed away and the churches of Newberry County
flourished.
In 1820 Kadesh, Shady Grove, Moon's Meeting House,
and many other churches were in their bloom. The Bush
River Circuit had become so large that, on Jan. 13,
1820, it was divided and the Newberry Circuit was
established. This area was made part of the Broad River
District.
The new circuit started with everything in its favor.
Spiritual life flourished on a high level. Coleman
Carlisle, the senior pastor, was one of the best and
strongest preachers of the South Carolina Conference.
The junior Circuit Rider was the energetic John L.
Jerry.
The Presiding Elder of the Broad River District was
the very eminent and respected Rev. Daniel Asbury. Mr.
Asbury was a veteran Circuit Rider with a remarkable
story.
About forty years earlier, during the early days of
the American Revolution, Daniel Asbury, who was a boy in
Virginia, had gone to live for a time with some
relatives who had gone with Daniel Boone into the
Kentucky wilderness. There the lad had been captured
during a raid by a war party of Shawnee Indians. The
Indians had taken their prisoners to one of their
fortified towns in the forests north of the Ohio
River.
Asbury had been a captive among the warlike Shawnee
Indians in Ohio, and later in Canada. He had escaped and
had returned to his native Virginia where, he became a
Christian and, eventually, a Methodist minister. The
story of this veteran and consecrated, old Circuit Rider
deserves more investigation.
With such energetic and devoted leaders in charge,
the churches of Newberry circuit were like ancient
Israel in the palmy days of the young Solomon. It seemed
that surely God's blessing was upon the land and that
further advancement, both spiritual and material, was
inevitable.
But the incredible soon happened. The lure of new
lands in the western wilderness began to entice away the
farmers of Newberry. Men began selling their lands,
loading their families into covered wagons, and moving
away to new lands in Ranklin County, Georgia. Later the
migration continued into western Georgia, the Gulf
States, western Louisiana, and more distant Texas. Some
of the people whom Dr. Moon had known were had known
were more distant during the Texan Revolution. Others
followed Kit Carson, a decendant of the Carsons of
Saluda Old Town, across the broad western plains and the
Rocky Mountains.
Almost entire communities of Newberry County were
depopulated. Churches and private schools dried up.
Pastors followed their parishioners to their new homes.
Some churches disappeared. The loss of leaders crippled
the remaining churches and caused their spiritual
decline. A series of good preachers and Presiding Elders
did their best. But the decline continued.
Parts of Newberry County were reverting to
wilderness. But wealthy planters began buying the lands
of departing migrants and building up large plantations.
Then black slaves of African origin were brought in to
work the fields. For the first time people of African
descent became numerous in some parts of Newberry
County.
Some of these blacks were only one or two generations
removed from their tribal homes in pagan Africa. Heathen
superstitions and the influence of witch doctors, or
"conjurs;' were very strong among these lost children of
the "Dark Continent." It was very important that these
newcomers be Christianized.
But the churches of Newberry County, including all
denominations, had become so weak that they seemed quite
unlikely to evangelize anyone. To make matters even
worse, most of the church leaders and many of the best
preachers had joined the tide of migration to the
southwest. At one time over forty percent of the males
born in South Carolina were living in various states of
the southwest or the far west.
Meanwhile, around the church buildings of Newberry
County, thickets of briers, thorns, and wild crabs were
springing up in areas where the parishioners had
formerly parked their wagons and hitched their horses
and mules. A general revival of the churches was badly
needed. |
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Sketch by Ann Senn
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The First Sanctuary, built in
1835, stood in the northern part of the present
cemetery. It was replaced in 1886.
In
1835, during a religious revival, the
congregations of three early churches merged and
built the first sanctuary of Trinity Methodist
Episcopal Church on land secured from David W.
Waters and his wife, Sarah Toland Waters.
The Rev. Henry Bass was Presiding Elder of
Cokesbury District, and the pastors of Newberry
Circuit, to which trinity belonged, were H. W.
Ledbetter and William C. Ferrell.
The site
of the original structure is now the northern part
of the cemetery. The grave of James Pinkney
Williams lies where once the pulpit stood.
This early church was plain in its architecture,
with hand-hewn sills, rafters, and studding, and
was largely pegged together. The building
was long and narrow, extending east and
west. The main entrance, on the north, was
opposite the pulpit, which was on the south
side. A second entrance was at the eastern
end where benches were reserved for the colored
brethren.
In 1886, this early structure was
replaced by a larger sanctuary nearby.
(History
compiled by Charlie M. Senn - Church Historian,
August 1968) | The
First Sanctuary
As the third decade of the nineteenth
century ended, the Methodist churches of upper South
Carolina faced very severe problems. Large scale
migration to wilderness lands of the southwest was
draining away many of the most energetic church members,
including many church leaders.
Churches languished as the sturdy
farmers who had supported them loaded their families
into covered wagons and drove away, over terrible roads,
toward the fabulous new lands of. the southwest.
As the farmers migrated to new frontier
areas, their abandoned farms, badly eroded in many
cases, began to revert to wilderness. But, very soon,
great planters came to buy many of the vacant, little
farms and consolidate them into large plantations. Then
black slaves, of African origin, were brought in as farm
workers. For the first time people of African origin
became numerous in some parts of Newberry County.
The Methodist Church had always opposed
slavery. It would continue its opposition as long as
slavery existed on Earth. But human bondage had existed
in most countries in early times. In Africa it still
flourished, as it would continue to do for more than
another hundred years. In West Africa powerful black
kings and tribal chieftains sold their captured enemies,
and sometimes their own subjects, to the Moors and Arabs
or to European and Yankee slave traders. Thousands of
these helpless prisoners, some of whom had themselves
been slave owners in their own country, were carried
away by ship to plantations in many countries.
The slave trade was like the use of
drugs or of alcohol; it was very hard to stop. Despite
the traditional Methodist opposition to slavery, a time
came when some Methodists owned slaves. However, most
Methodists were poor people who could not afford slaves.
Wealthy people usually joined churches with more social
prestige. Yet, the increasing population of Africans
made ever more urgent the task of Christianizing these
children and grandchildren of pagans from West African
jungles.
At the same time, the churches were
drying up and disappearing so fast that they seemed
unlikely to do much evangelization anywhere. Thickets of
briar, thorn, and wild plums were springing up in many
churchyards.
Such was the situation when Bishop
Joshua Soule, of Maine convened the South Carolina
Conference in January, 1830. The Bishop expanded
missionary work among the slaves. He also created
another district and reduced the number of circuits in
order to lighten the work of the Presiding Elders.
Newberry Circuit now became part of the
new Saluda District. The circuit pastor was David
Derrick, from the Dutch Fork. A year earlier, on this
same circuit, Mr. Derrick had preached his heart out.
But nothing had happened. Yet, since no better man could
be found, Derrick was sent back to his same charge. The
Newberry Circuit looked like Ezekiel's Valley of dry
bones. But Derrick rode his horse to abandoned New
Chapel and went to work on the wild crab thicket around
the sanctuary. A sharp ax soon disposed of the crab
trees. A few people assembled for worship service.
Derrick preached as he had never preached before, and he
sang a solo. Word spread that the circuit pastor was a
great preacher and a still greater singer. The
congregation grew. The Herberts, a Quaker family began
to attend because their Bush River Meeting had dried up
after most of the Quakers went to Ohio. Then the
Herberts, talented Christian leaders, joined New Chapel.
A great revival began at New Chapel. The revival spread
to Kadesh, Moon's Meeting House, Shady Grove, and all
the other Methodist Churches.
Soon the revival spread to all the
other denominations. Newberry County was in ferment; the
valley of dry bones was becoming filled with life. First
Baptist Church, Newberry Station (now Central
Methodist), and Aveleigh Presbyterian Church were
founded in Newberry. Northward and southward swept the
revival, through the seaboard states.
Once more the churches were alive. But
the population was scanty and the rural churches were
weak. Church consolidations were attempted in order to
ease the burden of the over-worked Circuit Riders and
also to enhance the efficiency and Christian witness of
the church. Despite opposition and serious problems,
Kadesh and Moon's Meeting House decided to unite, hoping
that other small churches would join them.
Land was secured from David Waters,
Jr., a grandson of Maj. Thomas Waters of the American
Revolution. The site was on the crest of a sandy ridge,
between the eastern and western forks of Beverdam Creek.
Mr. Waters also deeded to the church a right-of-way to
the Lewis Spring, near the foot of the eastern slope of
the ridge. On the deeds were several blank spaces which
were to be filled with the name of the new church when
that name was chosen. Those spaces are still blank
today. The church officials hoped that other churches
would join them and were uncertain about what name might
be chosen by an expanded church membership.
At the forest-covered site of the new
church, in August, 1835, a gorup of farmers, volunteers
from Kadesh and Moon's Meeting House, began felling
magnificent trees that had probably sheltered the red
men of the wilderness only 80 years earlier. Then oxen
snaked out logs which were laborously hauled to a
distant sawmill, which were probably run by water power.
Broadaxes and foot-adzes were used to square and smooth
huge sills. Then the heavy framework was erected and
fastened together with wooden pegs inserted into holes
drilled with augurs. The rafters were poles cut and
peeled in the nearby forest. The rough boards from the
sawmill were smoothed with jackplanes. The square nails
used were made by a blacksmith. The shingles were boards
made from short sections of tree trunks driven with an
instrument called a "fro".
The completed structure was long and
rather narrow, with its long axis east and west. There
was a door on the north and another at the eastern end.
The plain but handsome and well-built pulpit was on the
south side. There were good benches, which were made
locally.
Some benches at the eastern end of the
church were reserved for the black brethren. This was
symbolical of a new age and of new problems that were
developing. Most of the blacks came from two nearby
plantations owned by non-Methodist planters. Most of the
Trinity people were poor, and few of them ever owned
slaves. Wealthy people generally joined more fashionable
churches.
The northern end of the cemetery now
occupies the original church site. The grave of Mr.
James Pinkney Williams lies where the pulpit once
stood.
Trinity Church today has an authentic
sketch of the original sanctuary. This sketch, made by
Miss Ann Senn from various descriptions, was pronounced
accurate by several aged people who remembered the early
sanctuary.
The first communion set was presented
to the new church by Mrs. Jane Gilder Peterson and her
husband, John Peterson. Mr. Peterson was a good
Universalist, but his wife was a daughter of Col. James
L. Mosley Gilder of old Kadesh. In those days most
communion sets consisted of one pitcher and one goblet.
Since the germ theory was unknown, and since tradition
said that Christ and his apostles all drank from the
same two-handed mug, everyone at communion drank from
the same goblet. But many of the men chewed tobacco, and
most of them had beards and mustaches. As a result, the
communion wine or juice often tasted like tobacco. So
Mrs. Gilder gave a pitcher and two goblets, one of which
was reserved for the fair ladies and the children.
The name initially used for the new
church was Kadesh, the name of one of the original
churches. But two years later, after the accession of
Shady Grove, another early church, the name "Trinity"
came into use.
It is likely that the people of the new
church held worship services in an old, log house on the
church grounds while the sanctuary was under
construction. Seventy years after the new church was
built, a strong, log house, with a huge chimney, stood
near the northern end of the church property. This
structure was used as a private school in its final
years.
A year before Trinity was founded, the
name of Saluda District had been changed to Mt. Ariel
District. Then the name "Cokesbury District" was adopted
in February, 1835. The veteran Henry Bass, son of a
Boston patriot of the American Revolution, was Presiding
Elder of Cokesbury District when the new church was
finished. H. W. Ledbetter was the senior Circuit Rider,
and the junior pastor was William C. Ferrell. Andrew
Jackson was the American President. The Texan Revolution
was beginning. Troops from Newberry were marching away
to fight the Seminole Indians in Florida.
The three older church buildings were
kept in repair and used as private schools for many
years. Funerals and prayer meetings were held in the
older churches for a generation after Trinity was
founded. (See the Original Church Building in the
Appendix).
In those days many good people who knew
the Bible very well were quite ignorant of the equally
true Book of God's Works. Unfamiliar or misunderstood
natural phenomena often aroused intense fear that sent
people hurrying to the Bible, God's great spiritual
book, for the answers to scientific questions.
Such a spectacular event occurred on
Thursday night, November 14, 1833. An old farmer, not a
Methodist, was awakened by a sound of knocking on his
door and by a voice raised in mortal terror and frantic
urgency.
"Come"out, Massa;' cried an old servant. "De World am
on fire." Hastily getting into his clothes and grasping
his sword, a relic of the horse cavalry, the alarmed
planter hurried forth. Outside, the servants and farm
workers were outside their log cabins, praying, crying
out in fear, and shouting "jedgement." Many people lay
prostrate on the ground, moaning and crying for mercy.
Overhead it seemed as if all the stars
in a thousand worlds were falling and heading directly
toward the earth. The dark sky was filled with myriads
of streaks of greenish light, moving with incredible
speed and arching over the earth. The streaks seemed to
come from one area in the northeastern sky, somewhere in
the constellation of Leo, the Lion. It seemed as if some
vast celestial tree had been shaken by a mighty wind and
all its shining fruit had been sent cascading toward the
earth. To the terrified people, watching that glittering
swarm of fiery meteors, it seemed that the day of final
judgment was indeed at hand.
After a long time this splendid and
awesome spectacle gradually disappeared. Then the sky
reddened with the tints of dawn. But the terror aroused
by this event hung dreadfully over the land. People
quoted the Bible (Joel 3: 16; Rev. 6: 13) to prove that
the stars would fall from Heaven before the great and
terrible day of the Lord. Many hardened sinners suddenly
professed religion and began attending church. But most
of these folks soon returned to the Devil. Religion
based on fear seldom lasts very long.
Some of the Leonid meteors of 1833
apparently reached the ground before being entirely
consumed by friction with the air. Tradition says that
rocks fell from the heavens in Trinity community that
fearful night. Generations later people still talked of
the night that the stars fell.
Modern science has explained the facts
of the Leonoid meteors, and historians have found
records of similar but lesser displays at that same time
of year over a range of many centuries.
The first preacher assigned to the
Newberry Circuit after the building of Trinity was Angus
McPherson, a Scot from eastern North Carolina. Rev.
McPherson belonged to a Scotch Higland family that fled
from their native land after the war of 1745, when the
Highlanders were defeated while trying to place Prince
Charles Edward Stewart (Bonnie Prince Charlie") on the
English throne. Mr. McPherson was married and had two
children at a time when most Methodist preachers were
bachelors. At the age of 34, he was a firm and good
disciplinarina, who made no attempt to be popular. But
he had a winsome personality that made him one of the
most beloved ministers that the Newberry Circuit ever
had.
In the cold weather of late October,
1826, Rev. McPhearson became very ill. After preaching
at Ebenezer, he went to the home of his great friend,
Dr. James Kilgore. The doctor put his patient to bed and
sent for his family. There was little that medical
science could do with pneumonia in those days. One night
the patient appeared to be dying. In the morning, when
he seemed better, his wife told him of the night's
events.
"If I had died;' said the preacher, "I would have
gone to Heaven."
A few days later the preacher asked
Mrs. Kilgore, his hostess, to read the famous passage of
the Suffering Servant in the 53rd chapter of Isaiah. As
the passage ended, the sick man asked someone to pray.
After the prayer, Mr. McPherson caught his little
daughter's hand and he himself started to pray. But his
voice faded away.
Thus, at four A.M. Nov. 4, 1836, died
the Rev. Angus McPherson. He would be remembered forever
as one of Christ's saints. At Ebenezer Church, in the
Kilgore family plot, is an old-fashioned box tomb
bearing the name, Rev. Angus McPherson.
The Rev. Frederick Rush arrived in
February, 1837. Plain, sensible, consecrated, and
hard-working, he would be long remembered. Years later,
dying of fever while ministering to the slaves on the
Ashepoo Mission, Mr. Rush told his sorrowing daughter,
"Do not weep. I made my peace with God before you were
born."
The old veteran David Derrick returned
for two more years on the Newberry Circuit. He was still
an outstanding preacher and a great singer. Later,
Simpson Jones, a Christian of ancient mould, and Samuel
Dunwoody, a gentleman and scholar, of Pennsylvania, were
long and pleasantly remembered.
Archibald B. McGilbary, a Scotch
Highlander from the scenic island of Skye, in the
Hebrides, did much to help Trinity and the other circuit
churches. He had an unusual and romantic life story,
which is now lost forever.
John W. Zimmerman was one of the
strongest and most remarkable preachers who ever entered
Trinity Church. It was necessary for him to work a farm
so as to help support his numerous family. Sometimes the
preacher would leave his one horse at home for his boys
to plow and he would work his circuit and visit his
members on foot. Mr. Zimmerman was so effective as a
preacher and was so popular that he was sent back to the
circuit several times.
Temperance societies were active in the
church during the 1830's and 1840's. This movement did
not conquer John Barleycorn, but it saved many
individual lives and souls and reunited many families
that had been wrecked by Demon Rum.
A new Methodist hymnal, which was
adopted in 1846, remained in use more than 40 years.
There was much difficulty in raising
money in those days. President Andrew Jackson's
knowledge of economics by no means matched his
popularity. This retiring President saddled his
unfortunate successor with a financial mess that closed
banks, toppled the price of cotton from 18 cents to six
or eight ,cents and crippled businesses and church
programs alike.
During these years the churches tried
in vain to get a public school system started. This
failed, but the preachers tried to encourage the members
to send the children to the various, small private
schools, many of which were held in Methodist Churches.
Classes were sometimes held for the slaves, both at
church and on the plantations.
Sunday Schools were developed by the
Methodists before they appeared in any other
denomination. Indeed, some other churches distrusted
education. But most churches could not be heated. So it
was usually necessary to hold Sunday School only in warm
weather.
However, Trinity had a Sunday School at
an early date. In 1847, during the War with Mexico, a
stove was bought and installed in the church. After
this, Trinity's Sunday School operated on a regular
basis.
The camp meeting movement, after a
period of decline caused by migration to the southwest,
began to flourish again after the Mexican War. This
movement was ecumenical, but the main effort was
Methodist. Watson's Camp Ground, near Ebenezer, which
had been nearly abandoned, was improved and much used.
Farmers would "lay -by" their crops, or make the final
cultivation, then load their families into covered
wagons and go the annual camp meeting in August. These
camp meetings were so important that they should be
treated in a separate chapter of a church history.(See
Camp Meeting in the Appendix)
During the lay-by time of August the
various churches had week-long revivals in their own
sanctuaries. Since these services were often continued
for more than a week, they gradually came to be called
"protracted meetings." Trinity traditionally had its
protracted meeting in the second week of August.
These revivals were great occasions,
both spiritually and socially. During successive weeks
of August, the people would attend revivals at all the
neighboring churches. There would be a guest preacher at
a morning worship service. Then there would be dinner on
the ground, with the best food and tastiest viands
available displayed on snow-white table cloths. Later
there would be an afternoon service with much singing
and with soulstirring altar calls. Then the service
would end in time for the people to go home and milk the
cows.
At a later time, after kerosene became
readily available and improved oil lamps became common,
the afternoon service was often eliminated and a night
service substituted.
Every three months the Presiding Elder
of the District would make his rounds. He would visit
every circuit, go to only one church on that circuit,
and there meet all the officials from the various
circuit churches. These meetings were rotated among the
circuit churches. These Quarterly Meetings were great
occasions. They usually began on Saturday and ended on
Sunday. On Saturday there would be a worship service,
with much singing. Then would follow a business session,
with various reports and discussions. Then dinner on the
ground would follow. At a later time, one of the
principal delicacies served was salmon balls. This was
the only time during the year that many children ever
saw salmon. So, Quarterly Meeting day was sometimes
called "salmon-ball day". In the afternoon there would
be more services. On Sunday there would be worship
services in both morning and afternoon, with dinner on
the ground, prayers, and much singing. There was no
music, but the singing was beautiful and could be heard
a mile. Hundreds of people attended these old-time
Quarterly Meetings and often the church could not hold
them.
Circuits in those days were so large
and travel was so difficult on the terrible roads that,
quite often, a junior preacher would be assigned to help
the senior minister. For a long time almost all
Methodist ministers were bachelors. They could not
support a family on their tiny salaries, and they were
obliged to be away from home so much that they could not
have a normal family life or train the children. But
gradually it became customary for the older men to
marry. In such cases, the junior preachers usually
boarded with the senior ministers.
The Methodist Circuit Riders of those
days set aside time for prayer and Bible study. They
read the books that the Presiding Elder and the Bishop
recommended. Then the junior and senior preachers would
take different routes in working their circuit. This
made it possible for most churches to have a preaching
service every two weeks. Often, too, there were good,
licensed local preachers, or exhorters, who could fill
the pulpit when the pastor was absent.
The preachers, who had to travel
constantly, worked hard to secure better roads. But not
much highway construction was possible before modern
machinery was developed.
Dr. Peter Moon, of old Moon's Meeting
House, was one of a church group that led the effort to
secure a railway for Newberry. This was successful. The
steel track was laid along the southern edge of Trinity
community in 1847. But some of the people opposed this
dreadful steel monstrosity; they thought the engines
would kill the children, the hunting dogs, and the
cattle that ran everywhere. Some of the black people
were so alarmed that they held prayer meetings.
In May, 1845, the people of Trinity
learned that they had become members of the Methodist.
Episcopal Church, South. In a General Conference at
Louisville, Ky., the Methodist Church had split into two
segments.
Differences between North and South,
which had existed since colonial times, had gotten into
the church and torn it apart. Other denominations soon
followed the Methodist example and split also. Perhaps
if the churches had remained together the great war that
followed could have been averted.
For fifteen years life in Trinity
community continued in a patriarchal fashion not very
different from life in some rural community of the
ancient world. It seemed that this way of life would
last forever. Thus it looked in ancient Judaea when the
King of Babylon was still far away.
A day came when farmers returning from
Newberry Village reported that a train had arrived from
Columbia with jubilant passengers shouting, waving
newspapers, and spreading word that South Carolina had
seceded from the Union. The day of secession was Dec.
20, 1860. Most people expected peace to continue. But
this was not to be.
The thunder-bolt of Fort Sumter came,
and the country was at war. In the weary years that
followed boys of 16 and men in their 60's marched away
to defend the Southern Confederacy. Few of these people
were wealthy, and still fewer had ever owned slaves.
These brave men simply wanted to defend their country
and their homes.
For four terrible years the people of
Trinity thought that they and the Lord were on the same
side. They whole-heartedly supported the South.
Many fathers of families marched away
and never returned. The women toiled in the fields, and
the children worked beside their mothers. At night the
spinning wheels and looms were put into use. Women and
girls knitted mittens, socks, and garments for the
soldiers and for the family.
Boys made wooden boxes, which their
mothers packed with sweaters, socks, coats, grits, hams,
and jugs of molasses. These were entrusted to the
struggling and under-manned express people for delivery
to sons and husbands in the army far away.
Ladies of the community went with
baskets of food to the present site of Silverstreet and
fed the wounded soldiers aboard the trains. These
heroines of the Southern Confederacy, while trying to be
Good Samaritans, hoped desperately that someone else,
perhaps some Yankee Woman at a prisoner of war camp in
the North, was feeding their own boys far away.
Along the Carolina coast, and in
distant Virginia and Tennessee, Methodist chaplains and
other clergymen tried to sustain the soldiers and bring
them the message of the loving and unchanging Christ
while the World crumbled.
At home the families of the soldiers
were greatly supported by the sacrificial efforts of the
Rev. ]. W. Wightman, senior pastor of the Newberry
Circuit from Dec. 12, 1861 to Nov. 16,1864. This heroic
man and the two junior preachers, P. L. Herman and M. A.
Connelly, struggled through rain and mud to visit their
members, comfort those who had lost their loved ones,
and maintain the church services.
As illness and lack of farm labor
caused many families to run short of food, an elderly
planter, who lived nearby, went often at night to feed
the families of soldiers and ask the recipients of his
generosity never to tell who had aided them.
The veteran preacher John H. Zimmerman
returned to the Newberry Circuit in November, 1864.
Accustomed to poverty and hard work, this strong saintly
man had been known to go on foot to visit his members so
that his sons could use their only horse to work the
little farm that the preacher tilled to supplement his
meager salary. It was good to have this strong man as
counselor and comforter at this terrible time.
Medicines were scarce. Doctors were in
the army. The far-away grey legions were thinning fast.
The black cloth of widowhood was very expensive and very
scarce. Then came a day when the sound of explosions was
heard in the east and tremendous clouds of smoke were
seen. Columbia, the state capital, was burning. The end
was near.
The great war ended at last. But it was
like the beginning of the Babylonian captivity.
Thousands of the South's young men had gone over the
mystic river to rest with Stonewall Jackson in the shade
of the trees.
For many months, weary, ragged and
foot-sore soldiers, many of them maimed by wounds, came
walking home. Some, dismayed by the universal ruin,
paused only for a visit with their relatives. Then,
after an eternal farewell, they went away to Texas,
Honduras, or to South America to begin life anew.
One day, in the late spring of 1865,
some travellers on the Mt. Zion Road (now the Spearman
Road) passed an abandoned house near the eastern fork of
Beaverdam Creek. Mrs. William Long lives at that site
today, 1986. Leaning against the chimney of the deserted
building was a ragged, travel-stained Confederate
soldier. He seemed to be crying. The soldier was James
Henry Hendrix. He had returned home to find his house
desolate. Mrs. Hendrix had died and the neighbors had
taken the children.
Prior to the war all the Hendrix family
had belonged to Smyrna Presbyterian Church. But some of
the neighbors who took the halforphaned Hendrix children
were Methodists. These children began to attend Trinity
and later joined there.
The dark institution of slavery was
gone, although it would still flourish in Africa for
several generations until white colonial officials and
troops ended it. But its passing from America was
incidental to a terrible war that plunged a vast region
into grinding poverty that would last almost a hundred
years.
In Trinity Church the blacks continued
to attend worship services together with the whites. But
soon missionaries of the African Methodist Episcopal
Church came to Trinity. Going to the black members,
these people told of the very real advantages of
belonging to a black church of their own. There, the
black people could have a black minister, make their own
decisions, and manage the church as they wished.
The whites tried in vain to persuade
their black friends to remain. The parting was amicable.
The members of African descent went down to the Lewis
Spring, which had become known as Trinity Spring. There
they set up Trinity African Methodist Episcopal Church,
which still exists and flourishes today, on another
site. This story deserves fuller treatment in another
chapter of a church history. (See Trinity A.M.E. Church
in the Appendix)
Trinity Church, like other churches of
the defeated South, had a very difficult time during the
terrible days of the Reconstruction period. The poverty
of the people was so great that it was extremely
difficult to carry out the programs of the church. Work
had to be maintained in hope and faith. But, somehow,
like the cruse of oil belonging to the widow of
Zarephath, in the days of the prophet Elijah, just
enough resources remained available to support minimal
church programs.
The Methodist Church kept its preachers
out of the various secret organizations that resorted to
violence in those days. Regardless of the very good
reasons why some of these groups were first organized,
they generally soon developed into instruments of
oppression. Because of this, no Methodist preacher was
allowed to become a chaplain in the Ku Klux Klan.
This strong stand cost the Methodist
Church much of its popularity. Just as many of the 70
disciples of Christ became offended and walked no more
with him, many people left the Methodist Church and
joined other churches whose pastors were chaplains in
the Ku Klux Klan. But popularity had to be sacrificed to
Christian principle.
Economic conditions were so terrible in
those days of Reconstruction that many of
Trinity's members joined the still-continuing
migration to the Gulf states and to Texas. The names of
most of these people are forgotten now.
Levi Longshore, a former Confederate
soldier, and a neighbor, James Speer, loaded
their families into covered wagons and went to Texas.
But the older migrants did not like Texas. They became
homesick and returned to South Carolina. With them they
brought the body of Mrs. Speer, who had died in Texas.
With them, too, encased in an iron box, they brought the
little body of seven-year-old James Kemper Longshore,
who had died on the return Journey.
The two graves dug, late in 1867,
for Mrs. Speer and the Longshore child, were the
beginning of the Trinity cemetery. Previously, people
had used family graveyards and the cemeteries of the
three predecessor churches.
However, for a very long time
grinding poverty prevented many families from
marking the graves of their loved ones with cut and
polished stones of marble or granite. Many graves were
simply marked with field stones or with slabs of wood.
Grieving relatives, who could do no better, hoped vainly
that returning prosperity would enable them to purchase
dressed grave-stones later. Even in the late 1920's many
graves at Trinity were still marked with boards, bricks,
or field-stones.
Many stories of the Reconstruction Era
and of the migrations from Trinity during the covered
wagon days are now lost. But the saga of the Longshore
migration, which is typical of the lost stories, should
be preserved in a special chapter of a church history.
(See The Migration to Texas in the Appendix)
There was a flurry of excitement at
Trinity in 1878 when it became known that the beloved
Bishop William May Wightman would hold the 93rd Session
of the South Carolina Conference in Newberry December
11th. The good Baptist friends had offered the use of
the First Baptist Church for the Conference.
Many local Methodists attended the
Conference. The men went into the First Baptist Church
and the fair ladies joined Mrs. Maria D. Wightman, wife
of the Bishop, in Newberry Station Church, which was
later Central Church. Mrs. Wightman presided over the
meeting of the ladies.
This was the first recorded instance in
which a woman had presided over a public meeting of
church people in South Carolina. Previously, in every
denomination, the men had always quoted St. Paul to
prove that the women should remain quiet in church.
Before that day ended the Woman's
Foreign Missionary Society of the South Carolina
Conference had been founded.
Six months later, on July 13, 1879,
Trinity's Woman's Foreign Missionary Society was
organized with ten charter members. Mrs. Preshia Waldrop
(Mrs. Wilson W. Waldrop), wife of a Confederate
sergeant, was the first president.
In ten years the fair ladies did more
to promote the cause of foreign missions and to carry
out Christ's Great Commission than the big, strong,
husky men had done in 100 years. The missionary society,
with many changes of name and organization, was to be
permanently a very useful arm of the church.
The Methodist Church had good reason to
be proud that it pioneered in women's work in foreign
missions. All other such societies in all other
denominations exist today because of the Methodist
example. In addition, these missionary societies opened
the way for the many splendid clubs in which
women later participated outside the church. (See the
Woman's Missionary Society in the Appendix)
During all this time the twin problems
of poor educational opportunities and illiteracy
handicapped the Church. Even some of Trinity's leaders,
able and intelligent men, signed their names with
crosses. This was despite the fact that the Methodist
Church had always encouraged education and had fostered
the use of private schools, since public schools did not
exist. Strong efforts to encourage reading and Bible
study were hindered by illiteracy.
At some unknown time in the 1870's, one
of Trinity's fair daughters Sally Moates Longshore (Mrs.
Euclydus Longshore), wife of a crippled Confederate
soldier, started a school at her home about a mile from
the church. This school was later moved to a log house
on the church grounds Later, a frame schoolhouse was
built. Still later, this little school became part of
the new public school system of South Carolina. The
story of this church-sponsored Trinity School is so
important that it should be preserved in a separate
chapter of a church history. (See the Trinity School in
the Appendix)
The dark night of the Reconstruction
Era at last passed away. The Carpetbaggers vanished with
their loot and returned to the various foreign lands
from which most of these vulture-like adventurers had
come. With the highly-placed robbers gone, economic
conditions slowly improved.
A few families became able to buy
buggies. Not until the eighties did buggies became
numerous. But they slowly replaced the wagons in which
most families had gone to church since pioneer
times.
On the first Saturday in May, 1883,
occurred the first observance of Children's Day. Devoted
Sunday School teachers, assisted by parents, went to
much trouble in teaching the many shy, little urchins
their parts. The children looked forward to the great
day with mingled joy an apprehension. Some of them were
so fearful of soiling their costumes the they walked, or
rode in wagons, to the church while attired in every-day
garments and barefoot. Then, once on the church grounds,
they went in the old, log schoolhouse to change into
their Sunday best. Despite their fear of forgetting
their parts, the children did so well that their parents
were proud of them.
In later times Children's Day was
observed on Sunday. The church could scarcely hold the
congregations that assembled on that day. Very soon
Children's Day became, after Christmas, the second most
joyful day of the year.
As the congregation
increased in size and as economic conditions slowly
improved, a movement to secure a badly needed new
sanstuary was intensified. Another era in the life
of the church was ending. |
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The Second Sanctuary
- after the addition of two steeples and a Sunday
School wing in
1911 | The Second
Sanctuary
The Rev. Manning Brown, of
Columbia, S. C. had been a Methodist minister 25 years
when he became senior pastor of the Newberry Circuit in
December, 1882. A series of three splendid, young junior
preachers assisted Mr. Brown and boarded with him in the
parsonage. The circuit parsonage stood east of the
present Boundary Street School, in Newberry.
As economic conditions
improved, the people of Trinity Church started a
movement to build a badly needed new sanctuary. The
Sunday School Superintendent, Henry Senn, a dedicated
Christian and good farmer, was the leader of this
movement.
The contractor chosen was
Shockley Bros., of Newberry, but formerly of Laurens.
Most of the lumber was purchased from an enterprising
and much respected black businessman and landowner,
Sharar, of Lexington. Sharar cut the timber on his own
lands, sawed it at his own mill, and sold it to the
church at a reduced price. Some of the virgin-pine logs
were five feet in diameter.
In the late fall, after
the crops had been harvested and the grain sown, the
farmers took their wagons and began hauling lumber from
Sharar's Mill to the church site. By leaving home about
midnight, a wagoner could sometimes make a round trip
within 24 hours. But this required good weather and fair
road conditions. Often it was necessary to camp in the
woods or lodge at the house of some hospitable
family.
After leaving home early
and driving in pre-dawn darkness, a driver would arrive
at the Higgins Ferry Bridge, on Saluda River. Then the
wagoner would blow a horn, or shout. Out from a little
house on the Saluda side of the river would come the
black ferryman, wearing a heavy coat because of the
early morning chill.
Casting off the moorings,
the ferryman would bring his big, flat boat over to the
Newberry side. The teamster would drive aboard and hold
his mules until the ferry crossed the river. Then the
ferryman would return to his warm fireside while the
teamster drove along the hilly, winding roads of Saluda
and Lexington.
The big sawmill, the huge
steam engine, the immense piles of logs, the stacks of
lumber, and the many wagons and carts were a wonderful
spectacle, Little boys who went with their fathers to
the mill had much to tell when they returned.
But the weather soon
became too bad for children to go with the wagons.
Sometimes farmers had to go to the river in early
morning and help the ferryman break the ice so that the
ferry could operate. Such conditions were terribly hard
on the wagoners and their teams. Henry Senn, the Sunday
School Superintendent, became ill while camping along
the road during that severe winter. He developed an
incurable respiratory disease and soon died, leaving
four small children.
The new building was
constructed about a hundred yards north of the old site.
The present church driveway passes through the center of
the second church site.
The sanctuary was
rectangular, with no steeple or Sunday School rooms. A
row of three tall, slender columns followed the central
axis of the structure and supported the ceiling.
Connecting these columns was a partition, three feet in
height, which extended from near the rear of the church
to within a few feet of the pulpit. Midway between this
partition and the outer wall, on each side of the
church, was a long aisle. Another aisle led across the
rear of the church, behind the rows of benches.
The splendidly carved
pulpit, on a low dias, was guarded by an ornamental
railing. On each side of the pulpit, and facing it, were
four rows of benches. In each wall were three tall,
pointed windows, with clear glass.
There were smaller,
rectangular windows behind the chancel. On each side,
near the front of the church, was a door. Two other
doors, at the eastern end of the church, led from the
sanctuary onto a long porch facing the cemetery. This
porch was built into the church itself and had no
separate roof. Slender columns upheld the porch ceiling,
and there was a small room at each end of the porch.
The new church was
unpainted. The South was still rising from ruin and
poverty. Paint was expensive, and it was unusual for
rural buildings to be painted. But the people of Trinity
were as proud of their new church as King Solomon had
been of his beautiful, new temple in Jerusalem.
In this second Trinity
Church the men and women sat separately. The ladies
occupied the benches east of the central partition and
the men were west of the partition. This practice was a
survival from the very early days of Methodism on the
frontier. But this system was only for the church
members. Visiting couples sat together wherever they
could find space. If space were scarce, a gentleman
would always arise and make room for a lady. People were
taught good manners in those days.
On a small table near the
pulpit stood a bucket of water, with a dipper. This was
supposedly for the benefit of the preacher. But
children, if not too shy, often went during services to
this pail for a drink of water. The germ theory was
still unknown.
Trinity's popular and
beloved minister, Rev. Manning Brown, was transferred to
another charge Dec. 9, 1885. After meeting his successor
at the conference and telling him, "You will be in
Clover at Newberry". Mr. Brown bade a sad and
affectionate farewell to his parishioners.
The new pastor, Rev.
Matthew Moye Brabham, of Bamburg, had been a boy hero of
the Confederacy. He had been converted after the war by
an English surgeon who had returned home, opened his
Bible, and with his wife's help, had founded a family
altar the flames of which had never gone out.
When they moved from a
low-country charge to Newberry, the Brabhams shipped
their trunks and furniture aboard a Savannah River
steamboat to Augusta. From that point their possessions
were to be taken overland to Newberry. But someone in
Augusta blundered. The furniture and trunks were
returned to Savannah and placed in a warehouse.
In Newberry, with several
small children, the Brabhams were in dire straits for a
short time. But the townspeople and the circuit
parishioners came swarming in with food, clothes, and
furniture. The Brabhams quickly came to love Newberry
and its friendly people.
The extensive Newberry
Circuit of that time included the eight widely
scattered churches of Trinity, New Chapel,
Ebenezer, Lebanon, Prosperity, Zion, New Hope, and Mt.
Pleasant. Terrific storms and floods in May destroyed
bridges and caused deep ruts in the dirt roads. As he
sloshed through the terrible mud-holes with his horse
and buggy, Mr. Brabham resolved to recommend that this
over-sized circuit be divided into two charges.
The day was saved by a
splendid junior preacher, J. M. Steadman, son of a
Confederate colonel. At the age of only 19, this
brilliant and heroic servant of God acted like a veteran
as he and the senior minister took different routes and
struggled to reach the water-bound churches and visit
the sick.
The sun shone again in
June. But with it came a virulent kind of measles that
raged for two months, claiming many victims and causing
many birth defects. During the time the people of
Trinity were horrified by the death of Mrs. Brabham, who
left six children. The Brabham baby died six weeks
later. Already this little lady from the low-country had
won the hearts of the people of Newberry. With many in
their own families stricken, the circuit people tried to
support and comfort their bereaved minister. In Rosemont
Cemetery the two Brabham graves were tended for many
years by friends from Central Church.
In August the usual
revival meetings, or protracted meetings, were
successfully held. But a few churches did not finish
their meetings in August. The last night of the month
came. In the quietness of the evening shadows, the
weather was serenely beautiful. Neighbors sat on their
porches singing, as people often did at night in those
days, Rev. Brabham was at home with his children. From a
distant church came faintly the sound of hymns and of
music.
Then, from far away, came
a sound as if a heavily-loaded railway train were
approaching. Steadily louder grew that sound, which
seemed to come from deep beneath the earth. Nearer and
nearer came that dreadful sound, which swelled until it
was a terrible roar. The earth and houses began to
shake. Chimneys cracked. A few bricks fell. Dishes
rattled in cupboards. Window glass broke and tinkled to
the ground.
From the nearby homes of
some hardened sinners, noted for profanity, cries for
divine mercy and loud, fervent prayers were suddenly
heard. In distant churches lamps flickered, windows
broke, and horrified preachers forgot their dignity and
led their panic-stricken congregations in wild stampedes
into the outer darkness. There, they fled homeward in
mortal terror. Many people hastily acquired religion
that night. But most of them returned to the Devil soon
afterward. Religion based on fear is unlikely to last
long.
In the Newberry area but
little damage was done. But the next newspapers were
filled with accounts of massive destruction and heavy
loss of life in Charleston and along the coast. Such was
the Charleston earthquake of 1886.
Despite the poverty that
still gripped the south, the people of Trinity succeeded
in paying for their new sanctuary. Rev. Brabham had the
great pleasure of dedicating the new house of worship in
1886. King Solomon, in dedicating the golden temple in
Jerusalem, could not have been more grateful than were
the Trinity people and their pastor.
The circuit people still
thronged, in buggies and wagons, to the great camp
meetings at Ebenezer Camp Ground, which had once been
Watson's. The people were proud of their pastor as Mr.
Brabham held great congregations enthralled and brought
the message of the Redeemer to his earthly children.
Many hearers at Ebenezer, whether Methodist or not, went
home to name babies for Rev. Brabham.
There were tears of regret
in many eyes when Trinity and Newberry said farewell to
Mr. Brabham and his young second wife in November, 1889.
The feeling was mutual. Years later, in his sunset years
at a daughter's home in Ninety Six, Rev. Brabham wrote
his memoirs and spoke appreciatively of Euclydus
Longshore, David Pitts, Wilson W. Waldrop, and Gilliam
Senn, stewards of Trinity.
On Wednesday, Dec. 11,
1889, or on the following Sunday, the churches of
Newberry County held memorial services for President
Jefferson Davis of the Southern Confederacy. A poem of
the time bore a stanza,
"From hatred
and calumny, The grand old soul is free,
And in
Valhalla greets again The stately shade of Lee."
Throughout 1890 the Rev.
W. H. Lawton struggled alone to work the huge circuit
that Rev. Brabham and a junior preacher had worked with
difficulty. Industrious, diligent in faith and prayer,
Mr. Lawton was popular with all denominations. But he
was very glad when the big Newberry Circuit was
partitioned and the Prosperity Circuit was set up.
Trinity, New Chapel, Ebenezer, and Lebanon remained in
the Newberry Circuit. Steps were taken to sell the
Boundary Street parsonage and secure new parsonages for
the two circuits.
About this time a new
hymnal began to appear in the churches. This was the
Methodist hymnal of 1889.
On June 23, 1890, occurred
the first recorded appearance of a horse drawn hearse at
Trinity. This was at the funeral of James Speer, one of
the pioneers who had migrated to Texas and had returned.
Previously, coffins had often been made by local
carpenters and had been hauled to the cemeteries on farm
wagons.
The Rev. Coke D. Mann, of
Abbeville, was sent to the Newberry Circuit Nov. 25,
1890. He was the first pastor to occupy the new circuit
parsonage on Cornelia Street, Newberry. Always stressing
quality and Christian dedication rather than numbers,
Rev. Mann insisted on training new converts and church
members. He instructed new Christians in their faith.
More than 1,200 people were to join the church during
the long ministry of this dedicated and respected
preacher.
On November 24, 1882, four
centuries after the discovery of America, the Rev. W. L
Wait came to the circuit. The new minister was eloquent
and popular. His talented wife, the former Miss Jane
Wofford, soon became a leader in a movement to get music
into the churches of the circuit.
In earlier times many
Christians had thought that musical instruments in
churches were an indication of worldly vanity. In
addition, most frontier churches had been too poor to
afford organs and had lacked competent musicians.
Old-fashioned tuning forks had been used very
successfully in "histing the tunes;' or "raising the
hymns:'
But a young lady of
Trinity met the Board of Stewards and told them that the
young people wanted music in the church services. So
opposition was overcome and the first Trinity Church
organ was purchased. Since no church musician was
available, the Sunday School Superintendent, Mr. Henry
B. Hendrix (1859-1955), volunteered to learn to play the
new instrument.
Every week the organ would
be moved by wagon to the Hendrix home, a mile from the
church. Mr. Hendrix, a good farmer, would arise very
early, eat a hasty breakfast, catch his mule, and begin
plowing as soon as it was light enough to see. At noon
he would return home, turn the mule into a stable where
feed was ready, eat a hasty lunch, catch another mule
that had already been fed, then plow until it was too
dark to see. That night, after supper, this strong,
vigorous man would practice at the organ until overcome
by weariness.
On Saturday the organ
would be returned to the church. It was hard to keep the
instrument in tune because of so much moving. But Mr.
Hendrix, who was already a great singer, became
Trinity's first organist.
In 1894, probably because
of the influence of Mrs. W. L Wait, the old log
schoolhouse on the church grounds was demolished and
replaced by a frame structure on the same site. The big
chimney, which took four-foot wood, was repaired by Mr.
Henry B. Hendrix and was retained to heat the new school
building.
In the 1890's, during the
second administration of Democratic President Grover
Cleveland, a severe economic depression made it
difficult for the churches to raise money. Many Newberry
farmers migrated to Arkansas, Texas, and the Red River
Valley. Some of the black people went to Africa. The
Bluford Bishop family, of Jalapa area, went to an area
near Clinton, Van Buren County, Arkansas. But Mr. Bishop
later returned to Newberry and settled near Trinity.
The Rev. John David Crout
came Nov. 21, 1894. Mr. Crout was familiar with hard
work. He came from an era in Lexington County that had
been ravaged by Sherman's troops in the great war. Much
hard work and school teaching at a very low salary had
been necessary for Mr. Crout to finish his education.
Later, at Trinity, this energetic and dedicated pastor
preached sermons like those of the pioneer
Methodists.
Several very good local
preachers were members of the Newberry Circuit churches
in those days. Two of these, Jeff Hooten, and James
Michael Sanders, were members of Trinity. Another, the
Rev. Mark Boyd, a member of New Chapel, was so
outstanding that he could have done well in any church
in America. Mr. Boyd was a favorite guest preacher at
Trinity. Several Boyd sons were Methodist ministers.
Rev. Mark Boyd and the other local preachers deserve
recognition in a special chapter of a church history.
(See Local Preachers in The Appendix)
Miss Martha Caroline Boyd,
a very talented daughter of Rev. Mark Boyd, was a great
musician and singer. Always called "Mattie" by her
friends, she was much loved. Some obscure disease,
probably polio, had left her badly crippled in girlhood,
but it had not quenched her bright and indomitable
spirit. Miss Mattie was confined to a primitive wheel
chair, and she rode in a specially-built buggy. She was
a popular guest at Trinity and at many other churches,
where she conducted singing schools.
On Dec. 9, 1886, the Rev.
Dove Tiller came to the circuit. Mr. Tiller was from
Bethany Church, near Bishopville, where his clan was so
numerous that the place was called "Tiller's Church:'
Many people of the circuit churches would remember Mr.
Tiller as their favorite pastor. This was the last
minister who tried to revive and keep alive the
old-fashioned Class Meeting. This was not Sunday School,
but an organized attempt to teach people the meaning of
their faith while helping them with their personal
problems.
The unforgettable Rev.
David Pettus Boyd, a son of the Rev. Mark Boyd of New
Chapel, came Dec. 6,1899. He was a former Confederate
soldier and a farm-boy quite accustomed to hard work.
Mr. Pett Boyd, as he was called possessed a manliness
that aroused the respect of strong men. He had a
splendid voice and was a wonderful singer.
Always a favorite on every
charge, Rev. Boyd was destined to win over a thousand
people to Christ before his health failed. But he liked
to preach about the Day of Judgment, and some of his
sermons just about scared bad, little boys half to
death. Mr. Boyd's description of that final day was to
be remembered very soon.
On Monday, May 28, 1900,
the children at the day school on the church grounds
assembled to help their teacher, Miss Mamie McGraw,
decorate the schoolhouse. An elaborate "Exhibition;' as
school-closing exercises were called, was being
prepared. The teacher told the children that a total
eclipse of the sun would occur that day. But most people
did not know this. Many people were illiterate. There
was no rural postal service, and most impoverished
families did not take newspapers.
About nine o'clock, as the
decoration of the school was proceeding, darkness began
to fall. The children went over to the nearby home of
Mr. David Pitts to view the eclipse through smoked
glasses.
Soon, in the distance,
cries of alarm were heard. It was apparent that most of
the black people, and many of the whites as well,
thought the Judgement Day was at hand. The pictures of
infernal perdition in Mr. Boyd's sermons were uppermost
in everyone's mind.
Plowboys unhooked their
traces, mounted their mules, and galloped homeward with
plow-gears jingling. The fear of a resounding blast from
Gabriel's trumpet added strength to their blows as they
whipped their mules.
As darkness grew deeper,
dogs barked, chickens went to roost, and cows came home
to be milked. An old gentleman was heard calling his
sons home from the field and saying, "Quit now, and come
home, boys; there is no use in going against the Lord's
will."
Later, when the sun
re-appeared, the teacher and the children returned to
the schoolhouse and resumed work on the decorations.
Volunteer carpenters came and completed an outdoor stage
adjoining the schoolhouse.
The exhibition that night
was a great success, The freshly-scrubbed children, in
their pretty, well-starched costumes, did their parts
superbly well. The West End Band, from Newberry,
resplendent in handsome, new uniforms and with polished
instruments, put on a magnificent performance.
But the splendid efforts
of the teacher, the children, and the band would soon be
forgotten. The events of the total eclipse were
uppermost in all minds. Three-quarters of a century
later aged people would still talk of the "Dark
Day."
On Sunday, May 29,1900,
Rev. Pett Boyd was preaching one of his finest sermons
at Trinity when a handsome, well-dressed, young black
man came to a side door of the church and beckoned to a
white friend whom he saw inside. The white man went out,
and the two had a brief conversation. Then the white
youth returned into the church and had a low-voiced
conference with Mr. Dantzler Stilwell, the Sunday School
Superintendent. Next, several Stewards were called into
the consultation. Then, just before the preacher
announced the final hymn, someone went up to the pulpit
and whispered something to the pastor.
With a smile Rev. Boyd
announced that a wedding would take place and that the
people were invited to remain. Looking from the windows,
some of the people saw two shiny, high-topped buggies,
to which big horses were hitched.
Then into the church, from
the end next the cemetery, came the wedding party. Down
the left aisle strode the bridegroom, brown, stately and
dignified, and splendidly attired in a new broadcloth
suit, with high, stiff collar. Beside him, similarly
dressed, was the best man. People whispered that the
groom was Samuel Tribble, a well-known and much
respected landowner. The best man was a neighbor.
Down the right aisle came
the bride, Katie Belle Waits, very young, beautiful, and
exquisitely attired in a lovely bridal costume with a
long veil. Beside her, in a lovely dress, was the
bridesmaid, Laura Mingo.
The two parties met before
the altar. Rev. Boyd opened a book and performed the
beautiful wedding ceremony of the Methodist Church.
Then, amid the plaudits of their well-wishers, the happy
wedding party withdrew, boarded their buggies, and drove
away.
This wedding, which
created a local sensation, was the first colored wedding
at Trinity Church since the War between the States. The
wedding party, too, was remarkable. Samuel Tribble, who
was much respected by his white neighbors, had been a
servant in the Confederate army. After the war he had
worked hard and managed well until he owned hundreds of
acres of land. He was 62 years of age at this, his
second, marriage. The bride, who was 16, had spent
several years in Africa.
In those days it was very
unusual for people to marry in church. Most weddings
were performed at the bride's home, in the parlor or the
flower garden. Honeymoons were unusual. In those
impoverished times the groom could seldom afford a
wedding trip.
In Trinity Community,
however, it was customary to serenade the bride and
groom soon after the nuptials. A large group of devilish
boys would assemble in the night with every tool or
instrument that would make a loud noise. An outlandish
collection of shot guns, old dish pans, tin wash tubs,
iron plow shares, hammers, and possum horns would
appear.
There would also be a good
supply of old shoes. These shoes were always completely
worn out. People were too poor to sacrifice footgear
that was still serviceable.
Then, from the nearest
sawmill, somewhere in the nearby woods, a group of
husky, young men would bring the big, circular saw and a
piece of Iron pipe.
Late at night, after all
honest people were in bed, the serenade party would
creep quietly to the house where the newly-weds were
lodged. The family dogs generally knew the approaching
rascallions. If not, they usually fled in mortal
terror.
Suddenly the blare of a
possum horn would rend the midnight air. Then the boys
began beating their plowshares with hammers and banging
on their dish pans and wash tubs. Possum horns and
bugles were blown. An
iron pipe was inserted in
the opening in the circular saw and the heavy saw was
hoisted off the ground. Then several muscular rascals
would beat the saw with hammers. Shot guns were fired
into the air. The muzzle flashes could be seen in the
darkness, but the reports of the gun shots were
inaudible. The dreadful and unearthly racket of that
big, circular saw drowned out everything. The noise
could be heard five miles.
Chickens flew off their
roosts. Dogs and cats fled howling and yowling to the
woods. Horses and mules broke down stable doors and
jumped the fences. Hogs tried to get out of their pens.
Cattle broke down barnyard gates and stampeded into the
forest. Boys climbed to the roof and threw old shoes
down the chimneys into the fires below.
At last the fun would
begin to pall upon the participants. The noise would die
away. A party would return the circular saw to the
sawmill. Then everyone would drift away homeward.
Those serenaders were not
vandalistic. They did not steal, destroy, or damage the
property of their neighbors.
However, it generally took
several days for all the dogs and cats to return from
the woods. Then, after all the loose cattle, horses, and
mules were rounded up and the gates, fences, and stable
doors were repaired, the country returned to normal.
Serenades were also held
when maiden school teachers came to Trinity. But the
serenade custom died out during the great economic
depression of the 1930's.
When the young men of
Trinity went courting in those days, they walked, rode
horses, or drove buggies. Usually they went no farther
than the parlor of the girl friend's house. But
sometimes the fair lady had two sweethearts, or maybe
several of them. In such cases the hopeful swain in the
parlor often came out and found that someone had turned
loose his horse or mule and that he had to walk home.
Sometimes, too, the unfortunate lover's buggy was found
next day perched astride the ridge on the roof of the
barn or the well-house.
Most of the proposals for
marriage at Trinity probably occurred as young couples
strolled to the spring for water. The spring, located at
the eastern foot of the ridge upon which the church
stood, was a lovely and romantic place in those days,
with great oaks, sweetgums, and wild flowers. The road
to the spring was a good place in which courting couples
could promenade.
Usually, in those
impecunious times, a young bridal couple would have no
money or property. Some relative would donate an old
mule. Someone else would furnish a plowstock. Other
relatives would provide an old stove and various pieces
of furniture. The bride's relatives would begin making
clothes and quilts. A landowner would be found who
needed a sharecropper. Then the young people would
settle down and begin raising children and low-priced
cotton fast. Families of eight or ten children were
common in those days, about the turn of the century.
Children were usually
baptized at home. The busy pastor, unfortunately, often
forgot to record these events in the church
register.
There were many marriages
between cousins in those days. Most families were
closely related and very clannish. Because of this,
Trinity was humoriously called "The Nation". Even in the
newspapers that name was used.
A great advance was made
in the Nation when, in January, 1901, the first rural
free delivery mail route was established in western
Newberry County. People were now encouraged to take
newspapers. Ministers were now enabled to contact the
church officials readily.
Such was the state of
affairs when, on Dec. 19, 1903, Rev. John E. Beard, of
Columbia, S. C, came to the Newberry Circuit. Mr. Beard
was one of the best pastors Trinity ever had. He visited
the members, won many people to Christ, and preached
old-fashioned sermons with eloquence and power from on
high.
A worthy successor of Mr.
Beard, Rev. Albert Hartwell Best, came Dec. 13, 1905.
Pleasing in personality, strong in character and moral
convictions, Mr. Best was scholarly and studious. But he
found time to be a faithful and sympathetic pastor. The
Best children, too, were very popular. They often
visited Trinity families, remained overnight, and rode
to church in buggies and wagons with their hosts.
One of the fair Best
daughters, Miss Louise Best, was later for many years a
missionary to Brazil. After her retirement Miss Louise
returned to visit Trinity and taught in a school of
missions.
On Nov. 25, 1908, Rev.
James Marion Fridy arrived. A native of Fairfield, Mr.
Fridy had a splendid Christian background. His mother,
in the dark days of the War Between the States, used to
call her children to morning and evening prayer. Though
always a good disciplinarian, Mr. Fridy was so
sympathetic that tears often came into his eyes.
There was soon much need
for sympathy. In the summer of 1909 terrible epidemics
of typhoid, black-water fever, and measles raged in
Newberry County. Many people were ill and Trinity was
hit hard. Mrs. Emma Hendrix, widow of James H. Hendrix,
and her daughter Lucy Estelle died within hours of each
other on July 10th.
The funeral was conducted
at the church in mid-afternoon of the following day,
Sunday. The undertaker, Robert Y. Leavelle, provided a
black casket, black hearse, and black horses for the
mother. The body of the daughter, Lucy, was placed in a
white casket and a white hearse, drawn by white
horses.
In 1911 the need for
Sunday School rooms at Trinity was very acute. Through
the initiative and energy of the young Sunday School
Superintendent, Richard Maybin, construction began. A
wing was added on the western side of the church. The
long porch facing the cemetery was enclosed. A tall
steeple was added on the south side and a smaller
steeple was built on the north side. These changes added
several classrooms to the building.
Mr. Fridy spent much time
doing carpenter work on the church during the
construction. With his good friend, Mr. Henry Hampton
Hendrix, he nailed many shingles on the roof. Several
times the two friends slowed down during some weighty
discussion, and the boys nailed their coattails to the
roof.
In those early years of
the new century, Trinity had many able leaders. But it
is impossible to give them all due credit in a church
history. Several of these leaders however, deserve
special if inadequate, recognition in a special chapter.
However, as feelings would be hurt if someone were
inadvertantly left out, this chapter is omitted.
Several of the old leaders
of the post-war years were still alive and some new ones
were rising when, on Nov. 26, 1912, Rev. Otis Allen
Jeffcoat came to the circuit. Mr. Jeffcoat was a good
pastor, with a gentle, affectionate manner that the
young people liked. Many years later, Mrs. Leah Hendrix
Longshore recalled how she enjoyed the preacher's visits
to her girlhood home. Mr. Jeffcoat called her, "My
little, black-haired sweetheart."
Mrs. Jeffcoat, the former
Miss India May Crosby, was a good helpmate of her
husband and was much loved. It is pleasant to remember
that Mr. Jeffcoat, after holding many important
positions and serving many churches, lived to be the
oldest member of the South Carolina Conference.
In 1912 an automobile
appeared for the first time at Trinity. Mr. Dantzler
Stilwell, one of the leading laymen of the church,
purchased an early copper-headed Ford car. It had the
general appearance of a buggy, with carbide lights,
small, narrow wheels and a hoarsely-sounding horn that
was activated by mashing a large, rubber bulb. The
small, four-cylinder motor was, hopefully, started by
spinning a crank.
When this vehicle appeared
on the roads wagoners and drivers of buggies stopped
their horses, if they could. Then they frantically
leaped to the ground, seized the bridles, and with main
force held their struggling, rearing, and terrified
horses and mules. Sometimes the drivers hastily
unhitched their teams so that they would not tear up the
vehicles when they ran away.
Most people thought that
this monsterous, new mechanical invention, the
automobile, was only a fad. Nobody would have believed
that, only 25 years later, the venerable Mr. Henry
Hampton Hendrix would drive to church in the last buggy
ever seen at Trinity.
The first Trinity pastor
to own a car was the Rev. Samuel Calhoun Morris, who
came Nov. 26, 1913. As was their custom, Mr. and Mrs. L.
C. Boozer had sent an invitation to the new pastor to
stay at their house the Saturday night preceding his
first sermon at Trinity. To their consternation, the
Boozers saw a tall, handsome gentleman drive up in a
Maxwell car. Until a late hour the Boozer family sat up
and talked with their charming and versatile guest. Mr.
Morris, a graduate of the Citadel, had taught school and
had been a successful college professor. He had given up
much when he heeded the call to become a Methodist
minister.
Next morning, Rev. Morris
invited the Boozers to ride to church with him. Mrs.
Boozer declined to get into the strange, new
contraption. But Mr. Boozer and his sons, George and
Guy, eagerly accepted the invitation.
Mr. Morris drove from the
yard and started along the rough and rutted dirt road at
what his somewhat apprehensive passengers thought was a
fast pace. Behind, a cloud of exhaust vapor trailed in
the frosty air. Along the road cattle in their wintery
pastures stared at this unearthly monster and stampeded
in attempts to break through the old-fashioned rail
fences.
At the church, where the
yard was crowded with buggies and wagons, people stared
at this approaching masterdon and ran to hold their
mounts. Horses and mules reared, snorted, and tried to
run away. But after only a few months the animals became
accustomed to the new vehicle.
The people of the Newberry
Circuit soon learned that Mr. Morris was a splendid
Christian scholar and gentleman. He thoroughly prepared
his sermons and delivered them in an easy and effective
way. It was a great loss to the circuit when this
consecrated, gifted, and versatile man was moved after
only one year.
In his later years Rev.
Morris operated with great success a church sponsored
vocational school for under-privileged children in Horry
County. This was a fore-runner of the later technical
schools. If this program had been adequately supported
and had been extended through the states of the old
Confederacy, the South could have risen from its poverty
much sooner.
The Rev. William Reuben
Bouknight, a native of Saluda County, arrived Nov. 25,
1914. This was Trinity's second minister to own a car, a
Model-T Ford. This vehicle almost cut short the
preacher's career. He cranked it one day while it was in
gear and it ran over him and pinned him underneath.
Mr. Bouknight was a good,
very popular, and effective preacher. Church
indebtedness was reduced, the ceiling of Trinity's
Sunday School rooms was finished. Membership at all the
circuit churches increased. Services were started at
Silverstreet, and Lewis Church, at Newberry, had its
beginning in an old store.
Young William Reuben
Bouknight,Jr. joined Trinity. This was his first church
membership. Many years later, after serving as a
chaplain in the American army in Burma during the Second
World War, the younger Bouknight returned to Trinity to
officiate at the wedding of Miss Betsy Floyd and Mr.
Wayne Black.
So popular was Mr.
Bouknight and so effective was his ministry that several
refugee families from Germany began to attend Trinity,
and some of them joined there. Among these families were
the Krausers, KIinesmidts, and Brehmers. These were good
people who had fled from their country to avoid the
growing militarism fastened upon their homeland by the
Iron Chancellor, Prince Otto von Bismarck. These
families deserve special recognition in a church
history. (See German Immigrants in the Appendix)
America entered the First
World War during Rev. Bouknight's ministry. This great
conflict badly disorganized the work of the churches.
Trinity's splendid, young Sunday School Superintendent,
Richard Maybin, resigned and went away to join the naval
air force; he was succeeded by his friend Marcus Boyd
Hendrix. Many young men went away as draftees or
volunteers. Ladies knitted socks and warm clothes to
send to homeless refugees in Europe.
Then came a terrible
outbreak of measles that left many children with
physical defects. Next came a fearful epidemic of
influenza against which medical science was almost
helpless. Dr. W. D. Senn, of Trinity, hampered by lack
of proper medicines, drove his horse and buggy over
terrible roads in bad weather so continuously in
attending his many patients that he could scarcely sleep
for two days at a time. In some families everyone was
ill at once. As their ancestors had done in the pioneer
days of Methodism, neighbors took turns helping the
sick. They chopped wood, built fires, cooked, did the
laundry, changed the bed sheets, and nursed the
patients. But there were many new graves of children and
elderly people in circuit cemeteries before the various
plagues abated. The pastor and Mr. Marcus
Hendrix, Trinity's Sunday
School Superintendent struggled against odds to keep the
church work alive.
Armistice Day came on Nov.
11, 1918. In Newberry bells rang and factory whistles
blew. The clamor of sirens could be plainly heard in
Trinity community. It was long before all the boys came
home from Europe. But all hoped that the prophet Micah's
vision of world peace would be fulfilled and that the
nations would indeed beat their swords into
plowshares.
On Nov. 27, 1918, just 16
days after the Armistice, Rev. G. F. Clarkson became
circuit pastor. The new minister faced the problems
which follow all wars. A serious moral decline was
sweeping America. But this profound scholar and good
pastor had a blessed ministry.
A Pastor's School was
organized at this time, and efforts were made to
establish Epworth Leagues for the young people in all
the circuit churches. Previously, such work had been
only a department of the Woman's Missionary Society.
Trinity's Epworth League
was organized in 1920 by John Clarkson, son of the
pastor, assisted by Voight O. Taylor and Earl E. Glenn.
There were] 5 charter members. Miss Dollie May Senn, a
schoolteacher, did good work as adult counsellor of the
League. Later counsellors were Mrs. Ira Hunt, Mrs. Cora
Lea Hendrix, and Miss L. Elizabeth Boozer.
It was many years before
most of the adults in the church realized the value of
the Epworth League in building Christian character and
spurring interest in church work. This, unfortunately,
was also true of many of the clergy. It was very hard to
secure adult councellors.
Rev. Clarkson was the last
Newberry Circuit pastor to drive a buggy. However, he
bought a car, while on the circuit. He was remembered by
many people as their favorite pastor.
Rev. William Glenn Smith
arrived Nov. 8, 1922. A native of Georgia, he had worked
his way through the Textile Industrial Institute, which
was later Spartanburg Methodist College, and had
graduated from Wofford.
He was still young and
inexperienced. Mr. Smith was a good pastor and a true
Christian. One of the highlights and ornaments of his
career was his successful operation, after his
retirement, of the Oliver Gospel Mission, in Columbia,
S. C.
During this time the
Epworth League was very active. This work was greatly
encouraged by the popular and talented Presiding Elder,
Rev. E. S. Jones. An old pulpit Bible bears a notation,
"This Bible was presented to Trinity Church by the
Epworth Leaguers Oct. 14, 1923."
The Rev. L. W. Johnson
arrived Nov. 5, 1924. Grave, dignified and scholarly, he
was a true Christian and a good pastor. Remembering his
early difficulty in getting his education, Mr. Johnson
encouraged impoverished families to send their children
to the Textile Industrial Institute, at Spartanburg.
There the young people could work their way through
school.
In 1928 the Woman's
Missionary Society celebrated its Jubilee, with many
activities and observances. The ladies had every right
to be proud of their society and its accomplishments.
All other such societies, of every denomination, in
America had been prompted by this pioneer society.
On Nov. 21, 1928, Rev.
Hollis Alexander Whitten became circuit pastor. With a
good voice, vast knowledge, wide interests, and a
splendid personality, Mr. Whitten was one of the best
pastors Trinity ever had.
Mrs. Whitten was ideal as
a minister's wife. The Whitten children were much liked.
Joe Whitten, one of the younger sons, became mortally
ill and died while at Newberry. During this time Mrs.
Fanny Johnson (Mrs. William Johnson), of Trinity, spent
many days helping nurse the sick child at the parsonage.
The other church members tried to lend their support to
the bereaved family.
Trinity and the other
circuit churches flourished spiritually in the late
1920's. But a catastrophe was developing. Throughout
history economic depressions have followed great wars.
In modern times the depressions have come between seven
and ten years after the wars. So, as economists had
warned, severe economic disaster descended, like a black
cloud, upon every nation of the globe in 1928.
Cotton was almost the only
salable crop grown in Newberry County, as was true in
most of the South. Now the price of cotton fell to a
very low level. At the same time, mills and industrial
plants were closing. Unemployment was rife. People were
glad to get a chance to work at sawmills very long hours
for 50 cents a day.
It became impossible to
maintain the programs of the church at their former
level. On the Newberry Circuit, Rev. Whitten's salary
could not be fully paid. It was necessary to adopt a
cheaper type of Sunday School literature. The stewards
made many trips to collect money from the members.
The hardships of the
depression years were so great that this period should
be the subject of a special chapter in a church history
(See the Depression Years in the Appendix). But it
should be pointed out that recovery in the southern
farming areas was especially slow. Hard times prevailed
on the farms of Newberry County until the Second World
War.
On Nov. 30, 1929, the
upper South Carolina Conference changed the name of the
district that contained Newberry Circuit. Cokesbury
District became Greenwood District.
Rev. Whitfield Johnson
replaced Mr. Whitten Nov. 16, 1932. A native of Georgia,
Mr. Johnson had struggled hard for his education. Much
of his instruction had been received through
correspondence courses. But the circuit people soon
found that their new pastor had a vast store of
knowledge, practical experience, and common sense. He
also had a sunny disposition and a sense of humor that
made him a universal favorite.
In those days most
baptisms took place at home. The pastor would be invited
to dinner. The Bible would be read and all the
youngsters would be baptized.
On one occasion Rev.
Johnson dined at the home of Mr. Hugh Pitts, near
Longshore Store. It was desired to baptize several
children who were present. A young lady, like Rebecca at
the well of Haran, went to draw water for the ceremony.
Seeing Little Lila Pitts and several other children
playing nearby, she impishly told them that the preacher
was going to take them by the heels and lower their
heads into a bucket of water, nearly drowning them. When
time came for the ceremony, the little girls could not
be found. The fleeing children were overtaken and
captured while crossing a ditch behind the old W. D.
Senn house, where Frank Senn lives now.
On Nov. 23, 1933, Mr.
Johnson officiated at the nuptials of Colie Hendrix and
Mary Sterling. That night, following an old custom of
the community, a group of mischievious boys serenaded
the newlyweds. With a band equipped with a big, circular
saw, plowshares, dishpans, shot guns, and possum horns,
they raised a racket that was almost enough to scare old
Satan out of the Inferno. The fearsome clamor of that
big circular saw could be heard half-way to the circuit
parsonage in Newberry. But this was the last serenade.
Another tradition was passing.
For generations Trinity's
annual revival, or protracted meeting, had been held
during the second week of August. For many years it had
been customary to have two services daily during the
revivals and to have dinner on the ground on Sunday.
During the revival of 1934 the last dinner on the ground
was held beneath the great oaks and hickories that
surrounded the church in those days.
In 1934 Mrs. John Brehmer,
the former Caroline ("Miss Sis") Longshore, was elected
to the Board of Stewards. She was the first lady ever to
serve in this capacity.
About 1937 the venerable
Mr. Henry Hampton Hendrix came to church in the last
buggy ever seen at Trinity. After this the old gentleman
was too feeble to hitch up his buggy and climb aboard.
For many years this grand, old Christian had been a good
church worker, a useful member of the Board of Stewards,
and an able Sunday School teacher. Few men have ever
been so much respected.
The Whitfield Johnsons
remained five years on the Newberry Circuit. No previous
pastor had ever remained so long.
Rev. George T. Hughes, of
Columbia, came to the circuit Nov. 3, 1937. Mr. Hughes
was an able preacher, a good visitor, and a shepherd
popular with his flock. He liked his pastoral work and
found increasingly irksome the ever-growing flood of
paper work that consumed a preacher's time.
The Rev. Charles Wilbur
Brockwell, of Mobile, Alabama, came to Newberry Oct. 27,
1938. Mr. Brockwell was a good preacher and a beloved
pastor. He had a splendid helpmate in his lovely wife,
Amelia, who was a great singer.
The Brockwells strongly
supported the church organizations. In turn, the Epworth
League and the Woman's Missionary Society, led by Mrs.
M. B. Hendrix (Mrs. Eula), strongly supported the
pastor's efforts.
In May, 1939, the
Methodist Episcopal Church, South, united with the
Methodist Episcopal Church and the Methodist Protestant
Church to form the Methodist Church.
As a result of this union,
the Presiding Elder became the District Superintendent
(DS). The Epworth League became the Methodist Youth
Fellowship (MYF). And the Woman's Missionary Society
became the Women's Society of Christian Service
(WSCS).
In 1940 Newberry's new
Rural Electrification Authority was becoming well
established. It was becoming easy to have electric
lights and fans in churches. On August 8, 1940,
membership dues of Trinity Church were paid to the new
REA of Newberry. The first bill for electricity was
received by the church in April, 1941.
Since the church building
was hard to heat, the young people usually held their
socials in private homes. Sometimes, in good weather,
they went to Molly's Rock. Once they met beside a big
spring near the site of old Kadesh. .
It was becoming quite
obvious that the church building, although structurally
sound, needed repair. Many of the church members
reluctantly decided that they needed a new sanctuary.
Rev. Brockwell and the young people strongly supported
this movement.
But the iron grip of
economic depression still lay heavily upon the farmlands
of the South. So the Stewards wisely replaced the roof
so as to keep the old building usable until a new
sanctuary could be built. Meanwhile, adults and young
people alike started various projects to raise money for
a building fund.
All these plans were soon
over-shadowed by the ever-blackening war clouds across
the sea. The young men began to disappear into military
training camps as defense programs were hastily
established. Then came the thunderclap of Pearl Harbor,
Dec. 7, 1941.
From Trinity the young
people disappeared rapidly. One young lady, Myra
Davenport, joined the Waves. More than forty men joined
various branches of the armed forces.
Trinity's sons served on
various bases in America. They manned posts in Alaska,
Greenland and Iceland. They served aboard navy ships on
both the Atlantic and the Pacific. Many Trinity men
struggled ashore through raging surf in landings in
North Africa and Normandy. They occupied trenches in
sub-zero weather in the forests of Germany. They waded
through miasmal, crocodile-infested swamps in the
tropics and climbed the lofty, cloud-capped Owen Stanley
Mountains, beyond the Equator.
As to be expected, there
were many purple hearts. Then, on one dark night at Iwo
Jima, handsome, manly, young Dewey Duffie was killed on
the beachhead. A marine comrade sent a beautiful letter
of condolence to Dewey's mother.
Meanwhile, Rev. Brockwell
was serving as a naval chaplain in the Pacific. Almost
all the young men were gone, and Mr. J. Foster Senn,
assisted by his daughter, Lena, and Mae Dennis, was
trying to keep the MYF alive.
Plans for a new church
were hopefully continued. Both the young people and the
WSCS carried out several projects for raising funds. The
most interesting of these was a quilting program. In the
old Madison Pitts House, the John Waldrop home, several
quilting frames were set up. There the good seamstresses
of the community gathered whenever they could do so and
quilted for many hours. These quilts were all beautiful,
and some were works of art. The funds from this and
other projects were invested in war bonds. Someday, it
was hoped, this money would help pay for a new
church.
On Nov. 11, 1942, Rev.
Wain Marvin Owings had replaced the Brockwells on the
Newberry Circuit. The new pastor, a native of Owings, S.
C, was a former schoolteacher. He had promoted the
building of several churches during his ministry. Now he
supported and encouraged those who worked for a new
church.
Mr. Owings, in the face of
great difficulties, did good service for his Lord during
the dark days of the war. Still mentally alert, he was
badly hampered increasing infirmity and poor eyesight.
Often he was obliged to ask a neighbor to read to him
the letters from the boys in service.
The war ended with the
surrender of Japan, Aug. 14, 1945. Eventually 40 of
Trinity's young men returned from various parts of the
World. But many of them, after having seen so much of
God's great universe, moved away to start new careers
elsewhere. Others began attending urban churches which
had better facilities. It became ever more urgent to
build a new sanctuary. Still another era in the life of
Trinity. |
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After renovation and
addition of Educational
Annex | The Third Sanctuary The Rev. Robert
Lee Hall, of Lowndesville, S. C, came to the Newberry
Circuit Nov. 7, 1945. Soon after his arrival, Mr. Hall
learned of the critical need of Trinity Church for a new
sanctuary. During this period of post-war readjustment,
such a challenge was hard to meet. But the new pastor
was accustomed to hard work.
Mr. Hall, when a small boy, had been
forced by poverty to quit school and find a job after
having finished only the third grade. Later, as a young
adult, he felt the call to preach. At the age of 22 he
returned to school and entered the fourth grade. After
nine years of intense effort he completed public school,
worked his way through the Textile Industrial Institute
at Spartanburg, S. C, and graduated from Wofford
College. The year of graduation was 1928, just as the
great world-wide economic depression was beginning.
As a good workman in his Master's
vinyard, the new pastor was well qualified to monitor
the efforts to build a new church. First, a building
committee was chosen with J. Foster Senn as Chairman.
Then financial arrangements were made and a contractor
was chosen. Next, a temporary place of worship had to be
found.
The people of nearby Smyrna
Presbyterian Church very graciously invited the Trinity
people to use their beautiful sanctuary. This invitation
was much appreciated. However, it was feared that
construction might take too long and that Trinity might
wear out her welcome.
Finally it was decided to accept an
invitation from one of the sister churches of the
circuit - Bethel Church at Silverstreet. Under the
capable leadership of Mr. H. T. Lake, the Sunday School
Superintendent at Bethel, the two congregations
cooperated splendidly.
Excavations for the foundations of the
new church uncovered heavy foundation stones of the day
school which had once stood on the same site.
The old building was dismantled and
some of the material was saved. Neighboring landowners
donated timber. The church members contributed
generously. Money saved by the church organizations
during the war years was used. War bonds were cashed and
the proceeds were donated to the building fund. Whitner
Lumber Company and other businesses made valuable
contributions of material.
A contractor laid the foundation,
erected the framework, and did some additional work.
Then the congregation took over the job. Mr. George
Andrew Johnson and Mr. Horace Bowles, Sr. did most of
the carpenter work. The work was well done, although bad
weather slowed progress. The actual construction, which
began in 1948, was finished in 1949.
The advantages of the new building were
at once apparent. Young people who had been drifting
away to larger and more modern churches soon began to
return. People who had seldom attended became regular
attendants.
On August 14, 1949, the new church
building, Trinity's third house of worship, was
dedicated. This was a happy occasion for the church
members, and also for Mr. Hall, who was in failing
health.
Slightly more than a year later,
several gentlemen from all the other circuit churches
appeared at Trinity one Sunday. After the service Mr.
Jesse Frank Hawkins, of Ebenezer, rose to make a speech
of appreciation to Rev. Hall for his fine pastoral work
on the circuit. Then, in the name of the circuit
churches, Mr. Hawkins presented to the astonished
preacher the keys of a new automobile, which was even
then parked in front of the church. The feeble, old
pastor broke down and sobbed in gratitude as he tried to
express his thanks.
It was a compliment to Mr. Hall that,
despite the Church tradition of a four year pastoral
tenure, he had remained on the Newberry Circuit five
years. But he was aging before his time, and his health
was failing.
Trinity and the Newberry Circuit
churches no longer belonged to the Upper South Carolina
Conference. The upper and lower conferences united in
1948 to form the South Carolina Conference.
Rev. R. C. Emory replaced the Halls on
the Newberry Circuit Oct. 24, 1950. Mr. Emory had been
reared in an orphanage. He had struggled against many
difficulties to get his higher education. So, he
attended Newberry College in order to meet the
educational requirements of the Methodist Church.
Mr. Emory was a good preacher and a
faithful pastor. With the aid of the pastor and his
wife, the Wesleyan Service Guild was set up at Trinity.
This was for the benefit of working girls who could not
attend regular meetings of the WSCS.
The Supreme Court had not then outlawed
prayer in the public schools. So, prompted by the school
trustees, Rev. Emory and Rev. E. K. Counts, of
Silverstreet Lutheran Church, conducted Bible classes at
Silverstreet public school. It was later found, at
Newberry College, that students from Silverstreet knew
more of the Bible than any others except those from Bush
River School, where there was a similar program.
Although Mr. Emory was very popular, he
was on the Newberry Circuit only two years. His
departure was a great loss to the circuit. He was a true
Christian gentleman, a good workman in the House of God.
It was this minister who made the first serious attempt
to have Trinity made a station church.
The Rev. Robert M.DuBose arrived Oct.
21, 1952. Mr. DuBose was a true man of God. In the
pulpit, he was very good. An incurable shyness
handicapped this minister's pastoral work. But the
wife's radiant, out-going personality largely
compensated for the husband's shyness.
At this time, with the vigorous
assistance of the District Superintendent, John M.
Shingler, an attractive brick parsonage was built at a
site west of the highway, not quite in front of the
sanctuary.
The first minister to occupy the new parsonage was
Rev. Phillip Mace Jones, who was appointed to this
charge Aug. 24, 1955. Thus, hopefully, Trinity began her
career as a station church.
Mr. Jones, a native of Gresham, S. C.,
was only 25 years old. But he was already well-known as
an evangelist and a revival preacher. He has a pleasing
personality, a good voice, and an effective delivery of
his good sermons.
Mrs. Jones, the former Miss Gloria
Wilson, of Greenwood, and the two children were also
very popular. Few other young parsonage families have
ever been more pleasantly remembered.
During this time the MYF was
flourishing. Frank and Audrey Senn were adult
counsellors for many years. They spent several hours
with the young people every week and led them in many
activities. Sometimes they met in a large room of the
Senn home, the old Dr. W. D. Senn house, on the Belfast
Road.
Often the young people and their
counsellors went to Greenwood State Park. Occasionally
there were trips to Molly's Rock. But most enjoyed were
the straw-rides aboard Frank's trailer-truck, with a big
tarp as protection from the rain. There were several
never-to-be forgotten trips into the North Carolina
Mountains. But the MYF did not exist for pleasure in
those days. It engaged in various Christian activities.
Money was raised and used for missionary activities and
various church enterprises rather than for pleasure.
Mrs. Aliene Dickert, Winston Hendrix,
Boyd Hendrix, Billy Pitts, Frank M. Senn, Jr., Roger
Enlow and others worked with the young people in later
years.
In 1955 Trinity began participating in
a program of Fifth Sunday Interdenominational Youth
Meetings for all the churches of the area. This fine
movement was started by Rev. S. T. Lipsey, of Smyrna
Presbyterian Church. The meetings were rotated from
church to church, and the host church was never
responsible for the program.
Raising money for the building fund of
the church was a very serious drain on local resources.
So it was decided in 1955 to try the experiment of
having a barbecue at the church on July 4th and giving
it plenty of publicity.
A good barbecue pit was constructed and
roofed. Detailed plans were made. Leadership in all key
tasks was entrusted to experienced leaders who were
given necessary helpers. Members of the Pitts family
provided most of the leadership and did most of the
cooking. No better leaders could have been found. The
young people cooperated beautifully.
This first barbecue involved a
tremendous amount of work. But it was so successful and
was so much enjoyed by visitors that it was repeated the
following year. Soon the barbecues at Trinity became
famous in upper South Carolina. Guests came from
Greenville and Columbia. These barbecues, which became
bigger every year, were great social occasions that
provided much good fellowship.
Eventually, however, these barbecues
became so large that they required more labor than the
church family could provide. Governor Strom Thurmond's
industrialization program was becoming so successful
that the young people could easily find jobs. As a
result, the number of available cooks, butchers, and
waitresses was decreasing at the very time when the need
for them was drastically increasing. Because of this, it
was decided, very regretfully, to end these affairs
after the close of the barbecue held in 1962.
When Miss Dolly May Senn, a former
school teacher and church worker, died in 1955, money
from her estate had been reserved to help build more
Sunday School space at Trinity. It became necessary, in
1957, to use this building fund and borrow much more
money in addition. The growing number of children
necessitated the construction of an educational
annex.
A building committee was elected with
Frank Senn, Sr., as chairman. Other committee members
were Luther B. Bedenbaugh, Herman Pitts, Mrs. Olin
Berry, Mrs. Wilmer Longshore, David Waldrop, John
Martin, Mrs. Jeff Waldrop, and Rev. Phil Jones,
Pastor.
Cannon Construction Company, of
Newberry, was the contractor. The construction, which
involved some alterations in the sanctuary, was done
very efficiently. It was begun and completed in
1957.
In 1957, too, the Rev. Otis C.
Brown, pastor of Smyrna Presbyterian Church, started a
union Thanksgiving program that involved Trinity and
several other churches. These Thanksgiving services were
rotated from church to church in much the same manner as
the Fifth Sunday Night Services of the youth
organizations.
On June 24,1959, the Rev. James M.
Aiken, of Georgia, was assigned to Trinity. Mr. Aiken
had served in the infantry during the Second World War
and had returned home blinded in one eye and with his
face badly scarred. In Georgia a church of another
denomination had called him and had offered him a much
larger salary than he could expect in a small, rural
Methodist Church.
At Trinity Mr. Aiken was a good pastor.
He visited the members. He worked diligently with the
young people, and he did more for the MYF than any other
pastor had ever done.
One of Mr. Aiken's projects was to
encourage the young people to take part in the camps and
various summer programs provided by the church. Although
Asbury Hills did not then exist, the church rented
annually some cabins and facilities at King's Mountain
State Park. Mr. Aiken himself served as a counselor at
one of these camps.
Perhaps Mr. Aiken's most important
project was a series of classes intended to train the
church officials and commission members in their duties.
Available resource material was exhibited and the means
of securing this material was outlined. For the first
time the various commissions at Trinity began to operate
in an efficient and business-like manner.
On June 21, 1960, the Rev. Glenn
Parrott was assigned to Trinity. Mr. Parrott was highly
educated, a former school teacher, and a man of great
ability, with a powerful voice.
At the pastor's urging, the envelope
system and the pledge system for church finances was
adopted. The church lands were smoothed, landscaped, and
improved by the development of an attractive, rolling
lawn, which the pastor called, "a shepherd's field."
In previous years it had been customary
to have an annual graveyard cleaning day. The church
members would assemble with tools and cut and rake every
briar, weed, wild flower, and blade of grass. But in
1962 George Senn appeared at the cemetery with a
lawnmower. This machine did such good work that several
machines were used the following year. Hoeing and raking
ceased. Grass came to be desirable in the cemetery,
which later received better care.
Miss Louise Best, a retired missionary
to Brazil, was a guest at Trinity during the mission
school of 1962. She presented a very interesting
program. Fifty-five years had passed since Miss Louise,
as the young daughter of a pastor, Rev. A. H. Best, had
visited Trinity homes and gone to church with her hosts
in their buggies and wagons.
On June 11, 1963, the Rev. Ralph Thomas
Lowrimore, of West Columbia, was assigned to Trinity. A
Wofford graduate and former soldier, the new pastor was
a good shepherd of his flock. Even after moving away to
other charges, Rev. Lowrimore would visit Trinity people
in nearby hospitals if he knew of their presence
there.
The church flourished in this period.
The pastor wrote and distributed a little booklet giving
detailed information about the many items of the church
budget. A simple explanation was given about the use of
these various items, together with an exposition of the
formula by means of which the amount of every item in
the Conference askings was determined.
After this long-overdue information
became available, the church officials accepted the
annual church budget much more readily and with far less
debate.
At Mr. Lowrimore's suggestion, research
was started on material for a church history. This
difficult task was to take several years.
In 1963 two foreign students from Columbia College
visited Trinity during a school of missions. One of
these, Miss Miriam Acosta, was a lovely Cuban Senorita,
a refugee from Castro's communist revolution. The other,
Miss Pui Pui Chan, was a former resident of Hong Kong,
but she was a native of the interior province of
Szechuan.
Mr. and Mrs. H. T. Lake and their daughter, Cynthia,
of Silverstreet, acted as hosts for the two charming
guests. The stories of Cuba and of Hong Kong related by
these two girls were so striking that this was the most
successful mission school that Trinity had ever had.
Miss Chan was invited back on two later occasions.
On Dec. 20, 1964, there was a memorable
visit by Bishop and Mrs. Cyrus Dawsey. Bishop Dawsey had
spent much of his life as a missionary in Brazil, and
Mrs. Dawsey had been a missionary in both China and
Brazil. Bishop Dawsey's sermon, entitled "Little Golden
Town," was based on experiences in a small Brazilian
town.
Dr. P. H. Senn, the Charge Lay Leader,
took the visitors to lunch. Then followed a pleasant
visit at the parsonage and a covered dish supper at the
church. In the evening the visitors presented a
missionary program based on their years in China or in
Brazil in a pre-war era that had vanished. This
experience was so moving that it was much like having
St. Paul as a guest.
Early in 1966 it became necessary for
the church to replace a young minister who had
volunteered as an army chaplain in Viet Nam, where war
was raging fiercely. The standard method of replacing a
departing chaplain was to move an older minister who was
in his fourth year on a charge, then replace him with a
student. In this process, at the end of the first
quarter of the year, the Lowrimores were moved. The
Trinity people sadly parted from their parsonage
family.
The Rev. L. Samuel Sebring, a student
supply pastor, of Greenwood, S. C, arrived in April,
1966. Mr. Sebring was obliged to attend college classes.
But he and his charming wife, Jan, found time to
participate in church activities. Several times they
went with the young people to Molly's Rock. The young
preacher was fond of old-time usages that lent dignity
and reverence to the services. A new order of worship
was adopted at this time. The Trinity people were very
fond of their young parsonage family.
When he departed, Mr. Sebring said of
his successor, "I think that Jim Mishoe is the best
thing that can happen to Trinity."
The Rev. James G. Michoe, of Conway,
was assigned to Trinity June 5, 1967. He had a splendid
personality, a good voice, good sermons, and great
ability. The new parsonage family was soon very popular.
Tapes of the church services were taken to the
shut-ins every week. A telephone was installed in the
pastor's study. The church was repainted and the
parsonage was re-covered.
The Church's first History Day was held
in 1968. Various items of historical interest were
displayed. A tour was made of the three original church
sites.
On April 14, 1968, as a joint venture
of several churches, the first Easter Sunrise service
was held in the church cemetery.
On April 23, 1968, the church members
learned that their denomination had changed its name. In
a great Conference in Dallas, Texas, the Methodist
Church and the Evangelical United Brethren combined to
form the United Methodist Church.
During the summer of 1968 the area
around Trinity Spring was cleaned, cleared of brush and
beautified. The spring was restored and a small parking
lot was prepared. Some of the last hard work that the
Charge Lay Leader, Dr. P. H. Senn, was able to do was
the laying of rock at the spring and the pruning of
trees on the church grounds.
In early August of 1968 all the church
indebtedness was paid. Then, on August 25th, a
Homecoming Day was celebrated very successfully. This
was a project of Dr. P. H. Senn. It was thought that
this was Trinity's first homecoming. But it was found
that Mr. L. C Boozer, as Sunday School Superintendent,
had sponsored an earlier one at an unknown time many
years ago.
Another Homecoming Day was held in
August of 1969. Boy Scouts directed traffic and parking.
The church was dedicated to the glory of God. Lunch was
served in the Fellowship Hall. Then the Trinity Spring
Recreation Area was dedicated. Mr. David Waldrop, who
owned the land, had generously moved his pasture fence
in order to make the area more accessible.
The pastor cooperated with the Boy
Scouts, took the MYF on their first trip to Myrtle
Beach, and served as chaplain of the Silverstreet Rural
Fire Department. It was the proud boast of this
organization that, when they went to a fire, they always
saved the chimney and the well. But this ceased after a
fire at a tenant house near the home of Harry Burgess.
There, the chimney collapsed and filled the well.
In 1968, as a result of the promptings
of the Charge Lay Leader, Dr. P. H. Senn, a Trinity
Cemetery Memorial Foundation was established. In this
connection, a trust fund was set up so that the interest
could pay for cutting the grass and maintaining the
cemetery.
Dr. Pettus Holmes Senn, the Charge Lay
Leader, died Nov. 6, 1969. A World War One veteran and a
retired college professor, Dr. Senn was a friendly and
unassuming man. He never called himself "Doctor" and he
never signed his name as such. He was as courteous to an
illiterate workman as he was to the state governor. As a
college professor, his life and example had influenced
students from many lands. As one of America's leading
geneticists, he had produced writings that were quoted
in colleges and research stations of many countries. In
his retirement at the Windmill Farm, Dr. Senn had
returned to his old, home church.
Billy Pitts, who succeeded Dr. Senn as
Charge Lay Leader, was the youngest person ever to hold
that office at Trinity Church. Mrs. Audrey Senn, who
succeeded Billy, was the first lady to hold that job at
Trinity.
During this time the church enjoyed a
visit from the Rev. Mark Casuco and his lovely wife,
Nevis. Mr. Casuco, a student at Emory, was a native of
northern Luzon, in the Philippines. This visit, like the
earlier visits of Miss Louise Best, the students
from Columbia College, and the Dawseys, was like a
glimpse of another world.
The Rev. Conrad Allen Senn was assigned
to Trinity Church June 7, 1971. The new parsonage family
was popular on their charge. Mrs. Rosa Senn worked with
the WSCS. The sick, the shut-ins, and the hospital
patients were visited conscientiously. Tapes of the
services were taken to the shut-ins. The church
organizations received pastoral support.
At this time the church benches were
cushioned and wall-to-wall carpeting was laid. The trees
on the church property were pruned. The parsonage was
connected to a new water-line of the
recently-established Newberry County Water and Sewer
Authority. Then, using funds left by the late Dr. P. H.
Senn, a new room was added to the parsonage and a
memorial plaque in honor of Dr. Senn was installed.
The Rev. James, Henry Martin, pastor
of Central Church, Newberry, died suddenly Oct.
30, 1971. He was a native of Trinity community,
an honored and useful member of the South Carolina
Conference, and a former Superintendent of Anderson
District. Rev. Martin's many friends and relatives had
looked forward to having him back at his home church
after his retirement. Bishop Paul Hardin preached the
funeral at Central Church and conducted a grave-side
service at Trinity.
Mrs. Winnie Hudson Martin, the widow
of Rev. James Martin, died Oct. 18, 1972, less
than a year after the death of her husband. Bishop
Edward Tullis preached the funeral at Central and
conducted a grave-side service at Trinity.
In 1972 Trinity's chapter of the
Methodist Men's Club was organized under the leadership
of Billy Pitts, who later served as the club's first
president. This organization has since been active in
the life of the church and has been responsible for
several improvements in the church facilities. The club
president in 1986 is Mr. Johnny Pitts, Jr.
On Oct. 9,1974, occurred the death of
Mr. Charles Pinkney Teague, Sr., who, at the age of 97,
was probably the oldest member that Trinity ever had.
Mr. Teague was quiet and unobtrusive. But his life span
had covered some crucial eras in the history of both his
church and his country. When Mr. Teague was born, the
dark days of Reconstruction had just ended. Steamboats
still plied the large rivers of South Carolina. Buggies,
wagons, and horseback were the only means of
transportation on the terrible dirt roads. Indian wars
still raged in the far West. And there were no public
schools or rural postal services. Truly, many awesome
changes had occurred during those years.
Mr. Marcus Boyd Hendrix, Sr., one of
the most respected leaders the church had ever had, died
Jan. 16,1975, after a long illness. Always quiet,
conscientious, and diligent, Mr. Hendrix had been a
useful member of the Board of Stewards many years. He
had served as Sunday School Superintendent more times
and for more years than anyone else had ever done; he
had held this office during both World Wars.
The Rev. James Williard Johnston, Jr.,
of Jacksonville, Florida, came to Trinity June 2, 1975.
He and his lovely wife, Kathey, and their two children,
Jessica and James the Third, were quite popular on their
new charge. Mr. Johnston and his wife were both great
singers. The pastor, who was quite musically inclined,
sometimes gave guitar lessons. The MYF flourished with
the new pastor's encouragement. But for several years
Mr. Johnston had considered going into full-time
evangelism. While at Trinity, he decided that the Lord
wanted him to go into evangelism. He, therefore, was on
his new charge only one year.
During this time Trinity lost another
of its best and most respected members. Mr. Luther B.
Bedenbaugh died suddenly June 22,1975. Like most other
people who had been young at the time of the great
economic depression of the 1930's, Mr. Bedenbaugh was
conservative in his outlook. With his vast fund of
practical experience and common sense, he was one of the
most useful members of the church.
Another of Trinity's sons, the Rev.
James Gilliam Johnson, died Dee. 17, 1975. To know
Mr.Johnson was to love him. Much of his life had been
spent in other states. But for several years before his
death he served a Methodist Church at McClellanville, S.
C.
The Rev. John Kirkwood Hendricks, of
Conway, S. C., was assigned to Trinity May 31, 1976. A
former member of the Air Force and an Emory student, Mr.
Hendricks was a good preacher. Mrs. Hendricks, the
former Miss Margaret Lewis, of Charleston, was a skilled
nutritionist and a very good church worker. More Sunday
School rooms were added to the church at this time.
A very useful member of the church, Mr.
Jobe Yancey (J. Y.) Floyd, a former chairman of the
Board of Trustees, died March 6,1977, after a long
illness.
On July 30, 1977, death claimed
Trinity's oldest surviving member, Mrs. Henrietta Morse
Longshore, who was 94 year's of age, A numerous
Longshore clan was left to mourn her passing.
Rev. William (Bill) Vines, of
Asheville, N. C., came to Trinity June 1, 1980. Mr.
Vines was a graduate of Wofford and of Emory. He was a
good speaker, a good singer, and a splendid musician.
With his guitar he was the life of the party at church
socials or when it was necessary to entertain some
visiting group. The sick in the hospitals were
conscientiously visited. Every two weeks the pastor
visited the shut-ins and remained an hour with each.
These visits were much appreciated.
In June, 1982, the Rev. Samuel Bryson
Coker was assigned as the pastor of Trinity. Rev. Coker
was from Anderson and was a son of C. H. ("Lum") Coker
and Janie Poore Coker. The new pastor was accompanied by
his father, who was a veteran of the First World War.
The senior Mr. Coker had served in the same military
unit in France as did the late Mr. John Edward Neel, of
Trinity.
Soon after the new pastor's arrival,
Trinity community suffered a great loss in the sudden
death, on Oct. 27, 1982, of the Rev. Rex Vanlyn Martin,
a retired minister. Known simply as "Rex" to his host of
friends, this splendid Christian gentleman was a native
of Trinity community who had come back to his original
home after his retirement from the active ministry.
As one of Trinity's best leaders, Rex
helped carry on the church programs and gave invaluable
assistance at Bible School. In substituting for other
ministers, of several denominations, he preached almost
half the Sundays.
Never self-assertive or flamboyant,
Rev. Martin did not seek to be the center of attention;
instead, he put Christ forward. Few Christian ministers
of modern times have been'so much respected and admired
by their peers as was the Rev. Rex Vanlyn Martin.
The sudden and very serious illness of
Rev. Coker soon caused a minor crisis at Trinity. The
pastor was forced to be inactive for many months. During
this time the church members showed strong support for
their pastor.
A retired minister, the Rev. John
Gerald Hipp, formerly of Saluda, S. C., was sent as
supply pastor during Mr. Coker's illness. No better
substitute could have been sent. Mr. Hipp was an able
preacher, a good leader, and a conscientious pastor. He
visited the sick and shut-ins regularly, and his visits
were much appreciated. The Rev. John Gerald Hipp would
always be pleasantly remembered by the people of
Trinity.
After a necessarily slow convalescence,
Rev. Coker was able to resume his duties gradually.
During his ministry there were several successful and
well-attended Bible schools. During the school of 1985
the children raised over $800.00 for famine relief in
Africa.
During this time repairs were made on
the church and the parsonage. The fair ladies took the
lead in raising money for new wall-to-wall carpeting in
the church. The Methodist Men's Club and the Young Adult
Sunday School Class led in securing a steeple for the
church. A much-needed copying machine was purchased for
the office. The church library was enlarged by a gift of
books from the Pollard family. Improvements were made in
the cemetery area. An aluminum ramp was provided for the
use of visitors in wheel-chairs. The area around Trinity
Spring was cleaned up and the historical markers at the
three original church sites were renewed.
During this time the children of John
and Beverly Pitts did an excellent job of maintaining
the church grounds, while Mrs. Nell Taylor proved
herself to be a first-class church custodian.
Throughout the early months of 1985
plans were made for the observance of Trinity's
sesquicentennial. Various activities commemorating this
event occurred every month of the year. The climax of
this celebration was Homecoming Day, August 25,
1985.
Bishop Roy Clark, of the South Carolina
Conference, was the guest preacher on Homecoming Day. A
large congregation, with many visitors, assembled. After
the Bishop's splendid and well-received sermon, lunch
was served in the Fellowship Hall. There the many guests
soon learned why the ladies of Trinity are so well known
for their good cooking. The Homecoming was considered a
great success.
The people of this small rural church
are aware that they owe to God a great debt of gratitude
for many past blessings. They also know that they are
deeply indebted to many generations of worthy
predecessors, the countless sturdy men and women who
brought the Christian faith down through the ages to us.
Still remembered today are the people of the pioneer
churches and the heroic Circuit Riders, the horsemen of
God, in difficult times long ago.
At the same time, however, Trinity and
our other rural churches, of all denominations, now face
problems that the older people never knew. Changes in
society and various economic factors, over which farmers
have no control, are driving many small farmers out of
business. Few of the small farmers remaining could
survive and educate their children if they did not have
industrial jobs as well as their farms. These factors
force many families to migrate to urban areas, with
consequent weakening of the rural churches.
Tree farms, which can be tended by only
a few people, are being set on lands that once supported
many farm families. But, unfortunately, pine trees do
not join the church. As a result, many rural churches
are losing membership and drying up. Then when a church
becomes so small that it cannot provide an adequate
youth program or good Sunday School facilities, young
couples will leave and- take their children to urban
churches with better facilities than most rural churches
can offer.
In the face of such problems, Trinity has been
greatly blessed. The membership has slowly increased
until it hovers around the 300 mark. The Trinity people
are loyal to their church. They hope that after the
passage of another 150 years the men and women of future
generations will still be gathering for the worship of
God in a sanctuary upon this site, where the axes of the
pioneer workmen once rang in the primeval
forest. | | |
Transcribed by Dena
Thomason-Whitesell
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