USA > North Carolina > Historical papers of the North Carolina Conference Historical Society and the Western North Carolina Conference Historical Society > Part 2
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Caswell and Queen Streets, where the Kornegay Store now stands, was used as a preaching place. In 1851 or 1852 the first Methodist church building in Kinston was erected. It was used for seven or eight years when it was burned by lightning. The erection of the next building, which now stands on the corner of Caswell and Independence Streets, was begun in 1859, and being only weatherboarded and covered, was occupied during the war by the Confederate troops as a hospital, the basement being used as stables.
The building of a new church began to be talked and agitated sometime about 1900 under the pastorate of D. H. Tuttle. But the movement did not take definite shape until 1903, when under the pastorate of E. H. Davis a lot was purchased and a considerable amount of subscriptions were taken. But ground was not broken until 1907 when, under the pastorate of Rev. J. D. Bundy, the building of the church was begun. There were many and vexatious delays, but, if slow, there was progress, and under the pastorate of Rev. Jno. H. Hall, in the early part of this year, the church was well on the way to completion when Brother Hall was removed from this charge to the Raleigh District to fill the unexpired term caused by the death of Rev. W. L. Cunninggim, and our present pastor, F. S. Love, was sent here to fill the unexpired term caused by the removal of Brother Hall. Under his pastorate Queen Street Church, in which we now worship, was completed and opened on the first Sunday in August and dedicated on the third Sunday in September.
It is said that New Hope was the first place in Greene County at which a church was built. The site of this Church was eight miles from Kinston on the Kinston-Goldsboro public road and was conveyed to the Church by William Waters and the church was built by Mrs. Smithy Powell, nee Herring. It was on the LaGrange Circuit but went down several years ago or ceased to be used as a church and a new church building was erected on Falling Creek and is now known as Trinity, where the congregation worships.
The church at Institute was built between the years 1840 and 1850. The moving spirits in the building of this church were Rev. W. H. Cunninggim, a local preacher and father of Revs. W. L. and J. L. Cunninggim, and Rev. Geo. W. Venters, also a local preacher. It was a combination of a church and school house, the upper story being used for a school. For several years Rev. W. H. Cunninggim and Rev. L. Branson conducted here a flourishing school known as Lenoir Institute. This school continued until near the beginning of the war. In 1869 Mr. Cunninggim opened the school again as a neighborhood school. After a few years it was discontinued, but the church has remained and has been a great blessing to the community. For many years it was the nearest preaching place to LaGrange and many of its people worshipped there. In 1870 the LaGrange church was built, the chief human factor in its building being Mrs. Jno. L. Hardy, then a prominent merchant of LaGrange. Its membership was then small but it has grown and ranks as one of the strongest churches in the town. Piney Grove and Rose of Sharon were built about the same time (1870).
The building of these churches was due principally to the efforts
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of Uncle Daniel Culbreth of the North Carolina Conference, and A. J. Finlayson, a local preacher, both of whom served this charge about this time and left "deep tracks" behind them. The church at Sharon was organized sometime prior to the building of the church and the congregation worshipped in a free church.
Edwards Chapel was built in 1860 by the Edwards families, who were then prominent in the community. This church is situated near Edwards Bridge on the Contentnea and was for several years on the Snow Hill Circuit, later on the LaGrange Circuit and now on the Grifton.
The church at Grifton was organized in 1884 by Rev. A. McCullen, while pastor of LaGrange Circuit, in an old shop owned by F. M. Pittman & Son, in which Sunday school was also organized and held until the old shop was removed, when both church service and Sun- day school were conducted in a room over a bar room. Under the pastorate of W. W. Rose, a church building was erected on the Pitt County side of Contentnea Creek. This building continued to be used until recently when a new building took its place. This church is now doing a good work, having one of the best Sunday schools in this section. The bar room, I am glad to say, is gone, they not being able to abide together and the church being unwilling to abdicate.
Trinity Church, near Falling Creek, was also built by Rev. W. W. Rose while on the LaGrange Circuit.
All of these churches were on the LaGrange Circuit until 1890, when Grifton Circuit was formed, being composed of Edwards Chapel. Rose of Sharon, Grifton, Gum Swamp and Epworth churches.
Up to 1901 there was no Methodist Church in Lenoir County on the south side of Neuse River. But at this time, during his pastorate at Kinston, Rev. D. H. Tuttle, who is always looking for new territory to conquer for his Master, crossed the river and built the churches at Woodington and Sandy Bottom, the latter being named Webb's Chapel, in memory of Rev. J. B. Webb, a local preacher of Kinston.
St. Paul's Church at Goldsboro was born in a revival Prior to 18+9 there was no church building in Goldsboro, nor was there any . organized membership in the town, and there were but few professed Christians. There was a school building on John Street at the present site of St. Paul's Church, and there was at Waynesboro a free church, built in 1840. Both the school house and the free church were open to all denominations, but there was no regular preaching service at either place. The Court House had already been moved to Goldsboro and Waynesboro was in its dying struggles.
On the first Sunday in September, 1849, Revs. Ira. T. Wyche and James H. Brent began a meeting held in the free church at Waynes- boro in the day and in the school house at Goldsboro at night. At the first service Rev. Jno. N. Andrews and his wife, who had been converted just before at a meeting held by the same men at Holt's Mill, joined the church. From the first revival fires began to burn and great numbers from the surrounding communities attended the services. The meeting continued for three weeks and developed into a great revival in which not less than 100 were converted. As a result of this meeting all of the denominations gathered much valu-
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able fruit and thereby laid the foundation for the Episcopal, Presby- terian, Baptist and Methodist Churches.
There were fifty to join the Methodist Church at Goldsboro, who soon began to devise ways and means for the erection of a church building. The building was soon planned and erected at a cost of $2,500.
Goldsboro was at this time on the Smithfield Circuit, and thus remained for several years until Goldsboro Circuit was formed. Just before the war it became a station and has continued as such ever since except for two years right after the war when it was bracketed with Wilson, both being served by one preacher.
The church building, being from time to time improved, con- tinued to be used by the congregation at Goldsboro until 1883, when the present church building was erected on the site where stood the first school house in Goldsboro, and was named St. Paul's Church. Since then it has been remodeled and improved and a Sunday school department added. For many years St. Paul's has stood in the fore- front of stations in the North Carolina Conference.
Early Methodism on the Lower Cape Fear
REV. THOMAS A. SMOOT*
HE first Methodist preacher to set foot on North Carolina soil was that heroic scout of the armies of God, Joseph Pillmoor. Urged on by the Captain of the Host, he entered the borders of the colony from the north in 1772, skirting the whole of the eastern section, traversed that tidewater region from Currituck to the mouth of the Cape Fear in a line that would be suggested by Edenton, Bath, New Bern and Wilmington. Preaching on the way at farm houses and in established church chapels, he saw and heard enough to carry back a good account of the King's land, and become convinced that the "King's business required haste."
But before his itinerary was complete, Robert Williams, the accredited founder of Methodism in Virginia, had come in contact with Rev. Devereux Jarratt, an Episcopal clergyman of Petersburg, a man of evangelical spirit and no mean revivalistic gifts, and had caught fresh fire from the flame that burned on the altars of that good man's soul. Lighted on his way by what was now a blazing conflagration of divinely inspired enthusiasm, Williams scattered the glowing brands through southern Virginia, crossed the border-line into Carolina, and applied the torch to the crackling tinder of thousands of parched souls. The revival swept on, fanned by the winds of heaven, not even extinguished by the wet blanket of an epoch-making Revolution, for as early as 1779, when the bard might well have sung of "arms and men," we read in the minutes of three great circuits in the colony-New Hope, Tar River and Roanoke, comprising vast. tracts that embraced well-nigh half of our present state. To these was added the Yadkin Circuit in 1780, so that, before the war had closed, all of the northern half of North Carolina had the banner of the cross, as marked by the tribe called Methodists, planted upon the: ramparts of the hosts of the Almighty.
If those were stirring times for the state and nation, they were no less momentous for the Church. The itinerant preacher of that day carried no heavier luggage than saddle-pockets, and it can seem no wonder that Methodism went in a gallop. There was no time to be lost: the nation must be evangelized, the task was big, men must make haste. Twelve years had passed, and until now the southern half of a great commonwealth had not heard the Gospel as preached by the followers of John Wesley. Beverly Allen leaps to the saddle and speeds away toward the mouth of the Cape Fear, and there, on the level stretches of Duplin, sounds the bugle notes of Repentance and Justification by Faith. That was in 1784. But it takes loud blasts of the trumpet to awaken the dead; almost as difficult is it to arouse those who are under the thrall of that fine anaesthetic of the
* Annual address of North Carolina Conference Historical Society at Fayetteville, November 27th, 1912.
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devil, formalism, to the exclusion of spirit. The Established Church had pre-empted the ground, and the inhabitants slept the enchanted sleep. Allen's efforts failed, and his feeble societies crumbled away, so that in 1786 the Wilmington Circuit was discontinued, and the next year Bladen Circuit took its place in this region. And it is now that we get some faint glimpses of the marvelous work of Providence and the masterful Christian statesmanship that eventnated in devel- oping the territory lying between Wilmington and Fayetteville. Originally, the circuit stretched from Long Bay, in South Carolina, and for a long time embraced at least the counties of New Hanover, Brunswick, Columbus, Bladen, Robeson and Cumberland. Sometimes the circuit had as many as three preachers, but the appointment of one man to this vast tract of country was not unknown. The hun- dreds of miles required in traversing such a circuit, and especially when we think of the horrible roads and modes of conveyance in those days, causes the sacrifice of the twentieth century preacher to pale into insignificance.
As late as 1796 there was no regular preacher stationed at Wil- mington, though Asbury, in his Journal, states that it would be well to have one there, if men and money were available. The same cry was going up then, it would seem, that now resounds everywhere- more money, more men, for the harvest fields of God. But sometime during this decade-from 1790 to 1800-one William Meredith, from 'South Carolina, began preaching in Wilmington, largely, it would seem, upon his own initiative. It is this work of his that brings us to one of the great parallels of Methodism in the state, that of the founding of the church in a mission to the colored people.
For it was distinctly as a missionary to the negroes that Meredith came to Wilmington. What his authority was we do not definitely know, except that he was an ambassador of Jesus Christ, which was credential enough. He had been associated with Hammet, the schismatic, in South Carolina, and it is a credible theory that this same man, Hammet, aspiring to the widening of his influence as a seceder from the regular order of Methodism, had desired Meredith to open up preaching headquarters at the important town on the Cape Fear, with a view to pre-empting that point to a certain extent for the Primitive Methodists, this being the name of the dissenting sect. And it may be well to digress enough to say that, although Hammet's movement fell to pieces, and that even his own independent church finally reverted to the mother Church, as late as 1815 the influence of the Primitive Methodists was felt in Wilmington, and even as late as the middle of the century, there were persons in the city that re- ferred with great pride and fervor to their tutelage in that school of revolt against the episcopal form of Church government.
Be this as it may, whether Meredith merely drifted into the town or was advised by others to go, certain it is that after he reached the field and became immersed in his efforts to redeem the ignorant blacks from the power of sin, this apostle of God became the logical representative of Methodism in that community for future times, and held in his hand the destinies of the Church to a large extent.
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The historian devotes not more than a page to the work of this pioneer of the Church, but we can find enough, a scrap here and a. word yonder, to form a skeleton or outline of the story of a great life and of the wise placing of foundation stones upon which the superstructure was to rest in later years.
William Meredith undoubtedly found the blacks of Wilmington sadly neglected and grossly ignorant of the truth of the gospel. They were vicious and corrupt morally, but, with the religious instinct of the race yet intact, were willing to listen to the story of redemption which the white missionary came to bring. His work was looked upon with suspicion by the town authorities, and he was commanded not to preach to the slaves after sunset, lest he might inculcate an ยท insurrectionary spirit. How nearly with the letter of the law he complied, no data affords evidence. But it is a fact that his first crude shack in which he preached was burned by malicious hands. This first building of Methodism seems to have stood on the corner of Walnut and Second Streets, where the present Grace Church parsonage now stands. After this misfortune, the intrepid missionary repaired to the Court House and continued to preach the gospel to such as came to hear him. It was then that persecution reached its flood-tide of fury, and Meredith was arrested and placed in prison, the charge being, of course, that his influence was not calculated to promote the community's interests and welfare among the colored population, and that it tended to disorderliness and lawlessness. We marvel that, after a trial of eighteen centuries, any civilized com- munity should fear the result of proclaiming the evangel of "peace on earth and good will to men" among any class, no matter how degraded and ignorant.
The old brick building in which he was incarcerated still stands at the northeast corner of Princess and North Second Streets. It is now stuccoed and repaired for use as a modern mercantile estab- lishment. I rarely pass it now that I do not think of William Meredith, once looking from the bars of the upper floor down upon the sea of upturned black faces, furrowed with tears, preaching the same gospel that he proclaimed during his freedom. For it is one of the historic facts of Christianity that the message of Redemption cannot be bound, chained, handcuffed so that men may not hear and know of it. It is too precious, too inseparable from the weal of the race to be restrained. You cannot bottle up God's pure atmosphere and sunshine and keep them from the poor. The peasant has as much right to them as the king, and often gets a better quality. And so there was Paul, bound to a Roman soldier, and yet writing his immortal letters to the Churches, upon which we are now being nourished today; and there was John Bunyan, shut up in a filthy dungeon, but preaching on and on, giving out his immortal Epic of Salvation, destined to live after his persecutors were forgotten. And there was William Meredith, Methodist preacher, missionary to bond- men in Wilmington, himself bound for the sake of his message, yet dispensing from jail windows a gospel just as pure and liberating as that which the apostle Paul preached. And I deem it a thing not to be regretted that Methodism served a term in New Hanover's jail,
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just to show how mighty it was, what a powerful dynamic nestled at its heart, how revolutionary it was in its nature. It is still a mighty force in that city by the sea, and is still breaking jail-bars and liberating serfs.
Meredith's congregations grew around the jail to such an extent that the authorities had to let the prisoner out, fearing the effect might become a boomerang to themselves and their hostile purposes. It is a wonderful commentary on the man's preaching that it drew crowds about his cell. It seems problem enough to draw men to a great church building, with its comfortable pews and steam heated atmosphere now-a-days; even then there is room and to spare. But put the modern preacher in jail-and what man, though a son of thunder, would have a single hearer? Well, maybe it is the time and not the timber out of which men are made that differs; at any rate, we pause to admire these mighty men of the early days, who wrought so well that we have entered into their labors as into a splendid temple, built upon the rock of which our Lord spoke.
After his release Meredith continued his work, gathered about him an increasingly great congregation, and secured title to land on which to build. Finally, upon the original site of old Front Street Church, a structure was pitched that afterward became the property of the Methodist Episcopal Church, along with the dwelling that the missionary had occupied. Just when the transfer of property was understood to be in Meredith's mind we do not know, but it must have been in contemplation two or three years before his death, which occurred in 1799, after which Methodism fell legal heir to all that this good man had bought and built. As early as 1806 Asbury says in his Journal; "I gave orders for the completion of the tabernacle and dwelling house according to the charge left me by William Meredith."
From these meagre facts the conclusion may easily be drawn that Meredith was a man of really great constructive ability, for he realized that his work, apart from some great organized movement, was obliged to fall to pieces after his death, and so, with admirable foresight and magnanimity, he linked it with the destinies of the great Church that was nearest his heart.
By one of those strange ironies of human history and suffering, William Meredith was not privileged to die in the itinerant ranks as was his desire. It appears that he applied for admission to the South Carolina Conference in 1798, but "was refused, with the assur- ance that if he would come to Conference next year, show good behavi- or, and make over his meeting-house to the Methodist Episcopal Church, they would receive him." And even at that very Conference of 1799 his case was discussed, and he was refused admission, because he was not present, and it could not be ascertained whether or not the property had been made over to the Church. Before the year closed, however, Meredith had joined the hosts triumphant and had answered the roll-call in the assembly of the saints. That his behavior had been good is evidenced by the fact that the South Carolina Conference, years later, placed a marble tablet to his memory in old Front Street Church, under the porch of which he was buried; and upon the
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memorial was inscribed a high and loving tribute to his devotion to the cause of Christ. The ashes of Meredith now sleep beneath the pulpit of Grace Church-a place worthy of any man's dust. But the tablet lies under Grace parsonage, unknown, doubtless, to a tenth of the people who belong to the church he founded, and I have often reflected that it should have a more honorable recognition.
Sometime during the period of which I have spoken, that is, toward the close of the 18th century, the high tide of Methodism lapped the shores of the Scottish settlement eighty miles up the Cape Fear. Nothing can stop the upward rolling of the tides of the sea; nor can anything human throw up insurmountable barriers to the tides of God. And Methodism was a tide, sweeping out from eternal seas across the plains and against the shores of time. Just what year we do not know; what was his history we cannot tell, but there he stands in history, a truly great figure-Henry Evans, freed- man. Meredith, a white man, preached to blacks and founded Metho- dism in Wilmington; Evans, a black man, preached to slaves, and later to whites, and founded Methodism in Factteville. This, then, is the second great parallel of Methodism in the Cape Fear of which I speak. Both churches had their origin in missions to the slaves.
Much has been said and written of Evans, but he deserves it all. As we look back, knowing what we do, there is both pathos and grandeur in the figure-yonder black man, with the kit of shoe- maker's tools slung over his back, trekking from Virginia southward, his objective being Charleston. Along with him is his faithful wife, Melice. They come to Fayetteville, and must stop and gather funds for the onward journey. Evans opens up a cobbler's shop across the creek, on the hill, and mends shoes for small coin, and preaches the gospel out of love for Christ. We may truly say that shoe-mending was a side-line, preaching the main line. He had not intended to stay long, but God kept him. The blacks of the town were degraded and neglected; Evans saw it, and was moved with compassion that almost broke his heart.
And so the new-comer continued to stay and preach. We know how he was run out of town, forbidden by the council to preach the insurrectionary evangel of the Lord. But the blacks loved to hear it and Evans loved to preach it, and that settled the question as to whether it would be preached or not. It is so powerful-this gospel of God. The slaves followed the preacher into the woods and out; wherever he went, there were the eager listeners. And this gospel as preached by Methodists was so wonderfully adapted to the needs of these negroes: repentance, justification by faith, and the witness of the Spirit. These doctrines touched the slave's heart; though he was a slave, a bondman, he could be free through faith in Christ, and his salvation would be attested to by the Holy Spirit. This experience made his heart leap out into the larger, world-freedom of a new-born soul, and in his gladness he shouted. He liked that privilege, too. It was a gospel of song, and of full pardon to all who would accept it. The negro liked the unstinted measure of grace that was dealt to him, and being gifted in song, he made the welkin ring with hymns of praise. I thank God that Methodism still
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preaches a gospel that uplifts the negroes, makes them better citizens, and fills their souls with divine joy.
The inevitable triumph of the gospel came, and Evans was invited to return to the town and preach to his heart's content. At his own expense, we are to presume, he fitted out a preaching place on the site of the present Evans Chapel, and plied his trade of shoe-maker during the week, and preached on Sundays. White people came to hear the gospel that made the slaves better, and found it was good for them, too. The negroes were pushed out to shed rooms, and the whites complacently took their places in the center. And then it was that Henry Evans, with a broadness of vision as admirable as was his piety, called upon the great Mother Church to come and look after her children in Fayetteville. He, like Meredith, knew that his work had been in great measure accomplished, and that his labors would be largely dissipated and lost unless taken up and carried on by some well-wrought-out organization. Besides, though first of all a servant of Jesus Christ, he was also a servant of the Methodist Church, and realized that fealty to the denomination demanded the articulation of the church he had founded with the great organic body that was already laving carefully planned foundations for its world-propagandism. It is a co-incidence worthy our attention that in the very year that Fayetteville was taken into the General Con- nection, the General Conference-that of 1808-adopted the consti- tution of Methodism, delegating full powers to said Conference, under the six restrictive rules. It is a constitution that has stood well the test of a century, and still vindicates the wisdom of its makers. And during this epochal year Methodism, having gotten the consti- tutional basis for her future existence, planted her standard in Fay- etteville, and took out grants from the King of Heaven to operate in the said town till the grant should be rescinded. Thanks be to the King that at the end of a hundred years the grant still holds good.
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