Sumter County, Alabama, Religious Forms

Topic: Early Versions
The lexical history of Sumter County, Alabama, slave communities differed from that in the Georgia and South Carolina sea islands.  In places like Saint Helena, plantations had imported manpower from Africa before the close of the Atlantic slave trade, and kept groups isolated from one another.  During the Civil War, William Francis Allen noted:

“the different plantations have their own peculiarities, and adepts profess to be able to determine by speech of a negro what part of the island he belongs to, or even, in some cases, his plantation.  I can myself vouch for the marked peculiarities of one plantation from which I had scholars, and which are hardly more than a mile distant from another which lacked these peculiarities.” [1]

All but seven slaves in Sumter County in 1850 were born in this country. [2]  As indicated in the post for 8 September 2019, ancestors of the ones interviewed by Ruby Pickens Tartt in the 1930s, had come from Virginia and North Carolina.  Over generations, a regional vocabulary developed that attached African concepts to English words.

Homogenization accelerated when people moved about after Emancipation.  By the time people were talking to Tartt, they had common terms for describing their secret meetings with iron pots described in the post for 22 September 2019.  They either shouted or prayed easy, depending on the situation.

There was no agreement on the location of these meetings.  Margaret Washington said in South Carolina in the 1840s, Baptist slave owners began setting aside buildings for religious use to “deprive the inhabitants of various plantations of an opportunity to mingle.” [3]

Whites knew these as Praise Houses, but Samuel Lawton found local Gullah speakers really were saying “Prays.” [4]  Washington observed Gullahs were adept at double meanings, [5] which allowed simultaneous communication with whites and among themselves.

No term existed in Sumter County.  Josh Horn said his master, Isaac Horn, provided “an old house with a dirt floor in the quarters.” [6]  George Young implied slaves on Reuben Chapman’s plantations appropriated an “old house with a dirt floor.” [7]  Oliver Bell simply said they “shut the door” on Tresvan De Graffenreid’s place. [8]

Freedmen agreed they were Baptists after the war, but, beyond full-immersion baptism by adults, that term had little meaning.  As mentioned in the posts for 19 January 2020 and 26 January 2020, Baptists in Pamlico County, North Carolina, continually were confronted by proselytizing groups bent of changing their ways.  This continued in Sumter County, where Bethany Baptist church split in 1838 between Missionary and Old Side groups. [9]

When one looks beyond dogma, which was of little interest to most slaves and whites, the primary difference between factions was their view on what constituted qualification for membership and ordination.  Anabaptists, General Baptists, Free Will Baptists, and Primitive Baptists all believed a religious experiences was sufficient.  Particular Baptists and Missionary Baptists were more influenced by Calvin, and believed an individual needed to recognize his or her own depravity and that ministers should have some training.

Individuals who talked to Tartt had had owners from a variety of family traditions.  De Graffenreid’s great-grandfather founded the Anabaptist colony in New Berne, North Carolina. [10]  Jim Godfrey, the owner of Lucindia Williams, [11] was a Methodist from South Carolina. [12]  His aunts were married to John Evander Brown and George A. Brown, [13] whose early ancestors moved from Rhode Island to a Baptist colony in New Jersey. [14]

Ancestors of the owners of Berry Smith and Josh Horn had contacts with Quakers.  James Harper’s great-grandfather [15] lived in Friend’s communities in the Carolinas and Georgia, [16]  while one  of Isaac Horn’s father’s [17] brothers joined the Quakers in Edgecombe, North Carolina. [18]

Many who moved to Edgecombe County were fleeing religious persecution in Virginia. [19]  Another of Horn’s father’s relatives was a founding member of the Kehukee Baptist Association [20] formed by General Baptists.  Isaac’s father’s brother, his uncle Josiah, [21] helped organize the Methodist Protestant Church in Panola with Quakers and Primitive Baptists from that same part of Edgecombe County. [22]

Descendants’ religious affiliations may have changed and their public theology probably evolved to fit that of their neighbors in Sumter County.  What may not have changed were attitudes and values passed on through early child rearing practices.  Godfrey’s father’s will stipulated:

“it is my will that in the event any of the negroes be dissatisfied or unwilling to go to or live or serve any of my heirs to which they may fall in the division, it is my will my executioners shall swap exchange or sell to some other person or persons to whom the dissatisfied slave may be willing to live with.” [23]

No one has left a record of Freedmen’s actions in the first year of Emancipation in Sumter County.  In the pine woods of Clarke County south of Marengo County, a local newspaper complained that preachers were “springing up among them . . . without ordination, and claiming to receive their ministerial commissions and Biblical information directly from the mouth of God.” [24]

The following year brush arbors were reported.  There was no shared agreement on this term in Sumter County.  While most used “bush arbor,” some contributors to The Heritage of Sumter County in 2005 used the term “brush harbor.”  Mary Jo Square wrote “bush hobbler (meaning tent).” [25]

It probably began as a white term coming from Phoebe Palmer’s Holiness Movement that spread after 1867, [26] and was used by Freedmen to camouflage an African-American event with a label soothing to outsiders.  One suspects the retreat into the country provided a means of perpetuating what remnants of older African initiation rituals had survived.

Not all Freedmen wished to continue antebellum practices.  Many wanted “to do what was ‘right’ and behave as they thought free men did.” [27]  In Sumter County they were affected most by Jeremiah Brown and Abner Scarborough.  Brown’s father had been an English Baptist pastor in Darlington, South Carolina. [28]  Scarborough’s father was converted in 1811 [29] in Edgecombe County. [30]

Both were in the Missionary Baptist tradition, which emphasized centralized organizations that defined theology.  Brown donated to the Baptist seminary in Marion, Alabama. [30]  Scarborough was active in the Bigbee Baptist Association [32] in Sumter and Greene counties that was founded in 1853. [33]

One Freedman they influenced was Lewis Brown.  He was from Saint Louis, and had been purchased by Jeremiah in 1845.  Lewis was baptized in Jones Creek Church in 1863 where, Charles Octavius Boothe said, “the chief persons in the presbtery were Revs. Abner Scarber (white) and Mr. Wright.” [34]

Nathan Ashby organized the Colored Missionary Convention of the State of Alabama as a parallel organization [35] to the white Alabama Baptist Association in 1868.  That same year the regional Bethlehem Association was formed “in association with Jones Creek” to mirror the Bigbee conference. [36]

Like Daniel Payne, who tried to suppress ring shouts in the AME church, [37] Ashby sought to spread “correct gospel knowledge and influence” and elevate the “standard of ministerial education, piety and usefulness.” [38]  Boothe, head of a church in Montgomery, [39] condemned local Baptist ministers for acting on “dreams and suggestions which, they say, are made to them by ‘the spirit’.” [40]

Lewis was newly ordained [41] when Jones Creek hosted the founding meeting of the Bethlehem association.  By 1895, it had 6,000 members in 37 congregations, and sent more students to the church’s seminary in Selma “than any other association in the state.” [42]

Scarborough’s last pastorate was New Prospect Missionary Baptist, where he moved after he bought a plantation in the area in 1866. [43]  The year before he died, [44] white membership had dwindled, and ownership was turned over to African-American members. [45]

Tartt talked with three individuals about this church.  Tom Moore said his wife belonged to “the Prospect Baptist Missionary, and she just sets and prays and sings.” [46]  Laura Clark lived “across the road from that church over yonder and can’t go ’cause I’s crippled and blind.  But I hears them singin.” [47]  Emma Crocket told Tartt “I goes now to de New Prophet Church, and my favorite song” has the line “move Daniel, rock me home Daniel, rock by faith Daniel.” [48]

The white form was Missionary Baptist, but the African-American substance was much older.

End Notes
1.  William Francis Allen.  “Introduction.”  The Slave Songs of the United States.  Edited by Allen, Charles Pickard Ware, and Lucy McKim Garrison.  New York: A. Simpson and Company, 1867.  xxiv.

2.  Nelle Morris Jenkins.  Pioneer Families of Sumter County, Alabama.  Tuscaloosa, Alabama: Willo Publishing Company, 1961.  Reprinted by Bloutsville, Alabama: The Yarbrough National Genealogical and Historical Association, 14 June 2015.  128.  Most were on one plantation owned by “Poole who bought them from a man by the name of Jones in North Carolina.”

3.  Margaret Washington Creel.  “A Peculiar People.”  New York: New York University Press, 1988.  233 and 277.  Quotation, 277.

4.  Samuel Lawton.  “The Religious Life of Coastal and Sea Island Negroes.”  PhD dissertation.  George Peabody College for Teachers, 1939.  54–56.  Cited by Washington.  391, note 44.

5.  Washington.  391, note 44.  “The Gullahs’ mastering of double meaning however may also inform the discussion.  They often asked white Northerners to ‘jine praise wid we.’ [. . .]  Thus the Gullahs went to the meetinghouse to praise and pray.”

6.  Ruby Pickens Tartt.  “Alice.”  Southwest Review 34:192–195:1949.  Reprinted by Virginia Pounds Brown and Laurella Owens.  Toting the Lead Row.  University: The University of Alabama Press, 1981.  103.  Her source was Josh Horn.  A fuller quotation appears in the post for 22 September 2020.

7.  George Young.  “Peter Had No Keys ’ceptin His.”  Transcribed by Tartt for the WPA’s Slave Narratives collection from Alabama. [49]  120–122 in Brown and Owens.  121.  Owens modernized Tartt’s transcriptions to make them easier to read. [50]  A fuller quotation appears in the post for 22 September 2019.

8.  Oliver Bell.  “That Tree Was My Nurse.”  Transcribed by Tartt, WPA.  134–137 in Brown and Owens.  134.

9.  Jenkins.  38.

10.  Bell.  134.  For more on the founding of New Bern, see the post for 19 January 2020.

11.  Lucindia Washington.  Collected by Alice S. Barton for the WPA’s Slave Narratives collection from Alabama.  Reprinted by Alan Brown and David Taylor as “A Slave Story.”  99–102 in  Gabr’l Blow Sof’.  Livingston, Alabama: Livingston Press, 1997.  101–102.

12.  James Godfrey was buried in the Sumterville Methodist Church’s cemetery. [51]

13.  Robert D. Spratt.  A History of the Town of Livingston, Alabama.  Edited by Nathaniel Reed.  Livingston: University of West Alabama, 1997.  24.

14.  The line was Nicolas > Abraham > Abraham > John > Samuel > John Evander.  Jenkins identified John Evander’s grandfather. [52]  The Cummings Family provided the rest of the genealogy. [53]

15.  James M. Allen, Jr., identified Harper’s parents as Robert Harper and Mary Dunlap in “James Allen of Scotland and Virginia: A Partial List of His Descendants.”  11 January 2007.  North Carolina Digital Collections website.

16.  House of Harper Genealogy.  “Robert Harper Sr. of Georgia.”  Genealogy and History Blog.  5 May 2017.  “By 1774 Robert Harper, Sr., was in Georgia, in the neighborhood of the Quaker settlement at Wrightsborough, St. Paul’s Parish (now McDuffie County) [. . .] Records show that Robert Harper, Sr. had previously lived near Quaker settlements in North Carolina and South Carolina.”

17.  Isaac’s line was William > Jacob > Thomas > Isaac.  Thomas’ siblings included John, Jeremiah, and Edith, mentioned in the post for 13 September 2020.   Relationships pieced from a number of sources.

18.  Robert Gordon Horn.  “Henry (the Quaker) Horn.”  Horns of Tennessee/Kentucky website Henry was the son of William and brother of Jacob.  The immigrant ancestor, William, had land south of a Quaker meeting house.  Henry set two of his seven slaves free in his will.

19.  George Stevenson.  “Surginer, William.”  NC Pedia website.  1994.

20.  Old Reporter.  “Col. William Horn.”  Rocky Mount [North Carolina] Telegram.  17 March 1961.  4.  Posted by Jeanealogy058 on 21 April 2018.  William was the son of Henry.

21.  Jenkins identified Josiah Horn as another brother of Thomas. [54]

22.  R. M. Arrington.  “Shady Grove Methodist Church, Panola, Alabama.”  60–61 in The Heritage of Sumter County, Alabama.  Edited by Charles Walker.  Clayton, Alabama: Heritage Publishing Consultants, 2005.

23.  William Godfrey.  Will recorded 13 March 1854 by B. J. H. Gaines.  151–153 in Gwendolyn Lynette Hester.  Sumter County Alabama Wills.  Dallas: Southern Roots, 1998.  152.

24.  Clarke County Journal.  18 October 1866.  Quoted Peter Kolchin.  First Freedom.  Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press, 1972.  118.

25.  Mary Jo Square.  “The History of Shady Grove Baptist Church.”  60 in Heritage.

26.  For more on Phoebe Palmer’s camp meetings, see the post for 9 February 2020.  I’ve found neither an etymology for the term “brush arbor” nor a reference that was published before 1865.  I suspect once camp meetings (an activity) and brush arbors (a structure) became associated, they became synonymous, and once synonymous, the term brush arbor was extended back in time so that now it refers to any outdoor meeting that occurred after the Cane Ridge revival of 1801. [55]  If anyone has a published reference from before the Civil War, I’d love to see it.

27.  Kolchin.  61.

28.  T. A. Deland and A. Davis Smith.  “Jeremiah H. Brown.”  Northern Alabama, Historical and Biographical.  Birmingham, Alabama: Smith and De Land.  1888.  219.

29.  Jewell Davis Scarborough.  “Southern Kith and Kin.”  1957 edition.  59.  Roots Web website.

30.  Karen Hoy.  “John Rasberry Scarborough (1787 - 1846).”  Wiki Tree website.  10 May 2014; last updated 12 October 2019.

31.  DeLand.  The school was Howard College, now Samford University. [56]
32.  fdmal.  “Rev Abner Rasberry Scarborough.”  Find a Grave website.  12 August 2009.
33.  “Bigbee Baptist Association.”  Samford University website.

34.  Charles Octavius Boothe.  The Cyclopedia of the Colored Baptists of Alabama.  Birmingham: Alabama Publishing Company, 1895.  117.

35.  Edward R. Crowther.  “Interracial Cooperative Missions among Blacks by Alabama’s Baptists, 1868-1882.”  The Journal of Negro History 80:131–139:1995.  132.

36.  Boothe.  58.
37.  Payne is discussed in the post for 9 August 2017.
38.  Crowther.  132.
39.  Crowther.  133.  Boothe’s church was the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church.

40.  Boothe.  Quoted by Crowther.  134–135.  His sources were the Alabama Baptist for 20 April 1877, 2; Alabama Baptist for 17 May 1877, 1; and Minutes of the Alabama Baptist Convention, 1877, 24–25.

41.  Boothe.  117.
42.  Boothe.  58.

43.  In 1866, Scarborough purchased the plantation of John H. Gary, who was moving to Meridian, Mississippi. [57]

44.  fdmal.

45.  Jud K. Arrington.  “Bluffport.”  Arrington collection, Julia Tutwiler Library, University of West Alabama.  25 in Heritage.

46.  Tom Moore.  “Tom Moore and His Death Money.”  Transcribed by Tart.  77–79 in Brown and Owens.  77.

47.  Laura Clark.  “Children in Every Graveyard.  Transcribed by Tartt, WPA.  123–126 in Brown and Owens.  123.

48.  Emma Crockett.  Transcribed by Tartt, WPA.  Reprinted as “Ex-Slave Emma Crockett.”  29–31 in Brown and Taylor.  30.  On their “map of Sumter County showing where Ruby Pickens Tartt found singers and storytellers,” Brown and Owens showed Crockett with New Prospect. [58]  I found no mention of a Prophet church.

49.  For more information on Tartt and the WPA Slave Narratives project, see the post for 23 January 2019.

50.  Laurella Owens.  “Introduction.”  59–60 in Brown and Owens.  60.

51.  A.  “Dr James Myers Godfrey.”  Find a Grave website.  20 October 2008; updated by Doug Fitchett.

52.  Jenkins.  175.

53.  The Cummings Family of Sumter, South Carolina.  “Descendants of Nicholas Brown.”  Roots Web website.  Last updated 20 January 2019.

54.  Jenkins.  166.
55.  For more on Cane Ridge, see the post for 26 January 2020.
56.  Wikipedia.  “Samford University.”

57.  Mary H. Abbe.  “Scarborough Family.”  254 in Heritage.

Mary Anne Habbe.  “Gary/Scarborough Deed.”  November 1866.  AlGen website.

58.  Brown and Owens.  vi.