Topic: Early Versions
Joe Pearson organized the first Union Camp Meeting at Dixon’s Mills, Alabama, in the summer of 1912 using rented tents, and probably leased land. He expected people to come from southern Marengo County and neighboring Wilcox and Clarke counties [1] that were south of the antebellum cotton-plantation belt in northern Marengo and Dallas Counties. [2]
The term “union” then was used to refer to revivals that used clergymen from more than one denomination. In 1911, one of the first speakers at Dixon’s Mills, A. A. Walker, had “launched a simultaneous soul-winning campaign for the month of June” in Birmingham, Alabama, “where all evangelical denominations are expected to participate.” [3] The other speakers were Methodists. I. W. Chalker was from Montgomery, Alabama, [4] while W. W. McCord came from Georgia. [5]
The second year Pearson rented a larger tent and set up a restaurant. This time he brought in an evangelist associated with Wilbur Chapman, the former head of the Presbyterian’s Committee on Evangelism. [6] In 1908, it had promised “to provide well trained evangelistic singers who can assist pastors in their own evangelistic work.” [7] Daniel Toy was the speaker in 1913 and O. C. Steevers led the singing. [8]
By then, Harry Harrison Kroll and his wife were boarding with Alexander Jackson Dixon. [9] He remembered “as the meeting got into full swing people who might otherwise never have found occasion for making visits came to stay with all the families in the neighborhood.” [10] He added “Miss Lucretia cooked and cooked and cooked.” [11]
Pearson added a covered wooden stage in 1915. [12] Kroll recalled he “worked on the tabernacle several days, along with almost every other man and boy in the neighborhood and adjoining communities—[Pearson] was a master when it came to organization and getting labor donated.” [13]
The next year, Pearson took the next step common to successful camp meetings. He incorporated. [14] Charles Parker noted many camp meeting associations organized as joint stock companies, which were able to own and lease land under their state charters. [15]
The Association probably bought the land it had been using, and had it platted. [16] Among those who camped on the grounds were Sheppards and Shruptrines, who were related to Madelyn Sheppard. [17]
Ben Windham’s mother recalled “they had big preachers there, too. We just did miss getting Billy Sunday.” [18] The most famous of those who did appear was Gypsy Pat Smith. Kroll recalled “We were all stricken with awe that so noted a man would condescend to come down into the Alabama sticks, badly as our souls might need saving.” [19]
Kroll said he recalled “no idea Gypsy Smith ever advanced, no thought-provoking sermon he ever preached; but I never forgot the man.” [20] Smith returned to England and worked for the YMCA in Dublin in 1923 where a Y executive recorded his “message is simple and there is not much teaching, but he puts Jesus well in the front, and tells of His power to save and keep in an attractive way.” [21]
A choir was organized to support Smith. Kroll’s wife and Dixon’s daughters left their seats to sing, then returned. Smith sang a solo before he began preaching the first night. [22] Another evening
“when he worked up a great fervor for no reason at all I could tell. Instead of preaching he fell to walking around on the rostrum and waving his handkerchief and singing ‘We’re marching upward to Zion,’ and everybody got to milling and singing and weeping and praying, and asking one another if they were saved.” [23]
The March around Jerusalem had become a closing ritual at the Methodists’ Ocean Grove Camp Meeting mentioned in the post for 17 January 2021. Morris Daniels thought it had come from some college tradition. [24]
The Dixon’s Mills camp meeting prospered in the 1920s. More cabins were built in 1921 when Walker returned to preach. A small hotel was added in 1922. [25]
Music changed with the war. Sheppard began writing music with Annelu Burns of Selma in 1918, which they sold to W. C. Handy’s publishing company. In 1922, she wrote music for a Broadway play by Helen Smith Woodruff. [26] One of the tunes from Just Because was “Oh, Those Jazzing Toes.” [27]
One can be sure that when Sheppard began playing piano for the camp meetings, she wasn’t simply doing four-note chords that matched the text. Windham’s mother said “she was the draw at the camp meeting.” [28]
Years later, when Joel Jones was asked “was the camp meeting a success spiritually?” he answered “to some it was, to others it was not. The preaching was as good as could be had and the singing could not be excelled.” [29]
Graphics
Base map from Walter L. Fleming. Civil War and Reconstruction in Alabama. New York: The Macmillan Company, 1905. 494. The left red dot is Dixon’s Mills; the right is Central Mills where Madelyn Sheppard lived.
End Notes
1. Charles Miller. “Union Camp Meetings.” 33–34 in The Heritage of Marengo County, Alabama. Edited by Ruth S. Allen and Becky A. Willis. Clanton, Alabama: Heritage Publishing Consultants, 2000. 33.
2. Selma was in Dallas County.
3. “Simultaneous Soul-Winning Campaign in Birmingham, Ala.” The Christian Workers Magazine 11:890:June 1911.
4. “I. W. Chalker Memorial Methodist Church To Formally Open, Honor Former Pastor.” The Montgomery [Alabama] Advertiser. 8 July 1961. 5. Posted by charles_pearce on 14 April 2018. His full name was Isaac Watts Chalker.
5. Robert Thompson. “Rev Worthy Walstein McCord.” Find a Grave website. 11 May 2014. Obituary contributed by Susan Potts McDonald.
6. “Collection 077 Papers of J. Wilbur Chapman.” Wheaton College archives website. John Wilbur Chapman was the link between Dwight W. Moody and Billy Sunday. He began working for the one, and trained the other. He was the one who introduced simultaneous campaigns where all the clergymen in a city held revivals at the same time in their own churches.
7. “The Assembly’s Evangelists.” The Westminster 33:24:7 November 1908.
8. Miller. 33.
9. Richard L. Saunders. Never Been Rich. Knoxville: The University of Tennessee Press, 2001. 137, photograph of Kroll with Dixon’s family from 1911. Kroll boarded with William A. Dixon in 1910, [30] while he was working as an itinerant photographer with his brother and working to earn his first state teaching certificate. [31] He spent his winters wherever he could find work teaching, but returned to Dixon’s Mills most summers, where he bought land in 1913. [32] He sold everything in 1919 to go to college in Nashville, [33] and never officially returned. [34] His 1944 novel, Waters over the Dam, was based on his life in 1910, but devoted several chapters to a camp meeting than included elements from other years. Alexander Jackson Dixon, called Paw Jack in the novel, was the son of Joel B. Dixon, who built the grist mill in the 1820s. William could have been one of Joel’s grandsons by his first wife. [35]
10. Harry Harrison Kroll. Waters over the Dam. Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill Company, 1944. 166. This was brought to my attention by Glenn Sisk. [36] Karen Marie Elmore sent me a copy of two of the chapters set during the camp meeting from a copy of the book in the Kroll Collection held by the Paul Meek Library of the University of Tennessee at Martin.
11. Kroll. 166. Alexander Jackson Dixon was married to Lucretia Callahan. [37] Saunders said the novel was “idealistically nostalgic, standing as a romanticized statement of what he wished life would have been, but its setting is also the most genuinely autobiographical and unquestionably the most factual use of real characters among his works.” [38] One resident told him that “HHK did use so many of the real names, their personality traits, as well as actual places and events, some folks were very put out. The ne’re-do-well characters in the novel were barely disguised. For years before I saw the book, I though the title was WATERS OVER THE DAMN!” [39]
12. Miller. 33.
13. Kroll. 163. J. K. Pearson was the character Joe Frierson in the novel. I could find nothing more on him.
14. “The Marengo County Camp Meeting Grounds.” Biz Standing website.
15. Charles A. Parker. “A Study of the Preaching at the Ocean Grove, New Jersey, Camp Meeting, 1870-1900.” PhD dissertation. Louisiana State University and Agricultural and Mechanical College, August 1959. 16.
16. Miller reproduced a copy of the plat on page 33.
17. Joel T. Jones. “Joe Pearson Was the Man Who Made the Camp Meetings Successful.” 20 January 1937. Reprinted by The [Linden, Alabama] Democrat-Reporter on 1 August 2013. 2.
18. Kathryn Tucker Windham. Quoted by Ben Windham. “1920s Songwriting Duo in Danger of Being Forgotten.” The Tuscaloosa [Alabama] News. 22 January 2006.
19. Kroll. 163. At the time there was another man also known as Gypsy Smith who was more famous. When Pat Smith came over to this country in 1918, [40] he probably benefitted from being confused with Rodney Smith. [42]
20. Kroll. 167.
21. David Fowler. Youth Culture in Modern Britain. Bassingstroke, Hampshire, United Kingdom: Palgrave MacMillan, 2008. 82.
22. Kroll. 165.
23. Kroll. 166–167.
24. Morris S. Daniels. The Story of Ocean Grove. New York: The Methodist Book Concern, 1919. 53–55.
25. Miller. 33.
26. Anna Wynne O’Ryan and Helen S. Woodruff. Just Because. Earl Carroll Theatre. 22 March 1922 to 29 April 1922.
27. Ben Windham
28. Kathryn Tucker Windham.
29. Jones.
30. Saunders. 17–18.
31. Saunders. 22.
32. Saunders. 26.
33. Saunders. 28.
34. Saunders. 32–33. He worked in Columbia, Alabama, in 1919, then moved to Nashville in 1921. Saunders believed the only time Kroll could have visited Dixon’s Mills again was in 1927 when he was driving his family from eastern Tennessee, where he was teaching at Lincoln Memorial University, to visit his family in Birmingham and his wife’s family in Mobile. [page 80]
35. Evelyn McVoy Sisley. “Joel B. Dixon’s Families.” 177–178 in Heritage.
36. Glenn N. Sisk. “Churches in the Alabama Black Belt 1875-1917.” Church History 23:153–174:1954. 165.
37. Sisley. 178.
38. Saunders. 136.
39. Joy Nored. 10 June 2008. Quoted by Saunders. 136.
40. “Gypsy Pat Smith to Evangelize in U. S.” Los Angeles Herald. 6 January 1920. It said Smith had been in the United States in 1918. This was the only year when Kroll could have seen Smith. He told readers of The [Linden, Alabama] Democrat-Reporter in 1918 that he was back writing after a bout with malaria. [41]
41. “Dixon’s Mill News.” The [Linden, Alabama] Democrat-Reporter. 21 November 1918. 3. Posted by C0113c70r on 16 July 2017.
42. Wikipedia. “Rodney ‘Gipsy’ Smith.” He was converted by Ira D. Sankey in 1876 and worked with the Salvation Army before becoming a traveling evangelist. Pat Smith told Canadians in 1920 he had been asked “if I were any relation to the older Gipsy Smith.” He very skillfully placed himself in his aura, while carefully separating himself: “Of course, a man who is a Gipsy and has lived in a tent, his people call him Gipsy So-and-so. They never call him by another name. For instance, an old man sixty years of age, who comes from a different part to what I do, is called Gipsy Rodney because his name is Rodney Smith. When he started out his friends called him Gipsy Smith. He has gone all over the world, is one of the world’s greatest preachers and has been a great blessing to man.” [43]
43. Pat Smith. “The Gipsy People.” 268–278 in The Canadian Club. 15 March 1920. 270.
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