GEORGIA BIOGRAPHIES: THOMAS RHODES

File contributed for use in USGenWeb Archives by Barbara Walker Winge [barbarawinge@yahoo.com], courtesy of Oldbuck Press, Inc. [obsales @aol.dom]

SOURCE: GEORGIA BAPTIST: HISTORICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL, Jesse
H. Campbell, [1847] 1993, published by Oldbuck Press,  Inc., PO Box
1623, Conway, Arkansas 72034, pp. 52-54.   A copy of this book can be
purchased for $21.00 postage paid from the publisher.

Thomas Rhodes was an extraordinary man, born in North
Carolina, And baptized at County-Line Church, Oglethorpe
County, Georgia, about 1802…  Few men, with his limited
opportunities for education and general improvement in early
life, have risen up so rapidly to high reputation as a
pulpit orator and theologian.  His memory was very
retentive, his imagination creative, and his powers of
description unsurpassed.  His person was tall and
commanding, his address easy and persuasive, and his tears
would flow whenever he touched a pathetic subject…

Because he was so popular as a preacher and acquitted
himself well in this department, he was so blinded, and
bedizened by the indiscreet praises of some, that he
supposed he would succeed in any thing.  He entered with his
sons into mercantile business, issued change bills, and
became involved.  He took his sons’ part - prevaricated -
became deeply involved himself, and was finally excluded for
his incontinency…

After several trials to be restored to the ministry, [for
his ambition to Preach was insatiable, ] and not succeeding,
with a portion of the Williams’  Creek Church, he declared
himself not longer of the denomination, supposing he could
raise up a party, who would sustain him as their leader.
But in this he was mistaken…  He was afterwards restored to
membership at Shiloh, and soon removed to Jasper, where he
was restored to his ministerial functions; but he never
regained his former standing…'

He died suddenly in Milledgeville of pleurisy, in the
discharge of his duty in the office to which he was then
elected, in December, 1832, over fifty years of age.


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