Marion County GaArchives Church Records.....Mahalia Chapel Copyright Date July 26, 2015 ************************************************ Copyright. All rights reserved. http://www.usgwarchives.net/copyright.htm http://www.usgwarchives.net/ga/gafiles.htm ************************************************ File contributed for use in USGenWeb Archives by: Clarence White http://www.genrecords.net/emailregistry/vols/00030.html#0007419 October 16, 2015, 1:23 pm Mahalia Chapel and the Beginnings of the African Methodist Episcopal Church in Reconstruction Georgia Remarks of Clarence D. White at Mahalia Chapel’s Homecoming Service on July 26, 2015 When General Robert E. Lee surrendered to General Ulysses S. Grant on April 9, 1865 at Appomattox courthouse in Virginia to formally end the Civil War, the African Methodist Episcopal Church already had plans to expand into the South. The General Conference of 1864, meeting in Philadelphia and apparently convinced that the Union would win the war, had resolved to send missionaries to the South to reestablish the church there. The prior AME Church expansion into Charleston, South Carolina in the early 1800s had been driven underground and out of existence through white mob violence and the enactment of laws that forbade black churches, in the wake of the unsuccessful Denmark Vesey revolt of 1822 and other acts of rebellion against slavery. Thus, the foothold that the church had gained in Charleston, South Carolina before 1820 had come to an end by the mid-1830s. This history has been retold repeatedly in the media to a global audience following the massacre at Mother Emanuel AME Church in Charleston on June 17, 2015. In May 1865 at the onset of Reconstruction, Bishop Daniel Payne entered Charleston, South Carolina to recommence African Methodism. He established the South Carolina Conference that included not only that state but North Carolina, Georgia, Florida and Alabama as well. The Conference held its first annual session on May 15, 1865. It named missionaries to implant the church in the three states of Georgia, South Carolina and North Carolina. Subsequent annual conferences named additional missionaries to Georgia. Among the most notable of the Georgia missionaries were Theophilus Gould Steward, James Lynch, William Gaines and Henry McNeal Turner. Early African Methodist Church history in Georgia has been chronicled in four key books, three of which are available in electronic editions on the Internet. The best overall perspective is to be found in (African Methodism in the South; Or Twenty-Five Years of Freedo) m by Wesley John Gaines, available at http://docsouth.unc.edu/church/gaineswj/gaines.html. Another general source is (Centennial Encyclopaedia of the African Methodist Episcopal Church Containing Principally the Biographies of the Men and Women, Both Ministers and Laymen, Whose Labors during a Hundred Years, Helped Make the A. M. E. Church What It Is…) by Richard R. Wright, http://docsouth.unc.edu/church/wright/wright.html. The autobiography of Theophilus G. Steward—(Fifty Years in the Gospel Ministry 1864-1916…)— is online at http://docsouth.unc.edu/church/steward/steward.html. Although not an e-book yet, Stephen Ward Angell’s (Bishop Henry McNeal Turner and African-American Religion in the South) (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1992) is a must-read, praiseworthy account of Turner, who is one the most important figures in AME church history and in Georgia political history. All of these missionaries, learned and literate—Steward, Lynch, Gaines, and Turner—visited or lived and worked in our region of Georgia beginning in 1865. We are in the old Georgia Black Belt, where the black population of freed slaves exceeded that of whites by two, three even four times, depending on the county. The potential for establishing a church for the freed slaves, independent of the slaveholders’s religion, and for seizing political power through the Republican Party was obvious. Turner and many newly ordained AME preachers became Republican politicians as well, another interesting narrative in itself. For a comprehensive discussion of Turner’s and his brethren’s political activity, see Edmund L. Drago’s (Black Politicians and Reconstruction in Georgia) (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1982). Lynch is credited with organizing St Phillip AME Church in Savannah, oldest in Georgia; William Gaines gets credit for St James in Columbus, second oldest. Theophilus Steward arrived at Cuthbert and Lumpkin in the summer of 1867 to take over a floundering effort to establish and build a church in Lumpkin—what is now Greater St Mark’s. Henry McNeal Turner deserves the most credit for the spread and growth of the church in Georgia. At the 1866 session of the South Carolina Conference held in Savannah, he was named superintendent of a large portion of the state as well as pastor of the church at Macon. Macon in Middle Georgia was his base of operation. By his account he travelled as much as 15,000 miles on train and horseback throughout the state each year between 1865 and 1871, when he gave up his presiding elder work to become pastor of St Phillip AME in Savannah. Turner may well have been responsible for the organization of what is now Mahalia Chapel AME Church. What Turner and the other missionaries found in Reconstruction Georgia were groups of freed slaves who had under slavery been members and regular congregants in their slaveholder’s church. Some of the enslaved Africans of this vicinity would have attended the Methodist Episcopal Church, South, at Hopewell, Brantley, Tazewell, and Buena Vista. They were accustomed to worship in the Methodist way, and would have been receptive to an opportunity to form their own church, presented to them by Rev. Turner or other missionary. Of the year of organization of Mahalia, I cannot be certain, but we know that it was well established in 1879 and on the Buena Vista Circuit at the time of the Georgia Annual Conference session in Cuthbert. The Gaines history (page 80) notes, “Americus District was to have a new Circuit--Cedar Creek--Mahaly's [sic] Chapel, from Buena Vista Circuit, to be attached to it.” Mt Zion AME in Buena Vista on its cornerstone considers 1870 to be the year of its inception. Mahalia Chapel’s beginning probably dates from the same year, possibly as early as 1866 or 1867. Clarence White Contact: White792@aol.com, 678.429.9670 Mobile File at: http://files.usgwarchives.net/ga/marion/churches/mahaliac192bb.txt This file has been created by a form at http://www.poppet.org/gafiles/ File size: 6.6 Kb