Bertie COUNTY NC Churches Ross Baptist Anniversary Copyright. All rights reserved. http://www.usgwarchives.net/copyright.htm File contributed for use in USGenWeb Archives by "Jeanette White" http://www.usgwarchives.net/nc/bertie.htm Printed in: The Roanoke-Chowan News Herald in Ahoskie Ross Baptist Church has already started planning for its bicentennial year, which begins January 1, 2004. Windsor’s Stanley Hoggard has compiled an interesting history of the church and kindly shared it with me for this column. A bicentennial team will share excerpts from the church history in coming months in “Community Bicentennial News”, which will carry community news and events, including personal items and history residents might want to submit. Free ads will run in the newsletter for non-business sellers and all bicentennial events will be sponsored by the church. An old document requesting permission to build a gristmill on Cucklemaker Creek says residents of the area were known locally as “inhabitants of Cuckoldmaker” before the first church was built almost 199 years ago. The church was named James Ross Log Meeting House, bringing the name Ross Church Community/Field to the area. Native Americans established area trails that became early wagon trails and today’s highways. Algonquians on the north and east became neighbors to later Tuscaroras on the south and west. Their domains overlapped into what is today central Bertie County and the Ross Community. In the late 1600s and early 1700s, Europeans began settlements and brought white man’s diseases which were fatal to the “redmen”. Through disease and war, Native American population declined and Indians intermarried with settlers. That meant people who founded the Ross Community were English, French, African, Indian, Caucasian-African (Mulatto), Caucasian Indian and African-Indian. The first Ross Church, as its name implies, was built of logs on the same site of today’s place of worship. An 1805 document called it the “Log Meeting House of Bertie County”. It was built near an old wagon trail known as the Peeled Cypress-Cucklemaker Road, today known as Bull Hill Road. The junction road connecting Askewville was built around 1850. Prior roads to Askewville were near Cucklemaker Creek on the northeast and near Butlers on the southwest. Ross Church members were some of the most prominent people of Bertie and lived on farms joined by a network of wagon trails and pole bridges that spanned streams and were “highways” from the early 1700s into the early 1900s. People traversed the trails on homemade carts and wagons drawn by horse, mule or ox. All three means of transportation, along with foot-power, brought people to church the fourth Sunday weekend for services. The same trails brought residents to local gristmills to have corn ground into meal and to general stores to buy flour, sugar, salt and other necessities that were not raised on the farm. Trail traffic waned when motor cars in the 1920s, most Model-T Fords, chose better roads. The Great Depression brought renewed life to the old wagon trails when motor car owners could not afford their expense. The church was named for its first pastor, James Ross. William Ross, Jr., father of James, migrated from Virginia to Martin County and wed Mary Griffin. William died December 20, 1801, after fathering six sons and four daughters. Three sons, James, William and Martin, served in the American Revolution. Three sons, James, Martin and Rueben, became Baptist ministers. William and Mary became prosperous in Martin County and shipped farm products from Roanoke River docks to New England colonies in the mid-1700s. Their financial status provided above average education to their children through tutoring. When the American Revolution stopped shipping on Roanoke River (1775- 1783), the Ross family lost business with northern colonies, along with most of their property and were in financial ruin by the turn of the new century. Martin moved to Perquimans County in 1796, James to Bertie County about 1802 after his father’s death and Rueben to Tennessee in 1806 after the death of his mother. James bought a farm near Whitmel Swain and Thomas Speller, Jr, in what is known today as Woodard area. It is thought James’ first wife was a Martin County woman known as Martha Ernest. Two children were born, Nancy about 1805, and Sally. Nancy wed William Ward and later inherited the James Ross farm. Sally was probably an invalid because she never married and her father’s will directed she be permitted to “occupy the room that I have prepared for her as long as she lives”. James retired as pastor of Ross Church in 1838 at the age of 68. While serving as pastor, he joined John Wall, Martin Ross, George Outlaw, Lemuel Burket and others to organize the Chowan Baptist Association in 1806, the largest in North Carolina at the time. Records from 1850 show James to be 81 and his second wife, Mary, also known as Polly, to be 44. Pastor James Ross died January 1853 at the age of 83. In news of more current events, Ross Baptist Church plans an auction about 7:30 p.m. December 13 following the annual Christmas party. Sale offerings will include crafts and items donated by the community.