Lenoir County, NC - SOUTHWEST CHRISTIAN CHURCH ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ SOUTHWEST CHRISTIAN CHURCH A CAROLINA LANDMARK Two Centuries of Southwest Church By Charles Crossfield Ware, dec NOTE: This history of the Church was written for their Bi-Centennial in 1962 when Rev. D. L. (Pete) Warren was the minister. There is a fair amount of history of the Disciples in general which has been cut. NAME AND FIRST BUILDING Morgan Edwards (1722 – 1795), native Welshman, and itinerant Calvinistic Baptist preacher from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, visited Southwest Church in 1772. He declared in his Journal that this church was “so called from a creek by that name which empties itself into the Neuse near which the meeting house stands in Dobbs county.” Dimensions of the house of worship then used at Southwest he did not give. However, in the same county just outside of today’s LaGrange, was Bear Creek (organized 1752), which he also visited in 1772, about which he said: “The house is 20 feet by 15… built on land given by Joshuah Herring.” It is highly credible that these primitive structures, shrines in the wilderness, were built of logs, and were exhibits of a common pattern. LOCATION The Southwest Church site is in Lenoir County, North Carolina, at the eastern side of Southwest Creek bridge, five miles southeast of Kinston. It is one- half mile from the Jones County line which points an acute angle of boundary at the environs of Kinston. US Highway 70 is off from Southwest two miles, and from State Highway 55, four miles. The lot is on the east side of Southwest Creek about two miles from its confluence with the Neuse River. The locality is cited in the Colonial Records, (SR XXII, 323), of January 6, 1751, as the “lower side of Sow West Crick” community. Captain Thomas Graves gave on that date the roster of 96 men in his “foot company of soldiers” made up from that area. At least sixteen of the family names in his “treu List” have been to an extent current in that section for 211 years. These are: Beasley, Caddell, Cox, Dohety, (Daugherty), Fields, Goodvine, Heath, Herring, Humphrey, Johnson, Lane, Loftin, Nun, Russell, Taylor, Ward. These were among the landseekers in the mid-eighteenth century cleaving to the lush lower valley of the navigable Neuse. Through the years this landed area has been variously mapped. First in Bath County, 1692 – 1705; then in Archdale Precinct, 1705 – 1712; in Craven County, 1712 – 1764; Dobbs County, 1764 – 1791; finally Lenoir County, 1791 – 1962. On November 26, 1762, Richard Caswell asked that this Southwest Creek segment of Craven be added to Dobbs. (later named Lenoir). Hence by the laws of 1764 it was “enacted by Governor, Council, and Assembly”, that the area “on the southernmost side of Southwest Creek, and the upper branches of Trent River” by officially surveyed boundary “be annexed to Dobbs County”. AFFILIATION Extant sources indicate that for two centuries Southwest church has affiliated as follows: 1762 – 1789. Sandy Creek Association, Separate Baptists; listed by historians as a charter member. 1790 – 1793. Kehukee Association, United Baptists. Receding from the devastating effects of the American Revolution its scattered members had fellowship with a sister church, Trent, (Chinquapin Chapel), fifteen miles distant in Jones County. 1794 – 1818. Neuse Association, Regular Baptists. Southwest continued its status with Trent. 1819 – 1844. Neuse Association, Missionary Baptists. Southwest restored had membership as a distinctive church. 1845 – 1870. North Carolina General Conference of Original Free Will Baptists. Noted is a remnant also of about fifteen Union Baptists, (another denomination), at this “free church”, who were registered there as late as 1870, in the Mount Zion Association, most of whom at Southwest had already united with its new Disciples group. 1871 – 1962. Christian Church, (Disciples of Christ) connection; Southwest, a duly constituted member of The North Carolina Christian Missionary Convention. ORGANIZATION Shubael Stearns, (Jan 28, 1706 – Nov 20, 1771), and his small company began the Separate Baptist movement in the south, at Sandy Creek, North Carolina, in 1755. And George Washington Paschal, Twentieth Century Baptist historian of North Carolina, has declared: “I make bold to say that these Separate Baptists have proved to be the most remarkable body of Christians America has known.” This thesis he then affirmed through many carefully written pages. The magnetic, evangelical preaching of Stearns, fortunately well-times and wide- spreading through his able assistants, made marvelous impact on religion in the South Atlantic States. He baptized Philip Mulkey, of Halifax County, in December, 1756, who in turn baptized John Dillahunty, a co-founder with Charles Markland of Southwest church. Markland came to Southwest from New River of Richlands, (now Union Chapel, Disciples), in 1760, and in that year, according to Morgan Edwards, “preached to the conversion of fifteen”. These were formally organized as Southwest church in October 1762, “by a presbytery sent by Sandy Creek Association,” as related by Edwards who was at Southest in 1772. He gives the names of these fifteen charter members as follows: Mr. and Mrs. Charles Markland, Mr. and Mrs. Kittrell Mundine, Mr. and Mrs. John Dillahunty, Mr. and Mrs. Thomas Andrews, Mr. and Mrs. John Cox, Joseph Thraul, Mary Goodvine, Sarah Cox, Barbary Cox, and Margaret Busby. Facts about some of these pioneers: CHARLES MARKLAND. During the War for Independence and its aftermath he was an important person in the community. He served with 17 others on “a panell of Grand Jurors to attend at Kinston on October 27, 1773.” He with four others ran the boundary line between Dobbs and Wayne Counties in 1779. He was one of the 12 trustees named in 1785 for Dobbs Academy in Kinston. As a fiscal commissioner for Governor Caswell he supervised allocation of supplies for Major Thomas Evans in his “march of near 400 miles thro a wilderness in a strange State,” (Kentucky), in November 1787. His son Charles was also a trusted fiscal agent of the Governor, returning to him from Hillsboro to Kinston in July 1785, with about $1200 cash procured on a warrant from Hon. James Read. KITTRELL MUNDINE. He was an assistant minister at Southwest. A responsible magistrate of the Revolution, he faced on June 15, 1778, 20 Tories who were required to take “the oath prescribed by law”, failing which they should have to “depart this State within 60 days.” JOHN DILLAHUNTY, (1730 – 1816). He was of French Huguenot descent. Much impressed by a heart-searching sermon of George Whitefield, and later converted by the Separate Baptist preachers, Stearns and Daniel Marshall at Trent (Chinquapin Chapel), he was baptized by Philip Mulkey and joined the initial group at Southwest. His plantation of 160 acres in 1762, was on Strawberry Branch, near Southwest Creek. He “evinced much ability” and in 1781 was ordained to the ministry having been formerly licensed. He served Trent fifteen years, removing to Tennessee in 1796. His wife “with whom he had lived 68 years", died in 1816. He was an ancestor of John H. Dilahunt (1810 – 1860), Disciple preacher at Chinquapin Chapel, who with John Jarman visited the home of Alexander Campbell at Bethany in the winter of 1850. Josephus Latham said of this John H. Dilahunt, “He was zealously devoted to the sublime principles of the current reformation.” JOHN COX. He enlisted with Captain Thomas Graves “Company of foot solddiers”, mustered as of record, January 6, 1751. COL. NATHAN P. BRYAN. (1748 – 1798). A man of large affairs, his home was in Jones County within easy distance from Southwest, where he united in 1766. Joseph Biggs said that Bryan was “held in great esteem amongst men of the first character in this county,” and “strove for peace amongst religious professors of every denomination and amongst all men.” He served as a member of the House of Commons at Raleigh in 1787, 1791, - 1794, and later for two terms in the National House of Representatives at Philadelphia. He loved his church. He wrote on April 9, 1796 to John Koonce at Chinquapin Chapel that he could never “forget my brethren who are with you or cease to pray for you and the prosperity of Jerusalem.” The Separate Baptists of 1755 had a seeming miracle of expansion for more than three decades in the Carolinas, Virginia, and Georgia. Eventually they merged with other Baptists which they came to believe was ecumenically expedient. It was with distinct reservations however. Beyond the mountains in the Bluegrass State the merger was appreciably delayed and incomplete. Thousands of Kentuckians and Tennesseeans who had remained Separate Baptists at heart until the 1820’s and 1830’s, enrolled in the columns of the rising Christian Churches, (Disciples of Christ), for whom traditionally they had a real affinity. This in itself is a phenomenal story. Definitively, it is yet untold in the historiography of the Disciples. TRANSITION In the lean post-Revolution years, 1781 – 1810, it appears that Southwest suffered a dispersal of members. Some of their best trailed away to Tennessee. Perhaps in the exigencies of the time their meetinghouse had been destroyed or discommoded. Yet they could and did maintain a peripheral fellowship with a sister church, Chinquapin Chapel, where John Koonce long ministered. This Chapel reporting 44 members was host to the Neuse Association on October 19, 1811, when the “messengers” of its 22 churches with 8 ministers held annual conclave. Meanwhile a restoration was stirring at old Southwest Bridge. There Daniel Simmons, Jr., a “beloved nephew” of Abraham Kornegay, Sr., had inherited from this uncle a plantation. The will, probated in Craven Court, March, 1810 provided “that $200 be applied towards building a Meeting House on the lands of Daniel Simmons near the Southwest Bridge to be free for the preachers of every denomination of Christians.” Peculiarly he asked that a white and black inscription on the ceiling “over the door” invoke for him a prayer from “all Christians” observing it, based on Romans 14:9. Perchance a good idea, if thereby divers folks be rompted to study the Scriptures. Reportedly, first of the Kornegays in North Carolina was George, an orphan boy brought to New Bern, gateway of the Palatines in 1710. His son, Abraham, Sr., made the will noticed above; his sister, Mary, married Daniel Simmons, Sr., whose son, Daniel Simmons, Jr., inherited the Southwest plantation to which reference has been made. Daniel Simmons, Jr. married Penelope Hargett, and settled just west of Southwest Bridge near where Roland Vause now lives. Abraham Simmons, son of Daniel Simmons, Jr., was an early Baptist preacher at Southwest. This Abraham was the father of John W. Simmons, (Aug. 25. 1834 – Oct. 8, 1925), and John W. was the father of Luther W. Simmons, (Feb 25, 1875 – March 12, 1962). NEUSE BAPTISTS On October 16 – 18, 1819, the Neuse Association met with the church at Toisnot, (Wilson). It gathered in the little frame sanctuary built sixteen years before at a primitive crossroads in that densely forested domain. This is today’s busy intersection of Tarboro and Barnes Streets in “Wide Awake Wilson.” Reporting 18 members in 1819, having gained adequate prevalence in a local “free church”, Southwest is first listed as a distinctive member of the Neuse. In this fraternity it was to have varied fortune for a quarter of a century. Their number at Southwest had slowly increased to 23 in 1824, when the Neuse met there in annual session. Again it met there in 1832, incidentally marking an historic date for the incipient North Carolina Disciples of Christ. Eighty members it then reported, with Frederick Becton Loftin, (1802 – 1848), minister. Two years later their number was 72, William B. Rhem, Sr., minister, who, ten years later was preaching for Kinston Disciples in their “new church”. At the start of the Neuse in 1794, it enrolled 23 churches. In 1839, when Southwest was its host for the last time, only eight churches were in it. It was further reduced to six, of which Southwest was still one, in 1842, when it met at Fort Barnwell. Twelve delegates each attended one or more years in the annual meetings of the Neuse, from Southwest, 1819 – 1844, as follows: William Loftin, William H. Whitfield, Daniel Simmons, Jr., Jesse Jones, Joseph West, Shadrack Loftin, John Henry Jackson, F. B. Loftin, William Cox Loftin, Joseph Tilghman, Winston Andrews, and Samuel Loftin. These Loftins were in the ancestral line of Thomas Loftin Johnson, (July 18, 1854 – April 10, 1911), a Disciple, and famous “Single Tax” mayor of Cleveland, Ohio. His mother was Mrs. Albert W. Johnson, (nee Helen Loftin), six generations removed from Leonard Loftin, (1654 – 1720), founder of the family in North Carolina. (paragraph on Disciples history skipped) General William Clark of the Disciples was supported at the Southwest Convention, by colleagues at Rountree, Little Sister, Grindle Creek, and Chinquapin Chapel, all four of these churches being members of the Neuse. At this crisis their eleven representatives were: Isaac Baldree, Charles Rountree, Orlando Canfield, Abraham Congleton, John P. Dunn, General William Clark, Benjamin F. Eborn, Louis Spier, James Reynolds, William B. Rhem, Sr., and Thomas Alphin. Little Sister asked to be enrolled as a new member of the Association. (rest of paragraph deleted) ORIGINAL FREE WILL BAPTIST The Neuse Baptist declined at Southwest in the early 1840’s. Its remote members on the east found ready attachment at Fort Barnwell. Others in 1844 established Harriet’s Chapel, a few miles west of Southwest and two miles southeast of Kinston. It was named for Harriet Jones “who gave the land and paid for the buildings.” Here William Phillips Biddle (1788 – 1853), was pastor before its congregations removal to Kinston in 1857, where it has since flourished. Meanwhile the Free Will Baptists who were strongly evangelistic, having six churches in Lenoir County in 1842, developed a nucleus at Southwest in the “free church”. Southwest did not join the Disciples in 1845 with other Free Will Churches. It was involved with those who were reorganized at Hood’s Swamp in November, 1847, as the NC General Conference of Original Free Will Baptists. When this group met in their yearly meeting at Free Union, Greene County, November 6 – 9, 1851, reresentatives from Southwest made a glowing report. Recorded was its membership of 43, of whom 35 had been baptized that year. A working evangelism had found them. Its delegates of 1851: T. A. Heath (later a Union Baptist), John Henry Jackson (later a Disciple), and T. Hill. Jackson had also been a Neuse Baptist leader there as early as 1826 and 31 years later, as noted, a trusted Free Will leader. At this tragic time there was the great American War of Brothers. Wherefore this community was laid prostrate. A battle raged for hours at Southwest’s doorstep, beginning at 9:00 on Friday morning December 12, 1862, succeeded by another on Sunday, the 14th. Forces of General John Gray Foster (1823 – 1874), from Federal headquarters at New Bern, attacked the Confederates along the way to the Yankee capture of Kinston at the bleak Christmas time of ’62. Soldiers of Captain Cole, Co. K. Third NY Calvary, faced the Boys in Gray “at a place called Southwest Creek.” There at the western side of the bridge was “an earthwork thrown up directly across the road,” behind which were the guns of the Southerners. The residual entrenchment mount may be seen from Southwest’s churchyard of today. Confederates were brave but were overcome in this instance by superior forces. “Fosters Raid” went devastatingly as far as Mt. Olive. The bridge at the Creek destroyed in the battle was hastily rebuilt from the timbers of the old “free church”. It was fourteen years before the next meetinghouse appeared on the historic site. Then it was the work of the Disciples, where previously only brush arbor accommodations had seasonally obtained for the services. During the time it was considered Union Baptist James Latham Winfield preached to Southwest Union Baptists while they had no home – it was in the “gin room of the grist mill at the Lake Side”. This was near the place where the Armenia Christian Church now stands. CHRISTIAN CHURCH C. W. Howard in June, 1885, wrote a short account of the beginning of the Southwest Disciples, of which he was then one. About 12 persons formerly of Union Baptist decided in 1870 to allay with the Disciple brotherhood. Further, said Howard, John Henry Jackson becoming a Disciple “was a prime mover in this little church.” Then “it was favored by ministerial visits from J. L. Winfield, A. C. Hart, Josephus Latham, Dr. J. T. Walsh, and J. H. Foy. Moreover, Jackson the zealous layman “succeeded in getting a small but comfortable house of worship completed at Southwest in 1876”. As first organized, Jackson was deacon and W. G. Watts, Clerk. Next officers of record, 1885, were: Levi T. Russell and James H. Haddock, elders; John Irwin Vause and D. L. Williams, deacons. The only extant list of the earliest members at Southwest names the following: Elizabeth Hines, Elizabeth Jckson, John Henry Jackson, W. G. Watts, Mary G. Watts, and D. L. Williams, for 1870; Lucetta Gates, Mary E. Howard, Bettie A. Outlaw, Pussie Watts, and Lou H. Frazier, for 1876 – in all, three men and eight women. Jackson was a community leader and prosperous planter, residing near the church. He is said to have owned 570 acres on the eastern border of Southwest Creek extending to its mouth. In 1872, a year after Southwest Disciples had organized when only fifteen in number, he represented them at their Kinton State Convention. As of record other delegates from Southwest in these annual Convention until 1889 were: C. W. Howard, J. C. Kennedy, Levi T. Russell, D. L. William, J. I. Vause, J. Parker, James Huggins, W. B. Isler, and G. T. Grace. It struggled to survive the first ten years and shared ministers with other churches. In 1886 they remunerated pastor Nathan B. Hood $75 for the year. Their earliest church school of record was for 1885 -–1886, Jesse Vause superintendent. On September 3, 1887, 51 of their members went to the founding of the Armenia Christian Church, a few miles away. A native son, Joel E. Vause (Aug. 29, 1890 – June 26, 1962) became a spiritual leader at Southwest while yet a youth. Another from that community, C. F. Outlaw (Jan 27, 2883 – May 12, 1950), while pastor here, helped his cousin Joel to raise the needed building funds. In 1909 they built a new church whose property was then valued at $1,000. The church, being right on Southwest Creek has flooded a number of time including during Floyd. __________________________________________________________________ Copyright. All rights reserved. http://www.usgwarchives.net/copyright.htm This file was contributed for use in the USGenWeb Archives by Martha M. Marble ___________________________________________________________________