Chapter I: Front Matter

REV. C. O. BOOTHE, D. D. Author of “Plain Theology.”]

THE CYCLOPEDIA OF THE COLORED BAPTISTS OF ALABAMA THEIR LEADERS AND THEIR WORK

BY Charles Octavius Boothe, D. D.

Author of “Plain Theology for Plain People.”

BIRMINGHAM: Alabama Publishing Company. 1895

Copyright 1895 By Rev. C. O. Boothe, D. D.

INDEX TO ILLUSTRATIONS.

PAGE. Rev. C. O. Boothe Frontispiece Rev. J. Q. A. Wilhite 12 Hon. A. H. Curtis 19 Mrs. A. A. Bowie 26 Rev. L. S. Steinback in the act of Baptism 33 Mrs. D. S. Jordan 36 Shiloh Church, Birmingham Facing 45 Rev. F. R. Kennedy 56 Selma University Facing 61 Mrs. M. D. Duncan 66 Rev. J. P. Barton 75 Miss H. Martin 82 Rev. W. R. Pettiford 91 Rev. J. L. Frazier 99 Rev. P. S. L. Hutchins 106 Rev. W. T. Bibb 110 Sixteenth Street Church, Birmingham Facing 120 Rev. S. L. Belser 129 Dr. U. G. Mason 136 Rev. J. P. O’Riley 144 Miss Ella Knapp 151 Rev. J. H. Eason 158 Miss A. L. Bowman 165 Rev. M. Tyler 172 Mrs. Rebecca Pitts 179 Rev. W. C. Bradford 186 Rev. H. Woodsmall 194 Rev. J. E. Wilson 203 Rev. W. A. Shirley Facing 207 Rev. L. S. Steinback 212 St. Louis Street Church, Mobile Facing 221 Rev. T. W. Walker 228 Rev. J. W. Jackson 238 First Church, Selma 244 Miss Joanna P. Moore, Nashville Facing 249 Rev. C. J. Hardy 254 Rev. S. L. Ross 259 Dexter Avenue Church, Montgomery Facing 262 Rev. C. L. Purce 265

TABLE OF CONTENTS.

CHAP. PAGE.
Autobiography of the Author 9
Preface 13
I.--Introduction 17
II.--The State Conventions 37
III.--Associations 55
IV.--Biographic Sketches 111
Biographic Supplement 223
V.--Summary 237
Final Remarks 263

AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF THE AUTHOR.

* * * * *

Possibly some one may desire at some time and for some reason to know something of the author of this book, and therefore he submits the following short statement:

LINEAGE AND NATIVITY.--His great-grandmother was born on the west coast of Africa and was brought a slave to Virginia, where his grandmother was born. Ere his grandmother had reached her maturity of womanhood, she was sold into Georgia, where his mother was born. While his mother was still a child, she and her mother were carried to Mobile county, Ala., by a Mr. Nathan Howard. In this county, on a lonely looking sand hill amid pine forests, on June 13, 1845, the writer made his advent into this world. (In this year, 1845, the Baptists of America divided.)

EARLY RECOLLECTIONS.--Stored away in my earliest memories I find: (1) The songs and family prayers of my step-grandfather, a pure African, who had not only learned to read his Bible and hymn book, but had also learned the rudiments of vocal music sufficiently well to teach the art of singing. (2) The tender and constant attention of an old white lady (the only white person on the place), who took my hand as she went out to look after the nests of the domestic fowls and to gather a dish of ripe fruit. (3) A Baptist church in the forest, where white and colored people sat together to commune and to wash each other’s feet. (4) The saintly face and pure life of my grandmother, to whom white and black went for prayer and for comfort in the times of their sorrows. (5) A tin-plate containing the alphabet, from which at the age of 3 years, I learned the English letters. (6) The death of the old white lady, and the severing from dear grandmother and the old home. (7) My introduction at the age of 6 years to the family of Nathan Howard, Jr., where things were not altogether as tender toward me as at the old home, and where I came more into associations with books and with life’s sterner facts. The teachers who boarded here at my new home became my instructors, and so I was soon reading and writing fairly well. Here, listening to the reading of the Bible, I was drawn toward it, and began to read it for myself. The gospel story bound me to it with cords which nothing has been able to break. At the close of my eighth year I began to seek the Lord by prayer and supplication, and have, from that time to this, continued my secret devotions and strivings after truth. My association with Col. James S. Terrel, the brother of Judge S. H. Terrel, of Clark county, Miss., at the age of 14, as office boy in his law office, gave me a still broader range of books. I think I can say that the Colonel and I really loved each other.

I am not sure that I know just when I was regenerated, as my childhood prayers were often attended with refreshing seasons of love and joy. But my life was too often very un-christian, breaking out into the wildest rages of bad temper, which was followed by weeping and remorse. In 1865, however, I reached an experience of grace which so strengthened me as to fix me on the side of the people of God. I went at once to reading the scriptures in public and leading prayer meetings; notwithstanding this, I was not baptized until March, 1866, by Rev. O. D. Bowen, of Shubuta, Miss. I was ordained in the St. Louis Street Church, Mobile, December, 1868, by Revs. Charles Leavens and Philip Gambrell.

I taught school for the Freedmen’s Bureau in 1867--taught various schools under our public school system. I have been pastor of the First Colored Baptist Church, Meridian, Miss., Dexter Avenue Church, Montgomery, and held various State positions. The only time I have spent at school was spent in Meharry, the medical department of the Central Tennessee College.