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Faith and Family in the Antebellum Piedmont South

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Faith and Family in the Antebellum Piedmont South GRAHAM, CHRISTOPHER ALAN., Ph.D. Faith and Family in the Antebellum Piedmont South. (2013) Directed by Dr. Charles C. Bolton. 313 pp. This dissertation examines the cultural and religious dynamics of the North Carolina Piedmont’s non‐planter social order. I look in depth at the modernizing elements of antebellum religion, particularly the sensibility of liberality that accompanied institutional development, how church disciplinary procedures adapted to changing social reality, and the formation of middle class style nuclear families under the aegis of evangelical prescription. In addition to using denominational records, I utilize four diaries of ordinary Piedmont residents in extended explorations of how individuals enacted in their private lives the public lessons of evangelicalism. I conclude that an evangelical ethic developed that existed alongside the dominant planter ideology, and that ethic formed the basis for both unity, and dissent, in the late antebellum period. FAITH AND FAMILY IN THE ANTEBELLUM PIEDMONT SOUTH by Christopher Alan Graham A Dissertation Submitted to the Faculty of The Graduate School at The University of North Carolina at Greensboro in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Doctor of Philosophy Greensboro 2013 Approved by ___________________________________ Committee Chair To Mom, who made all this happen, and the memory of my father. ii APPROVAL PAGE This dissertation written by Christopher Alan Graham has been approved by the following committee of The Faculty of the Graduate School at The University of North Carolina at Greensboro Committee Chair__________________________________________ Committee Members__________________________________________ _________________________________________ _________________________________________ ______________________________________ Date of Acceptance by Committee ___________________________________ Date of Final Oral Examination iii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS This brief acknowledgement can hardly express my gratitude to the many people who invested time, interest, support, and forbearance in this project. I hope a quick mention will suffice for now. At the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, Charles C. Bolton, Mark Elliot, Greg O’Brien, and Phyllis W. Hunter have all bourne with patience and good humor my amateur’s enthusiasm while offering moments of criticism and guidance to keep me moving forward and doing good history at the same time. Rick Barton, Benjamin Filene, and especially Robert M. Calhoon have also been generous with their time and advice. Laurie Parham O’Neill, Dawn Avolio, and Kristina Wright have been nothing less than perfect in making this process as painless as possible. Thanks also to Valeria Caviness in the Graduate School at UNC‐Greensboro who stepped in with some last‐minute heroics. My colleagues and friends at school have shaped not just this dissertation but my entire life for the last six years. I hope to count them among my friends hereafter and look forward to their own contributions to the field. They include Therese Strohmer, John James Kaiser, Katrin Deihl, James Findley, Sarah Gates, Keri Peterson, Susan Thomas, Joseph S. Moore, Paige Meszaros, Theresa Campbell, Jacqueline W. Spruill, Maggy Williams, and Christine Flood. iv Elsewhere in the academy I have benefitted from the companionship and guidance of friends and mentors. James J. Broomall, Greg Jones, and Barton Price are peers and teachers I look up to. John David Smith, Jane Turner Censer, and Victoria E. Bynum deserve special mention for the many years of advice and support they have so unselfishly offered. Also, thanks are owed to Al Baldwin of Carrboro, North Carolina, and his extended family for permission to quote from the Caroline Lilly Diary and Account Book. I am blessed with a circle of friends outside of school who are all excellent scholars and have proven valuable sounding boards for my ideas and encouragements for my aspirations. To Ernest A. Dollar, Leslie M. Kesler, Jim Knight, Charles Le Count, Jeff Currie, Alex Christopher Meekins, David Southern, and all the members of the NSR and the Eno Will Free & Easy Society, I say, Loose Morals! I would be remiss if I did not include notes of gratitude to Mark Twain and Bruce Catton for setting me off in the first place. To Lizzie, who did everything possible to tear me away from this work: I wish we could go outside right now and range the countryside together searching for the homes and graves of the people in this study. No one knows this project more, and has done more to make it better, than Miriam Farris. I look forward to many more years and many more miles on the trail talking these things over. Iron sharpens iron. v TABLE OF CONTENTS Page CHAPTER I. INTRODUCTION: FAITH AND FAMILY IN THE NORTH CAROLINA PIEDMONT .................................................................... 1 II. ANXIETY AND LIBERALITY: THE RELIGIOUS LANDSCAPE OF THE POST‐REVIVAL PIEDMONT ................................................................................ 33 Mary Davis Brown’s Persistence ........................................................................ 40 Caroline Lilly’s Anxiety ........................................................................................... 45 Domestic and Foreign Missions .......................................................................... 53 Mission to the Slaves ................................................................................................ 60 Schools ........................................................................................................................... 65 Caroline Lilly’s Vocation ......................................................................................... 80 Sunday Schools ........................................................................................................... 84 Mary Davis Brown’s Family Circle ..................................................................... 93 A Variety of Places .................................................................................................. 103 III. DISCIPLINE AND THE EVANGELICAL SENSIBILITY ............................................ 109 The Blackwood Baptist Cases ........................................................................... 120 The Brown Creek Baptist Cases ....................................................................... 124 The Back Creek and Deep River Friends Cases ......................................... 126 The Irony of Orthodoxy and Change .............................................................. 131 The Wesleyan Episode ......................................................................................... 143 The Temperance Reformation .......................................................................... 151 Indirect Influence ................................................................................................... 160 IV. THE PRIVATE FACE OF DISCIPLINE ........................................................................... 162 John Flintoff’s Competency ................................................................................ 163 Strong Thomasson’s Balancing Act ................................................................. 177 Eased by Discipline ................................................................................................ 189 vi V. DOMESTIC FELICITY IN THE PIEDMONT ................................................................ 191 Textual Models ........................................................................................................ 197 Deems’s Prescription ............................................................................................ 212 “How to Treat a Wife” ........................................................................................... 218 VI. FAMILY LIFE IN THE LILLY AND THOMASSON HOUSEHOLDS ...................... 224 Caroline and James Lilly ...................................................................................... 224 Strong and Mollie Thomasson .......................................................................... 248 Middle‐Class Behavior in the Rural South ................................................... 263 VII. EPILOGUE ................................................................................................................................ 267 Evangelicals in the Secession Crisis and War .............................................. 267 Churches at War ...................................................................................................... 270 Bryan Tyson’s Objections .................................................................................... 280 Mary Bethell’s Family ........................................................................................... 285 Brown, Flintoff, Thomasson, and Lilly at War ............................................ 289 BIBLIOGRAPHY ...................................................................................................................................... 294 vii CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION: FAITH AND FAMILY IN THE NORTH CAROLINA PIEDMONT Strong Thomasson did not care for Ann Benbow’s poetry. He mocked it as “one of the wonders of the world, viz. a poem (or something else).” Some lines Ann Benbow had composed upon the death of her daughter‐in‐law had circulated around Yadkinville. He faithfully transcribed a sample, She decesed on the first month the 5 day She fell a sleep in Jesus’ armes, And her spirit took
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