A COLLECTED HISTORY OF CENTRAL UNITED METHODIST CHURCH Meridian, Mississippi by Atherton C. Gossard 1986 ACKNOWLEDGMENT The History Committee wishes to express appreciation to Betty Box Deen for the art work on the cover depicting our three buildings. FOREWORD The year 1984 marked the two hundredth anniversary of the founding of the Methodist Episcopal Church and so merited a bicentennial celebration. The Bicentennial Committee of Central United Methodist Church proposed that the various extant pieces of historical information be brought together into what may be called a “collected history.” Certainly this is in keeping with the Jubilee celebration of the “Two Hundred Years of Methodism in America” developed by the Council of Bishops and the Bicentennial Planning Conference of the United Methodist Church. To a limited extent, this effort will include Central’s antecedents in American and Mississippi Methodism. As a member of the History Committee, the writer views his task as selecting pertinent details collected by this committee and using them in narrative form to mark highlights in the progress of the church from its early days to 1986. The History Committee was composed of the following people and grateful acknowledgment is due them: Eva Mae Edwards, Chairman; Martha Wright, Staff Representative; Nettie Bush Adams, Otto Coleman, Emma Ruth Corban, Frank Crumbaugh, A. C. Gossard, and Augusta Whitener. Appreciation is also given to Robert H. Farrar, Representative from the Bicentennial Committee, for research assistance and to editors Winifred H. Farrar and Anne D. Sanford. The History Committee in 1986 is composed of Otto Coleman, Chairman; Martha Wright, Staff Representative; Nettie Bush Adams, Emma Ruth Corban, Frank Crumbaugh, Eva Mae Edwards, A. C. Gossard, and Augusta Whitener. Mississippi, Louisiana, Arkansas, and Texas. In 1803, Moses Floyd came to serve as Tobias Gibson’s ANTECEDENTS helper, and Lorenzo Dow arrived on the first of several visits to Mississippi. The year 1799 marked the beginning of Methodism in Mississippi. The Methodist persuasion had already been brought to The Mississippi Annual Conference was organized in 1813 Savannah, Georgia, by John Wesley and organized there in 1736. in the home of Newit Vick, for whom Vicksburg was names. He was Francis Asbury and Richard Wright brought it to Baltimore, a local preacher who had come from Virginia. The territory in Maryland, in 1771. On December 24, 1784, a conference was held Alabama, with some small portions along the Mississippi border, was to consider the future of the Methodist movement. Dr. Thomas Coke put into a separate annual conference in 1832. From that year until presided. Francis Asbury was present and noted in his journal that 1870, Lauderdale County was in that portion of the Mississippi “much business was done in a short time.” A decision was made to border that was in the Alabama Conference. In 1839 the Gainesville form the Methodist Episcopal Church. Upon its organization, four- (Alabama) District was mentioned for the first time in the Alabama fifths of its membership was in the South below the Mason and Conference Journal. Among the charges named in this district was Dixon Line, which ran westward from the Delaware River between the Lauderdale Mission. Meridian is thought to have been part of Maryland and Pennsylvania and separated the “North” and “South” this mission or circuit. before the Civil war. In 1856, no mention was made of the Gainesville District The early Methodist preachers who came to America from connection, but a report of the Macon District was included instead. England went southward shortly. “When Thomas coke landed in this As Meridian is mentioned in the Conference Journal of 1859 and country as Wesley’s representative, Asbury hardly let him catch his alternated with Lauderdale for several years, it seems likely that they breath before he mounted him on a horse and sent him off on an were on a circuit. evangelistic tour of one thousand miles through Virginia and Maryland.” The first North Carolina Circuit was formed in 1777. In 1864, Alabama was divided into two conferences, and the South Carolina followed soon. The first circuit in Georgia was Mississippi churches were put in the Mobile Conference. They established in 1785. remained there until 1870 when the Mississippi churches were placed either in the Mississippi or North Mississippi Conference. A frail young man by the name of Tobias Gibson brought The Meridian District has been in the Mississippi Conference since Methodism to Mississippi from South Carolina in 1799. He set off for 1870. “the Natchez Country” without any appointment. He traveled six hundred miles on horseback to the Cumberland River where he took a rowboat down the Ohio to the Mississippi and then by flatboat to Natchez. He organized the first Methodist church in the new Mississippi territory at Washington, six miles east of Natchez. He made the trip back four times, appealing for missionaries. His constitution was not strong enough to stand the strain he put on it, and he died at the age of twenty-eight. The Mississippi Territory included the areas now comprised by the states of Alabama, 7 8 of Central Church held on January 15, 1866. At the time to which he referred, the church was called just “The Methodist Church,” but not BEGINNINGS yet “Central.” That addition came later, thus Mr. Brown doubtless was using the term he was accustomed to using in 1919. At the The first Methodists who came to the Meridian area Quarterly Conference of January 15, 1866, the Rev. O. P. Thomas purchased a lot from Richard McLemore in 1852. It was located on was the Pastor in Charge, and the Rev. S. M. Cox, the Presiding what was then “A” Street, between 9th and 11th Avenues, near where Elder. I. S. O. G. Greer, Dr. Lyman Gould, and R. M. Herbert were the old Alabama Great Southern and the Mobile and Ohio railroad stewards. tracks crossed. Here they build a log cabin in which to worship. Having no permanent pastor, they depended on circuit riders for In Deed Book I, page 261, there appears a deed from Lewis their services. There was a graveyard beside the cabin. When the A. Ragsdale to J. H. Gibbs, I. S. O. G. Greer, R. Y. Rew, L. Gould, property was sold and the church moved in 1860, the graves were and James Watts, trustees; and O. P. Thomas, Pastor. It was filed leveled but not moved. Another account of the 1952 transaction is for record on April 1, 1867, for lots nine and ten in block 84, almost identical except that it states that the property was purchased Ragsdale Survey; and in Deed Book T, page 160, lots 11 and 12 in for “one dollar paid in hand to William Dearman by Levi Barton, Block 84 were filed for record on November 3, 1873. These lots Ferdinand Snow, and James Arrington, trustees of the church of the were located at what is now the southeast corner of 8th Street and Lauderdale Circuit of the Alabama Conference of the Methodist 23rd Avenue where Niolon’s coffee store was located for many years. Episcopal Church South.” The frame and log church on the corner of 11th Street and 27th Avenue had become too small and the lots too restricted, so these In 1860 the congregation moved from its “A” Street location four downtown lots had been purchased, and the frame and log to the northwest corner of 11th Street and 27th Avenue on property house was hauled by ox teams to the new location by Brother W. P. purchased from John T. Ball. In January 1860, a deed for $200 that Montgomery, on credit. It is said that the receipt for $110, as a had been contracted for in 1859, was given by John T. Ball to church partial payment for the expense of hauling paid him by R. Y. Rew, trustees John H. Biggs, I. S. O. G. Greer, R. Y. Rew, L. Gould, and is in existence, but it has not been found by the church committee. James Watts. They constructed a new log and frame church building on this lot, as the old “A” Street building had become too At the Second Quarterly Conference, 1867, under “What has small. The old cabin was hauled somewhere by ox team; the been raised for the support of the ministry, and how has it been account does not say where. The Rev. Alexander McBryde was the applied?” we have the answer, “Paid Presiding Elder $46, paid first pastor in the new church. During the Civil War this building was Preacher in Charge $56;” and under “Spiritual State of the Church,” used as a barracks and for quartermaster and commissary this answer, “We are greatly in need of a revival.” In 1870, Meridian purposes. General William T. Sherman’s soldiers set it on fire, but Station had 205 members. the fire was quickly extinguished and the building saved. When it was not occupied by the military, confederate army chaplains and The congregation decided to build a new brick and stone circuit riders kept up the services. Rector George Stewart of the building on the corner lots, but could not think of destroying their old Protestant Episcopal Church held occasional services there. log and frame building, so once again it was moved by oxen, (twelve yoke) out Fifth Street to Fortieth Avenue where it became the Fifth At this point the old accounts are confusing, but one, taken Street Methodist Church. from a paper written by Mr. Lincoln P. Brown at the request of the Annual Conference of 1919, refers to the First Quarterly Conference In 1885, a building committee was appointed and $17,000 9 10 was promptly raised for the church building soon to be erected on crowd began to scatter.