Young Americans: The Rebellious Faith of Moses Spencer and Elizabeth Tinsley

This article is part of the 52 Ancestor Challenge. Each week in 2023, I will attempt to spotlight one ancestor from my family tree and provide some details about his or her life.

Week Four

Young Americans: The Rebellious Faith of Moses Spencer and Elizabeth Tinsley By Clint Alley

Let My People Go

When I was a boy, TV came through an antenna. Most of the stations we could get at my house were out of Huntsville, Alabama. I remember one Easter after we opened our baskets, went to church, and spent the afternoon playing outside in the exceptionally fine weather, one of those Huntsville stations played Cecille B. DeMille’s The Ten Commandments without commercial interruption.

That was a big deal.

In pre-streaming days, a movie played on television with no commercials was a special occasion worthy of the family all watching together. I can still remember sitting in our living room that night, the sweet breeze of springtime drifting through the open windows, the sound of frogs and night creatures floating on the air, the smell of popcorn lingering from the darkened kitchen, watching Charlton Heston deliver the final warning to Pharaoh Yul Brynner: “Let my people go!”

As we watched, Mom said, “I think we had a relative named Moses, a long time ago, who was in the army.”

I was intrigued. My interest in genealogy had not yet fully-formed, but I was very interested in all things military. I filed it away in my mind to ask my grandparents about. But then Charlton Heston smashed the stone tablets and my attention was drawn back to the screen.

The House of Spencer

The ancestor my mom recalled was my 5x-great-grandfather, Moses Spencer. He was born a subject of King George II on January 5, 1746/7 in Middletown, Connecticut. He would die eighty winters later in Lawrence County, Tennessee, a citizen of the United States. 

Much like the Moses of Scripture, he played his part in pronouncing, “Let my people go!” to a king.

But before I tell that tale, can I take a moment to celebrate how unusually airtight Moses’s birth record is?

We can say with a high degree of certainty that Moses was born in Middletown, Connecticut because of four overlapping pieces of evidence. Like a Venn Diagram that slowly focuses into a single circle, the evidence is unusually clear for someone of Moses’s generation.

First, volume 2 of the vital records of Middletown, Connecticut names a Moses Spencer, born January 5, 1746/7. 

Second, baptismal records for Middletown record the baptism of a Moses Spencer on January 11, 1746/7.

Third, in his Revolutionary War pension application, Moses states his birthday as January 16, 1744. Which I know is not the same, but is still close given the cavalier attitude people of that time often gave to exact birth dates and years, and also given Moses’s advanced age at the time he answered the question. Even so, the fourth piece of evidence tells us that Moses's memory was probably off.

So what ties this evidence together? One super-unusual name.

What’s In a Name?

The Moses Spencer recorded in the two Connecticut records is listed as the son of a man named Ahimaaz Spencer. Even in a time when Old Testament names were common, ‘Ahimaaz’ (taken from the Book of 2 Samuel, where Ahimaaz, a very fast runner, is the son of Zadok the priest) was still unusual enough to stand out. 

So what connects the Moses Spencer in Connecticut to the Moses Spencer of Middle Tennessee?

Ahimaaz seems to have moved with Moses wherever he went for several years. The two appear side-by-side in a 1782 list of taxpayers of Henry County, Virginia. And Moses may have even named one of his sons Ahimaaz

Moses, his father Ahimaaz, and a man named 
John Tinsley (possibly a brother-in-law) 
all listed next to each other in a 1782 list of
taxpayers of Henry County, Virginia.
Source: FamilySearch

This propels the likelihood that my Moses was the same as the Moses of the Middletown, Connecticut vital records to a near-certainty. I think there are too many points of overlap for it to be a mere coincidence.

Born a Ramblin’ Man

Moses moved around. Quite a lot.

In the first four decades of his life, we know Moses lived in Connecticut, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Kentucky. In Virginia, alone, he is said to have lived in Henry County, Amelia County, and Charlotte County. Likewise we know that he lived in at least two separate counties in South Carolina, two separate counties in Kentucky, and two separate counties in Tennessee. During the Revolution he traveled to the outskirts of New York City and fought in one of the most important battles in North Carolina. By the early 1810s, he was in Tennessee, and even in his last years when he was blind and could no longer work, we are still not 100% sure which county he lived in when he died.

Joining the Continentals

According to his pension application, Moses Spencer joined the Seventh Virginia Infantry Regiment of the Continental Army on February 10, 1778 in Charlotte County, Virginia. The pension application and surviving muster rolls in the National Archives both agree on this date, which Moses apparently supplied from memory when he applied for his pension. According to those muster rolls and the helpful abstract from the Muster Roll Project of the Valley Forge Alliance, Moses was present with the Seventh Virginia when it was encamped at Valley Forge in March 1778, and in April it was noted that he was sick, most likely after receiving the smallpox inoculation.

The original muster roll from April 1778 said that Moses was "sick, present," along with 40 other members of his company, all of whom were new recruits serving enlistments of one year. The method of inoculation at that time was primitive, but effective. The men were given a weakened strain of the virus, usually by scraping infected matter from a sick person's open sores into a small incision made on the arm of the inoculation recipient. The inoculated patient was then quarantined for several days to prevent accidental spread of the disease.

By mandating smallpox inoculation, Washington immediately saw fewer smallpox cases in the army and ensured that there would be no future epidemics in the ranks, helping to bolster recruitment at a time when he badly needed additional manpower.

The Old Valley Road

A muster roll from September 9, 1778
Moses is highlighted as "with Artifecers."
Source: FamilySearch

The winter at Valley Forge was a transformational time for Washington's Continental Army. Despite deprivation and hunger, the army spent the winter at Valley Forge drilling and becoming a well-disciplined fighting force. The army which marched out of Valley Forge in June 1778 was, in many ways, not the same force which had entered the valley six months before.

According to his pension application, and corroborated by the muster rolls, Moses was in the brigade of Brigadier General William Woodford at Valley Forge. From a map drawn in 1928 and available on the Library of Congress's web site, we can see that Woodford's brigade encamped just south of the low hill called Mount Joy. Today, the encampment site of that brigade is located at the circle of South Inner Line Drive at the Valley Forge National Historical Park.

A map of the Valley Forge encampment made 
in 1928. The most likely areas where Moses
may have lived during that winter are highlighted.
Source: Library of Congress

A muster roll made on September 9, 1778 says that Moses was "with Artifecers." An artificer was a skilled craftsman who served the army as a gunsmith, blacksmith, or wheelwright. Artificers served as an early version of the army's ordnance department.

So, was Moses an artificer? Did he stay with the artificers at Valley Forge? We don't know. I haven't found any other army record that identifies Moses as an artificer, and he never mentioned it in his pension application. No record from any time in his life identifies him as anything other than a farmer, making any claims that he was a skilled craftsman of any sort hard to verify.

The artificers, according to that same map, were encamped near Washington's Headquarters on the Pottstown Road. If Moses stayed with the artificers during the last months at Valley Forge, he would have frequently been just a stone's throw away from the commanding general, himself.

Baptism by Fire

We know that Moses was with the army when it left Valley Forge in June 1778. After a march of some 70 miles, Washington met the army of British General Sir Henry Clinton near Monmouth Court House, New Jersey on June 28, 1778. Moses mentioned in his pension application that he "was in the battle of Monmouth." 

When the United States secured recognition and support by the French in February 1778, the British strategy changed. General Clinton's redcoats were ordered to evacuate Philadelphia and march north to New Jersey, where the British Navy was waiting to ferry Clinton to New York, where he could consolidate his force with the British army stationed there.

Washington, who had spent the previous six months rebuilding his army and defending himself against the political foes who sought his replacement as general, was eager to prove that he was a capable commander. Against the advice of many of his top generals, he decided to attack the British as they retreated across New Jersey.

The April 1778 muster roll showing Moses Spencer
as 'Sick, present' after receiving the smallpox
inoculation at Valley Forge.
Source: FamilySearch

He caught them at Monmouth.

Although the battle had no clear victor and the British army succeeded in its escape to New York, the Battle of Monmouth showed the world that the newly-trained and disciplined Continental Army was capable of holding its own against the British. Those present at the battle particularly remembered the brutal heat. As temperatures neared 100 degrees Fahrenheit, Washington's own horse died of exhaustion beneath him. 

Not Worth a Continental

Moses said in his pension application that he was honorably discharged on February 16, 1779 in Middlebrook, New Jersey, which is just a little over 150 miles southwest of his birthplace in Connecticut. The army was in cantonment or winter quarters at Middlebrook at the time of Moses's discharge. 

According to his own reckoning, Moses served in the Continental Army for a year and six days. As he later recalled, he was paid for that service "in Continental money, which was so much depreciated as to be of but little benefit to him."

An image of a Continental dollar which was
printed around the time that Moses Spencer was
discharged from the Continental Army.
Source: University of Notre Dame Libraries

The Continental dollar was the paper currency issued by Congress during the Revolution. Like most currencies issued by governments with rocky prospects, it fluctuated wildly in value and its usefulness was dependent on a myriad of factors. According to the Coin and Currency Department of the University of Notre Dame Libraries, "Congress officially valued the currency at $7.42 in Contenental dollars for $1 in specie" at around the time of Moses Spencer's discharge at Middlebrook. 

Moses's money woes were by no means an isolated incident. Runaway inflation ensured that many of those who were fortunate enough to survive the war gave a year or more of their lives to the cause of American independence and came home virtually empty-handed. When Moses returned to Virginia, he likely returned not only minus the profits of a year's lost harvest, but with a pocketful of practically-worthless currency. His family's sacrifice for the young nation was likely one they could feel for years to come.

A Wartime Wedding

A book written in 1876 by John Henderson Spencer, one of Moses's great-grandchildren, implied that Moses was married more than once; once to an unknown woman and then to my ancestor Elizabeth Tinsley.

According to his widow’s pension application, Moses married Elizabeth Tinsley on November 20, 1779 in Henry County, Virginia. The ceremony was performed, as Elizabeth recalled, by a Baptist minister named Dutton Lane, and was witnessed by Elizabeth's father Thomas Tinsley and the family of Rev. Lane.

A portion of Elizabeth Tinsley Spencer's
sworn statement in her pension application.
Source: Fold3

William Reading, a fellow Revolution veteran living in Decatur, Alabama at the end of his life, swore in 1843 that he knew Moses and Elizabeth, and he recalled that Moses obtained a furlough from the Continental Army to marry Elizabeth before returning to his regiment. However, this is probably inaccurate. Unless Elizabeth was mistaken and the marriage occurred in 1778, Moses had been out of the army for several months by November 1779.

According to Elizabeth, there was no surviving record of the marriage because their “marriage notice was published."

At that time in Virginia, there were two legally-recognized ways people could get married. One was by obtaining a marriage license from the county government in the county where the bride lived. The second--the method described by Elizabeth in her pension application--was by the publication of marriage banns, a process which was cheaper, took longer, and which, unfortunately, left few records behind.

A marriage bann was an official notification that a couple planned to marry. Banns were required to be posted for three consecutive Sundays prior to the wedding at the churches of the bride and groom or at militia musters or other community events. This gave the community the opportunity to object if there was something illegal or immoral about the proposed union. This practice, in theory, prevented people from marrying too young or from committing bigamy, the practice of being married to more than one person at a time.

Moses and Elizabeth probably opted for the publication method because they were adherents of a dangerous and rebellious religious movement sweeping the state of Virginia at the time.

They were...

Baptists!

From their inclusion on the roll of Shoal Creek Baptist Church in Oconee County, South Carolina at the turn of the nineteenth century, we know that Moses and Elizabeth were adherents of the Baptist faith, and the fact that a Baptist minister conducted their wedding gives some indication that they probably shared that faith at the outset of their married life. At the end of Moses's year in the Continental Army, they were probably Baptists planning to be married by a Baptist minister, and Baptist ministers in 1779 were still a year away from being legally permitted to perform marriages in Virginia.

Ten Thousand Dissenters

At that time, Baptists, despite being an increasing presence throughout the state, were still officially considered dissenters in Virginia. A dissenter was any Protestant denomination that was not Anglican or, after 1776, Episcopalian. The established church in Virginia was supported by a tax known as the tithe, a practice which survived not only the creation of an independent state government in Virginia but also lived on several years following the American Revolution.

According to Thomas S. Kidd's fantastic History of Baptists in America, the "aggressive evangelism and unwillingness to comply with regulations of the established church made the Virginia Baptists seem like revolutionaries." Many good Anglicans (and later, Episcopalians) saw Baptists as dangerous outsiders.

Throughout the 1760s and 1770s, more than thirty Baptist ministers were jailed for unlicensed preaching. Others were beaten, physically dragged from their pulpits, and one was even urinated on by angry crowds while trying to preach. Dutton Lane, the minister who married Moses and Elizabeth in the autumn of 1779, was harassed by authorities for unlicensed preaching (at least one of whom later joined the Baptist church) and was threatened with violence from angry crowds while in the pulpit, including a drunk who rushed him during a sermon against the dangers of drunkenness.

Moses and Elizabeth Spencer
in the membership roll of
Shoal Creek Baptist Church in
Oconee County, South Carolina
at the turn of the 19th century.
Source: Ancestry

Still the movement grew. The simplicity of Baptist services and the plainspoken nature of the mostly-uneducated Baptist preachers appealed to regular people of Virginia, many of whom had lost touch with the formality and hierarchy of the established church.

In October 1776, with revolutionary fervor at a fever pitch, the Virginia legislature received the "Ten-Thousand Name Petition," from Baptists and other dissenters demanding full religious liberty and an end to mandatory taxation in support of the established Episcopal church. The petition's signatories represented around ten percent of Virginia's white male population, a huge number that the state's wartime government couldn't afford to ignore at a time when manpower was dwindling.

The legislature obliged by exempting Baptists and other dissenters from having to pay the tithe tax in support of the established church, a move which placated Baptists for the moment but which stopped short of official disestablishment of the state church.

The movement reached its crescendo with Thomas Jefferson's Statue of Religious Liberty, which he wrote in 1776 but which was not presented to the Virginia Legislature until 1779, the year Moses and Elizabeth were probably married by the Baptist preacher Dutton Lane.

The statute languished in the legislature for years while the state government took on the more immediate threat of winning the Revolution. The statute encountered particularly strong opposition from Federalist Patrick Henry, a conservative and a political foe of Jefferson who wanted the state to allow taxpayers to choose which church to support with their tax money, but with the assurance that all tithes would be given to Christian churches.

It wasn't until 1786, after James Madison published a very popular pamphlet in support of religious liberty, that the Statute became law, and a few years later, was a direct influence on the First Amendment to the Constitution and the concept of a "wall of separation" between church and state which was so immensely popular among Evangelicals who had been ostracized by the official state churches.

Jefferson saw his authorship of the Statute of Religious Liberty as one of his most valuable additions to American history, and had it included in his epitaph. Jefferson's stalwart belief in religious liberty won him the lifelong love of Baptists nationwide. It was also the reason that he received a 1,200-pound wheel of cheese from a grateful Baptist congregation after he was elected president.

The discrimination faced by Baptists and other dissenters in Virginia had far-reaching repercussions. Five decades later, when Elizabeth tried to apply for a Revolutionary soldier's widow's pension after Moses's death, she was denied it because she could produce no proof her marriage. Since she had no marriage license and no witnesses to the marriage could swear to its validity, she was unable to draw any benefits from Moses's wartime service.

Volunteer Spirit

According to his pension application, after he was discharged from the Continental Army, Moses "served his country...as a volunteer militiaman, and fought against the enemy at the Battle of Guilford." Fought on March 15, 1781 just forty miles south of Moses's home in Henry County, Virginia, the Battle of Guilford Courthouse was a British victory which cost the British commander Lord Cornwallis nearly a quarter of his army and which propelled the war toward its final act.

Several Virginia militia regiments participated in the battle at Guilford Courthouse. We know from Thomas Jefferson's correspondence with Brigadier General Robert Lawson that Jefferson (then governor of Virginia) ordered several counties' militias called up to support General Nathaniel Greene's movement into North Carolina to face off against Cornwallis, including "a fourth part" of the Henry County militia.

Was Jefferson's order the catalyst for Moses's re-entry to the war? Elizabeth stated in her pension application that her first child was born on February 9, 1781, and that Moses joined the army on its way to Guilford Courthouse "a few days after the birth" of that child. Jefferson's letter to Lawson, indicating that several counties' militias were already in the field, was written on February 25.

An existing muster roll of the men who responded to Jefferson's call for militia from Henry County that spring does not include Moses's name, but it is possible that he went with another county's militia, or perhaps that he fell in with Greene's Continentals for the short march to Guilford Courthouse.

Whatever the circumstances, Moses was definitely in the right place at the right time to have participated in the battle. As a trained veteran of the Continental Army, Moses was probably an asset to the local militia, many members of which had received only sporadic and ineffective training at county muster days throughout their adult lives.

The British held the field when the Battle of Guilford Courthouse ended, and Moses and his neighbors slipped back across the state line home, but Lord Cornwallis lost more men than he could afford to lose in the fight, and he changed his strategy to compensate. By moving toward the Virginia coast, Cornwallis hoped to be resupplied by the British fleet. Instead, he was trapped by Washington and the newly-arrived French army at a little village called Yorktown, where he surrendered in October 1781, effectively ending British resistance in the Revolutionary War.

The "Art and Mystery" of Farming

With the end of the war, Moses moved south. He went first to North Carolina, then to South Carolina where his son Thomas said the family spent "fifty years." It was in South Carolina that Moses and Elizabeth were included on the church roll of Shoal Creek Baptist Church. Moses moved next to Kentucky, and then shortly thereafter to Lawrence County, Tennessee, which was organized in 1817 and where I and countless numbers of his descendants were born and raised.

Moses spent the final years of his life in both Lawrence and Maury Counties. It was to this area that his son Thomas returned after fighting the British in the Battle of New Orleans in 1815. What must those conversations have been like? To hear two generations of veterans comparing Monmouth with New Orleans!

The indenture recorded by
Moses in 1822.
Source: FamilySearch

Moses claimed in his pension application that he had become mostly blind by 1820 and was unable to work as he once did. This claim is bolstered by his taking on an apprentice in the summer of 1822.

According to the apprenticeship indenture recorded in the Lawrence County Register of Deeds' Office, Moses agreed to teach "the art and mystery of farming" to 14-year-old Elias Cromer. The apprenticeship was to last until Cromer was 21 years old, and stipulated that Cromer was to "faithfully serve [Moses's] lawful commands...and to behave himself as a faithful child ought to do." Moses would supply the boy with "sufficient victuals, clothing, and twelve months' schooling" in addition to teaching him to farm, rewarding him upon his 21st birthday with a "horse saddle and bridle and suit of clothes."

Unfortunately, Moses would not live to see the end of young Elias's education in the "art and mystery" of farming, and we don't know if he ever got that suit of clothes.

The old patriot died on March 29, 1826.

The only person he mentioned in his will was his wife Elizabeth, whom he named as both his sole heir and his executrix. By 1824, when the will was written, he was living in Maury County, but, in true form for him, he moved back across to Lawrence County shortly before his death.

Moses's payment for his service to the United States, deferred in so many ways, was rewarded in ** when he was awarded a pension for his Revolutionary service in the amount of $96 per year, or $8 per month, barely more than he made as a private in the Seventh Virginia Infantry.

On September 1, 1843, Elizabeth--back in Lawrence County again--applied to obtain a pension of her own as a Revolutionary War widow, but she was foiled by the fact that she had no "documentary proof" of her marriage to Moses. In fact, Elizabeth would never see a dime of her pension money. After she died in 1849, her son Thomas made inquiries into why her claim had been denied. 

According to the documents available in Elizabeth's pension application file, Thomas's efforts appeared to be successful, and her estate was awarded her pension amount posthumously in 1851.

Works Cited

'An Indenture from Amy Mansel to Moses Spencer,' Deed Book A, p. 65. Lawrence County Register of Deeds. Lawrence County, Tennessee. Dated 22 Jun 1822, Recorded 7 Jul 1822.

Ancestry.com. Connecticut, U.S., Church Record Abstracts, 1630-1920 [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: 2013.Original data: Connecticut. Church Records Index. Connecticut State Library, Hartford, Connecticut.

Ancestry.com. Connecticut, U.S., Town Birth Records, pre-1870 (Barbour Collection) [database on-line]. Lehi, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations Inc, 2006.Original data: White, Lorraine Cook, ed. The Barbour Collection of Connecticut Town Vital Records. Vol. 1-55. Baltimore, MD, USA: Genealogical Publishing Co., 1994-2002.

Babits, Lawrence E., and Joshua B. Howard. Long, Obstinate, and Bloody: The Battle of Guilford Courthouse. Chapel Hill: Univ. of North Carolina Press, 2013.

Boehm, J. “Mammoth Cheese.” Monticello.org, October 1997. https://www.monticello.org/research-education/thomas-jefferson-encyclopedia/mammoth-cheese/.

“Continental Currency.” Continental Currency: January 14, 1779. Accessed February 6, 2023. https://coins.nd.edu/colcurrency/currencytext/CC-01-14-79.html#:~:text=Detector%20bills%20were%20printed%20in,dollars%20for%20%241%20in%20specie.

Farrell, Cassandra. “Early Virginia Marriage Records.” Research Notes Number 26. Library of Virginia, July 2010. https://www.lva.virginia.gov/public/guides/Research_Note_26.pdf.

“Henry County. From Its Formation in 1776 to the End of the Eighteenth Century, et Seq. (Continued).” The Virginia Magazine of History and Biography 17, no. 2 (1909): 189–93. http://www.jstor.org/stable/4242979.

Kidd, Thomas S., and Barry Hankins. Baptists in America: A History. Oxford University Press, 2015.

Read, James H. Memorial and Remonstrance, 2009. https://mtsu.edu/first-amendment/article/870/memorial-and-remonstrance.

Scott, Morgan. History of the Separate Baptist Church: With a Narrative of Other Denominations. United States: Hollenbeck Press, 1901.

Smallpox, Inoculation, and the Revolutionary War. National Parks Service. Accessed 3 Feb 2023. https://www.nps.gov/articles/000/smallpox-inoculation-revolutionary-war.htm#ftn23

Southern Baptist Historical Library and Archives U.S., Southern Baptist Church Records, 1750-1899 [database on-line]. Lehi, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2022. Original data: Microfilm Church Records. Nashville, Tennessee. Southern Baptist Historical Library and Archives. sbhla.org

Spencer, Elizabeth Revolutionary War Widow's Pension Application. No. W-41. "United States Revolutionary War Pension and Bounty Land Warrant Applications, 1800-1900." Database. FamilySearch. http://FamilySearch.org : 2 Feb 2023. From "Revolutionary War Pension and Bounty-Land Warrant Application Files." Database and images. Fold3.com. http://www.fold3.com : n.d. Citing NARA microfilm publication M804. Washington, D.C.: National Archives and Records Administration, 1974.

Spencer, John Henderson. Autobiography of John Henderson Spencer, 1876.

Spencer, Moses Revolutionary War Pension Application. No. W-41. "United States Revolutionary War Pension and Bounty Land Warrant Applications, 1800-1900." Database. FamilySearch. http://FamilySearch.org : 2 Feb 2023. From "Revolutionary War Pension and Bounty-Land Warrant Application Files." Database and images. Fold3.com. http://www.fold3.com : n.d. Citing NARA microfilm publication M804. Washington, D.C.: National Archives and Records Administration, 1974.

"United States Revolutionary War Rolls, 1775-1783." Database with images. FamilySearch. http://FamilySearch.org : 2 February 2023. Citing NARA microfilm publication M246. Washington D.C.: National Archives and Records Services, 1980.

Valley Forge encampment,to June 18, 1778. [1928] Map. https://www.loc.gov/item/gm71000868/.

Against the Grain: Captain Thomas Masterson and the Fourteenth Amendment

This article is part of the 52 Ancestor Challenge. Each week in 2023, I will attempt to spotlight one ancestor from my family tree and provide some details about his or her life.

Week Three

Against the Grain: Captain Thomas Masterson and the Fourteenth Amendment
By Clint Alley

A Cabin in the Woods

I went on a pilgrimage once.

Okay, it wasn't a real pilgrimage. 

A real pilgrimage is when you travel to a holy place for a spiritual purpose, like to pray at a holy shrine, to visit a holy relic, or to stay in a holy city. Some go on pilgrimages to achieve a higher knowledge of God or of themselves.

On this particular trip, I wasn't in search of anything divine. 

I went to Moulton, Alabama to look for an abandoned log cabin.

Me at the Masterson UDC Cabin
April 2014

The cabin was not holy, but it did have a great deal of significance to me. And the journey was not inspired, but I did learn a little bit about myself along the way.

The cabin in question is nearly a century old, and it was built in memory off my great-great-great-great grandfather, Captain Thomas Masterson. After I learned about its existence, I made plans to find it. 

The journey introduced me to a part of my family's story that I didn't expect to find. In a small and unexpected way, at a precise moment in time, my ancestor played a part in moving the United States one step closer to living out its creed, that all men are created equal.

To me, that made the cabin worth searching for.

An Unlikely Radical

Captain Thomas Masterson was born on March 20, 1820, in Lawrence County, Alabama. His father, Thomas Masterson, Sr. (1779-1867) was an early settler of that area. Later accounts would postulate that Captain Tom's older brother, Robert M. Masterson, was the first white child born in Lawrence County, Alabama.

Captain Tom married Amanda Finney on December 16, 1841. He became a lawyer, a politician, a court official, and an active member of county life. He owned a mill and got press in the local newspaper at least once for growing impressively large sweet potatoes. But before that, he was an officer in the local militia company during the Civil War. And before that, he was a farmer who kept a general store. And, like many men of his time, he owned enslaved people.

Thomas Masterson
1860 Slave Schedule
Source: Ancestry

In 1860, Captain Tom held four people in bondage. The 1860 slave schedule does not record the names of these men and women, but it does tell us their sex, age, and race. In the order they are listed, they were a 40-year-old black male, a 32-year-old black female, an 8-year-old black male, and a 30-year-old black male. 

Most slave schedules listed enslaved people strictly in descending order by age, which makes the inclusion of a 30-year-old male after an eight-year-old boy an unusual anomaly.  This unusual grouping leads me to believe that the first male, female, and young boy were possibly a mother, father, and child, although I can't say for sure. One day I hope to track down as many of the names as possible of the people my ancestors held in slavery, so that they can be given their rightful spot in my family story, but that work has not yet begun.

Captain Tom was certainly not the only person participating in the sin of slavery in that time or that place. The men and women he enslaved in 1860 were four of the 6,788 people held in bondage in Lawrence County, Alabama that year. It was a common sin, but a sin nonetheless, and Captain Tom was guilty of it.

Which is what made the path he chose after the guns went silent five years later all the more surprising.

Citizen Soldier

Of all of my ancestors who served in the American Civil War, Captain Tom's military service has been the hardest for me to prove with contemporary evidence (records which were made at the time of his service.) I also have no record written in his own voice. Everything I know about Captain Tom comes from things that were written about him, not by him. If any of my conclusions in this article come across as assumptions, the fault is entirely my own. 

Unlike most Civil War soldiers, Captain Tom has no compiled military service record at the National Archives. He never applied for a pension for his service. Inquiries to the Alabama Archives for cursory index searches have failed to find anything. In fact, every source I have found of Captain Tom's service comes mostly from newspaper articles, printed years after the war ended, supplied to editors by Captain Tom's descendants.

Every source, that is, except one.

In his lifetime, Captain Tom was regularly referred to by his rank in local newspaper records. In fact, he is almost consistently called "Captain Tom," "Captain Masterson," or "Captain Thomas Masterson" whenever local newspapers wrote a story about him. In those days, it was common for officers to retain their rank as a title after being discharged from service. 

The first mention of Captain Tom as "Captain"
in a local newspaper.
Source: The Christian Herald (Moulton, AL),
29 Sep 1865, p. 3.

Beyond this, there are two likely reasons why I have yet to find any accounts of his service contemporary to the Civil War: the first is that he served in the Alabama Militia instead of the regular Confederate army, and the second is that I live very far away from Montgomery, Alabama, where the records of his service might be waiting in a roll of microfilm or scrap of paper that has yet to be digitized.

What the Record Shows

Aside from being called "Captain" for the last three decades of his life, the earliest record I have of Captain Tom's Civil War service is his obituary. Published in the Moulton Advertiser in January 1901, it says "he raised a company during the war, and in many fights with the enemy he displayed good generalship and great pluck and bravery."

In 1928, the Advertiser published the following article:

THOMAS MASTERSON APPOINTED LIEUTENANT IN 1863

While looking thru some old papers Tuesday Miss Ella Masterson and Mr. Tom Griffin found the following appointment made by Capt. D.C. White in 1863. It is understood that Mr. Masterson was made captain before the close of the war between the states:

Moulton, Ala., July 15, 1863

Thomas Masterson is hereby appointed 3rd Lieutenant in Company C, 4th Brigade 10th Division Alabama Militia. He will be respected and obeyed as such by all persons attached to said command. 

D.C. WHITE Capt. Co. 6

Approved by C.B. Robertson, Lieutenant Col., Company 6 Regular Alabama Militia

The enigmatic
commission.
Source:
The Moulton Advertiser 
6 Sep 1928

For several reasons, this is one of the most baffling and intriguing genealogical documents I have ever found. First, the "Company 6" designations in the last two lines are probably transcription errors. Company designations were always alphabetical. A likely explanation is that D.C. White was the Captain of Company C (misread as "6"), and the last line probably said something to the effect of "Approved by C.B. Robertson, Lieutenant Col., commanding [regimental number unknown] Regiment Alabama Militia. 

Also, if the obituary was correct in its assumption that Captain Tom "raised a company," why was he being commissioned 3rd Lieutenant instead of Captain? 

D.C. White (short for Dewitt Clinton White) was a longtime newspaper editor in Moulton. He also served for a year as a 2nd Sergeant in the 16th Alabama Infantry before hiring a substitute and securing a discharge from the infantry. His obituary says that White 

...served in the Confederate Army as a member of Company F, Sixteenth Alabama Infantry regiment, until 1863 when commissioned by Gov. Watts to raise a battalion in Lowndes County. He raised nine companies, but the war ended before they got into action.

C.B. Robertson, the commanding officer who signed off on the commission, was, indeed a lieutenant colonel in the Alabama militia. Robertson was elected to that post in Lowndes County, Alabama in May 1862, as evidenced by a letter to the governor of Alabama, currently in the state archives, certifying his election. 

What's more, the 4th Brigade, 10th Division Alabama Militia was present in the area of Moulton in the summer of 1863. On June 30, 1863, Brigadier General James H. Tompkins wrote a letter from Russellville to the adjutant general of Alabama that the brigade's official rendezvous point was Russellville, about 30 miles from Moulton.

The letter which proved the
presence of Captain Tom's division
in the vicinity in 1863.
Source: Alabama Department
of Archives and History

The pieces are all there. And even if it isn't a smoking gun, based on these points of corroboration, I am inclined to believe that the commission which Captain Tom's descendants brought to the office of the Moulton Advertiser that summer day in 1928 was probably a genuine record of his wartime service. 

From Rebel to Republican

At war's end, Captain Tom got busy. And he got political.

He started by taking an Oath of Allegiance to the Union. 

The Oath was part of the Ten Percent Plan first proposed by Abraham Lincoln and then adopted by Andrew Johnson. It said that if ten percent of voters in each of the former Confederate States swore an oath of allegiance to the Union, that state could write a new state constitution and form a new government. 

This plan fell apart completely in December 1865, when the southern states' delegates to Congress included a large number of unrepentant former Confederate officers and Confederate government officials, including the former vice president of the Confederacy. Radicals in Congress were outraged, and refused to seat the southern delegates--many of whom had borne arms against the U.S. government just months before--beginning the first phase of Congressional Reconstruction, a program of rebuilding the South which was designed by Republicans in Congress to reshape southern culture as well as punish former Confederates.

In 1931, the Moulton Advertiser reproduced an oath of allegiance reportedly taken by Captain Tom. The old document, which was owned by one of Tom's grandsons, was endorsed by Probate Judge Charles Gibson on August 30, 1865. 

Also, on September 29, 1865, the Moulton Christian Herald reported that "Captain Thomas Masterson has been appointed General Administrator for Lawrence County." 

The office of General Administrator in Alabama is appointed by the Probate Judge, and oversees the estates of deceased people for whom there is no other administrator to be found. No doubt Captain Tom was appointed to this post by the same Judge Gibson who gave him the oath of allegiance the previous month.

Judge Gibson, who was first elected as Probate Judge for Lawrence County in 1858, is said to have spent the war years laboring tirelessly to ensure that the wives and children of Confederate soldiers were provided-for, even going so far as to pay for food out of his own pocket. He was re-elected in 1864, but was disenfranchised by Alabama's Reconstruction government in 1866. 

So you can imagine my surprise when I learned that Captain Tom--this respected, seemingly conservative, ex-slave owning, former Confederate soldier who was appointed to county office by a pro-Confederate judge--ran for the state legislature as a radical Republican.

Captain Tom in the Party of Lincoln

A word about Reconstruction political parties. Today, the Republican Party is the nation's conservative party, and the Democratic Party is the nation's liberal party. During Reconstruction and for a century afterward, those roles were generally reversed. The Democratic Party of those days generally captured the nation's conservative impulse while the early Republican Party was one of the most liberal movements our nation has ever seen. For simplicity's sake, when I describe Captain Tom's politics during this period, I am describing what appears to be a moderately conservative man becoming a liberal seemingly overnight.

On December 19, 1867, Captain Tom was nominated for the state legislature by the Republican Party of Lawrence County, Alabama. The resolution which announced his nomination also promised that Lawrence County Republicans would "adhere to and abide by the Republican Union platform, as adopted at the Montgomery convention in June last."

Assuming he was one of these men who pledged to adhere to that platform, what did that mean for Captain Tom?

The Republicans of 
Lawrence County, Alabama
nominated Captain Tom
for the legislature in 1867.
Source: The Daily Sentinel,
27 Dec 1867.

Among other things, it meant that he endorsed "the action of Congress on the question of reconstruction" (meaning he supported the more punitive measures enacted toward the South by Congress after the Ten Percent Plan failed), that he would "endeavor to secure...the equal rights of all men and the full enjoyment of the rights of citizenship without distinction on account of color," that he supported "the removal of the tax on cotton and the state poll tax." 

Support for Congressional Reconstruction, equal citizenship for African-Americans, and the removal of the poll tax were extraordinarily liberal notions, indeed, at that place and time. It certainly stirred the ire of the man who may have been Captain Tom's commanding officer in 1863. 

D.C. White's conservative Moulton Advertiser hurled invective at the Republican platform in the summer of 1867, claiming that the entire Republican convention held at Montgomery was "begotten in fear and born in corruption," and that its parents were "Congressional oppression and lust for power."

I don't know what motivated Captain Tom's decision to join the Republican Party. It was a move with potentially seismic implications, to be sure. It earned him a brief mention in the book The Scalawag in Alabama Politics: 1865-1881, a work of scholarship concerning southerners who joined the Republican Party after the Civil War by Sarah Woolfolk Wiggins. 

However, this phase of Captain Tom's life, as unexpected as it might be, brought him what I consider to be one of the most enduring parts of his legacy.

The Fourteenth Amendment

Captain Tom was elected to represent Lawrence County in the Alabama legislature on February 4, 1868 and was sworn in as a member of the State House of Representatives of Alabama on July 13, 1868. In fact, Captain Tom was a member of the first group of Republicans to be elected to state office in Alabama history, and was part of one of the most racially diverse classes of legislatures the state has ever known. Later that day, he was one of 67 members of the State House who voted in favor of ratifying the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution, fulfilling his local party's pledge to support equal citizenship and helping Alabama cross a major checkpoint on its way toward being readmitted to the Union.

The Fourteenth Amendment defines the criteria for citizenship and, most importantly, guarantees equal protection under the law for every citizen. It extended citizenship to every person who was "born or naturalized" in the United States, regardless of color.

The record of the Alabama House of Representatives
showing the results of the vote to adopt the 
Fourteenth Amendment.
Captain Tom's name is highlighted.
Source: Alabama Department of Archives and History

The Fourteenth Amendment was the subject of Amend: The Fight for America, a popular six-part Netflix series hosted by Will Smith in 2021. 

Simply put, the Fourteenth Amendment remains one of the most important pieces of civil rights legislation in American history. It defended the formerly enslaved as full-fledged citizens with every right due to citizens, and ensured that everyone enjoyed equal protection of the laws. It is one of the most-often cited amendments in litigation today, and has been crucial to many of our most important Supreme Court opinions. 

As you might remember from history class, amendments to the Constitution must be ratified by three-fourths of the state legislatures in order to take effect. Captain Tom was there at just the right time to take part in the historic moment for Alabama.

Alabama's ratification of the Fourteenth Amendment came just days after South Carolina gave the amendment the numerical green light it needed to become part of the Constitution. And, under a law passed by Congress earlier that year, Alabama was required to ratify the Fourteenth Amendment before it could be readmitted to the Union. No ratification meant no representation in Congress. Alabama's hands were effectively tied. 

But still, I think it's pretty cool that my ancestor Captain Tom voted in favor of it on his first day in office. Four representatives voted against ratification. Captain Tom could have been the fifth, but instead he voted yes. And, although we may never know what he was thinking when he cast that vote, the fact that a man who once owned slaves could vote in favor of legislation that made those former slaves politically equal to him seems to me to be a moment of personal growth, even if it may have been done out of political necessity.

The End of an Era

Captain Tom's career as a liberal politician didn't last long.

He was an active member of the legislature, present throughout most of the sessions during that first two-year term of office.

On July 30, Captain Tom introduced a bill which would have "fully restored" the right to vote to several groups of people disenfranchised by the Alabama Constitution of 1867, including former Confederate soldiers, the insane, and certain criminals. The act was tabled.

Captain Tom's radicalism had moderated
sufficiently by December 1868 for the
conservative Moulton Advertiser to refer to 
the Republican as "our amiable and
indefatigable Representative."
Source: Moulton Advertiser, 25 Dec 1868, p. 2.

The zenith (or nadir, depending on how you look at it) of his radical summer came when he began making stump speeches in favor of former Union general Ulysses Grant for president. Journalists from as far afield as the New York Herald pointed to Captain Tom as one of the "great men of the carpet-bag regime" in Alabama and a "leading light" of the Alabama radicals. 

By late summer, however, the tide began to turn. For reasons not reported in any newspaper, Captain Tom moderated his politics, abandoned Grant, and, according to the New York Herald, began to throw his support behind the Democratic candidate for president. Although he continued to be a Republican, Captain Tom's moderation became a hallmark of his political style. Years later, the Moulton Advertiser printed a letter in which a man was said to have voted the straight Republican ticket his whole life, except for Captain Tom, whom he "scratched on account of...not being extreme enough."

Captain Tom continued to be active in local politics, even attending the 1876 Republican National Convention in Cincinnati, Ohio as a delegate for Alabama. 

The Cabin

The remains of the
Masterson Mill
in 2015

At home, Captain Tom settled into his work as an attorney. He also built a gristmill at the confluence of Eddy and Turkey Creeks northeast of Moulton, parts of which are still standing (the spot where Highway 33 crosses that body of water has a sign labeling it 'Masterson Mill Pond' to this day). He continued with his duties as County Administrator. And he raised his family. When he died of kidney failure in 1901 at the age of 82, Captain Tom had several children and grandchildren.

His daughter Ella Masterson became extremely involved in the local chapter of the United Daughters of the Confederacy in the early years of the twentieth century. Everywhere a document connected to Captain Tom's wartime activities was reproduced in a local paper, she was there.

In 1934, she donated a cabin on a plot of land once owned by Captain Tom to the Wheeler Chapter UDC in Moulton.

The cabin was dedicated in a ceremony on May 10, 1934. At that time, the cabin was three miles from Moulton at "the Masterson homestead on the Courtland highway." The cabin was near the old Masterson Millpond. More than a hundred people came to the dedication ceremony, including at least one Confederate veteran. Dixie was sung, speeches were made, and one tribute was given specifically about Captain Tom which unfortunately I have not been able to find in print. 

The bridge over Masterson Mill Pond in 2015

The cabin was neglected during World War II, but repaired in 1949 and placed back into regular use. The UDC continued to meet there, but so did the local Cub Scouts and eventually the local Sons of Confederate Veterans camp.

In 1977, the land on which the cabin was built was condemned in order to straighten a curve in the nearby highway. With what must have been a great deal of hard work and effort, the cabin was removed from its original site and placed in its current location inside the city limits of Moulton in 1983.

Finding the Cabin

I went in search of the cabin in 2014. I began by asking my friends from college who were from Moulton if they had ever heard of it. Some of them vaguely remembered a grandma or a great-aunt talking about a cabin once, but no one knew where it was.

After some digging in UDC history books and old newspaper articles, I consulted the ladies of the Lawrence County Archives in Moulton. They were able to give me a vicinity where it was, but they warned me that it was probably overgrown and might be full of snakes.

A true Indiana Jones adventure, snakes and all!

After a few wrong turns and a consultation with Google Maps satellite view, I saw the woods where it had to be: a rugged patch of land behind the county high school, near the edge of town. 

At long last I found it.

The cabin was still there, tucked beneath a copse of trees and suffering from neglect. And, as luck would have it, it was not locked. In fact, I believe the door may have been ajar. The dedication engraved in the stone mantle told me I was in the right place. It said, "In memory of my father Capt. Thomas Masterson. Ella Masterson."

The cabin was a mess. Logs were damaged, furniture was scattered everywhere, and no doubt a few snakes had called it home over the years. But the building was still there. And I couldn't help but feel a connection with my long-dead ancestor as I stood in the quiet of that place, reading his name on the mantle with the cool spring breeze blowing through the holes in the wall. 

Captain Tom was a complex man. He was a patriot who answered when his state called during the Civil War. He was a public servant who quietly lent his voice to the chorus of Americans who demanded that we live up to our national creed in the years after that war. And he was a beloved man whose children and grandchildren continued to recall his deeds many years after he died and of whom even his opponents spoke well. 

I thought of all of this while I stood in that cabin, and I took a moment to remember Captain Tom. 

It was worth the journey.

A photo collage I made the day I visited the Masterson cabin in 2014. The bottom photo is of LaGrange Mountain, which is in a different county.

Works Cited

'Congressional Legislature.' The Times and Messenger (Selma, AL). 30 Jul 1868, p. 4.

'Demoralization of Southern Radicals.' The New York Herald (New York, NY). 23 Aug 1868, p. 4.

'Interesting Old Document.' The Moulton Advertiser (Moulton, AL). 3 Sep 1931, p. 1.

Irwin, Elizabeth Griffin. The Masterson Family, House, and Cemetery. The Moulton Advertiser. Moulton, Alabama. 11 June 1959, p. 7.

Journal of the House of Representatives, During the Session Commencing in July, September, and November, 1868, Held in the City of Montgomery. Jno. G. Stokes & Co., State Printers. (Montgomery, AL), pp. 9-10.

'Night Dispatches.' The Times and Messenger (Selma, AL). 22 Aug 1868, p. 3.

'UDC Meets at Cabin.' The Decatur Daily (Decatur, AL). 17 Oct 1949, p. 6.

'Republicans of Lawrence County.' The Daily State Sentinel (Montgomery, AL). 22 Dec 1867, p. 2.

Simms, Sadie. 'Moulton--Wheeler Chapter No. 2040.' History of the Alabama Division United Daughters of the Confederacy, Vol. III, Virginia James Cook, ed. The Strode Publishers (Huntsville, AL), p. 318.

US Census Bureau. “1860 Census: Population of the United States.” Census.gov, December 16, 2021. https://www.census.gov/library/publications/1864/dec/1860a.html. 

Kind and Generous: The Christian Legacy of Sarah Harrison Kerr

This article is part of the 52 Ancestor Challenge. Each week in 2023, I will attempt to spotlight one ancestor from my family tree and provide some details about his or her life.

Week Two

Kind and Generous: The Christian Legacy of Sarah Harrison Kerr
By Clint Alley

The Surprise

The week before my wedding I made a remarkable discovery.

My wife and I could think of no better way to symbolize the seriousness of our commitment than by signing our names to the 'Marriages' page of one of our oldest and most treasured family Bibles. It fit in so many ways; the solemnity of our promise before God by incorporating His Word, the permanence of our commitment in the pages of a treasured family relic, and the added bonus of incorporating my love of genealogy in the ceremony.

Aunt Sadie Foster's Bible

My Grandmother allowed us to use the Bible of my great-grandaunt, Sadie Kerr Foster in our wedding ceremony. Sadie Kerr Foster, born in 1869, was my great-grandfather Harvey Kerr's sister. She lived a remarkable life; traveling from place to place and living in great hotels. Although she had no children of her own and died a widow, she shared her wisdom and love with her nieces and nephews in hundreds of letters, many of which still exist today.

Sadie Kerr Foster
From the collection of
Melanie Buffaloe Ginn

When she died, my grandfather inherited a trunk of her belongings, including her well-worn Bible.

In the center of the Bible, Aunt Sadie had fastidiously recorded the birth, marriage, and death dates of her parents, herself, and some of her siblings. On our wedding day, Christy and I added our signatures to this page.

As we prepared for the big day, I decided to leaf through the pages to ensure that nothing lay tucked there which might come loose during the ceremony. 

I am very glad that I did.

There, between the pages of the Bible, was a tiny, faded scrap of paper that was more than 130 years old; a one-of-a-kind relic of my family history.

It was the missing obituary of my great-great grandmother, Sarah Harrison Kerr. An obituary that--thanks to the unavailability of local newspaper records from the year of her death--probably exists in no other form anywhere on earth, and which offers one of the only surviving glimpses of who she was; a virtuous woman whose life was cut short far before her time.

Obituary of Sarah Harrison Kerr
Found in the pages of Sadie Kerr Foster's Bible

The Fountain which Never Runs Dry

Sarah Elizabeth Harrison was born on May 13, 1839 in Buckingham County, Virginia. She was the daughter of Benjamin Harrison (1805-1885) and Mary Beth Vawter (1808-1877). Sarah and her family moved to Columbia, Tennessee in 1846, when Sarah was seven years old.

Sarah's obituary records that "at the tender age of 12 she gave her heart to the Savior, and shortly thereafter united herself with the Baptist church, of which she has been a devoted, consistent member; and exhibited throughout her entire life that confidence and trust in Jesus, which is characteristic of a pure Christian." 

Not only did Sarah unite with the Baptist church; she--along with her father and sister--became one of thirteen original members of First Baptist Church of Columbia. The church was founded in 1856, some five years after Sarah's conversion. 

A 1908 obituary for Sarah's older sister Emma Harrison Sheppard published in the Baptist and Reflector says that Emma came to faith in Christ at "the memorable Philips Neely revival in the [Methodist] church" in about 1849, but joined the Baptist church along with Sarah and their father in 1856. Sarah's faith journey probably took a similar--if not identical--course. 

We can't be sure if Rev. Neely was the one who lead Sarah to faith also. But we do know the content of some of Rev. Neely's sermons, thanks to his wife's timely publication of them shortly after his death. One, in particular, was designed to get the attention of young people like Sarah and Emma. In his sermon The Need of Religion, Rev. Neely said, 

O that I could persuade you to draw your happiness in the morning of life from that fountain which never runs dry! O that I could influence you to put away that infatuation which tells you to postpone your return to God until your earthly hopes are dead, and age, with its infirmities, is upon you!

Down to the River to Pray

That same Baptist and Reflector obituary records that Sarah and Emma "were baptized by Dr. J.R. Graves in Duck river in the presence of a large assemblage of people." 

An article from the Tennessee Baptist describing 
the baptismal service where 
Sarah and Emma Harrison were baptized
on July 13, 1856

Dr. J.R. Graves was a prolific Baptist preacher who lived in Nashville. He published various Baptist newspapers from 1855 until his death. He also became a close friend of Sarah's father, Benjamin Harrison, by virtue of being part of the constituting committee of First Baptist Columbia. 

The Tennessee Baptist, Dr. Graves's paper published in Nashville, reported that an initial worship gathering was held in Columbia on June 29, 1856, at which time four pastors "constituted ten brethren and sisters into [a Baptist church]...at night one more was received by letter, and two have already offered themselves for baptism." 

The baptisms were held on July 13, and two men were also ordained as the church's first deacons that day. Those two candidates for baptism were undoubtedly Sarah and Emma Harrison, and one of the men slated for ordination was their father Benjamin Harrison.

A later Tennessee Baptist article describes that first baptismal service as "largely attended" and "solemnly impressive," with many present who had "never before witnessed...Christian baptism."

Sarah's baptism in the Duck River on July 13, 1856, was part of the 'grand opening' of First Baptist. Emma would be the last of the church's charter members to pass away, and every obituary for her intimately connected the Harrison family to the life of First Baptist Columbia. The church would remain a vital part of Sarah's life--and of the lives of her immediate family--until their dying days. 

Dr. J.R. Graves
The minister who baptized Sarah Harrison Kerr
Source: Wikimedia Commons

Answered Prayers

Despite the fervent prayers of its founders, the first decades of FBC Columbia were rocky. According to an article by Mrs. Robert Young in the book Churches of Maury County, Tennessee Prior to 1860, Baptists had been attempting with little success to form a church in Columbia since 1838. The formal chartering of First Baptist Columbia in 1856 was a major milestone, but many lean years lay ahead for the congregation.

The Civil War, which began five years later, scattered the church's members. The library and furniture which had been accumulated by the members was destroyed during the course of the war, and at war's end, little progress had been made in finding a place to build a home for the little congregation. 

In 1870, the church purchased a lot at the intersection of High and Mechanic Streets for $900 and "a faithful few" labored to pay for it over the next five years. 

Finally, in the summer of 1872, the church was reorganized and began holding regular Sunday services in a rented room above the offices of the Maury Democrat. The church's first building was completed and dedicated in the summer of 1876, two decades after Sarah and her family had helped to found the church. Judge W.B. Turner later wrote that the dedication of the church "was a joyful occasion for all and especially for Deacon Benjamin Harrison who had prayed earnestly for years that the Lord would let him live to see a Baptist church in Columbia."

Marrying a Presbyterian

In November 1858, when Sarah was nineteen, she married a cabinet maker named Andrew Harvey Kerr. The ceremony was conducted by Rev. George W. Griffin, the first pastor of First Baptist Church.  Andrew--or Harvey, as he was known, and as one of his sons would be named--came from a long line of Scottish Presbyterians. His grandfather, it was said, was a zealous Presbyterian who would "sing, pray, and exhort at the meeting" and "sing and shout in the field while following his plow." Andrew Harvey's father and many of his close relatives were listed among the members of Port Royal Presbyterian Church in Spring Hill, Tennessee in the 1870s and 1880s.

Although the details of Andrew Harvey's personal religious convictions are lost to time, we catch a glimpse that he probably shared the Presbyterian faith of his forbears from his obituary, which says that his funeral was held at Columbia's Presbyterian Tabernacle, albeit presided over by a Baptist minister.

The faith of their children might also give some evidence of the faith journey Andrew Harvey made in life. His son Harvey James Kerr (my great-grandfather) was a committed member of the Church of Christ, a movement which drew in many conservative Presbyterians in the late 19th century. On the other hand Sadie, the owner of the family Bible I mentioned above, once subtly ribbed her brother Harvey in a letter about his faith of choice. Sadie, like her mother Sarah, was a committed Baptist. In 1952, while congratulating Harvey on his son's wedding, Sadie said, "Mack wrote me that a Baptist minister is performing the ceremony (that pleases me!!)." 

Part of a letter from Sadie Kerr Foster to her brother Harvey James Kerr
(Both were children of Sarah Harrison Kerr)
March 10, 1952
Collection of Clint Alley

A Fireside Missionary

Sarah Harrison Kerr not only played an active role in the formative years of First Baptist Church Columbia, she also conducted a campaign of evangelism around her own hearth. Her obituary says, "Her many noble Christian virtues were daily displayed in her home around her fireside, where she instructed her children so faithfully, in tenderness teaching them the way of truth and righteousness."

What beloved passages might she have read to her children around that fireside? Her daughter Sadie was prone to mailing Bible verses to her nieces and nephews to memorize for Sunday School in her later years. Might this have been a practice she learned at the knee of her precious mother?

Sarah's Christian influence extended well beyond her years, and continued to inspire her descendants for decades after her passing. Although our window into Sarah's life is small, we see a woman who lived in extraordinarily challenging times and whose whose life was powered by extraordinary faith. 

The Civil War no doubt tested Sarah's endurance as well as her faith. In addition to being pregnant for most of 1862 (their second son, who was born that year, was named Robert Lee Kerr), Sarah suffered the hardship of keeping the household functioning without her husband for months at a time. The Civil War took Andrew Harvey from home at least twice; once at the beginning, when he enlisted in the Second Tennessee Infantry, and again at the end of the war, when Hood was making his final push toward Nashville. 

As the Confederate army swept through Columbia in November 1864, Andrew Harvey was conscripted into the Third Tennessee Infantry, and served a little less than a month for the Battles of Franklin and Nashville before returning home. In his oath of allegiance to the Union, made in January 1865, he said that he left the Confederate army because he "has a family."

Sarah's brothers also served in the Confederate army; one as a surgeon and one as an infantryman who walked home from Ohio after spending part of the war in a Union prison camp.

By the mid-1870s, Sarah, Andrew Harvey and their family were living near Dark's Mill, a community along the banks of Carter's Creek about seven or eight miles north of Columbia. In a twist of fate, their home was very near the home of Hamlin Alley, my 4x-great-grandfather on my father's side. Hamlin had moved his family to Maury County from Lawrence County after the Civil War.

The 1878 D.G. Beers Map of
Maury County
Homes of A.H. Kerr and
H. Alley highlighted in blue.
Source: Library of Congress

In 1877, the Columbia Herald and Mail reported "Mr. Harvey Kerr has a very sick family. His wife is very low; and his son Odie, who was accidentally shot Christmas, is improving very slowly." We don't know what ailment Sarah was suffering from in 1877. Perhaps it was the opening salvo of the disease which would cut her life short two years later. Whatever her ailment in the winter of 1877, she did not bounce back from it quickly; a blurb three weeks later said that she was still "improving slowly."

In September 1879, Sarah--mother of at least nine, the youngest of whom was four years old at the time--died of tuberculosis. She was only thirty-nine years old.

The Mission Continues

Sarah lived to see the first two decades of the Christian work she and twelve other believers began in Columbia. But the church she helped to found has blossomed into a major force for the Gospel. Untold thousands of souls have been impacted by First Baptist Columbia and the churches it has helped create. The Women's Missionary Union of Tennessee was created at FBC Columbia in 1888. By 1950, the church had more than 800 members. 

A photo I snapped of FBC Columbia in 2018.
Collection of Clint Alley

In 2001, First Baptist (now known as The First Family) moved from its downtown location to a 30-acre campus on Pulaski Highway south of Columbia, where expansion was easier. The church today has a staff of nine pastors, including a Hispanic ministry, and has sent many missionaries to the field worldwide. 

If Sarah could see the church today, and the many thousands of lives it has impacted since she first rose up from the waters of Duck River that Sunday so long ago, I think she would be immensely thankful. 

Works Cited

Churches of Maury County, Tennessee Prior to 1860. Columbia, TN: Tennessee Chapter, Daughters of the American Revolution, 1980.

'Dark's Mill Items,' Columbia Herald and Mail. 9 Feb 1877, p. 3.

'Death's Harvest.' The Herald and Mail. Columbia, Tennessee. 13 Nov 1908, p. 6.

“First Baptist Celebrates 160 Years of Serving Community.” The Daily Herald. The Daily Herald, August 8, 2016. https://www.columbiadailyherald.com/story/lifestyle/celebrations/2016/08/08/first-baptist-celebrates-160-years/25629174007/.

Foster, Sadie Kerr to Harvey J. Kerr, 10 Mar 1952, Collection of Clint Alley.

'In Memoriam: A Memorable Mother in Israel is Gone.' Baptist and Reflector. Nashville, Tennessee. 15 Oct 1908, p. 6.

McDaniel, Frank Kerr. Kerr Family History Project. Santa Clarita, CA: F. Kerr, 1993.

Neely, Philip Phillips. Sermons. United States: Southern Methodist Publishing House, 1884.

Tennessee Baptist. Nashville, Tennessee. Vol XII, no. 42. 28 Jun 1856, p. 3.

Tennessee Baptist. Nashville, Tennessee. Vol XII, no. 44. 12 Jul 1856, p. 3.

Tennessee Baptist. Nashville, Tennessee. Vol XII, no. 46. 26 Jul 1856, p. 3.

Turner, William Bruce. History of Maury County, Tennessee. Nashville, TN,: Parthenon Press, 1955.