NOTE 13
(Chapter VII, page [200])
The story of Mr. Dodge is interesting, and his benefaction, in this region certainly, has but one parallel—that of Mr. Clarkson in South Carolina, which failed because of pre-war adverse laws.
Young Dodge came, about 1884, to visit his father, whose large interests were near Brunswick. The beauty of the surroundings, still with the scars of war apparent everywhere, the ruins of the old churches, the unshepherded Negroes wandering astray, the poverty from which recovery was necessarily slow—all these appealed to his fine sensibilities. He determined to apply for Holy Orders and devote himself to the negro people of the islands. The story of Frederica parish had been a romance; its ruin formed an irresistible appeal. On the foundation of the ruins he began to build, and, with the building, his vision enlarged to include the evangelization of some thirty-nine counties. After the earlier structures had been reared, he was ordained, and then proceeded to devote $72,000 to the Missions, of which he became Missionary Trustee with successive rectors of Frederica as Trustees in turn. With the approval of the Bishop, he took over the negro mission work of the Diocese. One by one, mission-chapels (used often as schools during the week) were built, served sometimes by priests, sometimes by teachers who were also lay readers. The Rev Mr. Winn came first, as Assistant and remains in charge to this day.
One of the most noted of Mr. Dodge’s negro teachers was J. B. Gillespie, who went from the Sewanee St. Mark’s Mission, in 1875, as lay reader of St. Perpetua Chapel and School, of which he was the first teacher. Gillespie’s father had been chief of one of the black tribes of Africa. He was captured in battle and sold to one of the last slave-ships smuggling cargoes into America. In America, he came into the hands of Col. Peter Turney (afterwards Governor of Tennessee), a man of remarkable power and humanity. Gillespie was treated by the Colonel with due appreciation of his native standing. So Gillespie, the teacher, was a prince once removed from his native land; and he was one in character and in intellectual reach. Eventually he was ordained, intending to return to Africa as a Christian priest; but a fever epidemic through which he nursed his people, carried him away at its close, and he was buried by his chapel in 1887. The older people still revere his name.