Pioneer Colored Christians

by Harriet Parks Miller

We succeeded next day however, in securing a very good one.

On my second visit to her she met me at the door in her characteristic pleasant manner and said:

“I’ve been studying a heap about what you said and read to me the other evening when you were here, and I told my daughter that I believed the Lord had directed you to write this history of my people, and their early struggles. If somebody does not take it up, the old heads will all soon be gone, and there will be nobody left to tell the story.”

Among the older members of Mount Zion Church who have aided me materially in securing facts concerning its early history, I would mention Dan and Jerry Fort. While neither of them were charter members, they have been prominently identified with the church for many years. They have seen it rise from the little box house, with its seventy unlettered members of forty-three years ago, to a reasonably well educated membership of something over three hundred.

Crude and humble as that first church building was, I have heard it said that Uncle Horace on preaching days would pause on the hillside before entering, and praise God for the privileges he enjoyed. It seemed that a new heart was in his bosom and a new song was on his lips. He loved the little house of worship as though it had been handed down to him as a present, direct from heaven.

Uncle Horace was instrumental in organizing two other churches besides Mount Zion, Antioch, near Turnersville, in Robertson county, and Nevil’s Chapel, near Rudolphtown, in Montgomery. Along with prominent mention of the great Christian leader of his people, I must not omit due tribute to some of his followers; principal among whom was Uncle John McGowan, a member of Mount Zion Church forty-two years, and all the time leading a life worthy of emulation.

Uncle John was born on what was known as the George Wimberly place near Rossview, in Montgomery county, in 1822. He was the property of Miss Katherine Wimberly, who married Mr. Milton Bourne, brother of the late Mr. William Bourne, of Port Royal, Tenn. Mr. Milton Bourne owned and settled the present homestead site of Mr. John Gower, of Port Royal. After living happily there for a number of years, he became financially embarrassed, and was forced to sell some of his most valuable slaves. Among them, in young manhood’s prime, was Uncle John, who, in no spirit of bitterness, often referred to his sale as follows: “A large block, or box, was placed in the front yard for us to stand on, that the bidders might get a good look at us. The bid opened lively when I was put up, for I was considered a pretty likely man, as the saying went. When the bidding went way up into several hundred dollars, I was knocked off to Mr. Lawson Fort. I was glad of that, for I had lived near him and knew him to be a good man. I hadn’t long settled my mind down on having a good home the balance of my life, when up comes somebody and told me Mr. Fort didn’t buy me, he was just bidding for Mr. Patrick McGowan. ‘My feathers fell,’ as the saying is, for I didn’t know how me and an Irishman I didn’t know anything about were going to get along together. But it so happened that we got along fine; while his ways were a little different from what I had been used to with Mr. Bourne and the Wimberleys, I soon found him to be a man that would treat you right if you deserved it. He had his own curious way of farming, and no matter what price was paid for tobacco, he would not let a plant grow on his place. He had a very good little farm joining the Royster place, and raised more potatoes than anybody in that whole country.

“I have heard him tell often of letting Elder Reuben Ross, the great Baptist preacher that came to this country from North Carolina over a hundred years ago, live in a cabin in his yard till he could arrange to get a better home. Elder Ross had a large family, and Mr. McGowan took some of them in his own house. He was kind to strangers, and never turned the needy from his door.

“I must tell you of a whipping I got while I belonged to Mr. Milton Bourne, that I did not deserve, and if I had the time to go over again, I would whip the negro who caused me to get it. There was a still house on Red River, not far from Mr. Sugg Fort’s mill, it was long before Mr. Fort owned the mill; Mr. Joe Wimberly owned and operated the still house. In that day and time, the best people of the land made whiskey; it was pure, honest whiskey, and did not make those who drank it do mean things, like the whiskey of today. Mr. Bourne had hired me to Mr. Wimberly to work in the still house, with a lot of other boys, about my age—along about nineteen and twenty years old. We were a lively set of youngsters, and laid a plan to steal a widow woman’s chickens one night and have a chicken fry. We took a solemn pledge just before we started, that we would never tell on each other, if the old lady suspicioned us. Well we stole them, and one of the boys, Bob Herndon, who had been raised to help his mammy about the kitchen, was a pretty good cook, and he fried them. I think it was the best fried chicken I ever put in my mouth. A day or two went by, the still house shut down, and they put me to work in the field. Corn was knee high, I was chopping out bushes in a field near the river, when I saw Mr. Wimberly’s overseer come stepping down the turn row like he was mad as a hornet. I knew him so well, I could tell when he was mad, as far as I could see him. My heart began to beat pretty fast, as he asked about the chickens. I told him I did not know a thing about them, but when he began to tell things that really took place, I knew some one had given us away. He got out his rope and tied me to a hickory sapling, and said: ‘Now John, I’m going to give you a little dressing off for this, Bob Herndon has let the cat out of the wallet; of course he is the biggest rascal of the gang.’ Every now and then he’d stop, and ask me if I was ready to own up, but he soon found I was not, and turned me loose to chopping bushes out of the corn again. About twenty years after that, I met that same overseer at the mill one rainy day; he was older, and I reckon his heart had softened, and we laughed and talked over that chicken fry, and what it cost me. It was the first and last dishonorable scrape I ever got into.”