Ohio Baptist Assocation

The Jackson Standard, Jackson, OH 14 Mar 1867 p2
RANDOM THOUGHTS No. 11.

Burlington First Baptist Church Lawrence County, Ohio

In the year 1819, the Ohio Baptist Association was formed.  It consisted of churches in Lawrence, Gallia, Jackson, and Scioto counties.  One of these churches was composed of members living in both Jackson and Gallia counties, and part of the members was white, and part were negroes.  For these reasons, this church was called the “Union Church.”  The colored members of this church lived on a creek called “Dirty Face.”  This settlement was in Gallia County, some two or three miles up the creek from where Gallia Furnace is now located.

I use the word “church’’ as it was used then, meaning the members, in their organized capacity, and not their house of worship, as now used.  The house of worship was then known as the “meeting house.”

The meeting house of the Union church was located upon the high point west of Faulkner’s old mill, where the Gallia Furnace Road crosses the Black Fork of Symmes Creek.  It was built of hewed logs and had a gallery above.  It was perhaps thirty feet square and had rough benches for seats, and a rude pulpit called a “stand.”

This meeting house was built perhaps in the year 1820.  It was in the woods, and just west of the house was a graveyard, where there were a few graves.  They were not enclosed but had only rude pens built around them, most of the poles were cut in the surrounding woods, and the top of the pen was covered with like poles.  Some of these pens had rotted down when I can first remember, about the year 1820 or 1830.  The old meetinghouse, and the neglected graveyard, had a most desolate appearance.

When we boys were at a meeting and wanted water, we went down a very steep hill, southeast of the meeting house, where there was a spring of pure cold water, gushing out of the steep hillside.  The people coming to meet, came up the hill on the north side, where it was not so steep, and they hitched their horses in the woods near the meeting house.

Among the colored members of this church, there was a preacher, named James B. Stewart.  He was a pious old man and possessed considerable native eloquence.  He was called upon frequently to preach at funerals, among the white people, both members of the church and others.

In the same neighborhood where Stewart lived, was a blacksmith named Seth Shaffer, generally called Shaver.  He was a man who frequently drank to excess and was a great fighter.  He was never whipped.  I have seen him so badly beaten that he scarcely looked human, and yet he never was known to have cried “enough.”  But he was an honest man, and I have heard my father say that he never resided near a better neighbor than Seth Shaffer.

In the same neighborhood resided a man named Woods – Mathew Woods, I think.  He was generally known as “Double-Headed Woods,” on account of his head, being very long from the ears back.  His wife’s name was Nancy, and she had a very dark complexion.  In fact, some said that there was the blood of Ham in her veins.

Seth Shaffer was fond of a joke, and one day, when somewhat in liquor, he told a person whom he met that he had caught Stewart and Nancy Woods having improper intimacy.  This report soon spread and came to the ears of Phillip Lambert, a member of the church, and a white man, he at once preferred charges in the church against Stewart.  Stewart denied the charge, and the matter was agitated in the church during the period of some three or four years, between 1828 and 1832.  The members of the church became divided into two parties – one agreeing with Lambert and the other with Stewart.

But I must refer to the balance of the narrative until next week.  D. M. (“Davis” Mackley”)

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