Lenoir County, NC - SOUTHWEST CHRISTIAN CHURCH
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SOUTHWEST CHRISTIAN CHURCH
A CAROLINA LANDMARK
Two Centuries of Southwest Church
By Charles Crossfield Ware, dec
NOTE: This history of the Church was written for their Bi-Centennial in
1962 when Rev. D. L. (Pete) Warren was the minister. There is a fair amount
of history of the Disciples in general which has been cut.
NAME AND FIRST BUILDING
Morgan Edwards (1722 1795), native Welshman, and itinerant Calvinistic
Baptist preacher from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, visited Southwest Church
in 1772. He declared in his Journal that this church was so called from a
creek by that name which empties itself into the Neuse near which the meeting
house stands in Dobbs county. Dimensions of the house of worship then used
at Southwest he did not give. However, in the same county just outside of
today's LaGrange, was Bear Creek (organized 1752), which he also visited in
1772, about which he said: The house is 20 feet by 15 built on land given
by Joshuah Herring. It is highly credible that these primitive structures,
shrines in the wilderness, were built of logs, and were exhibits of a common
pattern.
LOCATION
The Southwest Church site is in Lenoir County, North Carolina, at the eastern
side of Southwest Creek bridge, five miles southeast of Kinston. It is one-
half mile from the Jones County line which points an acute angle of boundary
at the environs of Kinston. US Highway 70 is off from Southwest two miles, and
from State Highway 55, four miles. The lot is on the east side of Southwest
Creek about two miles from its confluence with the Neuse River. The locality
is cited in the Colonial Records, (SR XXII, 323), of January 6, 1751, as the
lower side of Sow West Crick community. Captain Thomas Graves gave on that
date the roster of 96 men in his foot company of soldiers made up from that
area. At least sixteen of the family names in his treu List have been to an
extent current in that section for 211 years. These are: Beasley, Caddell,
Cox, Dohety, (Daugherty), Fields, Goodvine, Heath, Herring, Humphrey, Johnson,
Lane, Loftin, Nun, Russell, Taylor, Ward. These were among the landseekers
in the mid-eighteenth century cleaving to the lush lower valley of the
navigable Neuse.
Through the years this landed area has been variously mapped. First in Bath
County, 1692 1705; then in Archdale Precinct, 1705 1712; in Craven County,
1712 1764; Dobbs County, 1764 1791; finally Lenoir County, 1791 1962.
On November 26, 1762, Richard Caswell asked that this Southwest Creek segment
of Craven be added to Dobbs. (later named Lenoir). Hence by the laws of 1764
it was enacted by Governor, Council, and Assembly, that the area on the
southernmost side of Southwest Creek, and the upper branches of Trent River
by officially surveyed boundary be annexed to Dobbs County.
AFFILIATION
Extant sources indicate that for two centuries Southwest church has affiliated
as follows: 1762 1789. Sandy Creek Association, Separate Baptists; listed by
historians as a charter member.
1790 1793. Kehukee Association, United Baptists. Receding from the
devastating effects of the American Revolution its scattered members had
fellowship with a sister church, Trent, (Chinquapin Chapel), fifteen miles
distant in Jones County.
1794 1818. Neuse Association, Regular Baptists. Southwest continued its
status with Trent.
1819 1844. Neuse Association, Missionary Baptists. Southwest restored had
membership as a distinctive church.
1845 1870. North Carolina General Conference of Original Free Will Baptists.
Noted is a remnant also of about fifteen Union Baptists, (another denomination),
at this free church, who were registered there as late as 1870, in the Mount
Zion Association, most of whom at Southwest had already united with its new
Disciples group.
1871 1962. Christian Church, (Disciples of Christ) connection; Southwest, a
duly constituted member of The North Carolina Christian Missionary Convention.
ORGANIZATION
Shubael Stearns, (Jan 28, 1706 Nov 20, 1771), and his small company began
the Separate Baptist movement in the south, at Sandy Creek, North Carolina, in
1755. And George Washington Paschal, Twentieth Century Baptist historian of
North Carolina, has declared: I make bold to say that these Separate Baptists
have proved to be the most remarkable body of Christians America has known.
This thesis he then affirmed through many carefully written pages. The
magnetic, evangelical preaching of Stearns, fortunately well-times and wide-
spreading through his able assistants, made marvelous impact on religion in
the South Atlantic States. He baptized Philip Mulkey, of Halifax County, in
December, 1756, who in turn baptized John Dillahunty, a co-founder with
Charles Markland of Southwest church. Markland came to Southwest from New River
of Richlands, (now Union Chapel, Disciples), in 1760, and in that year,
according to Morgan Edwards, preached to the conversion of fifteen. These
were formally organized as Southwest church in October 1762, by a presbytery
sent by Sandy Creek Association, as related by Edwards who was at Southest in
1772. He gives the names of these fifteen charter members as follows: Mr. and
Mrs. Charles Markland, Mr. and Mrs. Kittrell Mundine, Mr. and Mrs. John
Dillahunty, Mr. and Mrs. Thomas Andrews, Mr. and Mrs. John Cox, Joseph Thraul,
Mary Goodvine, Sarah Cox, Barbary Cox, and Margaret Busby.
Facts about some of these pioneers:
CHARLES MARKLAND. During the War for Independence and its aftermath he was an
important person in the community. He served with 17 others on a panell of
Grand Jurors to attend at Kinston on October 27, 1773. He with four others
ran the boundary line between Dobbs and Wayne Counties in 1779. He was one of
the 12 trustees named in 1785 for Dobbs Academy in Kinston. As a fiscal
commissioner for Governor Caswell he supervised allocation of supplies for
Major Thomas Evans in his march of near 400 miles thro a wilderness in a
strange State, (Kentucky), in November 1787. His son Charles was also a
trusted fiscal agent of the Governor, returning to him from Hillsboro to
Kinston in July 1785, with about $1200 cash procured on a warrant from Hon.
James Read.
KITTRELL MUNDINE. He was an assistant minister at Southwest. A responsible
magistrate of the Revolution, he faced on June 15, 1778, 20 Tories who were
required to take the oath prescribed by law, failing which they should
have to depart this State within 60 days.
JOHN DILLAHUNTY, (1730 1816). He was of French Huguenot descent. Much
impressed by a heart-searching sermon of George Whitefield, and later
converted by the Separate Baptist preachers, Stearns and Daniel Marshall at
Trent (Chinquapin Chapel), he was baptized by Philip Mulkey and joined the
initial group at Southwest. His plantation of 160 acres in 1762, was on
Strawberry Branch, near Southwest Creek. He evinced much ability and in
1781 was ordained to the ministry having been formerly licensed. He served
Trent fifteen years, removing to Tennessee in 1796. His wife with whom he
had lived 68 years", died in 1816. He was an ancestor of John H. Dilahunt
(1810 1860), Disciple preacher at Chinquapin Chapel, who with John Jarman
visited the home of Alexander Campbell at Bethany in the winter of 1850.
Josephus Latham said of this John H. Dilahunt, He was zealously devoted to
the sublime principles of the current reformation.
JOHN COX. He enlisted with Captain Thomas Graves Company of foot solddiers,
mustered as of record, January 6, 1751.
COL. NATHAN P. BRYAN. (1748 1798). A man of large affairs, his home was in
Jones County within easy distance from Southwest, where he united in 1766.
Joseph Biggs said that Bryan was held in great esteem amongst men of the
first character in this county, and strove for peace amongst religious
professors of every denomination and amongst all men. He served as a member
of the House of Commons at Raleigh in 1787, 1791, - 1794, and later for two
terms in the National House of Representatives at Philadelphia. He loved his
church. He wrote on April 9, 1796 to John Koonce at Chinquapin Chapel that
he could never forget my brethren who are with you or cease to pray for you
and the prosperity of Jerusalem.
The Separate Baptists of 1755 had a seeming miracle of expansion for more than
three decades in the Carolinas, Virginia, and Georgia. Eventually they merged
with other Baptists which they came to believe was ecumenically expedient. It
was with distinct reservations however. Beyond the mountains in the Bluegrass
State the merger was appreciably delayed and incomplete. Thousands of
Kentuckians and Tennesseeans who had remained Separate Baptists at heart until
the 1820's and 1830's, enrolled in the columns of the rising Christian
Churches, (Disciples of Christ), for whom traditionally they had a real
affinity. This in itself is a phenomenal story. Definitively, it is yet
untold in the historiography of the Disciples.
TRANSITION
In the lean post-Revolution years, 1781 1810, it appears that Southwest
suffered a dispersal of members. Some of their best trailed away to Tennessee.
Perhaps in the exigencies of the time their meetinghouse had been destroyed
or discommoded. Yet they could and did maintain a peripheral fellowship with
a sister church, Chinquapin Chapel, where John Koonce long ministered. This
Chapel reporting 44 members was host to the Neuse Association on October 19,
1811, when the messengers of its 22 churches with 8 ministers held annual
conclave. Meanwhile a restoration was stirring at old Southwest Bridge. There
Daniel Simmons, Jr., a beloved nephew of Abraham Kornegay, Sr., had
inherited from this uncle a plantation. The will, probated in Craven Court,
March, 1810 provided that $200 be applied towards building a Meeting House
on the lands of Daniel Simmons near the Southwest Bridge to be free for the
preachers of every denomination of Christians. Peculiarly he asked that a
white and black inscription on the ceiling over the door invoke for him a
prayer from all Christians observing it, based on Romans 14:9. Perchance a
good idea, if thereby divers folks be rompted to study the Scriptures.
Reportedly, first of the Kornegays in North Carolina was George, an orphan boy
brought to New Bern, gateway of the Palatines in 1710. His son, Abraham, Sr.,
made the will noticed above; his sister, Mary, married Daniel Simmons, Sr.,
whose son, Daniel Simmons, Jr., inherited the Southwest plantation to which
reference has been made.
Daniel Simmons, Jr. married Penelope Hargett, and settled just west of
Southwest Bridge near where Roland Vause now lives. Abraham Simmons, son of
Daniel Simmons, Jr., was an early Baptist preacher at Southwest. This Abraham
was the father of John W. Simmons, (Aug. 25. 1834 Oct. 8, 1925), and John
W. was the father of Luther W. Simmons, (Feb 25, 1875 March 12, 1962).
NEUSE BAPTISTS
On October 16 18, 1819, the Neuse Association met with the church at Toisnot,
(Wilson). It gathered in the little frame sanctuary built sixteen years before
at a primitive crossroads in that densely forested domain. This is today's busy
intersection of Tarboro and Barnes Streets in Wide Awake Wilson. Reporting
18 members in 1819, having gained adequate prevalence in a local free church,
Southwest is first listed as a distinctive member of the Neuse. In this
fraternity it was to have varied fortune for a quarter of a century.
Their number at Southwest had slowly increased to 23 in 1824, when the Neuse
met there in annual session. Again it met there in 1832, incidentally marking
an historic date for the incipient North Carolina Disciples of Christ. Eighty
members it then reported, with Frederick Becton Loftin, (1802 1848), minister.
Two years later their number was 72, William B. Rhem, Sr., minister, who, ten
years later was preaching for Kinston Disciples in their new church. At the
start of the Neuse in 1794, it enrolled 23 churches. In 1839, when Southwest
was its host for the last time, only eight churches were in it. It was further
reduced to six, of which Southwest was still one, in 1842, when it met at Fort
Barnwell.
Twelve delegates each attended one or more years in the annual meetings of the
Neuse, from Southwest, 1819 1844, as follows: William Loftin, William H.
Whitfield, Daniel Simmons, Jr., Jesse Jones, Joseph West, Shadrack Loftin,
John Henry Jackson, F. B. Loftin, William Cox Loftin, Joseph Tilghman,
Winston Andrews, and Samuel Loftin.
These Loftins were in the ancestral line of Thomas Loftin Johnson, (July 18,
1854 April 10, 1911), a Disciple, and famous Single Tax mayor of Cleveland,
Ohio. His mother was Mrs. Albert W. Johnson, (nee Helen Loftin), six
generations removed from Leonard Loftin, (1654 1720), founder of the family
in North Carolina.
(paragraph on Disciples history skipped)
General William Clark of the Disciples was supported at the Southwest
Convention, by colleagues at Rountree, Little Sister, Grindle Creek, and
Chinquapin Chapel, all four of these churches being members of the Neuse. At
this crisis their eleven representatives were: Isaac Baldree, Charles Rountree,
Orlando Canfield, Abraham Congleton, John P. Dunn, General William Clark,
Benjamin F. Eborn, Louis Spier, James Reynolds, William B. Rhem, Sr., and
Thomas Alphin. Little Sister asked to be enrolled as a new member of the
Association. (rest of paragraph deleted)
ORIGINAL FREE WILL BAPTIST
The Neuse Baptist declined at Southwest in the early 1840's. Its remote
members on the east found ready attachment at Fort Barnwell. Others in 1844
established Harriet's Chapel, a few miles west of Southwest and two miles
southeast of Kinston. It was named for Harriet Jones who gave the land and
paid for the buildings. Here William Phillips Biddle (1788 1853), was
pastor before its congregations removal to Kinston in 1857, where it has
since flourished. Meanwhile the Free Will Baptists who were strongly
evangelistic, having six churches in Lenoir County in 1842, developed a
nucleus at Southwest in the free church. Southwest did not join the
Disciples in 1845 with other Free Will Churches. It was involved with those
who were reorganized at Hood's Swamp in November, 1847, as the NC General
Conference of Original Free Will Baptists. When this group met in their
yearly meeting at Free Union, Greene County, November 6 9, 1851,
reresentatives from Southwest made a glowing report. Recorded was its
membership of 43, of whom 35 had been baptized that year. A working
evangelism had found them. Its delegates of 1851: T. A. Heath (later a
Union Baptist), John Henry Jackson (later a Disciple), and T. Hill. Jackson
had also been a Neuse Baptist leader there as early as 1826 and 31 years
later, as noted, a trusted Free Will leader.
At this tragic time there was the great American War of Brothers. Wherefore
this community was laid prostrate. A battle raged for hours at Southwest's
doorstep, beginning at 9:00 on Friday morning December 12, 1862, succeeded
by another on Sunday, the 14th. Forces of General John Gray Foster (1823
1874), from Federal headquarters at New Bern, attacked the Confederates along
the way to the Yankee capture of Kinston at the bleak Christmas time of '62.
Soldiers of Captain Cole, Co. K. Third NY Calvary, faced the Boys in Gray
at a place called Southwest Creek. There at the western side of the bridge
was an earthwork thrown up directly across the road, behind which were the
guns of the Southerners. The residual entrenchment mount may be seen from
Southwest's churchyard of today. Confederates were brave but were overcome
in this instance by superior forces. Fosters Raid went devastatingly as
far as Mt. Olive. The bridge at the Creek destroyed in the battle was hastily
rebuilt from the timbers of the old free church. It was fourteen years
before the next meetinghouse appeared on the historic site. Then it was the
work of the Disciples, where previously only brush arbor accommodations had
seasonally obtained for the services.
During the time it was considered Union Baptist James Latham Winfield
preached to Southwest Union Baptists while they had no home it was in the
gin room of the grist mill at the Lake Side. This was near the place where
the Armenia Christian Church now stands.
CHRISTIAN CHURCH
C. W. Howard in June, 1885, wrote a short account of the beginning of the
Southwest Disciples, of which he was then one. About 12 persons formerly of
Union Baptist decided in 1870 to allay with the Disciple brotherhood.
Further, said Howard, John Henry Jackson becoming a Disciple was a prime
mover in this little church. Then it was favored by ministerial visits
from J. L. Winfield, A. C. Hart, Josephus Latham, Dr. J. T. Walsh, and J.
H. Foy. Moreover, Jackson the zealous layman succeeded in getting a small
but comfortable house of worship completed at Southwest in 1876. As first
organized, Jackson was deacon and W. G. Watts, Clerk. Next officers of record,
1885, were: Levi T. Russell and James H. Haddock, elders; John Irwin Vause
and D. L. Williams, deacons.
The only extant list of the earliest members at Southwest names the following:
Elizabeth Hines, Elizabeth Jckson, John Henry Jackson, W. G. Watts, Mary G.
Watts, and D. L. Williams, for 1870; Lucetta Gates, Mary E. Howard, Bettie A.
Outlaw, Pussie Watts, and Lou H. Frazier, for 1876 in all, three men and
eight women. Jackson was a community leader and prosperous planter, residing
near the church. He is said to have owned 570 acres on the eastern border of
Southwest Creek extending to its mouth. In 1872, a year after Southwest
Disciples had organized when only fifteen in number, he represented them at
their Kinton State Convention. As of record other delegates from Southwest
in these annual Convention until 1889 were: C. W. Howard, J. C. Kennedy,
Levi T. Russell, D. L. William, J. I. Vause, J. Parker, James Huggins, W. B.
Isler, and G. T. Grace.
It struggled to survive the first ten years and shared ministers with other
churches. In 1886 they remunerated pastor Nathan B. Hood $75 for the year.
Their earliest church school of record was for 1885 -1886, Jesse Vause
superintendent. On September 3, 1887, 51 of their members went to the
founding of the Armenia Christian Church, a few miles away.
A native son, Joel E. Vause (Aug. 29, 1890 June 26, 1962) became a
spiritual leader at Southwest while yet a youth. Another from that community,
C. F. Outlaw (Jan 27, 2883 May 12, 1950), while pastor here, helped his
cousin Joel to raise the needed building funds. In 1909 they built a new
church whose property was then valued at $1,000.
The church, being right on Southwest Creek has flooded a number of time
including during Floyd.
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