The Slave Preacher Owned by Alabama Baptists

Last year I wrote a blog post on a slave named Harry Talbird who saved several Howard College students during a fire in Marion in 1854 and lost his own life in the process. Money was raised for a monument to him which stands in Marion Cemetery. In this post I want to write about another Alabama slave who also has a monument of sorts.

Caesar Blackwell has a Wikipedia entry; more about him is given in the piece below by Pastor Gary Burton. Wikipedia notes his birth year as 1769, but neither it nor the Burton item give information about his life until he appears as a slave of John Blackwell in Montgomery County. In 1821 Caesar joined the Antioch Baptist Church in Mt. Meigs, the first Baptist congregation in the county. The church was founded in 1818 by James McLemore, an important leader among early Baptists in Alabama. 

Caesar Blackwell could read and write, unusual skills for a slave. When his owner Blackwell died, the Antioch church tried to buy his freedom but was unsuccessful. Then the Alabama Baptist Association purchased him, and he moved in with  McLemore, who already owned Caesar's wife and child. McLemore preached to large crowds of both whites and slaves; Caesar became an assistant preacher and had a library of books for study. 

Caesar also preached to blacks, and was praised by whites for his efforts to convert his audiences from black "superstitions". He was very busy and paid well for his efforts until 1835, when the Nat Turner rebellion  in Virginia struck fear into whites across the South. After that, Caesar could only accept expenses and his activities were restricted.

Caesar died on October 10, 1845. The Association raised money for his grave marker; you can read the inscription below. Burton says about his grave, "The marble slab today is obscured by shrubs only a few feet outside the fence that encloses the McLemore-Taylor Cemetery located in the posh neighborhood of Greystone in East Montgomery."

Caesar Blackwell was one of a number of slave preachers in the antebellum South. His remarkable life deserves a more extensive telling.

For further reading, see  Flynt, Wayne (1998). Alabama Baptists: Southern Baptists in the Heart of Dixie. University of Alabama Press, pp. 45–47

Source: Find-A-Grave

The material below is taken from the Find-A-Grave site. The author of the text is unidentified there, but is taken from 

Burton, Gary (2007). "Caesar Blackwell (1769-1845): the work and times of central Alabama's nineteenth-century slave-evangelist". Alabama Baptist Historian. At the time of publication, Burton was the pastor of Pintlala Baptist Church, Hope Hull, Alabama; he is still there today. 

BIRTH	1769 Mitylene, Montgomery County, Alabama, USA
DEATH	10 Oct 1845 (aged 75–76) Montgomery County, Alabama, USA
BURIAL	McLemore Taylor Burying Ground Montgomery County, Alabama, USA

Although he lived and died in slavery, his ownership changed from John B. Blackwell to the Alabama Baptist Association (ABA). Caesar's early creative attempt at missions was quite impressive. The effectiveness of the slave-evangelist, Caesar, indicated by the surviving references to the high demand for his preaching and related services, is a powerful confirmation to his skill as a communicator. His itinerant ministry was widespread within the association and sometimes beyond. Despite his fame, most historical treatments of Caesar's ministry have been expressed in one or two paragraphs.

Caesar's Popularity

A Negro slave, named Caesar, a bright, smart, robust fellow was ordained to preach. His ability was so marked, and the confidence which he enjoyed was so profound, that Rev. James McLemore would frequently have Caesar attend him upon his preaching tours. He was sometimes taken by Mr. McLemore into the pulpit, and never failed of commanding the most rapt and respectful attention....

In 1821, Caesar, a servant of John Blackwell, joined the Antioch church by experience and baptism. Two years after he was licensed by the church to preach the Gospel, and in 1827, he was solemnly ordained to the ministry by a Presbytery consisting of elders Harris, Davis, McLemore and Harrod. ... After he became the property of the Association, he made his home at Rev. Jas. McLemore's, who
owned his wife and only child. He was furnished with a horse to ride--and had an extensive library of books, and as he had been taught in early life to read and write, he spent his time, when not otherwise employed, in reading and study. 'Uncle Caesar' was an excellent mechanic, and before his strength failed, he devoted a part of his time working for the neighbors, who rewarded him liberally for his services. While thus engaged with his hands, he was in the habit of having his Bible, or some other good book before him, and occasionally reading a paragraph for study and meditation, and in this way he acquired much of that knowledge which elevated him above others of his race. As a preacher of the Gospel, 'Uncle Caesar' had few superiors in his day and generation.

Caesar's Death and Posthumous Recollections

The ABA trustees reported on "our late colored brother, Caesar." The report was referred to the Committee on Documents, which encouraged the trustees to finalize Caesar's affairs by the next year and to expend the necessary money for a tombstone. Caesar's affairs were not resolved, and the tombstone had not even been ordered. Once again the trustees were encouraged to bring the matter to closure.

When Caesar died in 1845, the ABA took note of his death and did so with profound appreciation. His trustees were authorized to sell his house and real estate in Montgomery. The proceeds were used to furnish his grave with a marble slab inscribed:

Sacred to the Memory of
REV. CAESAR BLACKWELL,
Who departed this life Oct. 10, 1845.
in the 76th year of his age.
He was a colored man, and a slave;
But he rose above his condition, and
was for 40 years a faithful and acceptable
preacher of the Gospel.
The stone is reared as a tribute of respect to his memory, by his brethren of The Alabama Baptist Association.

The marble slab today is obscured by shrubs only a few feet outside the fence that encloses the McLemore-Taylor Cemetery located in the posh neighborhood of Greystone in East Montgomery.

In remembering Caesar, one person wrote with much fondness:
When I used to see old Caesar coming down the lane to my father's house, Saturday evenings, that he might preach at the log church not far away the next day, I used to run with all my might to meet him. He would lift me from the ground and place me near the mule's wet ears and I would embrace and kiss old Caesar. I was only a child, but with the frosts of many winters on my head, whiter now than was old Caesar's then, I still love the memory and cherish it
as did my father and mother, till they, as I am, grew old and with old Caesar joined.., angels, whose melody doubtless provoked the celestial conflict of which I was dreaming.

---

Once a Baptist Church, Now a Fabric Store

I worked at UAB from 1983 through 2015 and often left campus going down University Boulevard and then Green Springs Highway [Alabama State Highway 149] to enter I-65. Thus I passed this building, on the right just before the U.S. Army Reserve location, many, many times. Recently I decided to investigate.

The structure, obviously built as a church, has been home to King Cotton Fabrics since 1993. Janet and Bill Haas had opened The Cloth Patch in Tuscaloosa in 1968 and then expanded to this location. You can see interior photos here. There is also a Montgomery shop; the Tuscaloosa shop is no longer open. 

The structure has a Jefferson County Historical Commission sign noting the building's original use as Green Springs Baptist Church. I presume the two dates given are the congregation's organization and then construction of this building in 1905. The interior retains the original hardwood floors. A couple of other buildings are located on the property to the right in this photo, but I have no idea about their construction. 

Below the recent photos is a 1949 newspaper article about the church and the city's right of way on Green Springs Highway. Initially paved in the 1920's, Green Springs was partially rerouted and became a divided highway in the mid-1940's. The building has been changed very little since then. The article notes that the church had recently built a basement and would like to make an addition onto the back of the church. 

I have so far been unable to find any more information about the church. Two large histories of Baptists in Alabama, A. Hamilton Reid's Baptists in Alabama [1967] and Wayne Flynt's Alabama Baptists [1998] do not mention it.

Perhaps one day I'll stop by again and make some inquiries about further details. History just pops up all over the place, doesn't it? 

Source: Birmingham Public Library

Birmingham Photos of the Day (29): Three Churches in 1908

I'm continuing to draw photographs from the wonderful 1908 publication Views of Birmingham. 

The top photo is the "Baptist Church", perhaps the one built of Bedford Stone and dedicated on Easter Sunday in 1905. If so, it is the First Baptist Church of Birmingham now located on Lakeshore Drive in Homewood. The property was sold to AmSouth Bank in the 1980s. The Encyclopedia of Alabama has an entry on Southern Baptists in Alabama.

The Methodist building still stands and is now the First United Methodist Church of Birmingham. More information on the building is available on the BhamWiki site and on Methodism in Alabama at the Encyclopedia of Alabama. 

The Episcopal church also still stands and is now known as St. Mary's-on-the-Highlands Episcopal Church. The congregation was organized in 1887. An EOA entry on the history of the Episcopal Church in the state is available here.   

My Grandmother & the Manlys' 1850 Baptist Psalmody

           Several years before her death in 1997, my paternal grandmother Rosa Mae Wright of Gadsden, Alabama, gave me a small bound book measuring 4.75 inches high, 3 inches across, and 1.5 inches thick. This little gem is The Baptist Psalmody: A Selection of Hymns for the Worship of God. The book has 772 pages and contains the words of 1295 hymns in a very small font. An index of first lines is also included at the beginning of the book. The book is in fairly good condition, although the front cover has begun trying to free itself from the rest of the binding.

Title page of an 1870 printing of the book from the Hathi Trust 

            My copy has an inscription written in pencil on the inside of the first blank page. “Mrs. Anna Wright’s Book Presented by Owen Swindall Jan. the 16^th, 1883,” it says. The woman is Anna Swindall Wright (1856-1949), who along with her husband Thomas C. Wright are my paternal great-grandparents who had married just the previous November. Owen is no doubt a relative of Anna’s, but I have yet to identify him despite what our family knows about Swindall genealogy.

            This Baptist Psalmody was published in 1850 and compiled by Basil Manly and his son Basil Jr. The father was 52 years old and the son just 25 at the time. The book was the Southern Baptist Convention’s first collection of hymnals. In his 2004 dissertation on Manly Jr.’s hymnological contributions, Nathan Platt notes that it “remains the most comprehensive collection of hymns ever produced by Southern Baptists.” The Southern Baptists had formed only five years earlier; Manly Sr. was heavily involved in that effort.

Basil Manly, Sr. (1798-1868)
[Source: Encyclopedia of Alabama]
 

            The father served as pastor of the First Baptist Church in Charleston, South Carolina, from 1826 until 1837. During that period he helped start Furman University. In 1837 he became the second president of the University of Alabama, and the family moved to Tuscaloosa. Manly Jr. graduated valedictorian from that institution in 1843 when he was 18. He began theological studies in Boston at the same time the American Baptist Publication Society issued a brand new hymnal, The Psalmist. That publication met with little success in the South because of its changes, abbreviations and omissions of many familiar hymns.

            Despite the existence of earlier regional hymnals, The Alabama Baptist newspaper called for a new one in 1844; and a few years later the Manlys were approached about compiling such a hymnal. They agreed, and in October 1849 advertised in The Alabama Baptist their intention to publish a collection for Southern Baptists that would restore the old hymns.

            Manly Jr. had finished his studies in the North and returned to Tuscaloosa in 1847 to become a circuit riding preacher at several churches in west Alabama. He did most of the actual work on the new hymnal and made final revisions in the summer of 1850.  The eclectic selections include 318 hymns by Isaac Watts, 58 by John or Charles Wesley and others by Congregationalists, Episcopalians, Independents, Lutherans, and Presbyterians. Their compilation included 472 hymns not included in The Psalmist. The work also contains hymns written by Manly Jr.

Basil Manly, Jr. (1825-1892)
Image is from Our Home Field newspaper February 1892
My source is the Furman University Library 

 The Baptist Psalmody was generally well-received in the South, and in 1877 Manly Jr. estimated that more than 50,000 copies had been sold. The work seems to have been issued by both the Southern Baptist Publication Society in Charleston, South Carolina; and Sheldon and Company in New York City. The copy I have indicates the latter publisher. Manly Sr. died in 1868. His son continued to contribute to Baptist hymnology with several other publications until his death in 1892.

The legacy of Manly Sr. is problematic. He was an important figure in both religion and education in the South. In addition to the achievements already mentioned, he pastored several churches in South Carolina and Alabama, helped found Judson Female Institute in Alabama [which still exists as Judson College, one of the oldest women’s colleges in the U.S.] and the Alabama Historical Society. Manly also owned many slaves on his Alabama plantation and passionately supported the Confederacy; he delivered the opening prayer at the inauguration of Jefferson Davis. Manly Hall was built on the UA campus in 1885 in his honor; today it houses the Department of Religious Studies and the Department of Gender and Race Studies.

            I don’t really remember seeing this book in my grandparents’ house during the many times I visited from the 1950s until the mid-1990s. My grandmother may have kept it in a drawer of precious things from her husband’s side of the family. I’m not sure now why she gave it to me, and I have no memory of that event. She did know of my love for old books. Maybe she thought it would put me on the path to right thinking after being raised as a Methodist.

            My grandmother and grandfather Amos J. Wright, Sr., were people born at a time—1900 and 1894 respectively—when the world of The Baptist Psalmody was about to undergo great cultural change. The hymns sing of “Great God, how infinite thou art” and “How shall I praise the eternal God”—issues raised for millennia. My southern grandparents would see the coming of the automobile, the telephone, motion pictures silent and sound, computers, many wars and many wrenching social changes. By giving me that book my grandmother really handed me a little piece of the good and bad from a much older world.

Further Reading

Basil Manly, Sr., at Wikipedia 

Basil Manly, Sr., at Encyclopedia of Alabama 

Basil Manly, Jr., at Wikipedia

Platt, Nathan Harold. The Hymnological Contributions of Basil Manly, Jr. to the Congregational Song of Southern Baptists. Ph. D. dissertation. Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, 2004

Smallwood, William Edward. "The Most Versatile Man": The Life, Ministry, and Piety of Basil Manly, Jr. Ph.D. dissertation. Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, 2015

What's in those Old Birmingham Directories, Anyway?

If they survive, all sorts of ephemeral materials from the past can be of interest to historians, genealogists, entrepreneurs, and even the rest of us. Whether its pulp magazines, baseball cards, advertising flyers or directories of all types, these products can tell us something about the people who produced and used them, are listed in them and the time in which they were created.

Three such items related to Birmingham I’d like to examine in this post:  Fred W. Green’s The Birmingham Church Directory published by the Dispatch Stationary Company in 1896;  R.W A. Wilda’s  Birmingham, Alabama: Facts Worth Knowing published by the Caldwell Printing Company in September, 1889; and the 1920 telephone yellow pages for the city. The church directory and the telephone book were found online at Birmingham Public Library’s Digital Collections. The Wilda pamphlet came from the Library of Congress via Google Books.

The church directory is 80 pages long and covers various Christian denominations around the city: Baptist, Christian, Catholic, Episcopal, Methodist and the largest number, Presbyterians. One Hebrew congregation is also given. Near the end is a listing of the sixteen church locations. The listings include histories of the churches and current members. South Side Baptist, for instance, has over seven two-column pages of members.

Wilda, a native of Germany, was co-owner of a real estate firm; and his booklet is one of many issued in the city’s early days to attract investment. He includes information on Birmingham streets, water works, sewers, schools, street car lines, banks, main industries and railroads. Information on black institutions in categories such as churches and schools is included. A listing of “Buildings” street by street is useful to us in establishing what existed at the time of publication. For instance, we learn that the Caldwell Hotel was located on the corner of First Avenue and 22^nd Street.

The telephone yellow pages are a veritable snapshot of the city in 1920. The 44 pages offer categories for everything from Abstractors to X-Ray Supplies. In between are numerous doctors, lawyers, produce merchants and over two-and-a-half pages of grocers. Thirteen theaters are listed; the Lyric is the only one still surviving. Only one power company is listed; you guessed it, Alabama Power Company. The directory also includes such categories as Bath Houses, Billiard Halls and something called Ladies Toggery—as in clothing.

A fascinating aspect of the 1920 yellow pages is the lack of segregation, as the listing for “Doctors” demonstrates. Scattered among the mostly white ones are some of the city’s early black physicians.  Arthur McKinnon Brown, Logwood Ulysses Goin and Ulysses Grant Mason apparently had the same office at 310 North 18^th Street at this time. Brown and Goin had the same phone number, Main 503, but Mason’s was Main 2. Also listed is an early female physician, Annie M. Robinson. Although several women had practiced medicine in Birmingham in the 1890s and very early 20^th century, she may have been the only one in 1920.

Near the end of the telephone directory is a table giving “Long Distance Rates from Birmingham.” Most of the cities listed are in Alabama, but a few such as Washington, D.C., and Pensacola are included for comparison. The table notes that rates for over 70,000 locations are available from the long distance operator. Two basic types of calls were station-to-station, which meant the caller would talk with anyone who answered, or person-to-person.  Such calls to Hartselle, for instance, would cost 50 cents and 60 cents respectively for the “initial period”, which the table does not define.  

Publication of the two directories was supported by advertising from many local merchants scattered across lots of pages. Southside grocer J.E. Minter placed a large ad just after the title page in the church directory. Bodeker’s National Detective Agency had a full page ad in the telephone directory, which tells us that their main office in Alabama was located in the Brown-Marx building and branch offices in the state in Mobile and Montgomery. The Wilda pamphlet is “Compliments of the Bankers of Birmingham.”

These publications offer us the names of numerous individuals and their relationships with businesses and institutions. The advertisements, tables, and lists tell us much about the way life was lived in the city at the moment of publication. We can look at them now with a sense of wonder at not only how much has changed, but how much remains the same all these decades later. 

       

This piece originally appeared on the DiscoverBirmingham.org site in December 2013.