What do we know about our role during the Civil War?

The Rev. A. Vanhoose served First Baptist Church from 1860 until 1864. From 1864 until 1868, Rev. D. Will Gwinn led the church. We have not been able to find proof that the church served as a hospital during the war, but a letter dated October 7, 1864, from the pastor, Reverend David William Gwin, to The Christian Index, describes the local situation.

“I have been engaged for several months almost continuously with the Griffin Relief Committee. We have lifted, nursed, furnished bandages and medicines, fed, comforted and otherwise relieved, thousands of our noble soldiers…My pastoral work has been neglected on this account. True, I have been at home a portion of my time, but was unfitted for pastoral visiting. But what Church ought to forbid its minister from laboring in such a field?”

   Susan G. Martin (later Mrs. Pope) was a student at the Synodical Female College on South Sixth Street in Griffin during the Civil War.  This passage from her Reminiscences is quoted from History of Griffin, Ga. 1840-1940 by Quimby Melton, Jr., page 74:

After the long years of anxiety, it was terrible to see each train that came into Griffin bring dozens of wounded and sick soldiers. Soon the hospitals overflowed, and the Courthouse, public buildings, stores, colleges and even private homes, were filled with cots and the patients made as comfortable as possible with the limited means we possessed. Already, we had used our linen underwear, sheets and table linen for bandages, and raveled them into lint for wound dressings.”

“During the calamities incident to the War the church Minutes from the year 1847 up to the December conference in the year 1864 were lost or destroyed”; therefore, a committee was appointed to “revise” or reconstruct them. The committee’s report is the only record we have of these early years of church history, and for a hundred and fifty years that is all we knew about what happened to the minutes, until we found this item in The Christian Index, March 30, 1865:

“Bro. Gwin informs us that Wheeler’s men broke into the store of a deacon and took away, among other things, the church minute-book.”

To add further intrigue to the saga of the minutes, Kate Cummings, who worked for the hospitals of the Army of Tennessee and was in Griffin from March 9 to May 1865, wrote in her journal  published in 1866:

[April 20] “One of the stories afloat is, that they [Federal troops] had no idea of coming here; but the mayor and some of the citizens met them some miles from town, and offered to surrender the city if they would spare private property. There were not more than one hundred. They were a detachment from the main body, who have gone on to capture Macon. I am told that the captain boasted that, last year, when Sherman went through the eastern portion of this state, he, along with many others, had come to Griffin, dressed in Confederate uniform, calling themselves Wheeler’s men. They then broke open stores and took out what they pleased. They said they had often done so. This will, likely, account for the bad repute of Wheeler’s men.”

[General Wheeler made his headquarters in a house that is still standing at the corner of South Hill Street and Tilney Avenue. Until several years ago, the street between Hill and Sixth Streets was named Wheeler Place.]

In 1866 the church name changed to First Baptist Church of Griffin because another Baptist church had been organized in the city. Some members left our church in a dispute about the use of an organ during worship services. We don’t know which faction organized a separate church. First Baptist called the Reverend J. H. DeVotie to be pastor in 1870 and he managed to reunite the two factions. 

Blanche Drewry Westbrook came to this church in 1866 when she was seven years old. She  recounted interesting details about the church in the 1870s in a memoir that we have made available in our Welcome Center. Sunday School in those days was for the children and met on Sunday afternoons. Young children were given Bible verses to memorize. Those twelve and thirteen years old memorized Romans 12, 1 Corinthians 13, or Matthew 5, 6, or 7 and recited them to the pastor. Ms. Westbrook classified recitations as “Scary times.” The choir director, Joe Lowenstein, “was a Hebrew, a fine violinist & knew music. ‘He called himself Brother-in-law to the Baptist church which was next thing to a Jewish Synagogue.’”

For decades members were required to attend church services and monthly church conferences. If they missed a meeting, they had to ask to be excused. March 1866 conference minutes state: “Acknowledgments from offenders having been called for Sisters Ellen George & Laura Thomas both apologized to the Church for having been guilty of the offense of dancing & were on motion forgiven by the Conference…James M. Bloodworth charged with absence from Conference & unchristian conduct. Ed Brown charged with neglect of Christian duties & absence from Conference. George Jones charged with neglect of Christian duties & absence from conference. Robert White charged with Drunkenness. S. Burnett charged with absence from Conference. Mrs. Stark charged with permitting dancing at her house.”  Similar situations were addressed years later, for example this entry in the May 9, 1888 conference minutes: “The following report of Diciplinary [sic] committee read and adopted…In our effort since last conference to induce those of our members who have been dancing to refrain from said practice. Report as follows. We have found one—Bro. Will Flemister who claims the right to dance whenever he may see proper and also declines making any promise whatever to conform to the rule of the church upon dancing. Your committee have visited and labored with him repitedly [sic] and are of the opinion we cannot effect any good by further effort…On motion T.J. Collier the church withdrew fellowship from Said Brother.” Will Flemister was a young man in his early twenties. He married a few years later, fathered Lucille Flemister (the artist who drew a  familiar sketch of the church) and was for a long time a member in good standing of First Baptist.