Lights — flickering candles inside Mason jars — shone in the darkness in the backcountry of Southampton County. The luminaries let visitors know they had arrived at Hebron Baptist Church and helped guide footsteps to the front doors of the old church. Hebron, constituted in 1786, is considered a “mother” church to numerous churches in the area; and on a Friday evening in late October, members of one of the “daughter” churches had come home.
Fred Anderson
|
The visitors were members of Boykins Baptist Church and the evening in the country was the beginning of their Heritage Celebration weekend which included a banquet and a special worship service. It also was a time to distribute a newly-published church history.
The heritage emphasis had been masterminded by their energetic and imaginative pastor, Raymond Bunn.
Earlier in the year several Boykins’ members had accompanied the pastor to the Virginia Baptist Historical Society. Their purpose was to kindle an interest in writing a new church history. Their surprise was to discover that the Historical Society had their earliest records on file. They had been deposited for safekeeping years before anyone’s memory.
Boykins’ pastor Raymond Bunn with a painting of Hebron’s daughter churches.
|
In the founding records was a statement which Pastor Bunn likes to call “the birth certificate” of Boykins Church. In the neat handwriting of James M. Corbitt, the statement records that on Oct. 18, 1871, a meeting was held at Boykins Depot “for the purpose of organizing a Baptist Church.” Five names are listed as the charter members, including Martha Corbitt, whom the Boykins’ people still call “the mother” of their church. In the early years the Corbitt’s parlor was a Sunday school class and a temporary tabernacle for the worship of God. Today at the Boykins Church there is a plaque containing Mother Martha’s last words: “I have tried to do my duty.” Her last words could be the motto of Boykins Baptist Church.
By 1917 the congregation had grown from the original five to over 300 and a new house of worship was needed. The Boykins’ members built for the ages by erecting a large and handsome brick church sporting a dome. The auditorium could hold 500 worshippers. The porticos were supported by massive Corinthian columns and the interior was decorated with magnificent stained-glass windows made in Germany. In recent years an educational building with a large fellowship hall has been added as a pleasing complement to the original building.
Members of Boykins Church’s history committee include (from left) Shirley Bryant, Sylvia Edwards, Sarah Grizzard and Dot Lassiter.
|
But for the beginning of the Heritage Celebration weekend the people of Boykins left their comfortable church house to travel through the countryside past cotton fields and deep woods to the neat little white frame building where a Baptist witness was first offered in the swamps of Southampton. The current Hebron building was built in 1884, a century after the church’s founding.
Hebron is located at a place called Koskoo. The only commercial building at Koskoo is a ramshackle abandoned building, a reminder of the days when many farmers owed their souls to the country store. The other place for their souls was the church.
Hebron Baptist Church
|
Hebron is lovingly kept by its small membership. The current BGAV annual reports that the church has 10 members. It is basically a one-room church. The “necessary rooms” are entered only from the outside but they are an improvement upon the old-time “outhouse.” There are two anterooms; and on the Heritage evening, one served as a makeshift kitchen to prepare refreshments while the other was a dressing room for this columnist who changed into costume to portray an old-time preacher, William E. Hatcher. The interior with its old pews and Victorian pulpit furniture became a perfect stage set for the portrayal of Hatcher. My script included references to some of the former pastors of Boykins and Hebron and much to my surprise the photographs of several of the ministers were on the walls of the old church.
In the service, copies of the new Boykins history were distributed. Entitled The Mosaic, the pictorial history captures the character of several generations of Southampton folks. It shows a people who created a sense of community through their church, who engaged in missions projects to benefit people near and far, and who learned how to have fun and good fellowship right where they lived in the swamps of Southampton.
Fred Anderson is executive director of the Virginia Baptist Historical Society and the Center for Baptist Heritage and Studies. He may be contacted at [email protected] or at P.O. Box 34, University of Richmond, VA 23173.