ALHENRY-L Archives

Archiver > ALHENRY > 2002-12 > 1041379514


From:
Subject: [ALHENRY] Re: Omussee Baptist Church and Graveyard
Date: 31 Dec 2002 17:05:14 -0700


This is a Message Board Post that is gatewayed to this mailing list.

Classification: Query

Message Board URL:

http://boards.ancestry.com/mbexec/msg/rw/YS.2ADI/2368.1.1

Message Board Post:

Jo An,
The names you are searching for are names I have seen and I must remember where that was. I know that two members of the new "First Baptist Church" were Bartlett Smith, a wealthy planter with a large plantation up near Haleburg but lived in a townhouse in Columbia. Also a charter member was his carriage driver, and African slave that belonged to Master Smith named January Smith. so a slave was one of the charter members as all races went to church together until 1867 with the beginning of the Radical Republican Reconstruction. The demands of the Yankee Radicals, such as the blanket disfranchisement of all Confederates caused the white South to revolt by excluding all their blakc members and telling them to build their own churches root hog or die poor. I have been to the Ommussee Baptist Church Cemetery before. The last time was 1976 during the Bicentennial when Columbia really went all out to research its history. The cemetery contains the first settlers of the area an!
d is surrounded by a deep ditch that was placed there to keep out cattle with no stock laws in those days. There are no lists, no maps, no evidence that I know of off hand about the Omussee Baptist Church. Columbia is as dead as a doornail! All of the elders have passed on and the new Columbians have no idea what they have been left stewards of. The Main Street is vacant and strip malls with a large grocery, a pharmacy, bank, Ace hardware, etc. It is the oldest settlement in the Wiregrass and the Main Street should be breaming with specialty shops and resturants drawing a cliental from Dothan and surrounding towns to this vintage old port city. But there is no interest in the environs for any such "foolishness." Sorry I can't help you NOW, but I will keep this on a back burner until I can find what I am looking for! Okay? Sorry I could not be of more help. But you cannnot help those who care not to help themselves.

~~"Y'all Come!"
Steve Elliott

This thread: