Below are pictures of "then" and "now."
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| The Old Associate Reformed Presbyterian Church at Lincoln |
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| The Lincoln Memorial A.R. Presbyterian Church |
My grandfather's story from The First Thirty Years biography are as follows:
We went to church here. It was the Associate Reformed Presbyterian, a blue stocking Presbyterian denomination that was a reformed group formed in South Carolina that believed in singing Psalms. Dad, Mother and I joined in 1923, I believe under the pastorship of Rev. Snell, a big tall man with a kind heart and hands as big as a country ham. He was a Champion of the Poor. He drove an old Model T. Ford and visited all over the area culling and even the infidels and bootleggers welcomed him into their homes. Each Sunday afternoon after church at Lincoln, Bro. Snell, dad, mother and myself would go to Quick school house west of Lincoln, in his Model T and hold services. There was a deep mud hole in the road just off the Goshen road, there was no way to go around it, just aim down the middle, give it gas and hang on. We always got stuck in the mud. After a couple of times doing this, Edgar Brown who lived in a log house on the hill above the mud hole began to hook up his team of white nose mules and wait for us to come by so he would be ready to pull us out. He never went to church, this was his contribution to the Lord's Work. I took up the collection, handed out the Psalm books and funeral home fans in the hot months. I was about seven when this started, by the age of ten was reading the scripture before his sermon. As dad would say, "he was a good man."
Dad was an Elder in the Lincoln Church, mother was a Beginners Sunday School (we then called it Sabbath) teacher. As previously stated, the congregation sang Psalms, with piano or pump organ accompaniment. The mothers publicly breast fed their babies during the service, a practice that was accepted by this rather conservative church. There was one problem, one woman, well endowed, delighted in feeding her baby boy numerous times during the services. She nearly foundered the little sucker. As I recall, some of the sisters talked to their husbands, who were elders, about the problem but they appeared slow to pick up on it, or perhaps they wanted the diversion from the dull sermons, what ever, the subject was never brought up in session. To add to the exasperating problem, the baby had a burp that could be heard all the way to Smith's water-mill a mile away. Whether by divine intervention or otherwise, the problem was solved when they started going to the Methodist Church up the road.
I have fond memories of the community Christmases held at the church, real cedar tree with popcorn strings. By necessity of the times, the gifts were inexpensive and limited.
It was here that on one Sabbath morning, during a revival meeting, Brother Lauderdale, a renown revival preacher from Erskin College at Due West, South Carolina, failed to completely knock out his old crooked stem pipe when he put it back in his pocket after intermission, as he began to pray the smoke began to boil up, he cut short his communion with God to take care of more pressing problems. He had no serious burns, only a bruised ego. But as dad would say, "but he was a good man."
I sang in the choir and was youth leader and soloist. Mother was often song leader when Bro. Nelson, a neighbor up the road from us, was away. Each Easter we had egg hunts for the children behind the church, then kind of a thicket, where the new section of the graveyard is now located. I was not too good at egg hunting and soon found that it really didn't matter because the lady promoters of the event always had a sack of candy eggs that they would give out to the backward ones who did not find any real eggs, besides I wasn't too keen on eating eggs that someone else had boiled, having once gotten one that was kind of runny.
Mother and dad, Mr. R.A. and Mrs. Blanche, were laid to rest in the cemetery beside the church, in the Marsh plot, dad in 1980 and mother in 1992.
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