[Granville-Hough] 24 May 2009 - Taking Your Religion with You

[Trustees for Granville W. Hough]

I am preparing this as a little chapel presentation 
at Crean Lutheran High School.

  It came to me the other day that one line of my family had established 
churches as they moved to new communities. It goes like this:
Stephen Cole brought his family from Great Britain to Pennsylvania about 
1720.  They could not find enough land where they settled, so the sons 
James, Mark, and John joined George Robinson in a new settlement in 1743 
in what is now Roanoke, Southwestern VA.  This was the absolute frontier 
where they had to build homes and clear land.  Mark Cole was 
instrumental in establishing the first church, the Episcopal church, 
which met in his home.  His brothers and others of the settlers 
participated.  This was the first generation to establish a church.  
However, his wife was Baptist, as were other settlers, so there was 
great interest in the Baptists.
    James, Jr, nephew of Mark, moved to South Carolina, where he became 
Baptist.  The Revolutionary War started and the frontier people had no 
interest in fighting a war when they were already struggling to 
survive.  James Cole, Jr, and his family moved back to Southwestern VA 
where they learned that a man named Woodrow Bean had floated down the 
river system all the way to New Orleans.  Eight families, Cole, Carter, 
and others not recalled, decided they would build log flatboats and 
float down to British land at Natchez.  They went to the Holston River 
in Southwestern Virginia and built 8 flatboats, one for each family.  
They floated down the Holston River to the Tennessee River, but they 
lost one family and flatboat at Muscle Shoals at the Northeast corner of 
present day Mississippi.  The other families managed to roll their 
flatboats on logs around Muscle Shoals, then went on down to the Ohio 
River, then to the Mississippi River, then down to the first British 
settlement at Natchez.  The British gave them land in 1776 on what 
became Cole's Creek, and the families established the first Protestant 
church in what is now Mississippi, the Baptist Church of Cole's Creek.  
This was the second generation to establish a church.
    After the war, Natchez was Spanish Territory and the Baptists on 
Cole's Creek had to worship in secret.  In 1797, the United States was 
able to get the Natchez area and the people of Cole's Creek moved south 
and east. Mark Cole,  son of James  moved south and was  a charter 
member of the Zion Hill Baptist Church in Amite County.. Then he moved 
his family to Pike County and became a member of an early church there.  
This was the third generation to establish churches.
    In 1833, the Choctaws ceded their land in Mississippi and moved to 
Indian Territory (Oklahoma).  Five of Mark Cole, Sr's children moved 
into the Choctaw land in Smith County and in 1851 joined in 
establishing  Zion Hill Baptist Church of Smith County, MS.  John F. and 
Lucy Cole were charter members. My great grandparents, Hiram and Susanna 
(Cole) Miller were in that church.  This was the fourth generation to 
establish  a church. 
    My grandmother Martha Lenora (Miller) (Keyes)joined the Zion Hill 
Church in January, 1862.  Later, after widowhood and remarriage to my 
grandfather Frank Hough, they moved into another part of the county and 
were charter members of the Fellowship Baptist Church of Smith County.  
Today, the Fellowship Church has the most beautiful cemetery in Smith 
County.  This was the fifth generation to help establish a church.
    My own mother, Nancy Elizabeth (Richardson) Hough, after WW II, 
began to see churches closing as people left farming and moved to 
coastal jobs and opportunities.  The remaining farm people could go to 
the town churches, but they had little in common with the town people.  
My mother helped establish the Eastside Baptist Church of Magee and 
welcolmed all the farm people who had been members of the country 
community churches.  It is really a farm folks church which meets in 
town.  This was the sixth generation to help establish a church.
    My brother, Clifford Hough, helped my mother in establishing the 
Eastside Baptist church, becoming the seventh generation to help 
establish a church.  When I was a college student, I joined with John 
Carter, who I believe was descended from the flatboat Carter family and 
we went into the cotton mill section of Starkville, MS, and established 
a church among the workers there.  Shortly afterward, I was inducted 
into the Army, and so was John Carter.  The cotton mill closed, the mill 
town section of Starkville was rezoned, razed and the families all 
left.  So the church I helped establish did not survive. 

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David adds:  the closest I came to being an eighth-generation church
establisher was teaching Sunday School and later acting as Secretary and
Treasurer for Congregational Church of Almaden Valley, UCC.    I started
attending in 1987, however, well after it was established in 1965.