[Granville-Hough] 28 May 2009 - Taking your religion with you for 9 generations - final

[Trustees for Granville W. Hough]

  As a logistics officer in Thule, Greenland, I learned that buildings, 
as designed, could be quite different from buildings, "as built," and 
that a prerequisite to repair is getting a copy of the "as built" 
blueprint for that specific building. So it is also with prepared talks. 
Following is my "as delivered" talk on our family participation in new 
church activities.

TAKING YOUR RELIGION WITH YOU FOR 9 GENERATIONS

Thank you for this opportunity to talk about genealogy,
which is a study of our families and our communities.
It partly answers the question you may have asked yourself: Why am I who 
I am? Or, why are you and I taking part in this new school?

I am going to illustrate this with the stories of one line of my family, 
the Cole family. When my ancestor, Stephen Cole brought his family in 
1720 from Northern Ireland to Pennsylvania, he and his children were 
members of the Episcopal Church. They were not particularly religious, 
but the people around them were Quakers and Baptists, so the sons were 
soon marrying Baptists and looking for suitable land.

They learned in 1742 that George Robinson was forming a company to go 
about 400 miles to the Virginia frontier where the Tuscarora Indians had 
just lost a war and migrated to New York. So three of the Cole sons, 
James, Mark, and John, joined that company and made the trip in 1743, 
going west to Frederick County, MD, then across the Potomac, then up the 
Virginia Valley to the Roanoke River. Their settlement became Roanoke, 
VA. As soon as they got log cabins built, Mark Cole began to hold 
Episcopal services each Sunday in his cabin as a Reader or Lay Leader. 
However, his wife was Baptist, and I believe she joined others in 
starting Baptist services. This was the first generation to establish 
new churches.

Their nephew, James Cole, Jr, learned about the Baptist communities on 
the Pee Dee River in South Carolina, so he went there for several years. 
Then he heard that William Bean back on the Holston River in Virginia, 
had flatboated all the way down the river system to New Orleans. That is 
something he could do to avoid the war which was about to begin. So he 
and six other families packed up and went 240 miles back to the Holston 
River. Each family built a flatboat and they started 1400 miles down the 
river system to the Natchez Country of West Florida. They navigated the 
Holston, then started down the Tennessee. They knew they would have to 
portage around the rapids known as Muscle Shoals, now in the 
Northwestern corner of Alabama. Even so, they lost one family and one 
flatboat there. The others portaged around the shoals, got back on the 
Tennessee, went north to the Ohio, then west to the Mississippi, and on 
down to the Natchez Country. They poled into a creek which became known 
as Cole’s Creek, and reported overland to Natchez. They got British land 
grants in 1778, in the middle of the Revolutionary War. They established 
Cole’s Creek Baptist Church, the first Protestant church in what is now 
Mississippi. They were the second generation to establish new churches.

After the Revolutionary War, Natchez came under Spanish rule. All 
Protestant activity was suppressed, and the minister had to flee back to 
South Carolina. The U. S. got the land by treaty in 1797, and the Cole’s 
Creek people began to move south and east. My ancestor was another Mark 
Cole, son of James. He helped establish Zion Hill Baptist Church of 
Amite County, Ebenezer Baptist Church of Amite County, and Pierce’s 
Creek Baptist Church of Pike county. In 1806, he was one of the 
delegates to form the Mississippi Baptist Association.
He was in the third generation to establish new churches.

In 1833, the Choctaws ceded their land in Mississippi and moved to 
Oklahoma. Five of Mark Cole’s children moved into this cession, and in 
1851 helped establish Zion Hill Baptist Church in Smith County. My great 
grandmother Susanna (Cole) Miller was a member, as were her brothers and 
sisters. This was the fourth generation to establish new churches.

My grandmother, Nora Miller (Keys) joined Zion Hill in January, 1862, 
and her husband soon after. He was killed in the Battle at Vicksburg, 
and my widowed grandmother married Frank Hough. They moved to another 
part of the county and were charter members of Fellowship Baptist Church 
of Smith County. That was about 1880. That was the fifth generation to 
establish a new church.

After WW II, my mother observed that farmers were leaving the area and 
churches were closing down. She knew the farmers went to the nearest 
town for all their business, so she joined with my brother and they were 
charter members of Eastside Baptist Church of Magee, MS, which is a sort 
of refuge church for isolated farmers. So they were the sixth and 
seventh generation to establish churches.

I had gone to Mississippi State University just before WW II, and I 
joined with classmate John Carter to start services in the Starkville, 
MS, cotton mill section. We were doing fairly well, but I got inducted 
into the Army and so did John a little later. The Cotton mill closed, 
and the people moved away to wartime jobs. So the seventh generation 
church I helped start did not survive.

My niece Carol (Hough) Linger and her family lived in Rogers, AR, when 
their Baptist Church established a mission in nearby Bentonville, AR. 
Carol and Russ Linger helped establish the mission and took their 
children, then 13 and 8 to its services. It is now Calvary Baptist 
Church of Bentonville, AR. So the eighth and ninth generations got 
involved in starting new churches.

So, why am I here today? Why are you here today? It is a family 
tradition we must follow. We must plant the seeds of Christian faith 
wherever we live. When you get a break, I suggest you begin to write 
down what you can about your family and its traditions. That would begin 
your study of genealogy. Thank you for this opportunity, and may God 
bless you all!

P. S. Pastor Bill Bartlett kindly suggested that I should consider 
myself one of the founders of Crean Lutheran High School because of my 
early donations. So I indeed did make a seventh generation contribution 
to a Christian school if not a church..