Utica Area News

I knew this was going to happen sooner or later. I got no news from current events, so I am devoting this week’s article to early Utica settlement and early Utica churches. There are a lot of names to glean through, so I hope some of you more interested readers will check them out, and see who you are kin to, who your ancestors may be, and what they did. I have already put a lot of Utica Baptist history here, so this week will be Methodist, Christian, and Presbyterian. Much of this is from memory, so please let me know if you see errors.

In the early days of settlement in colonial America, emigrants from the eastern seaboard often realized that they may never get back to the homes of their births once they traveled West to Mississippi and other territories. Not only did they carry papers such as military permission to pass through Indian territory, they also carried their church letters with them in written form to present when and if a church could be started at their new location. Many times, old wills when probated and filed in the Carolinas, Virginia, or Maryland would note that a certain child or children had already received their inheritance prior to migrating “West”, usually in the form of family heirlooms and possessions, and in slaves to help the traveler settle into the new area.

The early settlers of Cane Ridge were concerned about the need for a church in their midst, but in the village’s early years there weren’t enough people to establish denominational churches. The residents met in non-denominational services for several years in a small wooden building located near the recently closed Utica High School, in the tanning yard owned by Henry Smith and family. Their pastoral needs were probably supplied by circuit-riding ministers such as Rev. Thomas Nixon, who lived between Bear Creek and Cane Ridge and was ordained as a Methodist minister in 1816 at Pine Ridge, and by resident ministers such as Rev. Van W. Brock, a Baptist who lived in Cane Ridge where the Reuben Dodson (Buddy) Price Jr. home is located and owned by Kevin Horne until recent years.

Interestingly, Rev. Nixon is listed in 1854 as a trustee of the Utica Christian Church when they moved their congregation to town, was a minister of record of the Utica Methodist Church and trustee of that church as well, and his family cemetery and county records list his ordination in the Methodist Church to his credits. This was not the only occurrence of men’s names appearing in the histories of more than one church: Baldwin Beauchamp was a contributor to the Christian church’s new building in 1854, but was a member of the Baptist church, James C. Lee was a member of the Methodist church but gave land to the Christian church to build its new building in 1847, and was a trustee of the Christian church and the Methodist Church, and several of the early trustees of the Christian church were Baptists and Methodists. While that seems unusual today, apparently no one in any congregation in the small village had any problem with it.

In 1829, the Cane Ridge non-denominational congregation separated into Baptists and Methodists. The Methodist church in Cane Ridge was believed to be organized by Rev. Thomas Nixon (1793-1872), and continued to meet in a wooden building in the same part of the village as the old church had been. Sometime before the Civil War, the Baptists located elsewhere in the village close to where the present church is located until they built a new church in the 1850s at or near their present location. Rev. Nixon is believed to be responsible for the beginning of many of the vicinity’s Methodist churches, including Bear Creek, Cayuga, Utica, and Reeves Chapel.

The Ford, Funchess, Allen, Burnet, Ervin, Peyton, Rawls, and other Bear Creek families were connected to the early Nixon family. Rev. Nixon’s pioneer homesite was on what is now Highway 27 (then the Utica-Crystal Springs Road), and he is buried in his family cemetery off Morrison Road close to its intersection with Highway 27. His wife was Elizabeth Rawls (1804-1846) from South Carolina, and was the mother of twelve of his children, the last of which died with her in childbirth and is buried in the same coffin. Rev. Nixon married again and had more children, but this author does not know the name of the second wife; eight of his children by both wives who died as infants or as young children are buried in this cemetery.

According to R. A. McLemore’s 1973 comprehensive History of Mississippi, Methodist missionaries were sent to Mississippi Territory as early as 1799, and Rev. Tobias Gibson organized nine churches in the Natchez area. By 1812, there were a number of other Methodist churches without much leadership, and in 1816, Bishop R. R. Roberts ordained Thomas Nixon, William Winans, and John Shrock to serve as Methodist ministers in the circuits of the area. This was the first Methodist ordination service in the State of Mississippi. The 1860 census showed 606 Methodist churches in the state with a membership of an estimated 50,000 whites and 11,000 blacks. Prior to the Civil War, the Methodist church was the largest in Mississippi.

No records remain of the Utica Methodist Church’s founders, but it is believed that the Alexander Morrison, Daniel Yates, and Solomon Price families were prominent in its establishment. Their descendants are members of the congregation nine generations after their arrival in southwest Hinds County via the Carolinas and south Mississippi from Isle of Skye, Scotland, as well as the Ignatius Yates families who came to Mississippi in the early 1800s and settled between Utica and Cayuga. The Morrison pioneering home place for this particular branch of the extended Morrison family and its connections is located on Morrison Road on the hill behind Bryant Morrison’s home east of Utica, along with one of their family cemeteries. The Utica United Methodist Church history has no written record of its activities or its pastors prior to 1847, but Rev. Nixon was the only known Methodist-ordained pastor in the area.

In a brief history of the Utica Methodist Church, church historian Mrs. Evelyn Taylor Majure noted that in 1847, James C. Lee and his wife Winifred Yates Lee deeded land to the Methodist congregation for purposes of building a church, and they moved to their present location north of East Main Street. This site was adjacent to the Lee home. Since its records began, it has had 82 pastors. In recent years. Lauren Yates updated and filled in some of Utica and other Methodist churches history and published it.

The first two-story Methodist church was remodeled in 1901, and burned in 1932. While they were building a new building, the congregation was invited by the Baptists to meet in their church building; the Christian church had also burned down earlier and was still without a building, and the Baptists also invited the Christian congregation to meet at their church. They all arranged different times to hold services until both of the other church buildings were rebuilt.

Mrs. Evelyn Taylor Majure was a lifetime member of the Methodist church, and was the wife of Troy V. Majure Sr. (1913-1983) of Utica. Her parents, H. V. and Anna B. Taylor moved to the Reedtown community in the 1920s, and had four children, Reginald, Frank, Everette, and Evelyn. She was a member of the Utica School Board for a number of years, and active in the Utica 20th Century Club and other civic organizations. The Hinds County Public Library in Utica is named in her honor.

The present church was constructed in 1933 by Harvey and Ernest Mashburn, and their Sunday School annex was added in 1941. The Utica Methodist Church hosts the Fifty-Plus Club, a community organization for senior citizens, in their fellowship hall. The Methodist parsonage adjacent to their church was constructed in 1939 by the Mashburn brothers, to replace the old Methodist parsonage built in 1885 on the same location.

Ministers from 1829 to 1847 are not known, but Rev. Thomas Nixon undoubtedly was one of them. A list of Methodist ministers who served the Utica church from 1847 to the present are, generally in chronological order because several served more than one time): the Reverends Thomas Nixon, Henry J. Harris, E. R. Strickland, Daniel A. J. Parker, Lysander Wiley, John T. Kennon, J. Nicholson, John T. Kennon, J. C. Johnson, Lorenzo Ercanbrack, F. W. Sharbrough, Andrew Day, B. B. Whittington, E. F. Mullins, V. J. Johnson, Charles T. French, John Lusk, William Wadsworth, P. A. Johnson, Ira B. Robertson, Andrew Day, C. F. Gillespie, Rev. C. A. Powell, J. S. Calhoun, G. F. Thompson, F. M. Williams, N. J. Roberts, W. H. Lewis, F. M. Keen, C. W. Crisler, W. H. Huntley, W. L. Linfield, G. A. Guice, J. T. Leggett, W. G. Forsythe, C. M. Crossley, J. W. Ramsey, J. Y. Bowman, B. W. Lewis, T. A. Luster, H. W. Featherstun, W. B. Alsworth, C. Y. Higginbotham, E. A. King, H. C. Castle, Rev. J. B. Holyfield, E. L. Ledbetter, T. E. Nicholson, E. E. McKeithen, J. T. Weems, M. K. Miller, L. M. Sharp, J. R. Cameron, R. J. Gilbert, R. L. Case, J. B. Elam, Charles Nicholson, Oliver Joyner, James Turnage, James Delmas, George Thompson, H. H. Youngblood, Thomas Morrow, Ray Daniel, Billy Joe Hayes, Charles Brister Jr., Paul Burke, Denise Earls, and Sue Michael. Rev. Michael and Rev. Earls are the first women pastors of any congregation in the Utica community. Rev. J. S. Calhoun (1853-1883) is buried in the old James Lee cemetery on Collins Farms, and his gravestone notes he joined the Mississippi Methodist Conference in 1878; he was only thirty years old when he died.

The Utica Methodist Church has been associated with and member of various Districts or Charges of the church over the years, and at various times has been in the District or Charge with Methodist churches at Cayuga, Carpenter, Bear Creek, Vicksburg, Port Gibson, Learned, Reeves Chapel, Burtonton, Brookhaven, and Crystal Springs. The church is currently a member of the Vicksburg/West Jackson District of United Methodist churches. In 1966, Bear Creek merged with Utica, and by 1990, most members of Cayuga had also moved to the Utica Methodist Church.

By 1832 the Utica/Cane Ridge Christian Church was established. It was never part of the non-denominational congregation, and was one of the first Disciples of Christ churches in the State of Mississippi. Their meetings were first held on nearby plantations, and their first little church building was located just off what is now known as Tom Collins Road (county records indicate land set aside for a church). The old cemetery associated with that church is located on Collins Farms but is no longer in use. Prior to 1900, it was often called the “Washington Cemetery”.

The Christian Church congregation moved two miles away to Utica to a new building completed in 1854, after James C. and Winifred M. Lee also deeded land for the church building at the same time as they deeded land to the Methodists in 1847. The Christian church trustees were identified as Thomas Nixon, Henry Hudson, Caleb J. Broome, Henry N. Wise, Peter Stubbs, T. H. Campbell, M. Ball, James C. Lee, and Robert Jones.

McLemore’s History of Mississippi (1973) noted that the Disciples of Christ, although now a large denomination, were once considered “interlopers” by the state’s other Protestant denominations, and was formed out of the Baptist church. The first Christian minister in Mississippi was William E. Matthews in 1828, who convinced three Baptist churches to convert their congregations to Disciples of Christ. The first eight congregations of the Disciples of Christ in Mississippi were at Utica and Battle Springs in Hinds County, Ebenezer and Mount Mariah in Wilkinson County, Wells Creek in Franklin County, Grand Gulf in Claiborne County, and Thyatira and Columbus in north Mississippi.

They didn’t have a state association until 1884, so each church congregation stood as an independent group until then; there were 24 Disciples of Christ churches listed in the 1860 census with an estimated 2450 members, compared to 1848, when Rev. Alexander Campbell, the first minister of that reformation, noted that there were 930 members in Mississippi without reporting the number of congregations.

The Christian church site was immediately adjacent to and had been a part of land that was part of the John Chappell farm and included the John Chappell Family Cemetery, which was given to the community of Cane Ridge/village of Utica by the Chappells to become the public burying ground in the 1830s. Prior to the new Mississippi Constitution of 1890, 16th section land was not designated as set-aside land for public schools; the 16th section government survey monument was located on the northwest intersection corner of North View and East Main Streets across the street from the cemetery, which is all on 16th Section land. In addition to the town cemetery, there are eleven other cemeteries located inside and adjacent to the Utica incorporated limits.

In addition to the Utica Christian Church, there were numerous small Christian churches scattered in nearby communities. In the early Unity of Churches, Utica, Dentville, Christian Chapel, Wise, and Reed were together. In Rev. J. W. Bolton’s extensive notes of his lifetime ministry in the Christian church, he noted that he had the Utica, Christian Chapel, Duke, Wise, Reed, and Hickory Ridge churches at the same time under his service. Duke became the Griffin Memorial Chapel. In 1960, the Wise, Reed, Griffin Memorial, and Christian Chapel congregations all formally moved to the Utica church in a combined congregation. Much of the information on early Christian church members in this area over a 30-year period came from Rev. Bolton, because he noted all baptisms, all weddings, and all funerals in chronological order, with details.

The Christian church building was finished in time for the invasion of tiny Utica by more than 12,000 Union foot soldiers, assorted calvary and equipment, and camp followers, who damaged the church building at that time and during occupation. There were bullet holes in the back of the church building that could still be seen in 1930, probably inflicted at the same time that the Union soldiers destroyed many of the gravestones in the old cemetery. The 1854 antebellum Christian Church building burned in 1930, and a new church was constructed in 1933. This church has now become their fellowship hall, office, and classrooms, and a new sanctuary was constructed in front of and attached to the old church in 1960. The congregation modernized the old and new sanctuaries in 1977, and in 1986, replaced their old windows with beautiful stained glass windows. In 1990, they modified their front sanctuary to include the large area of stained glass above the church entrance.

The Utica Christian Church records burned with the old church, and details on early pastors is therefore sketchy as a result. Miss Lucy Powers, historian for the Utica Christian Church, found information that Rev. J. Jones was pastor when the 1854 church was finished, and he was followed by Rev. R. V. Wall, who was pastor prior to the Civil War, with Rev. T. W. Caskey of Jackson supplying during the War. Thirty-seven pastors are known to have been called to the church, NOT including the one whom Will Price seemed to remember best: the Rev. J. C. Davis, whom he identified as the Christian Church pastor just prior to and during the Civil War. Rev. Davis is not included in the published history of the Christian church, but is prominent in the memories of Mr. Price and his published history in 1942. Perhaps he was minister of another Christian church besides Utica.

Their pastors prior to 1896 have included (not in chronological order) the Reverends J. Jones, R. V. Wall, W. H. Stewart, R. A. Bishop, George B. Hoover, M. S. Dunning, G. W. Terrell, J. B. Cole, B. F. Manire, D. W. Broome, Lee Jackson, and J. A. Felix. From 1897, in chronological order, their pastors have been the Reverends F. M. McCarthy, John Tally, M. F. Hannon, J. W. Bolton, W. H. Alford, Rev. McGee, James Reynolds, Earl Waldrop, Oscar Jenkins, Jack Malia, Herbert R. Allegood, Dr. Burt R. Johnson, Morris E. White, Carl Smith, George Wilson, Travis Pugh, Ray McCullough, David Woodburn, John Shearer, Dr. Jerry C. Smith, and Brad.

Mrs. Addie Mae Bolton (1865-1928), the first wife of Rev. J. W. Bolton, pastor at three different times at Utica Christian Church, and both of his Baptist daughters, Mrs. Iloe Carmichael and Mrs. Dorothy Biggs, are buried in the Utica Cemetery. The beloved pastor whom many current residents of Utica remember well, and who served as the church’s longest-term pastor from 1948 until his death in 1959, was Dr. Bert R. Johnson. Dr. Johnson (1886-1959) and his wife are also buried in the Utica Cemetery. Rev. Wiley H. (1867-1934) and Olla B. (1871-1946) Alford are buried in the Utica cemetery; they were the parents of an only child, Mrs. Ruth Alford Gleason, the beloved teacher of English at Utica High School for many years, fondly remembered by the generation of students from the 1950-1960s era. I remember with a smile that all her students called her “Ma” Gleason, and she loved it.

Three Presbyterian missionaries, James Hall, William Montgomery, and James Bowman, came to the Natchez District in 1800 and established nine churches at Big Black, Grindstone Ford, Clarkes Creek, Bayou Pierre, Callender Meeting House, Washington, Natchez, Jersey Settlement, and Pinckneyville. These followed the general line of the Natchez Trace. By 1816, Mississippi Presbyterians were well organized and in 1829 they had 24 churches with an estimated 900 members. In 1860 on the eve of the Civil War, the census reported 148 Presbyterian churches in the state, mostly in cities and towns, and the Presbyterian church was noted by R. A. McLemore as having considerable influence over state politics and economics.

In the vicinity of Utica, there were three Presbyterian churches begun in the early to mid 19th Century, Bethesda in 1826 (could this have been the early Big Black congregation noted by McLemore?), and Greenwood begun in the 1830s and that merged with Lebanon when they formally organized in 1854, although a congregation had been meeting prior to that time.

Learned church was formed by the congregation of Lebanon, when the village of Learned started to grow and Lebanon remained small and rural (the Little J Railroad passed through Learned and missed Lebanon). The Utica Presbyterian Church was formed from congregation members of Lebanon, Bethesda, and Learned.

About 1925, a small group of Presbyterians from surrounding communities and churches formed the Utica Presbyterian Church (the author’s father Thomas E. Collins Jr., was a deacon in the Lebanon and Utica Presbyterian Churches, and Conrad Harris, father of Baptist deacon Bill Harris, is an elder in both churches) but its small congregation moved to other congregations in the early 1900s. Members of the Brock, Hubbard, Harris, Keith, Price, Collins, and other community Presbyterian families made up its membership. The last service held in their brick sanctuary was the funeral of Utica’s mayor, Presbyterian James Keith. Their building was sold to another denomination, the Apostles of Christ.

More on early churches and surrounding community later. Until next week, send me your news!