Final Services Will Be Held Today In Yanceyville's Old Baptist Church; To Give Way To Modern New Building
By Tom Henderson
Yanceyville, Jan. 28 -- The walls of Yanceyville's historic Baptist Church will echo some weepings and wailings, along with paeans of thanksgiving, Sunday morning when the pulpit is preached from for the last time and the doors officially locked, preparatory to tearing down the old building and breaking ground for the new, whose architectural magnificence and magnitude will more fittingly eulogize the living God and more lovingly express the denominational loyalties of a growing membership.
Perhaps those who are yet unrelentingly loyal to the ancient landmark, satisfied with its size and imposingness and loath to see it razed will find some consolation in the knowledge that the costlier edifice will arise in the same setting of the grove of oak and hickory donated by Thomas Graves in the long ago.
Many Noted Sons
Through the years this church has been the home-base shrine of the Kerrs, Poteats, the Graves and the Yanceys. From the portals have gone out into state and national life many who have become eminent in the professions of life. Senator Bartlett Yancey, Dr. Edwin McNeill Poteat, Dr. William Louis Poteat, Miss Ida Poteat, Judge John Kerr and Representative John Hosea Kerr, to particularize, learned much of their Bible beliefs from the teachings here.
It is no reflection on either the Primitive or the Missionary Baptists to tell that the founding fathers of the Yanceyville church were mostly Primitive Baptists who had pulled out of the Country Line Church, whose foundation rocks are yet to be found on this side of the creek near the nascent mill site of the late William Graves, now in the possession of the heirs of the late Billie Martin, an ardent and orthodox Primitive Baptist.
The late Dr. Billie Poteat once "commissioned" this humble scribbler to "search the records and find out the historical facts incident to the splitting-off of the Missionary church from the Primitive." Unfortunately, these irreplaceable records have either gone up in smoke or "gone with the wind."
Great Debate Recalled
Dr. Billie told me that the greatest debate ever held in this part of the world was that day on the grounds of the Country Line Church when Elders John Kerr and John Stadler engaged in a forensic contending over the "status quo" of their church. The scholarly Kerr fighting for a more liberal creed, was pitted against the Godly homespun philosopher and humorist Stadler. The oratorical fur flew almost all day long, and a vote was taken just before night. Elder Kerr lost, according to Dr. Billie and the recollections of others, and, "at sundown Elder Kerr led his followers out of the church, never to return, and moved on over to the village of Yanceyville."
In the endeavor to be both truthful and fair, this feeble historian must say that some of the descendants of the illustrious John Kerr, contended that their ancestor was at that time a Missionary Baptist preacher living in Virginia -- a "traveling bishop" and organizer of churches of that denomination in both Virginia and North Carolina.
If he was a Missionary Baptist preacher at the time of the debate, one who knows something of the stubborn loyalties of the Primitive wonders how he retained for a day his "status quo" as a secessionist within the confines of Primitive grounds. There is some substantiation of Dr. Billie Poteat's relatings in the handed-down report, in colloquia vernacular, that when Elder, or Reverend, John Kerr left Country Line Church he carried with him "ha'r, hide, guts and feathers."
Once Only Sunday School In Town
Reminiscently, this scribbler goes back only 6 years in his personal associations with the Yanceyville Baptist Church. My older brother and I were led by our father to its Sunday school, where he was a teacher of the Bible class for many years. He was not a member of any church (his paternal ancestors were Episcopalians of the yet-standing St. John's church of Williamsborough while his maternal were Presbyterians of nearby historic Nutbush), but he was a Bible student of great faith. At the time the Presbyterians and the Methodists in Yanceyville were too feeble in numbers to conduct Sunday schools.
My first "baby roll" teacher was the late Miss Linnie Poteat, who has always been my ideal in the perfection of lovely Christian womanhood.
Indulging further in personalisms, an inclination which may have virtues as well as faults, permit me to say that I can almost call the roll of the Sunday school roster of that long ago. Rev. W. B. Wingate was pastor. Mr. "Buck" Lowndes, blind and wheel-chair-ridden (he was pushed to the pulpit by faithful "Uncle" Jerry Graves, the old Negro who discovered the Ku-Klux-killed body of Senator John Walter (Chicken) Stephens in the Yanceyville courthouse), was Sunday school superintendent.
Blind, But Did His Own Painting
Mr. Lowndes was a Richmond, Va., Baptist who had come to Yanceyville and established a carriage and casket manufactory. Although totally blind, he did his own painting, even to striping wheels. His daughter, Miss Lizzie, who for more than a half century adorned the teaching profession in Yanceyville and in Danville, was also a Sabbath school teacher. A granddaughter, Mrs. Lula Belle Jeter of Greensboro, is the oldest living daughter of this church and Sunday school.
Incidentally, a son of Rev. John Kerr became Judge John Kerr, a jurist widely known for scholarly learning and polished oratory. Most of the descendants of Elder John I. Stadler are yet Primitive Baptists, preserve the "status quo," keep the faith of their fathers and worship at ancient Bush Arbor, now pastored by Elder W. Currie King, one of Greensboro's successful business executives. The new Country Line Church, moved from the old site to across the creek to the "Russell Hills," has almost passed out of the picture. I am informed that his church has now but one member -- Mrs. Lula Poteat Foster -- who lives in Burlington and is nearly 80.
The boundaries of the old graveyard, as we called it back in the days of our provincialisms, have been broadened from time to time. Some of the graves in the oldest section have no inscriptions on the hand-hewn stones, and there is no way of telling who was first laid to rest there.
Memories Sweet And Sad
The old church has many sweet and sad memories for many of us who were reared in its shadows. I saw and heard Dr. Billie Poteat when he smilingly "preached" his own mother's funeral. I heard the thud of the clods falling on the open graves of "Cap'n Jim Poteat, "Miss Jule (Mrs. Julia McNeill) Poteat, Miss Linnie and Miss Ida. Perhaps my weeping will mingle today with others who love the ancient landmark.
The pastor, Rev. W. T. Baucom, his good wife, the deacons and many of the faithful members have labored long and tirelessly to raise the funds for the planned $50,000 church building. Only three-fifths of the money has been raised, and some of the members feel the building should not be started now, but the majority have their hearts set on the Godly endeavor and to them the completed structure is a vision "like apples of gold in pictures of silver."
Greensboro Daily News (Greensboro, NC), 29 January 1950
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