Category: Traveling the Backroads

The story of Judge James T. Green and his family

Story by Robert Debter
Photos submitted

From its nondescript exterior, it looks just like many a building scattered throughout Alabama, just an old National Guard armory that has seen better years. But what or who – lies underneath – is the story here.

It may mark the end of an era for this St. Clair County couple, but it preserves the story behind the beginning of their life and lineage in the county, rooted long ago in royalty.

 James Thomason Greene was born on Feb. 2, 1849, to John Greene, who was born in Cork County, Ireland, in 1814, and came to America in 1832, and Elizabeth (Thomason) Greene, a descendant of Mary, Queen of Scots.

   Elizabeth’s father, James Thomason, served as St. Clair County’s first probate judge from Nov. 20, 1818–Nov. 20, 1819, and her brother, John Isham Thomason, also served a probate judge from Dec. 13, 1845–Jan. 15, 1848, and Jan. 30, 1850–June 8, 1850.

Her grandfather, John Duett Thomason, was a Revolutionary War soldier who held a commission in the Carolina Regiment and was wounded at the Battle of King’s Mountain. After the war he made his way through South Carolina and Georgia, he came to St. Clair County. He had acquired many acres in modern day Springville and St. Clair Springs through a land lottery for men with Revolutionary War service.

It was this patriot who married Elizabeth Stuart Diamond, and their final resting place is underneath the Ashville Armory. Elizabeth’s mother, also named Elizabeth, was born into the House of Stuart and was listed in Burke’s Peerage until her name was removed after she married a commoner named John Diamond.

Charles Dickens once said, “In love of home, the love of country has its rise.” It seems a fitting proverb for John Duett Thomason and one that was transferred to his granddaughter and great-grandson. Elizabeth was an ardent Southern patriot who, in the tumultuous and dark military rule of Ashville following the subversion of the Confederate government, raised the Confederate flag on a fishing pole line each morning. According to legend, she slept under the flag each night for she said that this gave her a sense of complete safety and security.

At the age of 13, James enlisted as private in the Confederate States Army and served until ill health forced him to leave service.

The young James was a public, spirited man and in 1871 and began reading law. The next year saw him admitted to the bar and also appointed to register in chancery, a position which he would hold until 1880.

From 1876–1881, he served as chief clerk to Judge Leroy Franklin Box, later state superintendent of education, at his office in Montgomery. Greene would go on to represent St. Clair County in the Alabama State Legislature from 1884 to 1886 and during his term was chairman of the Committee on Education.

He continued to serve the people of St. Clair County as probate judge, following in the footsteps of his grandfather and uncle, from Sept. 14, 1887–Nov. 1, 1892. Judge Greene practiced law in Ashville from 1872–1876, 1881–1886 and 1892–1901. He also opened the “Law Office of Inzer & Greene” with Judge John W. Inzer in Ashville. His son, Gardner Greene, would one day study law.

On October 13, 1873, he married Margaret Ashley and to them were born 10 children: Otis, Claude, James Gardner, who be known for his heroism in World War I, Postelle, Evelyn, Ethel, Margaret, Marie, Nelle and John Benjamin. 

Judge Greene was a Mason and a member and Worshipful Master of Cataula Lodge No. 186 in Ashville, a member of Lodge No. 443 in Anniston; a royal host of Anniston chapter, Royal Arch Masons, Chancellor Commander of Anniston lodge, No. 46, Knights of Pythias. He was also an Elk and a member of the Independent Order of Odd Fellows.

Judge Greene died on April 10, 1910, in Pell City while trying to recover from a severe cold that had settled on his lungs. His obituary notes, “He was one of St. Clair’s most distinguished citizens and by his strength of character and kindly disposition had held the love of our people for several generations.”

His son, the gallant World War I hero Gardner Greene, was born in Ashville on April 16, 1878, and after finishing his primary education, studied at the Inzer & Greene Law Office, run by his father and Judge John Washington Inzer at Ashville. He was licensed to practice law in 1897.

At the age of 20, the young lawyer volunteered for the Spanish-American War and served with distinction as a private and non-commissioned officer. In 1900, he entered the George Washington University Law School, graduated in 1901, and soon after, he entered service in the United States Census Bureau. In 1908 he opened a law office in Pell City and continued to practice there until he entered service in the Army.

Greene organized the Pell City Guards, known as “Company C” Fourth Alabama in 1915 – before the regiment was demobilized, war was declared on Germany, and the Fourth Alabama became the 167^th United States Infantry. It was one of the regiments of the now famous “Rainbow Division.” 

Captain Greene, in command of Company C, sailed for France and entered the trenches of the Toul sector early in 1918. He served continuously with his company until July 31, when he was gassed, but under skillful treatment recovered and returned to command his company in late August.

On September 12, 1918, while leading his troops into battle with the German forces in the Saint Mihiel sector, fire from a machine gun struck him in the forehead, and he died instantly. He was buried at the Saint Mihiel American Cemetery and Memorial in Lorraine, France.

Greene was universally loved and respected and was popular in his regiment. He was a Mason, a member of the Kappa Sigma Fraternity and one of the leaders of the St. Clair County Bar.

Nearly a century before, his ancestors would be laid to rest in Ashville’s first cemetery, where the armory stands now. On a corner of the building, a plaque commemorates the royalty – both of historic nobility and local legends.

It simply reads:

ELIZABETH DIAMOND THOMASON

1739-1829

7^th Gen. from Mary Queen of Scots

John Thomason, R.S.

1724-1825

Editor’s Note: The name in all capital letters denotes her royal roots, niece of Queen Anne of the House of Stuart. The R.S. following his name signifies, Revolutionary Soldier. The plaque was dedicated in 1989 by the Broken Arrow Chapter of Daughters of the American Revolution.

Story by Joe Whitten
Photos by Wallace Bromberg Jr.
Submitted Photos

Many late-Victorian-style cottages remain in St. Clair County, and one of the loveliest is the c1891 home of 80-year-old Maurice Huneycutt, who has cherished and restored this ancestral home.

“My great-grandfather, William Henry McConnell, built the house. He was married to Salome Ash,” a descendant of the John Ash family and for whom Ashville was named. After William Henry died in 1930 and Salome in 1932, “grandmother and granddaddy bought out the other heirs for this place – house and about 38 acres.”

Maurice’s grandmother, Velma McConnell, grew up in this house. She married Arthur Huneycutt, who lived a short distance from them on today’s U.S. 174. They lived in Birmingham for a while, then on Blount Mountain. When the Great Depression swept the country, they moved to the homeplace around 1931 or ‘32.

Maurice was born in 1941 in this house. “Some of my first memories,” recalls Maurice, “was playing under the house using a tablespoon and a toy truck to build roads. There was no underpinning, so it was light under there.”

In the 1940s and ‘50s, families had gardens and raised beef and pork for food. “We had a garden and cows and pigs and beehives,” Maurice reminisced. “We had turkeys and chickens for eggs and meat. We had a salt box to store the pork in and a smokehouse to smoke bacon and hams. The fat was rendered into lard – nobody used Crisco or cooking oil in those days. My grandmother milked the cow every morning, and we had fresh milk, cream and butter all the time.”

Water for the family came from the front yard well still kept under a roofed shelter today. “The well water was cool and tasted wonderful. Our well was freestone, and the water was the best around. On Sunday, the church people would come here and draw a bucket.”

Pat and Maurice’s parents were Annis Redwine and Maurice “Boots” Huneycutt, Sr. The nickname “Boots” came from his love of wearing boots, and everyone in Beaver Valley knew him as Boots. He was a butcher working in Birmingham when he met Annis. “The Redwines were from Hampton, Ga., and had come to Birmingham. She worked at Pizitz’s candy counter, and that’s probably where she met Daddy,” Maurice recounted.

Boots and Annis married in 1932, and had two children, Patricia, born in 1934, and Maurice Edwin, Jr., born in 1941. For a while, the family lived near Atlanta where Boots had a job. “We were way out in the country,” Pat laughed, “and it was lonesome. They said I would sit and carry my coat. I wanted to go back, so finally my granddaddy, Arthur, came and got me. We came back to Odenville.

Boots worked hard, and in the early years of married life, he raised vegetables to sell to supplement his regular job. “I heard my mother tell about one year my father plowing two oxen,” Maurice chuckled. “They said people laughed at him about the oxen, (but) he made a good crop.” Boots took the vegetables in his buggy to the Margaret coal mines “and sold them to the miners for clacker,” Maurice said. “Clacker” was the term used for coins the mines paid the workers with. You could take the clacker to the company store and get food, shoes or whatever you needed.” With the clacker, Boots traded at the company store.

Arthur Huneycutt, Boots’ father-in-law, worked as a foreman at the Pullman Plant in Birmingham. He helped Boots and a number of Odenville men get jobs at Pullman. These men, Maurice said, “would ride Mize Bus Line on Sunday night and come back home on Friday night. Glen Stevenson drove the bus. It was white with blue stripes.” The men boarded in the city during the week, and on Friday night, some of the men had nipped the bottle before they bid Glen Stevenson goodnight.

And liquor almost killed Boots and changed the Huneycutt story. For all of Boots’ hard work providing for the family, when the craving took hold, it took over. It happened the evening of Christmas Day in the mid-1950s.

Boots and family had spent the day with daughter Pat and her husband, Henry Coshatt. Back home in Odenville, one of Boots’ drinking friends came by. “When they got together,” Maurice reflected, “they would get very drunk, and it would be bad for a day or two.” Annis and Maurice begged Boots not to go, but their pleas went unheeded. He left, and “the next day, no word from him, and the next day nothing. So, we started the ‘find Boots’ routine.” This included calling the jails, the drinking places and the hospitals.

It took three or four days, but they located him in an Anniston hospital. He and his friend had wrecked, and Maurice remembered that the ambulance driver said he thought Boots was dead, so he stopped for a soft drink. “Boots went through the windshield. Broke his leg above the knee and cut his throat, leaving a scar of about 6 or 7 inches and 1-inch wide.”

Annis had Boots transferred to the VA hospital in Birmingham. A month later, he came home in a body cast, and lay in bed flat on his back for eight months. His leg never healed properly, and he limped when he walked again. In his early 40s, Boots never worked again.

From this tragedy, there came to be a café called Huneycutt’s Country Kitchen. Annis Huneycutt was a woman of indominable spirit – the “unsinkable Huneycutt matriarch” of Odenville. From the tragedy, a family and a community combined forces to build a café still fondly remembered by older folk today – Huneycutt’s Country Kitchen.

“We had to make a living.” Maurice remembered, “and we had no money,” So, with three related superb cooks – Annis, her mother-in-law, Velma McConnell Huneycutt, and Velma’s sister, Claire McConnell Scoggins – why not a snack bar or even a café established in Odenville?

Ed Fulmer owned nine small lots along Beaver Creek where MAPCO is today at the corner of Alabama Street and U.S. 411. The Huneycutts bought them, but they required fill dirt to raise them above floodplain. Dwight Blocker, although crippled by arthritis, drove the dump truck and filled in the lots.

With the site ready, Maurice and his grandaddy tore down the homeplace barn to construct a building. “It had wide boards, and all that lumber was straight,” Maurice said. “We had three syrup buckets for different sized nails. The nails had a little bend, and you’d lay ’em down and hit ’em one time and they’d be straight. With a handsaw, a hammer, a hatchet, a level, a square, a plumb bob and chalk line, we built that snack bar out of old heart pine 12- to 15-inch-wide boards. My Uncle Bill Redwine wired it, and George Mize came by and gave us directions.”

They bought finishing material at Sears and put it on their ‘Easy Payment’ charge account. Mr. Granger from Sears helped them with selecting the materials.

“We put the gas in through a hole in the wall,” Maurice laughed, “and built a frame out of 2x4s to set a grill on. Then we took the stove and refrigerator out of our house down there and started cooking – hotdogs, hamburgers and stuff like that.

“Grandma would cook vegetables up at her house, and Aunt Claire would cook the pies. My job was to get in the car – I was about 15 and didn’t have a driver’s license – but I’d get the vegetables at Grandma’s and then go to Aunt Claire’s and get the pies.”

Things progressed, and community folk pitched in to help make the business a success. Ben Vandegrift gave them his barber shop, which the Huneycutts “tore down and put the nails in a bucket” and built onto the snack bar. “We put a sink and the stove in there.” Then, Mr. Hoover, who had a farm in Odenville, “gave us a house in Ensley. So, we went down there and tore it down. Charlie Mordiccai let us borrow his dump truck, and we’d load the lumber on it and bring it home.” With this material, Lester and Burt Cash extended the kitchen and built a wing onto the snack bar, and the Huneycutt Country Kitchen came to be.

“Back in those days,” Pat commented, “nobody had any money, and we didn’t know the difference.” Maurice added, “You did whatever you had to, and you did it yourself.”

Maurice continued reminiscing. “Granddaddy found the windows on the railroad. So, we put hinges on top of them, and we put an eye on the bottom and had a coat hanger hanging down that we hooked the window to. None of ’em ever fell and hit anybody! That was in the snack bar. In the new part, we used the windows out of the building we tore down in Ensley.”

The school recognized that Boots and Annis needed Maruice’s help during their lunch hours. They worked his schedule so he had study hall, lunch and PE, one right after the other, so Maurice could help during rush hour. After school, he worked until 9 p.m. “We’d clean after breakfast, after lunch and at night. On Monday night, we waxed the floors.” Oldtimers remember the café as being immaculate.

The new wing provided more seating for regulars, so, Boots and Annis hired other local good cooks, Missouri Patmon and Ozella Smith. Word began to spread, “There’s a good little café in Odenville.” So, when someone passed though Odenville and stopped to eat, on Sunday, he’d bring his family for lunch after church. Claire’s son, Henry Scoggins, was in Atlanta and someone asked where he lived. When he told them, Odenville, Alabama,  the person responded, “Oh, they’ve got the best restaurant there!”

Sundays became very busy. “Most of our trade was from Birmingham and Leeds,” Maurice recalled. “We had so many come they couldn’t all get in, so we built a cover where they could wait in line. We could seat 30 at a time”

Of course, many Odenville citizens made Huneycutt’s their regular eating place. Maurice remembered Mable and William Forman, Garland and Sis Fortson, and Steve and Evelyn Mize dining there almost every day.

It was hard work. “When I went to work, I’d took a picture of the café and put it on the wall. No matter how bad it got, I’d look at the picture and say, ‘I’m better off now than I was then.’”

Boots became an iconic part of the café, and his memory brings a smile to those who remember him. One story involves a customer who had moved to Odenville “from up north,” who asked for “iced coffee.” Boots slammed a cup and saucer down, filled the cup with coffee, threw an ice cube in it and said, “There’s your iced coffee.” This customer is remembered as knowing how to “pull Boots’ chain.”

Pat recalled Boots’ encounter with the Alabama health inspector. “The health department would always come in at lunchtime – busiest time of the day. They came in one time, and it made Boots mad. He picked up a hammer and said, ‘You come in here at lunchtime! Don’t ever come in here at lunchtime again.’ They said, ‘Oh, no, no, we won’t come at lunchtime again.’’

Sales tax collection was another thorn in Boots’ side. “A long time ago,” Maurice laughed, “the sales tax man would come to your place to collect. He’d say you owe us so much, and that would be it. So, Daddy got a length of pipe and took a hatchet and clinched one end and nailed it next to the cash register. He said, ‘Every day when we close, figure out how much the sales tax is and put it in that pipe.’ So, every night we’d put in the quarters and dimes and nickels in that pipe. So, the next time he comes to collect the tax, he got out his calculator, but Daddy hops over and gets the pipe and empties it out. The money spilled all over the table, the floor and rolled against the walls. Daddy said, ‘There it is.’”

In spite of his impatience, Boots was also a man of kindness and compassion. “He always looked out for the underdog” Maurice commented. For instance, if the sheriff, transporting prisoners, stopped for lunch at the café, Boots would take hamburgers or hotdogs to the prisoners. He gave the food to them, but the sheriff had to pay. Boots and Annis also provided meals to folks who were shut-in or needy.

The most well-remembered act of kindness is their taking into their home Wayne Franklin. Maurice recalls the first time he met Wayne in the 1950s. “I heard this awful crying or screaming noise, so I went out to see what was happening. I see this kid, seven or eight years old, running down the road.”

Maurice couldn’t understand what the child tried to say, but knowing he was scared, he took him into the house. He calmed down and told him his name was Wayne and where he lived – quite a way from the Huneycutt home. When he’d got home from school, his grandmother wasn’t there, so he started out. The Huneycutts took him home and waited for his grandmother, Sal Betts, to arrive.

Later, Mrs. Betts and Wayne lived in a tar-paper cover building across the highway from the café, and that’s when the relationship with Wayne began. Wayne’s parents were dead, and Mrs. Betts was destitute. Boots and Annis both had tender hearts for the less fortunate folk. “Wayne started hanging around the café,” Maurice reminisced. “Boots always loved the underdog, and my mother just took Wayne under her wing. He stayed with us most of the time. Tom, the Coca-Cola man, would pay Wayne to stack empty bottles in the cases, and he bought Wayne a blue and white coat.”

Wayne was a happy boy with the Huneycutts. However, school was another matter. He had a speech impediment, and he couldn’t read, so the school placed him in the Special Education class. He was smart in other ways and could learn. He suffered from dyslexia before this was understood or help for these students was available in public schools.

Mrs. Betts died, and Wayne lived in the Huneycutt home. One day an aunt and her husband from Florida, who had somehow heard about Wayne, showed up in Odenville and packed him off to live with them. “I do not think,” Maurice observed, “that they understood his reading problems. But these people were real and took Wayne with them.”

They didn’t hear anything from Wayne for a long time, until one Sunday afternoon, Wayne was back. “We were glad to see him,” Maurice said. “The aunt said Wayne wanted to live with us, and Daddy said, ‘That’s just fine,’ and we moved him in. The aunt said that it hadn’t worked out as they had hoped it would.”

The Florida folk left, and then the Huneycutts learned what happened when it didn’t “work out.” Wayne had a grandfather living in the woods of Montana. The aunt wrote a tag with Wayne’s name and where he was going, pinned it to the blue and white coat that Coca-Cola Tom had given him, put him on a Greyhound Bus and sent him to Montana. At the Montana destination, nobody was there to meet him. A policeman took him home with him then got him to the grandfather.

A Montana newspaper wrote a story about his trip and mentioned he was hard to understand because of his Southern accent. Maurice recalled Wayne’s telling him his grandfather taught him to hunt and that they lived off the land. When his grandfather died, Montana sent him back to Florida and from Florida, he arrived back home with the Huneycutts in Odenville.

Boots and Annis sent him to Gadsden Trade School where he finished cabinet making and learned a trade. He married and had children. His first son he named Paul after his friend, Paul Loren in Odenville. He owned and operated The Shelby County Woodworks and made a good living for his family until his death in a car wreck.

Maurice said of Boots, “Daddy was always in trouble. He didn’t conform. But at his funeral, there were people standing in the parking lot because they couldn’t get in the church.”

Of Annis, Pat commented, “Her background was Hampton, Ga. They had a big country place there. She was more like a refined Southern lady.” Those who remember her would agree. In her speech, Annis retained the soft vowels of her Georgia years. She had a distinctive laugh that was joyful and contagious.

Reflecting on the difficult times, Pat said, “Mama just took everything in stride and kept working.” Maurice agreed, adding, “That’s what she did. She had a pretty bad time with some of the things that went on.” He paused in memory, then said, “She always worked hard.”

This quotation by Leonard da Vinci applies to Annis: “People reveal themselves completely only when they are thrown out of the customary conditions of their life.”

But it was perhaps a granddaughter who described her best: “(She) showed us all how to be strong and resilient,” for Annis had held a family together by the strength of her character and spirit.

Name reveals storied past of
Odenville entrepreneur

Story by Joe Whitten
Photos by Wallace Bromberg Jr.
Submitted Photos

Maddox Farm Road, named for John Luther Maddox Sr., lies off U.S. 411 about two eyeblinks north of Liberty Church. Who was this man?

A July 16, 1908, an article in the St. Clair County News, published in Odenville, states, “John Luther Maddox … moved to St. Clair County 21 years ago [c1887], where he … engaged in farming up to 1895. He then entered the mercantile business in a small scale but has been very successful…. Mr. Maddox is a self-made man and is successful in his undertakings … He is … interested in educational matters, good roads, the general upbuilding and development of Odenville and adjacent territory.” Maddox was founder, owner and editor of this newspaper.

He was born March 23, 1869, in Benton (Calhoun) County, Ala., to Chesley Benton and Annie Majors Maddox. John Luther’s great-great-grandparents, John and Rebecca Teague Maddox, had settled in the Blue Mountain area of Benton, now Calhoun County, early in the 19^th Century. According to family historian, Dorothy Maddox Bishop, John Maddox fought with Gen. Andrew Jackson “… at Horseshoe Bend,” and indicates that John settled in Alabama because of serving with Jackson.

Just what prompted him to locate in St. Clair County isn’t part of family lore. However, rich farmland probably lured him here c1887. Also, the excitement of a new century lay ahead, and St. Clair stood ready to flourish. Springville, Ashville, Odenville and Ragland bustled with businesses. By 1905, the Seaboard Airline Railroad would connect Ragland and Odenville with Birmingham. Sumter Cogswell was developing Pell City, and by 1902, a railroad would connect that town with cities east and west.

John Luther Maddox married Sarah Elizabeth Jones (1870-1927) on Feb. 24, 1895, in St. Clair County. She was the daughter of Joel Wheeler Jones, who was born in South Carolina to Steven and Polly Jones. According to Dorothy Bishop, Steven served in the American Revolution and is buried at Pleasant Hill Cemetery near Springville.

Joel Wheeler Jones bought 40 acres in July 1854 near Harden’s Shop, today’s Odenville. Sixty years later, his acres would be called “Jones’s Cut” because of the cut for Seaboard Airline railroad tracks nearby.

In 1858, Joel Wheeler Jones married Jane E. Simpson, and they had two children, James and Lorenna. In December 1861, Jones enlisted in the Confederate Army and fought in battles at Shiloh, Corinth, Tullahoma and Chickamauga. He was captured Nov. 25, 1863, at the Battle of Missionary Ridge, Chattanooga, and imprisoned at Rock Island, Ill.

At Rock Island, the Union offered him release from prison if he would fight for the Union. He agreed and was sent with Union forces to quell Native American uprisings in the “Northwestern Frontier.” Dorothy Bishop’s research showed he was sent there, “because General U.S. Grant, among others, did not believe that ex-Confederate troops should be assigned to areas where they might have to fight their former comrades in arms.” Discharged from the Union Army Nov. 7, 1865, Jones headed home to St. Clair County.

According to Maddox’s oral history, Jones’ wife, Jane, not having heard from her husband for maybe three years, assumed him to be dead and married again. Working in the yard one day, she looked up, and Joel Wheeler Jones came walking down the lane toward her. Seeing him, she fled, leaving the children behind and never returned. Jones’ mother helped him with the motherless children until her death in 1866.

Joel Wheeler Jones married secondly Aug. 1, 1866, Mary Rebecca Bolton, daughter of Henry C. and Margaret Vandegrift Bolton. Joel and Rebecca had five children, one of whom was Sara Elizabeth Jones who was destined to combine both the Jones-Maddox genealogy and the Jones-Maddox farmlands which remain in the Maddox family today.

John Luther Maddox added store business to farming c1895. His daughter, Myrtle Maddox Kenney, in a 1990 interview recounted, “When my father started out, his first store was up there at Friendship in Miss Nancy Mize’s old house. It was a log house with a lean-to.” A descendant of Nancy Mize relates that they believe Nancy’s house was near the foot of Beaver Mountain between today’s Prison Road off U.S. 411 and Friendship Baptist Church.

About 1900, he moved his store a few miles north of Friendship to Julian, a late 19^th Century community where today stand the “Rock Stores” landmark. Of this community, Gary Pool wrote in a Leeds News article, Sept. 26, 1985, “There were only a few wooden frame buildings and one small post office. Even as towns were rated back then, Julian was … no more than a wide place in the old gravelly road.”

Maddox built a wood-frame store at Julian at today’s rock stores. His was on the right side going north. Will Dollar later bought that property. Maddox’s wooden building burned in 1926 and Will Dollar constructed the rock stores.

The Julian store flourished and was noted frequently in the Springville newspaper. The “Odenville” column of the Springville News reported March 17, 1898, “J. L. Maddox passed through our town first of the week on his way to the Magic City to buy goods.” An April 3, 1902, Springville News ad reads: “All next week we will be pleased to show you the largest stock of ladies trimmed hats, misses trimmed hats, and children’s hats all sizes … J. L. Maddox, Julian, Alabama.”

In 1902, excitement ran high in Odenville, for the Seaboard Airline had begun drilling the Hardwick Tunnel and laying train tracks that would run through Odenville and on to Birmingham. Always alert for business opportunities, Maddox now set his sights on Odenville and supplying the needs of railroad workers.

Myrtle recollected, “He built a store over there at the Hardwick Tunnel, and then he started the one down there where the Chevron Station is.” The Ridgeline Roofing Company operates at that location in 2021.

Wanting to move to Odenville, in 1904 Luther began construction of a family home there. “We moved in it in 1905,” Myrtle said. “It wasn’t finished on the inside. You see, everybody farmed back then, and the carpenters … stopped work when the crops came in.” After gathering crops, the carpenters finished the house.

About the same time, Myrtle continued, “He built a four-room house” in Odenville for Dr. C.C. Brown, the first doctor to live in Odenville. Both these houses still stand today. This house may be earlier than 1904 because Dr. C.C. Brown is mentioned in a Springville Item, June 11, 1903 issue.

The doctor’s house is sometimes referred to as “the house with two front doors.” Speculation is that one front door opened to Dr. Brown’s office and the other front door opened to his living quarters.

Over the years, several rooms were added to the first four. The original roof was wood shingles and traces of forest green paint was discovered on old trim-work. The historic designation of the house is the Maddox-Whitten House since this writer and his wife bought it in 1974.

In 1907, Alabama proposed building accredited high schools in counties that did not already have a state-supported high school. St. Clair County wanted a county high school, and Springville, Odenville and Pell City began to vie for location. Realizing the strength of a newspaper in campaigning for the school location, Luther Maddox founded the St. Clair County News, c1908, and built a newspaper office building.

In his efforts for the school location, Maddox wrote editorials in favor of Odenville as the best spot in St. Clair County for the new school. Pell City had no newspaper in March 1908 and made no public response to Maddox’s comment that Pell City was good, “a cotton mill town,” but “nature never intended it for an educational site.” (St. Clair County News March 5, 1908)

However, in May when Odenville was chosen for the school location, Pell City had a newspaper, The Pell City Progress, and the editor, McLane Tilton, wrote in the May 7, 1908, issue that he feared the state would come to regret having put a “Ten thousand dollar school building in a one thousand dollar town.”

As a member of the St. Clair County High School Building Committee, Maddox worked tirelessly to raise funds for construction of the building. Completed in 1909, the school’s first seniors graduated in 1912.

Maddox was among the first shareholders of the Bank of Odenville which opened in 1908. He was listed as vice president of the bank in a Southern Aegis ad May 6, 1909.

Civic responsibilities did not preclude Luther Maddox’s involvement in the church life of Odenville. The Methodist congregation had organized and met in the Odenville Elementary School from about 1906. Then in the April 19, 1909, edition of the St. Clair County News, the church announced the construction of their own Methodist sanctuary. Listed as a member of the building committee was J. L. Maddox. The article reported that the committee were obligated “for a generous donation of lumber to the new church.” The beautiful building, completed c1911, stands today and serves the Odenville United Methodist Church congregation.

Maddox caused excitement and newspaper reports when he purchased Odenville’s first automobile. The St. Clair County News reported Sept. 9, 1909, “Mr. J. L. Maddox purchased a fine automobile last week and Odenville can now take her place with the other towns throughout the country who have passed the horse and buggy stage.… The auto is made to carry about six passengers and has good speed.”

Two weeks later, the Sept. 23, 1909, issue of St. Clair County News reported, “A party of five went to Ashville Sunday in the automobile belonging to J. L. Maddox. Mr. Crow Harden, who knows more about the machines than anyone else in this area of the county, acted as chauffeur. The trip was made in record breaking time, one hour and ten minutes.”

In 1990, when the interviewer asked Myrtle about these newspaper articles, she laughed and replied, “That was the surrey with the fringe on top! My daddy guided it with a stick – steered it with a stick.”

She told another trip. “Coming home we got in Canoe Creek, and the old thing got wet and quit. Daddy had to pull off his shoes and roll up his pants and crank the thing to get it to start.” She remembers how the automobile’s “chug, chug, chugging,” scattered chickens near the road and frightened horses pulling wagons near Bethel. “The horses rared up and down. It scared me,” she laughed.

Luther Maddox prospered, and in November 1909, he entered into a partnership with W.L. Steed in the Odenville Mercantile Company. St. Clair County News reported Nov. 11, 1909, that “Mr. J. L. Maddox is president of the new firm and Mr. W. L. Steed Secretary-Treasurer.”

Economic downturns often swallow up the good, and Luther Maddox’s fortunes began to diminish. The July 12, 1911, Southern Aegis ran a legal ad announcing that on Aug. 7, 1911, the Sheriff, J.D. Love, would sell “at the courthouse door, Ashville, St. Clair County …” three tracts of J.L. Maddox’s land to satisfy a circuit court case in favor of J.L. Newton. The Southern Aegis of July 24, 1912, and Nov. 20, 1912, Sheriff Love advertised two more tracts of land to be sold on the Ashville Courthouse steps to satisfy J.L. Newton.

Despite these setbacks, Maddox continued his business operations in Odenville for a while. However, the June 23, 1916, issue of the St. Clair County News, published in Ragland, noted in the “Odenville News” that “Luther Maddox is moving out to his farm near here. Maddox has gone into farming and cattle raising.” Then in the July 23, 1916, “Odenville News” reported, “J. T. Newburn has bought the Maddox store and will run the business at this place.”

Myrtle recalled her father’s misfortunes: “In 1916, it rained, and they didn’t make any crops that year. That’s what put my daddy out of business. People just didn’t make anything, and he’d sold ‘em fertilizer on credit, and they didn’t even have corn to eat. They had to go in debt to keep themselves living. So, my daddy borrowed $1,200 and had to pay 6% interest on that. Yes, $72 a year…. That was 1917 that he’d borrowed to keep everything going.”

Maddox stood on the brink of disaster – the possibility of losing more land and the houses he still owned. However, family loyalty rescued Maddox. Myrtle recalls, “My brothers joined the Navy. They made their money out of the Navy – their little bitty bit of money – and they’d send it to Daddy, and he paid it off that way.” She paused, then added, “It was terrible.” The brothers were Chesley Benton and J.L. Maddox, Jr.

J.L.’s daughter, Mary Ann Maddox Moore, told how her father took none of his free time but instead did the laundry for his shipmates to earn extra money to send back home to help pay off the debt. Little by little, John Luther Maddox cleared his debt and saved his property. Since he no longer had business dealings in St. Clair County, the Maddox family moved to Florida.

Myrtle recalled the move, “My father closed out everything, and he just went to Florida after we got everything paid out. Daddy didn’t have money to try to get back in business, so he went to Lakeland, Fla. The boys got out of the Navy, and that’s where the boys got jobs.”

In Florida, Sarah Elizabeth Jones Maddox became ill with cancer and died May 1, 1927, and was buried in Liberty Cemetery, Odenville.

Myrtle recalled the Great Depression and that in 1932, she along with her father and sister, John Luther and Tennie, returned to Odenville. Renters lived in the family home, so they all lived in the house built for Dr. Brown.

Over the years four more rooms had been added to that house. “It was a great big place, and we were all there. After Mama died, Daddy took her insurance money and got back in business again. Store business was all he knew. He started again, and then he died in 1935.” John Luther Maddox, indominable entrepreneur of Odenville, was laid to rest next to his wife in Liberty Cemetery.

Maddox’s last store stood where the Oakridge Outdoor Power Equipment conducts business today on U.S. 411. “My sister Tennie inherited the store,” Myrtle recalled, “but everybody was in debt to her, and my brother, J.L. Jr., just came up here and closed it out.” Tennie went with J.L. to Florida where she married and lived out her life.

At John Luther’s death, Myrtle inherited the family home, Jack Maddox, the Dr. Brown house, and brothers Chesley Benton and J.L. Jr., inherited the farm. J.L. bought out his brother, and the farm remains in possession of J.L.’s children, Dorothy Maddox Bishop, Mary Ann Maddox Moore and deceased John Wesley “Jay” Maddox’s wife and children.

Bert and Mary Ann Maddox Moore and their three daughters moved from Mulberry, Fla., just outside of Lakeland in 1977 and built their home on the land in sight of where Joel Wheeler Jones built his home before the Civil War.

Bert and Mary Ann’s daughter, Lee Ann Moore Clark, loved spending time at the farm during summer visits from Florida. “Prior to living here, we traveled from Florida to Odenville during the summer to visit my grandpa Maddox’s farm.

“My sisters and I loved exploring the property and seeing the lightning bugs at dusk. We would catch and put them in a mason jar to light our room at night. A whippoorwill just outside my bedroom window would always lull me to sleep every night. Picking blackberries along the road was also the highlight of my summer except for the chigger bites. Licking the drop of nectar off a honeysuckle flower, was something our dad taught us, that we thought was the coolest thing ever! One time our mom found a perfect arrowhead on the farm which prompted a discussion about how it got there and how long it had been since Native Americans spent time on the property,” Clark said.

“We played in the creek that flowed through the property, caught minnows in a jar and always stopped at the spring for a quick drink to quench our thirst. Conveniently, there was always a cup left hanging on a limb close by. From there we could hear the rushing water over the waterfall, which was our last stop before climbing back up to the shady road lined with large trees,” she said.

“Names carved in the trees included my grandpa’s. Not only did we have fresh water to drink, but we also found a crabapple tree, something we had never seen or tasted before.

“My Maddox grandparents would come up from Florida and stay for a month in the farmhouse during the summer after we moved here. Grandpa always worked hard to remodel the farmhouse he loved so much. We often had lunch there, and our Grandma cooked all kinds of delicious things for us like chicken and dumplings and rice pudding. She also made watermelon rind preserves. Unlike folks today, she didn’t waste anything,” she recalled.

“These are just a few of my favorite childhood memories of a place that one day would become my home.” 

Life spans run out, and community leaders change from one generation to another. Without written records and recorded memories, people and names fade into forgottenness. Be thankful for St. Clair County road names like Maddox Farm Road that remind us of a man Odenville owes a great deal to, John Luther Maddox Sr.

Story by Joe Whitten
Submitted photos

“Any person or persons who shall attempt to teach any free person of color, or slave, to spell, read, or write, shall upon conviction thereof of indictment be fined in a sum of two hundred and fifty dollars.”

This doleful Alabama law underscores the importance of education. Enacted in 1833, the law aligned with other Antebellum states’ laws which resulted from literate slave Nat Turner’s brief rebellion of 1831. Until then, slaves could be openly taught to read and write. Turner’s Rebellion ended in three days, and he was hanged.

Sometimes referred to as the “Black Moses,” Nat Turner was literate, preached from the Bible and influenced both races. From his rebellion, slave owners realized that educating slaves was dangerous. Therefore, soon after Turner’s execution, slave states began passing laws forbidding educating Blacks – slave or freedmen. Ex-slave Frederick Douglass would later write, “Knowledge makes a man unfit to be a slave.”

So, it’s no wonder that after the Civil War and toward the end of Reconstruction in Alabama (1874), freed slaves began organizing their own churches and schools. Established Dec. 17, 1868, the Alabama Black Baptist Convention urged their members to foster education through the local churches. In his history, Uplifting the People, Three Centuries of Black Baptist in Alabama, Wilson Fallin, Jr., records: “In 1870, the convention advised its churches ‘to build schoolhouses and churches in their own means, declining all union with others, unless absolutely necessary.’”

In St. Clair County, though, Ashville’s Black citizens had the “union” and support of White citizens in establishing the first school for children of former slaves. Old St. Clair County records show that on April 15, 1872, Pope Montgomery and wife deeded to the Methodist Episcopal Church a building to serve as a church and a school for “colored children.” That church was named St. Paul’s and continues today.

About 90 years later, this school evolved into Ashville Colored High School and in 1965 to Ruben High School.

According to Mrs. Bessie Byers’ valuable handwritten history of the school, the 1872 school began with two teachers who “were qualified to teach by having passed the teachers’ examination.” Attendance increased, and in a few years, more teachers were added, and both St. Paul’s Methodist Church and Mt. Zion Baptist Church served as classrooms for grades 1-7. Students sat on the church benches. Potbellied stoves supplied heat, and the men provided the wood and pine knots for starting the fires.

The school had no PTA, but parents and community came together to support education. Mrs. Byers writes, “The parents began having ‘Saturday Nights at the Hall.’ Admission was 25 cents, and every child who came was given 25 cents to spend on goodies, such as parched peanuts, cookies, and drinks. The money collected went to the teachers to purchase blackboards, chalk, erasers, and other necessities.”

These Saturday nights not only provided teachers with essentials but also brought the community together for fellowship. Those attending enjoyed spelling bees, poetry readings, games and singing. This community camaraderie has all but vanished in the whirlwind of today’s business.

As years progressed, music became part of the curriculum. Many of the students had natural musical gifts though they never had lessons. Mrs. Byers wrote of Ila and Eva Byers, “They could play any melody once they’d heard it, although they’d never taken piano lessons. Each day,” she recalled, “a time was set aside when lessons were put aside and every child sang, filling the building with the sound of beautiful old Spirituals.” She mentions that four graduates of Ashville Colored High School formed a quartet called The Happy Four and sang to groups as far away as Chattanooga. If they added a fifth member, they called themselves The Happy Five.

Margaret Bothwell LeFleur, class of 1963, recounted, “We had a little group of us girls called The Red Skirt Gang, and we used to sing the songs of the day – like Sincerely.” Gloria Williams, Gloria Woods, Pauline Mabry, Doris Turner and Margaret sang with the group.

By 1935, the school needed a new building. Mrs. Byers recorded that the County Board of Education, led by Superintendent of Education James Baswell purchased from Jim Beason three acres on the “hilltop known as Jim Beason’s pasture,” where the Board constructed a three-room frame building.

“It was a neat building,” she wrote, “painted white, with large classrooms and numerous windows. It was known as Ashville Colored High School, with grades one through 12.” The new school had running water but no lunchroom. Attendance grew quickly and the board added two more rooms. Five teachers gave instruction.

Earlier times

Let’s go back to1897 for a moment, for that year in Ashville was born to Wash and Sarah Yancy a baby boy they named Ruben. Sarah Yancy’s 1963 obituary lists Ruben’s siblings: Della Mostella, Gordan Yancy and Myrtis Noble. Ruben was the one destined to move Ashville’s Black school forward in the 1940s when he was known as “Professor Yancy,” principal of Ashville Colored High School.

Information about Professor Yancy remains scant. Where he attended college seems a mystery, although 91-year-old Boone Turner recalls that Professor had several college degrees and “When school was out for the summer, he would take off to Chicago and take up classes.”

He probably started at Millers Ferry, Wilcox County. He was teaching there when at age 21, he enlisted in the U.S. Army on Sept. 28, 1918. Teachers were exempt from registering, but he patriotically enlisted. However, the war ended less than two months later, and he received an honorable discharge on Dec. 26, 1918.

Just where he taught after the war and what year he arrived in Ashville to teach is elusive. By 1947, Professor Yancy had been appointed principal of Ashville Colored High School. Some local senior citizens recall him well. Joe Lee Bothwell recalled, “When he told you to do something, he meant it. He was all about you learning.” Boone Turner said, “I can tell you he was a good man. He was the principal of the school and taught classes.” His influence was on both Black and White communities, Boone said. When White parents whose children needed tutoring in math, they sent them to him for tutoring. Jay Richey, whose dad, J.W. “Shag” Richey, principal of Ashville High School and later St. Clair superintendent of education, recalls hearing stories of the math tutoring and how “extremely intelligent” Professor Yancy was.

As a well-educated, hometown man, Professor Yancy was respected throughout Ashville. Mrs. Byers observed that he “commanded the respect” of both students and parents. He also knew his students deserved a better school building with a lunchroom and library, and he set to work to bring that dream to fruition. “White citizens of Ashville,” Mrs. Byers wrote, “helped Mr. Yancy plan the new building,” which took several years.

When Professor Yancy’s health forced him to retire, Lloyd Newton took over as Principal. On Feb. 26, 1958, Professor Yancy died, never seeing the fruit of his labor.

The community’s love for him moved them to successfully petition the board of education to rename the school for him. Therefore, at the dedication of the new building, Dec. 15, 1965, they changed the name from Ashville Colored High School to Ruben Yancy High School.

Eloise Williams recalled that after integration there was a move to change the school’s name, but Brother Clifford Thomas led the way in gathering petition signatures to present to the board of education to keep the name Ruben Yancy. The board approved. The school served the middle school for some years and now serves alternative education students.

Under Professor Yancy’s photograph in the dedication day program appears these words: “The school is being renamed in honor of the late Prof. Ruben Yancy who was a native of Ashville and principal of Ashville Colored High School from 1947 to 1956. Because of his humanitarian efforts, the community has grown and become a better place to live. His life was an exemplification of all that is embodied in ‘The Teacher’s Creed.’”

Another legend

Professor Lloyd Newton’s education career in St. Clair County made him a legend not only in Ruben Yancy High School but also in the integrated Ashville Elementary School.

Lloyd’s father was a cotton farmer in Sumter County, according to a retirement article in The Anniston Star, Aug. 11, 1985. His mother died when he was three and his father married again.

Erroll Newton, Lloyd’s son, recalled that after his dad graduated from high school, he lived with relatives in Fairfield, where several other relatives lived and worked. One of his aunts recognized Lloyd’s scholastic aptitude and introduced him to the president of Miles College. He enrolled in Miles, lived with his aunt and worked his way through college.

The United States had entered World War II, and Lloyd joined the Navy where he was a first class motor machinist mate for four years. Erroll Newton says of his dad, “During WWII, the military was beginning to integrate all branches of service, and it was in the Navy that he developed his skill as an instructor.” According to the Anniston Star, “After working for Seaboard Railroad, the Navy, and (attending) Wayne State University in Michigan, he landed back in Alabama.” “It was after being discharged after WWII that he began his odyssey to further his career,” Erroll said. “He worked as railroad porter in the Ford Foundry and the Fairfield Foundry, and continuing college in Michigan.”

“Back in Alabama,” Erroll continued, “He ran a nightclub in Fairfield a while before Dr. Bell, president of Miles College, gave him a reference to teach veterans in St. Clair County. A St. Clair News-Aegis article of Nov. 14, 1991, states that Professor Newton returned to his home state in 1947 and that he spent 37 years in St. Clair County education.

Teaching veterans seems to be the beginning of his education career in St. Clair County, but at some point, he began teaching for Professor Yancy and taught until he became principal and was known as “Professor Newton.”

Thousands of children profited from his teaching and mentoring, and each has a memory, as does his son, Erroll, who spoke for himself and his deceased brothers Lloyd, Jr., and Paul when he said, “To me he was just ‘Dad.’ With me not having a mom, he played both roles, and he did a good job. When we came along, he kind of took the reins off, so to speak. It was like, ‘If you want to advance, I’m setting an example for you. You choose your own way, though.’ He was Dad; that was him to me.” And later he was Granddad to Terrell, Chery, Shawn (deceased) and Ryan and several great-grandchildren.

Margaret Bothwell LeFleur credits her teachers and Professor Lloyd Newton at Ashville Colored High School for much of her own success in teaching. 

“All of our teachers were dedicated,” Margaret recalled. “Mrs. Marcelline Bell taught seventh- through 12^th-grade English. We had textbooks, but we didn’t have a library. But she taught us the Dewey Decimal System even though we had no library to use that knowledge in. However, when I went to Bethune Cookman College, I knew how to use that system in a real library! Our teachers knew what we needed, and they did their best to compensate for the deficiencies.”

Margaret’s dad drove her to Attalla twice a week for piano lessons for there was no Black piano teacher in Ashville. She progressed quickly, and as a seventh-grader played for high school graduation. She accompanied the school choir, which Professor Newton directed. In college she majored in music, which led to her career of teaching music in the schools of St. Paul, Minn.

After Margaret’s mom bought her a typewriter and instruction book, Professor Newton helped her learn typing, and she became an office assistant to him during her high school years.

Eloise Williams remembers Professor Newton as one who “set examples for the kids, and he and the teachers did a good job educating us.” She recalled that he disciplined when misbehavior called for it.

She also knew him as the principal of Ashville Elementary School where her son attended the integrated school. “When the law passed,” she said, “the school had to integrate. Our kids had a hard time. The Whites weren’t used to the Blacks, and the Blacks weren’t used to the Whites. It was new thing for all of them. It didn’t work for a while, but then it smoothed out, and they began to get along with each other.” Mrs. Williams is lovingly known as “Sister Ella” in Ashville today.

Most folk from the 1960s years agree that Professor Newton’s respect by both races, his professional demeanor, and his calm guidance helped ease tensions of integration in Ashville.

When Ruben Yancy ceased being a Black school in 1969, the County Board placed Professor Newton over the elementary grades at Ashville High School (grades K-12) where J. W. “Shag” Richey served as principal. When he moved to the central office of the county board, Mr. Keener became principal of Ashville High School and Professor Newton, principal of Ashville Elementary School, where he served until he retired in 1985.

Jay Richey said of Professor Newton, “He was first class, and a loyal school man to my daddy, and I loved him dearly. Whatever job needed to be done, Mr. Newton did it well.” 

Recalling his father’s career, Erroll added that his “Dad considered Superintendent D.O. Langston a great asset to him” during his administration, and his “faculty members assisted him over the years.” He also mentioned the love of his “endless number of students.”

Professor Newton’s students and teachers hold his memory dear. Maurice Crim started teaching for Professor Newton in 1957 and described him as “a man of integrity who was very supportive of his teachers. There were no problems for we all got along well there.”

“He had a deep booming voice that made you automatically respect him,” student Joy Walker Raysaid. Others, too, recalled his voice and his love of singing.

Glorine Williams became his daughter-in-law when she married Erroll Newton. “Growing up, I remember Mr. Newton coming to my home, and he always talked about the importance of education, attending school and doing your best no matter what. He believed in helping students, and he didn’t show favoritism with anyone. Everyone was treated equal.”

His teachers at Ashville Elementary speak fondly of him. “Mr. J.W. Richey hired me,” recalls Beth Jones, “but Mr. Newton was my first principal. I remember ‘the Professor,’ as Mr. Richey affectionately called him, as a strict father to his teachers. He also had a firm but kind rapport with his students.

“My first year, I had 43 fourth-graders. That year, Mr. Newton reminded me of something very important. The two of us were standing in the hallway at dismissal time, trying to find ways to get poster projects home. There was one last poster with no way to get it home,” she said.

“As a new teacher and taking this lighter than I should, Mr. Newton chided me; for that last poster, even though not the best, demanded the same respect as any other. That poster was his work and important to the child. The child who made it was important. As a young, impressionable teacher, I never forgot Mr. Newton’s words to me, words that colored my entire career.”

Susan Kell also has memories of the professor. “When Mr. Newton came to Ashville elementary, I was teaching first grade. I later became librarian and worked with him until his retirement.

“Mr. Newton cared deeply for the Ashville community, especially the young children of Ashville Elementary. The 1970s were before school nurses, so he took care of the sick and all the playground ‘boo-boos.’ He once removed a tick from a child’s ear.

“This, however, is one of my favorite Mr. Newton stories. There was a disturbance in the lunchroom, so I walked to the table to investigate. I heard, ‘Is too.’ ‘Is not.’ ‘We do.’ ‘Do not.’ I asked, ‘What is the problem?’ and a child replied, ‘We do have a school doctor, and there he is,’ as Mr. Newton walked into the lunchroom.”

“He wore many hats other than principal – teacher, friend, counselor, singer, and yes, medical doctor!”

Professor Newton retired in 1986 and continued his influence in St. Clair County through the Alabama Retired Teachers Association, serving on the Committee for Protective Services, and in service to his church.

As a man of Christian faith, Professor Newton served as deacon and Sunday school teacher at Mt. Zion Baptist in Ashville. Well known for his basso profundo voice, he sang in the church choir and often sang solo.

Combining his love of singing with his love of children, one wonders if when he arrived at the empty school some mornings, he may have voiced the old children’s gospel refrain:

Jesus loves the little children,

All the children of the world,

 Red and yellow, black and white

 They are precious in His sight,

Jesus loves the children of the world.

“Children are the greatest thing in my life,” Professor Newton told Viveca Novak of The Anniston Star, and his loving influence continues in the multitude of lives that he touched in his lifetime.

Professor Newton, St. Clair County thanks you.

One of St. Clair’s oldest churches is still home to many

Story by Joe Whitten
Submitted photos

On Aug. 16, 2020, Macedonia Baptist Church, No. 2, Ragland, celebrated 180 years of faithful spiritual service in St. Clair County. The anniversary celebration occurred on a modest scale because of the current COVID-19 pandemic. The congregation went for regular worship and afterward enjoyed a lunch in the fellowship hall.

The county is home to several churches organized in the early years of both St. Clair County and Alabama.Some churches have surviving records documenting the church’s beginnings, while others have scant information. Over the years, many original minute books met destruction through a house fire where the minutes were stored.

Researchers come face to face with this in researching Macedonia Baptist, No. 2. The official organization date of 1840 is recorded in St. Clair County Baptist Associational meetings, but the year that families began to meet to worship together in the area of Macedonia Mountain lies in the long shadows of two centuries. Furthermore, undocumented published accounts deepen the shadows of the past rather than giving light to them.

In the Daughters of the American Revolution book, Some Early Alabama Churches (Established before 1870) Commemorating the Bicentennial of the United States of America, published in 1973, authors wrote this about Macedonia Baptist: “This church is said to be the oldest church in St. Clair County, and it is thought that it was organized in 1812. It is located in the mountains near Ragland. Records go back to 1840.” However, the authors, Mable Ponder Wilson, Dorothy Youngblood Woodyerd and Rosa Lee Busby, give no documentation for stating this. This is a great frustration to the church and any historian, for someone gave them that information. One can hope that in some old trunk or chest, a forgotten diary or family Bible will come to light to prove the 1812 date.

The Minutes of the St. Clair County Baptist Association for 1932, 1936 and 1942 record 1840 as the official organizational date. The fact is that, as settlers formed communities, families met in homes to worship together. At some point, a circuit-riding minister would come to preach once a month. A desire for a church name and building would burn in the hearts of the group who would petition ministers in the county to help them organize a church. Probably believers worshipped together long before organizing and naming the church Macedonia. The Grizzell and Johnson families are known early members of the church.

The person who gave the 1812 date to DAR also gave a description of the first Macedonia church building. The log structure had no widows. “On the interior of the structure was cube of rocks about three feet long, three feet high, and three feet wide, with a rock shaft going out the side of the building. This was for light when it was necessary to meet a night. Pine knots were burned, giving light, and the smoke went out the shaft. A lean-to that joined onto the building accommodated the slaves.” According to oral history, the first church sat where today stands the pavilion protecting the long “dinner on the ground” tables.

Lela Alverson Grizzell told great-granddaughter Sheila McKinney that a storm destroyed the log structure, but she didn’t give a date for the storm. In a St. Clair News-Aegis article of Oct. 15, 1992, Elise Argo wrote, “The log building was replaced in the early 1900s.” The article indicates Ms. Argo got that date from Brother Archie Maddox, pastor at that time. An up-to-date, wood-frame church replaced the log building, which served the congregation until the present brick structure replaced it in 1948.

In 1956, the church started a building fund to add classrooms. This came to fulfillment in 1965 when the men of the church added two restrooms, a pastor’s study and eight classrooms. In 1985, the men added the fellowship hall with kitchen and dining areas.

The lovely painting gracing the baptistry was done in 1998 by Ken Maddox in loving memory of his mother, Mary Maddox, wife of Brother Archie Maddox.

The original log building served as both church and school according to local family accounts. Shelia McKinney recounted what her great-grandmother, Lela Alverson Grizzell, told of attending the log school.

“The Alverson family settled these hills and valleys, and Lela’s brothers and sisters attended school here,” Shelia recalled. “Lela and her older brothers and sisters walked to school from Macedonia Mountain where they lived. A pond ran over the road, and she told of ice skating on the pond.

“The school had a potbelly stove, and when it rained, they took off their boots and lined them around the stove to dry. They’d wrap their feet in their coats until their feet got warm. Lela said the log church-school blew away in a storm.”

Surviving church minutes of Aug. 20, 1922, show Macedonia as a member of the Coosa Valley Baptist Association, and Rev. Joe Mitchell, pastor, appointing Russell Arnold, Calvin Wood, Henry Johnson, William G. Wilder and J. H. Trammell as messengers to the 1922 meeting. Baptist churches’ messengers represent local congregations and have voting privileges in associational business meetings.

The St. Clair County Baptist Association minutes of the 1929 annual meeting at Broken Arrow Baptist Church, Sept. 14-15, records that “Macedonia No. 2 was received, and the Moderator gave the messengers the right hand of fellowship.” The messengers were M.C. Sagers, H. Johnson, J.S. Bunt and Rosa Jane Bice. Brother Clifford Streety of Pell City was Macedonia’s pastor in 1929.

Macedonia, Ragland, was designated No. 2, and Macedonia, Margaret, No. 1, because the Margaret church had been a member of the association since 1915.

Shelia McKinney, church clerk, has collected church memorabilia and history, some of which is tattered fragments of minutes from the 19^th and early 20^th centuries. As with many old records on paper, deterioration has taken its toll, but those tattered remains are treasures.

Fragments of old minutes record the Church Covenant and Order of Decorum. As with most early Baptist churches, Macedonia practiced church discipline. The purpose was to help members and restore them to fellowship. Common infractions found in most old church minutes show that drinking, swearing and dancing were causes of “being brought before the church” for discipline and restoration.

The cemetery adjacent to the church is one of the older ones in St. Clair County, and as with all old graveyards, some of the oldest graves are marked by large rocks or crosses. The oldest known grave is that of John Chambliss, May 23, 1826 – Jan. 23, 1881. The oldest person buried there is Chesley Phillips, 117 years old, Aug 7, 1810 – Oct. 25, 1927. According to 1890 church minutes, Macedonia began observing Memorial Day at the cemetery “… on Saturday before the 3^rd Sunday in May.” This continues today.

Macedonia’s records show that the Singing Convention often met at the church. Open doors and windows of the church allowed those outside to enjoy the singing going on inside. Newspapers usually announced these events, as shown in this Aug. 12, 1954, St. Clair News-Aegis invitation.

“All-Day Singing, Food Galore, To Be At Macedonia Aug. 15. The Annual all-day singing with dinner on the grounds at noon will be held at Macedonia Baptist Church No. 2 Sunday, August 15. Special singers for the annual event will be Mack Wright and the Victory Quartet, in addition to several others. You are cordially invited to this great day of fellowship,” it reads.

Vacation Bible School week has been another annual event for the church. During the week, children are taught Bible stories and work on crafts or art that correspond with the theme of the week. Several years ago, one of the teachers started the Bible School Quilt, with good results, as shown in the photographs.

Rev. Edwin Talley, pastor of Ragland First Baptist and a former member of Macedonia, said, “I was a member of Macedonia in the early 1980s. It was there that I accepted my calling into the ministry, and there I preached my first sermon. I remained an active member there until I was called to pastor Oak Grove No. 2 in 1986. Macedonia ordained me at the request of Oak Grove. I will always consider Macedonia my home.”

McKinney echoes Talley’s sentiments. When asked for a comment and memory, she replied, “All I can say is, ‘It’s home.’ This was the first church I ever attended. I accepted Jesus in the alter to the right of the pulpit, and I was baptized here. My daughters were saved and baptized here.

“My great-great-grandfather helped organize this church and pastored it. My great-grandparents met and married here. My aunt, Louise Grizzell Sterling, was the song leader for many years, my uncle was a deacon, and my granny taught Sunday school. Following in her footsteps, I also teach Sunday school. Seven generations of my family have attended this church and worked for God here.

“This church – not just the building – the people are my family, and I wouldn’t want to be in any other church – unless God told me to go. I pray that as long as God tarries Jesus’ coming again that my family and I will be here serving God and community to the best of our ability.

“My favorite childhood memory of Macedonia Baptist is learning to recite all 66 books of the Bible in order as they are in the Bible. I was 12 years old, and my granny, Marcene Grizzell, was my Sunday school teacher. Our class had to recite the 66 books in front of the church on a Sunday morning. When we accomplished this, the church gave us our own Bible. I still have mine. My most cherished memory now is that I saw my grandbaby, Katelyn Serenity Byers, dedicated in this church. She is the seventh generation Grizzell descendant attending here.

“I will be buried in the graveyard beside the church with my beloved family members that have gone on before me.”

Brother Bryan Robinson has pastored Macedonia Baptist since 2016. He said, “Macedonia, Ragland, is truly a church that God has ordained to be the church today where we see people saved and baptized even during a COVID-19. This church has seen many wars, the Great Depression and many United States presidents. Over the years, Macedonia’s members have endured many trials and have been victorious through it all. It makes me humble, thankful and truly blessed that God would allow me to help His church go a little further till He comes again. Macedonia members are the salt of the earth. They are a loving, caring and praying people who still use the altar every time the church doors open. I thank God for this church, my church. My wife Sandy and I call it home.” 

Each of these referred to Macedonia as Home. What they express connects perfectly with modern Christian author Philip Yancey’s words, “I go to church as an expression of my need for God and for God’s family.” Such is Macedonia Baptist Church, Ragland, a family of believers who feel at Home in church.