Maternal Kin, Migration, Newspaper Articles, North Carolina, Vocation

Ardeanur, elocutionist.

Pittsburgh Courier, 2 June 1928.

This brief blurb intrigues me any number of ways:

(1) Ardeanur R. Smith? This is the first I’ve seen of a middle initial for Cousin Ardeanur.

(2) Smith? My grandmother said Ardeanur married somebody she ran off with when she was a teenager. However, every mention of her I’ve found dating before 1947 — and she is elusive in official records — names her as Smith, her maiden name. In her uncle John McNeely’s 1947 obituary, she’s a Hart for the first time. I have no idea what Mr. Hart’s first name was, where they married, or how long they stayed that way.

(3) Elocution? This may absolutely be a function of me failing to ask the right questions, but, as much as I heard about Wardenur playing the organ on the radio, I never heard my grandmother speak of Ardeanur’s singing or speaking career.

(4) And who was Ardeanur’s publicist that he or she managed to get her name and photo in the Pittsburgh Courier? And not for the last time.

(5) Staten Island?

(6) “Where a balcony fell at the closing session”?!?!?

Maternal Kin, Paternal Kin, Religion, Vocation

Where we worked: men and women of the cloth.

Joseph Silver, near Enfield NC – husband of Sarah Henderson Jacobs Silver; founder of Plumbline Holiness Church, 1893; organizer of the United Holiness Church of America (see Estrelda Alexander, Black Fire: One Hundred Years of African American Pentacostalism); 1890s-1958. [Said my grandmother: Mama got married there on Elba Street, there at the house. Yeah. Reverend Silver was a little short brown-skinned man, and he was a elder and the head of the church where was down there in Halifax County.]

Graham Allen, Charles City County VA – Baptist minister, circa 1880?-1928.

Jonah Williams, near Eureka NC – Baptist minister; pastor of Turner Swamp Primitive Baptist Church and other small churches between Wilson and Goldsboro NC; circa 1890?-1915.

William H. Henderson, Goldsboro NC – minister, ??-1950s.

Larry R. Artis, Washington DC – minister, Sharon Baptist Church, 9^th Street between U and Barrett Place NW, circa 1917.

Sarah Henderson Jacobs Silver, Wilson NC – Holiness evangelist, 1920s-1938.

Ruffin C. Carroll, Goldsboro NC — preacher, 1920s.

Kinchen C. Holt, Greensboro NC – husband of Vera Baker Holt; African Methodist Episcopal minister; Presiding Elder, Greensboro District, 1924; circa 1900?-1940.

Joseph Aldridge, Goldsboro NC — minister, ??-1930s.

Joseph L. Aldridge, Dayton OH — United Methodist minister.

Elias Lewis “E.L.” Henderson, Eureka NC — founder of Saint Mark Church of Christ, Saulston NC.

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The ninth in an occasional series exploring the ways in which my kinfolk made their livings in the 19th and early 20th centuries.

Maternal Kin, North Carolina, Photographs, Religion

Church home, no. 7: Center Street African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church, Statesville NC.

My grandmother: She was a great Methodist. And she would come down occasionally to go to church, you know. Have on all them taffeta skirts, and they were shirtwaisted skirts, you know. And she was pretty, honey. Have you ever seen any of her pictures?

And another time:

Where did they have that funeral? They must have brought her down and had her in, at the Methodist Church in Statesville. She belonged there. She would come Saturday, get up Sunday morning, honey, and put on those taffeta skirts with those pretty blouses and lace all down the front and ‘round there.

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I had not planned to go to Sunday School. I was on my way home for Christmas and stopped in Statesville just to look for Harriet Nicholson Hart‘s church. I suspected that Center Street AME Zion Church was the same as Mount Pleasant AMEZ, which still meets, but my internet search was inconclusive.

The morning was dreary and chilly when I pulled into a space across from the church. I had snapped a couple of shots with my phone when I saw a woman step from an SUV in the parking lot. “Excuse me,” I called. “I’m looking for Center Street AMEZ.” She tilted her head toward the church behind me. “This is it,” she said. “It’s called Mount Pleasant now.” I explained that my family had been members of the church a hundred years before and my great-great-grandmother had been funeralized there in 1924. We chatted for a couple of minutes, and after asking if I might peek inside, I followed her through a side door — straight into Sunday School.

A junior pastor was addressing a small gathering of adults, and I — acutely conscious of my jeans and hoodie — took a seat just inside the door. As he spoke on the necessity to reach out to youth, I discreetly glanced around. In the nave, dully gleaming brass organ pipes stretched nearly wall-to-wall. At the back of the sanctuary, a large arched tripartite stained glass window brightened the pews. At an opportune time, I introduced myself and expressed my joy at joining in a service at a church that had been so important to my family at one time. “What were their names?” “Nicholson and Colvert and Hart,” I said, “and other family lived in the neighborhood. My great-aunt was Louise Colvert Renwick.” There were nods of familiarity and expressions of welcome.

I slipped out before too long and paused again as I reached my car to gaze back at the building. A woman hurried around the side of the church, calling out for me to wait. She was the pastor’s wife and she had a small gift — a card and a CD of hymns. “Thank you for visiting,” she said. “We’re so glad you found us.”

Mount Pleasant AMEZ Church today, corner of South Center and Garfield Streets.

Center Street AMEZ Church, Sanborn map of Statesville, 1918.

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Scuffalong: Genealogy.

Tag Archives: AME Zion

Ardeanur, elocutionist.

Where we worked: men and women of the cloth.

Church home, no. 7: Center Street African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church, Statesville NC.