My father and mother’s descendants, now numbering more than 60, are almost all Baptists and not members of some other Protestant denomination purely by chance. This is how it happened, according to my oldest sister, Marge.
“I grew up in a home with a non-church attending father and a Catholic mother who believed church was important for the well-being of her children, even though she was not attending her own church.”
In 1929 mother returned from California with their three children and the family moved to a house Dad built at 1023 Hoke Street in East Gadsden, AL. They would have four more children by 1942.
“An early recollection of our new home in Alabama was our first Sunday when my mother insisted that my father take us to church,” Marge said.
“My brother [John] and sister [Jane] and I climbed into the back of the panel truck. My father stopped at a drug store for the Philadelphia Inquirer (which had a thousand funny papers, as I remember) and then parked at the first church he came to, East Gadsden Baptist Church. My father sat outside and read while we were in Sunday School.”
Our father had been raised a Methodist so why didn’t he take the children to a Methodist Church? Because East Gadsden Baptist was closer, only about two miles from their home.
Our Mother had been raised a Catholic so why didn’t she take the children to Mass? Because the Catholic Church had kicked her out for marrying my father, a divorced man.
In the late 1930’s or early 1940’s, Jane said, mother was baptized and joined East Gadsden Baptist Church. She was active in Women’s Missionary Union and other aspects of church life and, according to her obituary, church deacons were honorary pall bearers at her funeral in June, 1947.
Coming Friday: What’s For Supper