History of Cloud Springs Church
As told by Reverend Frank Creighton
by Laura Brown in 1952
Transcribed by James M. Dunn Jr.
F.C. Sister Brown, I’d like for you to tell us, if you will,
all that you can about the Cloud Springs Church and of course you know we’re
going to play this back for them one Wednesday night and if you will tell us, I
believe about 1884, that you was telling while ago, when you was 18 year old
that they started the church? Is that right?
L. B. Yes they, they,
that’s when they built it, was in 18, I
joined it, and that’s about when the time they built it. When I joined the
Church. About 82.
F.C. About 82?
L. B. Yes.
F. C. Well, uh, would you tell us who give the land?
L. B. Yes, Mr. Hargraves, I think, was the man that give the
land, then my father (George Washington Kelley) was the one that, he
hauled the lumber and stuff, he built it. When they first built it, they built
it for a school house and then in a little while they commenced having church
services and then it was about, I reckon about, I think about, I was about 22
years old when I joined the church so the rest of em was before that.
F. C. Well, uh, where was the first church building?
L. B. Well, it was built up there, uh, just beyond Cloud Springs on the
left-hand side a’ going yond way.
F. C. In Ft. Oglethorpe, up there, somewhere?
L. B. Up there after you cross that spring branch, you remember Cloud
Springs, all that down below that big hill, it was built on the left hand side,
that was where the church was built. You know they came in, then the government
took the land, why they moved it to where it is now. So then it got burnt down,
and they had to, they built the rock church.
F. C. Do you remember the first pastor’s name?
L. B. Yes, I know the first pastor’s alright, Trotter was the
first pastor.
F. C. Brother Trotter.
L. B. Yeah, brother Trotter.
F. C. You don’t remember what they paid him then do you?
L. B. No, did they, he preached four or five years and then he went off
a few years and they called him back again, but I can say one thing, he was a
good preacher.
F. C. Mrs. Velma Brown was telling us, maybe, that you said
something about at one time they disbanded the church? Is that right?
L. B. No, not that I know of.
F. C. Maybe some of them went to Boynton maybe, and then they come back
and started again, or something like that?
L. B. I don’t know of them ever disbanding after the church was
started. That they ever disbanded and didn’t have no church after Trotter
started the church, why then, they kept on. It was started with fourteen members
when they organized the church.
F. C. What was the first church made out of?
L. B. Well it was made out of lumber, my daddy (George Washington
Kelly) sawed the lumber off of his place and hauled the logs there and built
it. Just a plain boarded-up house, you know. The first one was and then they,
the school, he always didn’t like it about the school, my daddy didn’t, they
didn’t have much fuel, you know, and he knowed to get the folks he always
wanted, three months is all we have and he wanted them to hire the other one and
none of em hardly helped about hiring anybody, or anything like that, and so
after they built the church then they went to having school. That’s what they
built it to have school in but, they soon organized the church in it.
F. C. Say your father (George Washington Kelly) helped build the
church?
L. B. Yes, he’s the one that hauled the timber off a his, he had a
under lease place up, he owned two
farms, you know where that place
is, after, on the right side of log hewn house, well that’s my old home. Then
he owned a farm on the road right there, Park City church, on the fur corner of
it. Well there’s where he hauled the logs from there, and had lumber sawed and
that’s when they all went in and built the church.
F. C. Could you tell us who the fourteen members were?
L. B. Yes, I, yes I could remember all of um. If you want to know it.
F. C. Alright.
L. B. Well my daddy, mother (Amanda L. E. Kelley) and one sister (Gertie Mae Kelley).
F. C. What was your sister’s name?
L. B. Mae.
F. C. She wasn’t the one I met?
L. B. No, she was not down there, she was the first one to confess, she
was the first and then they was Hib Lemons and his wife and then they was
Andy Cain and his wife, well that’s seven and was Mrs. Carver, and her daughter
was nine, and Tom Westbrooks, and his wife was eleven, and let me see if
I can think of the others. Did I say Mrs. Cheek?
F. C. No.
L. B. Well Mrs. Cheek, and I mentioned Jim Windthrop, that
would make twelve, well they’s two more.
F. C. Well maybe you’ll think of them in a few minutes.
F. C. Did ya’ll have Sunday School in those days?
L. B. Well they didn’t have Sunday School until after they organized
the church. Then sometimes we’d go to Union Springs, my father was a Baptist.
F. C. A Methodist, you mean?
L. B. No! He was a Baptist and he wouldn’t believe in the Methodist
way of doing it, he didn’t much want to talk, but he’d let us go sometime.
He come from Burning Bush, he belonged at Burning Bush. He’d take us over
there, but it was so fur to take us, you know, to Sunday School. After they
organized the church, then they was having Sunday School.
F. C. How often would you have church, a month?
L. B. Well, they, we’d have it once a month. For a long time, we’d
have church once a month.
F. C. When did they move the church down to where the church is setting
now?
L. B. Well, I don’t remember, it was when the government took the land
though, you see, the government took the land, and they give ‘em the church,
and they just moved it and put it back down there, but I don’t remember what
year it was.
F. C. I imagine there was some pretty hard times back then?
L. B. Why yes, and then they wasn’t so many members, it started with
fourteen, that’s what it started with. I’ve thought about it a lot of times
about fourteen members, and then after the government took the land why that
moved out, you see, a lot of them, they went back down again, and so my father
was dead, then, and my husband (John Thomas Brown) was put in deacon, and
he was a deacon.
F. C. He’s probably the first deacon wasn’t he? Your father was,
your father did?
L. B. Yes, he come in there deacon, he come in, yeah, and then John was
put in, my husband was a deacon, so ah, he died then but, we keep going, I keep,
I went with the children, and they didn’t have no pastor then, after we got
down there where we didn’t have no pastor, might not get one. Sunday we was
coming on home, I said to John Huff that’s, actually he’s my
brother-in-law, and I said to him what the reason they don’t call a preacher.
He said, ah, we can’t call no preacher cause we ain’t got no deacon. They
all died out. So the next Saturday night I went down home to my father’s and
when I got down there, preacher Fuller I believe you’ve heard of
him.....
F.C. Yes.
L. B. An’ so, he happened to be there and I told him about it and he
told me, you go on back, and you tell em to call em a preacher and elect em some
deacons and go on. So I come on back and told John Huff what he said and
then they went ahead and put in Jess Proctor and Clyde, I think,
as deacons then.
F. C. That’s probably
where I got that a few minutes ago about the church, you know, disbanding, it
didn’t disband. They just got out of a pastor; out of deacons that was the way
it was.
L. B. Yes, yes.
F. C. Then it started growing.
L. B. They still had Sunday School though. Yes, it started growing and
that’s what it grown from. You see that when it started, it started with
fourteen members, well it got back down till it didn’t have many. Then cause
the government moved a lot of them out, and so, so, some of em had died. So
they’s one feller and his sister didn’t attend any more, so it started then
and been a climbing ever since.
F. C. Well, what about preacher Gray, do you remember him?
L. B. I remember him, but I remember all of ‘em, I just can’t.
F. C. What about preacher Ellington?
L. B. Yes, I can remember Ellington better than any of em, cause
he’s the one, they’s several of the hardest hearted boys around here
professed religion when he preached here.
F. C. Can you think of any of them was saved when he was here?
L. B. Yes, they was the Ivy boy, and, ah let me see if I can figure the
other, and Elmond (Elmond Devoe Brown), that boy of mine, ah he had a
change, but he didn’t tell anybody he has, and I’ve tried to get him to join
the church, but he won’t do it, that one that’s mine, but he’s told Edwin
(Clarence Edwin Brown). Edwin told me here not long ago that he’d talked
to him about it, you know, and he told him the same thing he told me, and I told
Edwin I was glad he talked to him,
if he told somebody else about it, and he said he never did feel like going up
no more.
F. C. A Kingston, Preacher Kingston.
L. B. Yes Kingston, he preached, he’s along down towards last.
F. C. That was in 1912.
L. B. 12, Well Lula (Lula Christia Dunn) put ‘em down best she
can remember, but Kingston, she went to school with him, but he made a
right good preacher. He’s kinda slow you know, and he didn’t preach much,
but after he become a deacon, he got pretty good.
F. C. Well, what about Ben Brooks?
L. B. Well, Brooks was a good preacher, I remember him.
F. C. Ludlow?
L. B. Ludlow, yea I remember Ludlow.
F. C. Preacher Hunt?
L. B. Yeah, Hunt, but I might near forgot Hunt. That’s the only one,
though.
F. C. Preacher Newton?
L. B. Well, Newton he come from Rossville. Yeah and he preached
out there, seem to me like he preached one time then they called him back, they
was two of the Newtons.
F. C. Well Charlie Dunn?
L. B. (Chuckle) I remember Him.
F. C. You do? (Laughing) Was he converted at Cloud Springs?
L. B. No Sir, he professed that his folks was all Calvinists and he
professed religion at a tent meeting, they had a tent meeting, he come from up
in Hendersonville, and professed religion up there, and ah, so he boarded our
house, he got to coming, he picked a guitar, he got to coming out there with
Elmond and the children, and so he commence after a while going with Lula, well
I found out he was just honest, I
could tell by they way he wrote and everything, and, ah, he was a good honest boy, and things, and so they, he kept
coming out there, so then a, after he, I told the children he told me about
professing at that meeting, I told the kids, I said, just let him alone, don’t
say nothing, so he got to boarding there then stayed on, after a little while he
joined the church up here, and then he’s got another brother that moved down
here, he joined the Baptist church and he preaches too.
F. B. Now preacher Ludlow, he come back then after brother
Charlie left?
L. B. Yeah, Yeah, he come back.
F. C. Then Preacher Reichle?
L. B. Yes, I remember Reichle alright.
F. C. Then Preacher Mavity?
L. B. Yeah.
F. C. And Cargill?
L. B. Yes Cargill, he was a kinda of an old man, Cargill
was.
F. C. Preacher Blassingame, ain’t that his name?
L. B. Yeah, Blassingame.
F. C. Well he’s dead.
L. C. Yeah.
F. C. Died last year I believe. Well then, there was brother Guy
Rainwater?
L. B. Yeah.
F. C. And then Brother Lumpkin, and then me? (Frank Creighton)
L. B. Yeah, I reckon she’s got em down pretty good.
F. C. I’d like to ask you something else now, about the old church,
you know that burnt down, is that, I imagine that was a shock to all of you,
wasn’t it?
L. B. Well item was they didn’t know how come it to get burnt, you
know, it got burnt one night, didn’t know whether some of em left fire or
something, or what caused it to get burnt.
F. C. Then the new church started then?
L. B. Yeah, they started it.
F. C. I know, I was looking at the record. We have over six hundred
members now, I believe?
L. B. Yeah
F. C. Then started off in1884, started off with fourteen?
L. B. Fourteen members.
F. C. I imagine that it makes your heart rejoice?
L. B. Why, yes that was.
F. C. What your dad and husband and all them, they had it hard, and all
these other preachers, and now today seeing all, seeing one of your boys.
L. B. I think about it lot of times, I got it in my head, I believe the
Lord blesses people that tries to serve, why yes, and course my daddy was
strict, they was eight, eleven children of us but, real strict, he didn’t let us carry on.
F. C. Well I know that maybe after all the heartaches you had, and all
that, and hard times maybe that you had back there, getting the church started,
now when you see two of ya boys singing and then one of them a deacon, and the
other a preacher (Clyde Brown), and then one nephew as a deacon.
L. B. Well, I think about it a lot of times, the Bible says “a promise
is not to the owner its down, its across and down the third and fourth
generation of them that serve” and of course nearly all the grandchildren, now
Thomas’s (Thomas Lydia Brown), I think they all professed, but
there’s one of ‘em didn’t join the church, but might near all the
grandchildren belongs to the church.
F. C. Well, sister Brown, I know this, that whenever that
you’re not there I always miss ya because, I just know that you’ve been a
blessing to this church, and the community, and you’re a blessing to me.
L. B. Well, its been this way about me, I always went, my husband went
as long as what time he lived, and afterwards I just went right on with the
children, and I studied about it a lot of times. I think about people that’s
got boys that grew up, and things like that. I said, I can go to bed and I
don’t have to worry a bit about
them out a drink or nothing like that, and another thing is when children little
that’s when to put things in their head. Yes it is, cause that stays there. I
know by myself, I can go back when I was, when to school in the little old
schoolhouse, and that’s just as fresh in my mind as anything, now I forget
things.
F. C. Well, let’s see, how old did you say you was?
L. B. I’m eighty six. Eighty-seven the last day of this coming July.
F. C. You remember anything about the Civil War?
L. B. No.
F. C. That’s before your time.
L. B. Yeah. All I remember about is was hearing my mother (Amanda L.E.
Kelley) tell about it, she could tell a whole bunch.
F. C. They say they had a tough time.
L. B. Law yes, they, she told about it lotta times, they’s sixty
living children ordered off on Sunday morning when they had the battle right
there in front of, I told you, where we lived, and they lived on that side of
the road then, and they come ordered them off, and they’d done formed they
line of battle, and so they went a little over in towards Mission Ridge. She
said they was sixty living children, and one or two old men went over there, and
now men loaded up an come over there in the field over there where the
Snodgrasses where, she said she was worser scared then.
F. C Course, ya’ll didn’t have electric lights when the church was
built.
L. B. No.
F. C. What did they use?
L. B. Just had lamps. Lamps? Yeah.
F. C. What did you use candles?
L. B. Yes, I think they did at first. Yes, they used to have candles.
F. C. I know they used to tell us about our old church at down home,
they used torches.
L. B. Yeah.
F. C. Torches while they had service at night.
L. B. They used to use candles, and then they got to having lamps.
F. C. I imagine they had some good old shouting meetings back then?
L. B. Oh yes, I reckon they did, the people was afraid to shout.
F. C. You reckon maybe they don’t have much to shout about? Maybe
that’s it.
L. B. May be, I don’t know, but law, I would be up there in the church
study at the old place, I can just remember it as well, they was one night the
preacher come out there and preaching, teaching how he lifted up his eyes being
in torment, on that, and the house was just packed, they was just standing up
across the back, and I know I had,
my sister that’s dead, she shouted that night, and I got up and said “Lord
have mercy on this congregation” at the top of my, hands in a fist.
F. C. Could you tell us where you was at when you was saved?
L. B. Yes, I was there in Cloud Springs old church.
F. C. That was the same place you was just telling us about?
L. B. Yes, and I kept going and going, and I got out of heart, and
you’d get out of heart sometimes, and stay back, and so one day I got up, we
was coming to school, they’s have school there, we was coming to school, and I
got up and went down to the, went to the, mom was ironing, I went down, they was
a branch down in the woods, I just stood there and got to studying about it, and
this thought come down “what can I do? I’m afraid; I’ll just be saved, and
if I’m lost, I’ll just be lost.” Went on back to the house, and went to,
and told my mother, I said I’m not a going up there narry another time, and
she just left it with me to do as I pleased, you know, well I went on that day
and old Brother Loveless preached,
and well it just seemed to me like every word he said was right to me, so when
they made the alter call I didn’t wait a minute I got up, and took the front
seat, and they was a neighbor girl come, and sit down by me, and over in her lap
I went, and they got down and went to praying and all at once just everything
left me, and I never saw a brighter day, or people look, I didn’t make no big
to-do over it or nothing, but it was just so bright and everybody looked just
good.
F. C. What time would ya’ll have meeting at night in those days?
L. B.Well, about eight o’clock I think.
F. C. About dark?
L. B. Yeah.
F. C. That would be about nine our time now.
L. B. Yes, I guess it would.
F. C. We’re on this fast time, you know. Well what time would you
generally get home of the morning then?
L. B. Which a, at night?
F. C. At night?
L. B. Well, sometimes it would be pretty late getting back.
F. C. Twelve or one o’clock, something like that?
L. B. I don’t know if we ever stayed that late, but we’d be eleven
or twelve getting back.
F. C. Well, what about day services, what was about the latest you ever
got in after meeting?
L. B. Well, I don’t hardly remember, sometimes they’d keep later
than they did others, of course if they had penance or anything that way they
might stayed later.
F. C. Well, I know that, They had some good times back in those days. I
imagine you carried your children to church, and put them on pallets too,
haven’t you?
L. B. Yes, Clarence (Clarence Brown) and Clyde (Clyde Brown)
lay on a pallet behind, you know how they made old fashion stands, I don’t
know whether you know or not, but I used to, the way we done we’d put a bed in
the wagon and put a quilt on it and lay our kids in the wagon and then go to
church and take em out, and I’d take my quilt, and make a pallet down. Trotter’s
preached a many time with them laying back there a sleep.
F. C .Go ahead.
L. B. I was just gonna say take ‘em up to home, we had, my husband had
to go, but he’d help me take ‘em out, and he took ‘em and laid ‘em in
the wagon many night, and take ‘em home and put ‘em to bed, they’d never
wake up.
F. C. I imagine they’d be lots of them laying around on the floor
though wouldn’t they?
L. B. Why yeah, they’d go to sleep and on benches.
F. C. People get to shouting and I never seen ‘em step on one of them
yet. Have you?
L. B. No.
F. C. I imagine, if you could, you’d probably live those day over
again, wouldn’t you?
L. B. Well, I wouldn’t regret it.
F. C. Un huh.
L. B. But, I tell ‘em I’m satisfied, and of course about my kids, I
don’t have to worry about them. I know they’re alright, and course Edgar (Edgar
Brown) had a spasm when he was little, and that kinda eat at him a little.
He never could learn at school, and then he was full of mischief too.
F. C. He’s still full of mischief ain’t he?
L. B. Why yeah, like that red-headed man’s woman, she asked me up
there one day, I hadn’t went, but
about two or three times after she come up, and she slipped up and asked me,
something about kids, or something that away. I told her , I said, I had seven
boys, I’d raised seven boys and two girls, and she said, “ well, how do you
raise ‘em?” I said “well, my daddy raised me with a principle in me and I
tried to put it in mine too,” and I said, “He used to come my house when
they’s little an say, “now Laura, you’ll have to put the switch on them
boys even if you think you can raise ‘em up yourself”. She wanted to know if
I’d done it, I told her, “yes, if they needed it.”
F. C. Don’t you think Clarence might of done a little bit better if
you’d a whooped him a little bit more?
L. B. He might, I didn’t grow
up to mischief, it’s just him, yes, he was, when they was little, they was
just as full of mischief as they could be. It’s a wonder, I’ve thought about
it a lotta times about how they learned the Bible and things like that.
F. C. It’s amazing, it really is.
L. B. Why yes! Why they was just as mischievous as they could be, and
Clyde was hateful about the water, I used to go up the neighbor’s house, and
they’s a branch along the road, and I’d be a toating him when he was a baby,
and I’d try to get him to come home, and stood around an hour, and I said,
“If I have to come back after you, I’ll give you a whipping.”
F. C. What, playing in the water?
L. B. Yes, stop at the branch and play.
F. C He even had a little badness in him back then, didn’t he?
This will prove a blessing to the people, when we play it back to them,
and I appreciate you giving us this information, I really do, and it’s been a
blessing to me since I been at Cloud Springs. God has wonderfully blessed us,
and I hope I get to stay here many more years, and I hope that you live to be a
hundred years old, and I get to eat dinner with you on that day, I really do.
L. B. What they’ll say down there sometimes about being a hundred
years, I told em I wasn’t scared about living till I was a hundred years old.
F. C. Well, Thank you very much.
This is Brother Creighton (Frank
Creighton), speaking again, This tape you just heard was made in nineteen
hundred and fifty three, and Aunt Laura Brown was of course eighty six years of
age, and oh, what a memory she has, and what a sweet person she was. What a
blessing she was, and then the children that she spoke of, spoke of there, and
also the ah, her son-in-law, which was Brother Charlie Dunn, a preacher
of the gospel of Jesus Christ. All of those that she mentioned there of her
children and her son-in-law, they have gone to be with the Lord, and I
appreciate Sister Brown I appreciate those, Aunt Sally Brown, Mrs. Velma
Brown that’s still living, God blesses their hearts, such a blessing to
us, but also I’d like to say that, I stayed at Cloud Springs four years, from
fifty one to fifty five, and then I was gone nine years but to bring you up to
date the preachers up to this and so since then, when I left Cloud Springs in
fifty five, they called Brother Roy Arwood as pastor, and then Brother Arwood
left they called Brother Leroy Perry as pastor. After Brother Perry
left they called Brother Bamann Cate as pastor, and after Bamann left
they called Brother Ed Kelley and he stayed until nineteen and sixty four
whenever they called me back. After nine years, after I was at New Liberty six
years, at Green Street in Dalton for three years, they called me back to Cloud
Springs in nineteen sixty four, at which I stayed until nineteen eighty.
December nineteen eighty we resigned as pastor at Cloud Springs after sixteen
years. Ttwenty glorious years as pastor of the Cloud Springs Baptist Church.
Then they called Brother Woody Lee who is pastor there now. On the fourth
Sunday in June they will have, they will be observing the one hundredth birthday
of Cloud Springs Baptist Church.