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The Preacher’s Corner
By Rev. Dr. Milton Winter The Sabbath school was first Holly Springs Church  | First church
The “Sabbath School”
building, recently restored and renovated by the Town and Country
Garden Club, was not only the “first” Presbyterian Church in Holly
Springs, it was the first church in Holly Springs. The “Sabbath School”
has been home to church and Sunday school services, as well as Holly
Springs city government offices, including the Chamber of Commerce. The
Town and Country Garden Club is graciously allowing the First
Presbyterian Church to once again meet in the “first” Presbyterian
Church. |
While
our old church is being worked on, we’ve been meeting in the little
building two doors north that belongs to the Town and Country Garden
Club. We are grateful to the club for allowing us to use this space,
for it has a historic connection to our congregation. You see, the
little garden club building was the original Holly Springs Presbyterian
Church! In fact, it was the town’s first church. In
the spring of 1836, about the time that Davey Crockett and General Sam
Houston were fighting at the Alamo, two pioneer settlers at Holly
Springs erected a pole-and-mud cabin at the corner of what is now
Memphis Street and Gholson Avenue and began a Sabbath school. In
this little cabin, on the spot of land where the present Holly Springs
Presbyterian Church now stands, James Elder, a Methodist and a merchant
from Murfreesboro, Tenn., and Robert H. Pattillo, originally of North
Carolina, and a descendant of an old Presbyterian family and the town’s
newspaper editor, began a Sunday school. The founding of the school
preceded formal organization of the town’s churches by several months. The
Elder and Pattillo Sabbath school operated on a plan similar to many on
the frontier, where lay leaders were much more willing than clergy to
cooperate across denominational lines. Indeed, most early Sunday
schools in Mississippi were interdenominational. James Elder joined the
Holly Springs Presbyterian Church when it was organized in December
1836 (a Methodist church was not organized until the following year),
and served as an elder in the church until he moved to Memphis in 1850.
He was a banker in Memphis, serving as a director of what is now the
National Bank of Commerce. R.H. Pattillo was
also an elder in the Holly Springs Church until he moved to Memphis. A
stained glass window in the First Presbyterian Church of Memphis,
Tenn., honors his memory. (Mrs Lyndon B. Johnson of Texas was a
descendant of the Pattillo family.) In 1871 James
Elder recorded memories of the little Sunday school at Holly Springs.
He wrote that: “At an early day myself and Mr. Pattillo, organized a
Sabbath school, perhaps in the beginning of 1836 or 37 — in a little
pole cabin; not a log cabin, for I could not dignify it with that name
(long before we had a church building), which prospered exceedingly,
and finally became one of the most flourishing schools I ever knew.” By
December 1836, with representatives of the Elder and Pattillo Sabbath
school, 20 persons covenanted together to form the First Presbyterian
Church of Holly Springs. The little
pole-and-mud cabin sheltered the first Presbyterian sermons that fell
upon the local settlers’ ears. But the growth of the congregation could
not long be accommodated without a proper church building. This was
erected in 1837, and both the congregation and its little Sunday school
had a home. The 48-foot long, narrow building, said to be the region’s
oldest extant example of “shotgun” architecture, was erected on the
site of the original pole-and-mud cabin, but faced south. The
Sabbath school no doubt profited most from the increased allotment of
space when the Presbyterians turned to build the first brick church in
the county on the north corner of the same block as the little frame
church. This building, occupied in 1848, was used until a still-finer
house of worship (our present church) was erected in 1860. At
this time the congregation re-purchased the lot on the south end of the
block where the little church built in 1837 still stood and moved it to
the center of the block, where it has since been used for secular
purposes, but remains the oldest structure built for religious use in
North Mississippi. (The 1848 building likewise still stands and for
many years housed the Graham Miller Department Store.) So
you can see why we are pleased to worship once more in the little
church and salute our hosts, the Town & Country Garden Club for the
wonderful work of preserving and restoring this building that they have
recently carried out. |
