Religious Geneaology

 Center Point Church, Scottown, OH

In this blog, I've explored my genealogy through the lenses of the Revolutionary War, slavery, and religious heritage. Along the way I encountered a story about religious roots that I am uncovering. As settlers moved from Virginia into Ohio and beyond they took with them their deep religious convictions. 

Where settlers went they established places of worship. The building pictured above is one my second Great Grandfather, Lewis Rose, helped construct. Another of my Great Grandfathers (4th), Timothy Bates, was partially responsible for the establishment of the Mount Ephraim Church. 

 The Mount Ephraim church building was built in 1839. It is currently a United Methodist church, but it started its life as a Christian church with the roots in the Restoration Movement led in part by Alexander Campbell.

Growing up worshipping at a church of Christ, I was familiar with religious leaders like Campbell. I remember at least one focused study on the topic of the Restoration Movement in a bible class. In my twenties, I discovered copies of The Christian Baptist. I read them with fascination, struck by both the similarities and differences between Campbell’s spiritual insights and the church fellowship that emerged from his influence. 

With that background the religious intersection of Timothy Bates and Alexander Campbell seeded my current diversion. 

Timothy came to the Guernsey/Noble region of Ohio with his father, Ephraim. Timothy was counted as residing in Guernsey, OH in the US Census from 1820 until 1850. Ephraim had been influenced by a Presbyterian minister named Jacob Green, in New Jersey.  That influence likely included Jacob's abolitionist views and may have influenced Ephraim to move to a free territory. (Some who were in that region of Ohio were involved in the Underground Railroad, but all of their identities and cooperative associations have been lost to time.)

Alexander Campbell spent most of his life in Brooke, Virginia (now WV). But sometime after he married his second wife in 1828 but before the 1840 Census he resided in Guernsey, OH. By the 1850 Census he was back in Brooke, Virginia. Around 1840 was right around the time the church building was being constructed in Mount Ephraim.

Given Alexander's association with the Restoration movement, the construction of the Mount Ephraim church structure in 1839, Timothy's association with the Christian church movement, and Timothy and Alexander both residing in Guernsey, OH in 1840 - it is reasonable to conclude they interacted considerably.

What interaction that must have included! It was enough to convict Timothy to align with the restoration cause. How did those conversations impact Alexander's views on slavery? Certainly, he had no slaves in 1840 while in Ohio - but in the 1860 census he owned a 9-year-old girl.  The circumstance of that ownership is not known. It may have been an undesirable situation for him that he found himself involved with. After all, in 1829 and 1830 he was recorded as advocating in the Virginia Constitutional Convention for gradual emancipation of slavery. Clearly, while seemingly simple to us today, it was complicated.

Slavery question aside, the likely association of Alexander Campbell with Timothy Bates provides an unbroken connection of a portion of my family from the Second Great Awakening down to Timothy's great granddaughter Wilma Moore Rose. 

My father talked of the significant influences of his grandmother, Wilma, on his spiritual journey.  He remembered fondly worshipping with his grandmother, Wilma, in a small building they called Wilma's Chapel, built for his great grandmother, Willamina Moore, by her sons in the hills surrounding Crown City, OH.

My father, in turn, influenced my brothers and me to continue in the restoration spirit to become independent thinking Bereans, that is, "receiving the word with all readiness of mind, and searching the scriptures daily, whether those things were so." My brother, today, serves as a minister of a church in Tuscaloosa, AL that still holds to the principles of continuous restoration. 

Though Paul was addressing a different context, his words beautifully capture the spirit of Continuous Restoration -

 “Not that I have already obtained all this, or have already arrived at my goal, but I press on to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me. Brothers and sisters, I do not consider myself yet to have taken hold of it. But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus.” Philippians 3:12-14

Genealogy (and history, in general) reminds us so vividly if we listen that life is composed of individual journeys, interactions, decisions, and contradictions that affect others who are distant from us in space and time. Choices matter!  We seldom have the prescience to know exactly how.