BLOG ARCHIVE
Roots of Bellefonte’s African Methodist Episcopal Church
Part 3: 1888-1901
Philip Ruth, Research Coordinator
January 22, 2025
At the October 1887 annual meeting of the AME Church’s Pittsburgh Conference, J.J. Norris—the St. Paul AME congregation’s accomplished pastor since November 1884—was assigned to the Connellsville Circuit, over which his predecessor John M. Palmer would serve as Presiding Elder from a base in Uniontown.[1] St. Paul secretary William Mills noted that Norris had baptized 24 persons—most of them young children—during his three-year tenure in Bellefonte. Among the baptized were Mills’ children Harry and Hattie, assistant pastor Charles Garner Sr.’s infant son James Blain Garner, and three Auman children (Henry, Herbert, and Bertie) whom Mills characterized parenthetically as “white.” On only one subsequent occasion would Mills characterize a St. Paul AME baptizee as “white” (on February 17, 1895; details to follow).
Pastorate of Charles H. Brown (November 1877–October 1890)
Charles H. Brown replaced J.J. Norris in the fall of 1887. “The Rev. C.H. Brown” (as he was formally known) had been a minister in the AME Church’s Pittsburgh Conference for at least several years, serving in West Middleton, Washington County, in 1884-85, then in Bradford, McKean County, in 1886-87.[2],[3] During his three-year pastorate in Bellefonte (1887-1890), Pastor Brown would see the borough’s Black population approach its numerical peak of approximately 200 persons. (The number of Black Bellefusians circa 1890 can only be estimated, because the complete set of Centre County census data recorded in 1890 was destroyed with many other records in a 1921 fire in a Washington, D.C. repository. Some Centre County data—not including racial descriptors—were published later in 1890 in a County-wide business directory.[4] Census data recorded in 1880 and 1900 included racial descriptors, and are thus useful for deducing which residents listed in the 1890 business directory had been identified as Black in the 1890 census enumeration.)
Membership in the St. Paul AME congregation appears to have hovered in the low-to-mid 50s during Pastor Brown’s tenure, as it had since the late 1870s. This is evidenced by lists of Dollar Money contributors published annually during the 1890s in minutes of annual sessions of the AME Church’s Pittsburgh Conference. The number of St. Paul AME members contributing to the financial support of their pastor and the work of the Conference topped out at 53 in 1890, as recorded in the following entry in 1890 Conference session minutes:
St Paul, Bellefonte. Pa.—Rev. C.H. Brown, Pastor.
The following persons paid one dollar each: Sarah F. Wilson, Mary Pennington, Margaret Powel, Tillie Dorsey, Lucy Stewart, Goin Thomas, Mariah Green, Emma Green, Caroline Monroe, Adaline Lawson, Alfred Stewart, Peter Jones, Louisa Dunlap, Mary Ann Gilmore, Mary A. Johnson, Martha Jones, Thamazine Pennington, Annie Brown, George Brown, Emma Hamer, Jessie Green, Katie Miller, Mary Miller, Sarah E. Graham, Thamazine McDaniels, Katie Derry, James Carter, William Potter, A.V. Jackson, Kate Wellington, Robert H. Nelson, L. Wm. Lee.
Nettie Palmer paid 60 cents.
The following persons paid 50 cents each: Benjamin Williams, Celia Williams, Charles Green, Mary Garner, J. Malisa Garner, Wm. H. Mills, Celia Mills, Anna Miller, Hellen Mills, Lettie Carter, Charles Garner, Sr., John Emry, Alice Emry, Robert Randolph, Alonzo Potter.
The following paid 25 cents each: Moses Jackson, Carrie Mills, Albert Washington, Joseph Mayhew, William Green. Total, $41.35.[5]
Assistant pastor Charles Garner Sr. was among the Dollar Money contributors in 1890, as were his wife Mary and eldest daughter Julia Melissa. The absence from the list of the eight younger Garner children suggests they had not officially joined the church, but no doubt helped fill St. Paul’s pews on Sunday mornings. Their father’s leadership in the congregation was occasionally noted in newspaper accounts of church activities during the latter 1880s. In July 1887, for instance, Charles Sr. reportedly addressed the congregation during “a memorial meeting [marking] the recent death of Bishop James A Shorter.” The service of remembrance for the man who had pastored Bellefonte’s young AME congregation 39 years earlier included “an excellent address by the pastor Rev. Norris eulogizing the late Bishop,” followed by shorter homilies from A.V. Jackson, Luther Calvin Green, and William H. Mills; “essays” presented by Nettie Palmer and Tamazine Williams McDonald; and “choice music for the occasion rendered by a talented choir.”[6]
Charles Garner Sr. served as assistant pastor to C.H. Brown throughout the latter’s three-year pastorate. On a Thursday evening in late July 1889, the two clergymen officiated at the wedding in the St. Paul AME Church of 28-year-old, Virginia-born hotel waiter Calvin Pifer and Rosa (“Rosie”) Williams, the 20-year-old daughter of Isaac and Sarah Jane Williams (making her a granddaughter of “Uncle John” and Mary Williams). “A large assemblage filled the A.M.E. Church to witness the ceremonies,” the Democratic Watchman reported a few days later. “To the sound of the wedding march, the bride and groom, supported by their respective bridesmaids and groomsmen, entered the church, the bride wearing a handsome cream-colored dress and her attendants, Miss Nettie Wilson and Miss Helen Mills, were tastefully attired in blue and pink. The groomsmen were Mssrs. Quinn Mills and William Green. . . . A reception was given by Mrs. Levi Pennington [Tamazine Williams Pendleton], sister of the bride. The wedding presents consisted of many handsome and useful articles.”[7]
Toward the close of C.H. Brown’s tenure in Bellefonte, he and his assistant pastor welcomed African Methodist Episcopalians from across the region to a protracted gathering in the “church on the hill.” The multi-day conclave in early August 1890 was the “11th annual session of the Eastern District of the A.M.E. Sunday School convention of the Pittsburg conference” (as named in a Democratic Watchman report[8]). Pastors Brown and Garner were assisted on the occasion by veteran minister Benjamin F. Wheeler (then stationed in Williamsport), as well as 31-year-old Altoona AME pastor Ishmael B. Till. Wheeler was promptly elected president of the Sunday school organization for the following year, and Till was voted in as vice president. St. Paul’s own Quinn W. Mills, the 20-year-old son of William and Cecilia Mills, was elected treasurer. Two of Quinn’s fellow parishioners were appointed to subcommittees: Katie Miller, the well-spoken daughter of Thomas and Rosanna (Delige) Miller, was placed on the Resolutions Committee, while bank watchman Abram Valentine Jackson was assigned to the Finance Committee.[9]
At the session’s first evening meeting, kicked off at 7:30 p.m. on Tuesday, August 5, bachelor barber Quinn Mills rose “after song and prayer” and “made an address of welcome to the delegates of the convention, which was received with much applause,” the Tyrone Daily Herald reported a couple of days later. The Rev. Till then “made the response to Mr. Mills’ eloquent address. This was followed by music by the choir. Rev. C.H. Brown then addressed the convention, his subject being ‘How Can We Best Promote the Life and Efficiency of the Sunday School?’ The response was made by the Rev. Charles Garner, of Bellefonte. This was followed with music by the choir, benediction and adjournment, to meet at 9 o’clock Thursday morning.”[10]
A few months after the Sunday School convention, C.H. Brown and his partners on the Pittsburgh Conference’s Committee on Sunday Schools reported to the Conference’s 23rd Session their satisfaction with “the steady progress of the Sunday Schools of the Pittsburg [sic] Conference, and the increased interest taken in the two district Sunday School Conventions.” Later in that October 1890 Session, Pastor Brown received an appointment to the Bethel AME congregation in Meadville. That meant swapping places with Meadville’s most recent minister: the Rev. Samuel C. Honesty.[11] Honesty’s appointment to the Bellefonte Circuit meant he would also be responsible for pastoring the small Lock Haven congregation.[12]
Pastorate of Samuel C. Honesty (November 1890–October 1894)
The eldest child of parents formerly enslaved in Virginia and Maryland, S.C. Honesty had been born and raised 18 miles north of the Mason-Dixon Line, in southwestern Pennsylvania’s Fayette County. He had married Annabel Terrell, the daughter of free-born Brownsville barber Nelson Terrell in the late 1860s, then begun raising a family with her in his parents’ home.[13] While making a living as a day laborer, he became a lay leader in Brownsville’s AME congregation. Sometime after the summer of 1875 (when he was elected secretary of the AME Pittsburgh District’s Sunday School Convention), he was ordained to ministry in the Pittsburgh District.[14] His subsequent postings included two-year stints in Clarksburg, West Virginia, and Youngstown, Ohio, followed by a one-year appointment in Meadville, where he immediately impressed a newspaper reporter as “a good pulpit orator and a pleasant gentleman to meet.”[15] He appears to have been a widower by the time he moved to the Centre County seat in November 1890; the only member of his large family recorded in Bellefonte during Pastor Honesty’s four-year ministry in the borough was his teenage daughter Gertrude.[16]
Charles Garner was available to assist St. Paul’s new senior pastor for only a few months. Early in 1891 the junior pastor began focusing his attention on the fledgling AME congregation in Tyrone, a two-hour train ride down the Bald Eagle Valley from Bellefonte. Among Charles’ first recorded ventures in Tyrone was serving as chaplain for the “reorganized Charles Sumner Literary Society,” a group “of the colored people of our town,” meeting weekly starting in February 1891.[17] Charles’ frequent visits to Tyrone turned into full-time residence in late March when he “accepted a call to administer to the spiritual welfare of the Tyrone A. M. E. congregation and departed for his station on Tuesday evening, [March 31],” the Democratic Watchman reported. “Recognized as one of the leading colored men of [Bellefonte],” Charles “was given quite an ovation on the afternoon of his departure.”[18] The St. Paul AME alumnus would pastor the Tyrone AME congregation for five years, then serve congregations in the Bedford-Everett Circuit, the Lock Haven-Jersey Shore Circuit, and the Montrose Circuit (covering Susquehanna, Lackawanna, and Luzerne Counties), before landing in Danville—the Montour County seat, and the hub of the Pittsburgh District’s Bloomsburg Circuit—in 1902. Charles would pastor AME congregations in Danville and Bloomsburg for the remaining 23 years of his life.[19]
Perhaps at the direction of new pastor S.C. Honesty, St. Paul secretary William H. Mills sat down with a blank ledger book on March 9, 1891, and filled its first few pages with essential details of the congregation’s pastors and lay leaders beginning in 1876—unaccountably skipping the period 1881-1890. Leaving room for subsequent entries in that initial section, the veteran barber and church leader then marked off sections further back in the ledger for the recording of member births, deaths, baptisms, and marriages. Mills would enter data in his ledger—the earliest known systematic recording of vital statistics for Bellefonte’s AME congregation—over the course of the remaining 40 years of his life.[20]
In commencing the “Baptisms” section, secretary Mills apparently had access to earlier documentation, as he was able to list the names of 24 individuals baptized by Pastor Norris “from October 27, 1884 to September 24, 1887,” followed by 32 persons baptized by Pastor C.H. Brown “from December 19, 1887 to September 30, 1890.” Mills had probably witnessed some of those baptisms, and may well have been present for most of those conducted by new pastor Honesty through the following four years: 12 in 1891, none in 1892, 2 in 1893, and 4 in 1894. Eight of Honesty’s 18 baptizees were adults, and were thus required to enter a post-baptism “probationary period of reflections under the special care of a class leader assigned by the pastor before being read into the church as full members.”[21],[22] As reflected in St. Paul ledger entries, probationary periods could last anywhere from several months to several years.
Only once did William Mills enter into his ledger a list of the congregation’s “Full Members.” Comprising the names of 38 persons “in full communion in St. Paul’s A.M.E. church” as of January 1, 1891, the tally identified George Brown, James Carter, George Derry, Katie Derry, Charles Garner, Mary A. Gilmore, Charles Green, Emma Green, L.C. [Luther Calvin] Green, Mariah Green, A.V. Jackson, Moses Jackson, Nanie Jackson, Mary A. Johnston, Peter Jones, Adeline Lawson, Tami McDonell [Tamazine McDonnell], Annie Miller, Katie Miller, Thomas Miller, Carrie Mills, Louisa Mills, William Mills Sr., R.H. Nelson, Nettie Palmer, Mary Pennington [Pendleton], Tami Pennington [Tamazine Pendleton], Calvin Piper, Margaret Powell, Tamer Reynolds, Amelia Stevenson, Alfred Steward, William Steward, Rachel Taylor, Gowen Thomas, Benjamin Williams, Celia Williams, and Sarah F. Willson.[23]
On March 9, 1891, Pastor Honesty appointed five of those church members—George Brown, Charles Green, A.V. Jackson, William Mills Sr., and Thomas Taylor—to serve as congregational “stewards.” The men formed a pastoral cabinet responsible for managing the congregation’s finances, helping the pastor minister to members in need, supporting outreach, and serving as liaisons between the congregation and its pastor. A few weeks after the steward appointments, the congregation elected a new slate of trustees whose primary responsibility would be maintaining the congregation’s physical property. Four of the appointees (Brown, Jackson, Mills, and Taylor) were already serving as stewards. William Mills Sr. was appointed secretary for both groups. As he would note later in his ledger, a group of “stewardesses” was organized as early as January 1894. In that month Pastor Honesty appointed nine women of the congregation to a board responsible for assisting him and the stewards with physical arrangements for preaching, baptisms, weddings, funerals, celebrating the Lord’s Supper, and other services.[24]
All hands were on deck for the St. Paul congregation in mid-April 1892 as clergymen and lay leaders from across the AME Church’s Pittsburgh District descended on Bellefonte for a multi-day conference, the business of which appears to have gone unreported in central Pennsylvania newspapers. The hometown Democratic Watchman reported little more than “eleven meetings were held [over four days beginning on Tuesday morning, April 18] and St. Paul’s church was well filled at every one.” When “adjournment was made last night [Friday, April 21], the members present had accomplished much work of importance and felt that they could return to their congregations much better for the time they had spent in communion with each other.” The affair brought former St. Paul pastors Charles Garner Sr. and J.J. Norris back to the Centre County seat, where they no doubt renewed old ties.[25]
Pastor Honesty represented the St. Paul congregation at a large interdenominational Christian assembly in Bellefonte the following February (1893). According to a Democratic Watchman report, the day-long gathering was the “first annual convention of the Christian Endeavor societies of Centre county,” held in the borough’s Presbyterian chapel amid “disagreeable weather.” The event drew “a great white ribboned army of arduous young workers recently mustered from every corner of our land” (points identified later in the article as Gatesburg, Rock Spring, Oak Hall, Lemont, State College, Howard, Milesburg, Martha Furnace, Julian Furnace, and Unionville, in addition to Bellefonte). S.C. Honesty made his formal contribution during the afternoon session, representing the Prayer-Meeting Committee. Preceded by an “Address of Welcome” by Bellefonte Presbyterian pastor William Laurie, a meditation on “Our Motto, ‘For Christ,’” offered by Miss Martha E. Shortlidge of Bellefonte, and a report on the state of “Look-Out Committees” from Centre County Secretary John Foster, Pastor Honesty presided over a “Free Parliament” (a session of free-ranging debate and voting) on the topic of prayer meetings. The Rev. William H. Blackburn, pastor of Bellefonte’s United Brethren Church, followed with a “Talk on Temperance Work” before the “afternoon meeting concluded with reports from the Societies, all of which were exceedingly flattering.”[26]
On Tuesday, September 30, 1894, in the final month of his pastorate in Bellefonte, Pastor Honesty baptized two adults and one child in the St. Paul AME Church. They were the last three of 18 persons baptized by Honesty during his four-year tenure in the Centre County seat. The baptized child was Amelia DuBois (William Mills spelled the surname “Duboice” in his ledger).[27] She had just been born to barber Thomas DuBois and his wife Minnie (née Welch).[28] Thomas had come to Bellefonte in 1888 and opened “his elegant tonsorial parlors in the Crider block, next door to the First National Bank,” as advertised in the Centre Democrat. In setting out his shingle as an “expert and polite manipulator of the razor and scissors,” the “genial and accomplished DuBois” followed in the footsteps of St. Paul members Meshic Graham, William Mills, A.W. Bond, George Skinner, Quinn Mills, and Joseph Mayhew.[29] The latter had seen his son James Mayhew baptized by J.J. Norris nearly a decade earlier, and his wife Edith (daughter of G.G. Skinner) and daughter Nettie baptized by Pastor Honesty more recently (as noted in William Mills’ ledger).[30] Census records indicate that barbering was the only occupation pursued by Black men in and around Bellefonte during the nineteenth century that afforded practitioners an opportunity to own and operate their own business. Black barbers catered to an exclusively white clientele by day, recognizing that white customers were reluctant, if not adamantly opposed, to patronizing shops where African Americans were served (for more on that phenomenon, see Cutting Along the Color Line by Quincy T. Mills; University of Pennsylvania Press, 2013).
Minutes of the 27th Session of the AME Church’s Pittsburgh Conference, held in Wheeling, West Virginia, during the first week of October 1894, included the following report on the state of the “Bellefonte Station”: “This is an old church and it retains its position in the front ranks of the churches in the Conference. Rev. Samuel C. Honesty, the pastor, has served this station four consecutive years. Signal progress and prosperity have attended his labors. Brother Honesty is a scholarly Christian gentleman and will leave behind him many pleasant recollections of kindnesses done and services rendered.” Honesty was set to leave Bellefonte following his appointment to the Braddock Circuit, comprising the Bradford and Homestead congregations on either side of the Monongahela River east of Pittsburgh.[31]
Pastorate of Henry A. Grant (November 1894–October 1896)
S.C. Honesty was replaced in the fall of 1894 by Henry Albert Grant, often referenced in newspaper articles as “the Rev. H.A. Grant.” Like his immediate predecessor, Grant had been born and raised free in antebellum Fayette County, more specifically in the County seat of Uniontown. By the time he turned 27 in 1876, Grant had married, become a father, been ordained to the ministry in the AME Church, and was ministering at the Brown AME Chapel of Allegheny in Pittsburgh.[32],[33] Two years later he moved to West Elizabeth to pastor a fledgling congregation meeting in that city’s Quinn Chapel. He had already developed a reputation for being a clergyman “unsurpassed as a natural singer, and whose talents both as a preacher of the word and remarkable vocalist, rendering the sacred songs with thrilling effect” (as reported in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette[34]). After serving briefly in 1880 as pastor of an AME congregation in Washington, Pennsylvania, Grant yielded to his Baptist wife’s urging to trade Methodist Episcopalianism for membership in the Baptist Church, then launch a new ministry as a traveling Baptist evangelist.[35],[36] During his three-year career as an evangelist, Grant supported himself by barbering.[37] He reunited with the AME Church in February 1883, and six months later the Pittsburgh Conference restored his “local preacher’s license” and posted him to an AME church in Warren, Ohio.[38] After falling out with AME leaders in Ohio and having his license suspended again, Grant returned to southwestern Pennsylvania and his barbering occupation. His conduct in the Mon Valley over the next few years was such that his “pulpit privileges” were restored in the fall of 1885.[39] Seven years later, having remarried and traveled widely as an AME evangelist, Grant was posted to the Philipsburg Circuit of the Pittsburgh District in the fall of 1892. He served there two years before bringing his remarkable talents and dynamic personality to Bellefonte in November 1894. The Centre Democrat reported that the first sermon delivered by Grant in the St. Paul AME Church (on Sunday morning, November 11) “was highly spoken of by the congregation.”[40]
The congregation inherited by H.A. Grant had “55 active members,” according to a profile published in a special June 1895 edition of the Democratic Watchman commemorating the centennial of Bellefonte’s founding. St. Paul’s Sunday school program was serving “60 scholars.” An accompanying line-drawing of the “very commodious frame structure” occupied by the congregation on Halfmoon Hill since 1860 was captioned in part: “the scene of an earnest Christian work under charge of evangelist Rev. H.A. Grant.”[41]
An early reflection of H.A. Grant’s “earnest Christian work” was his baptism of five persons on Sunday, February 17, 1895. The composition of the baptismal class was highly unusual for the St. Paul congregation, as most of the subjects were white, and almost half were adults (as recorded in William Mills’ ledger). The baptized persons were “white adult” Annie Margaret Welch, identified in an 1890 Bellefonte directory as the wife of 30-year-old laborer John T. Welch; “white adult” Margera [sic] Colpetzer (no further identification); “white infants” Minnie and Joseph Ross (possibly children of Spring Township farmers William and Lillie Ross, the only parents of a Joseph Ross enumerated in the 1900 Centre County census); and Daniel Hasting Green, whose lack of annotation suggests he was a Black teenager or man.
Pastor Grant soon learned that the St. Paul congregation was laboring under a $200 debt. Determined to see that debt “canceled” (according to a Keystone Gazette report), he “divided the congregation into five companies,” each of which selected a captain to guide “these soldiers of the cross [as they] start out to raise the money and liquidate the debt.”[42] Records of methods used in this fundraising venture have not been found, but the goal was eventually accomplished. It would be reported in the fall of 1896 that funds “raised for all purposes” during H.A. Grant’s ministry totaled $808.54.[43]
Pastor Grant’s zeal for debt liquidation might not have been shared by all members of his flock. In an assessment offered by Presiding Elder William H. Brown at the close of Grant’s first year in Bellefonte, the Elder referred to “some little opposition against [Grant] in the beginning of [1895].” But the evangelist’s “work and Christian deportment [eventually] banished all opposition like the morning dew,” Brown observed. The St. Paul AME congregation was “now moving on under Rev. Grant.”[44]
H.A. Grant’s replacement in Bellefonte in the fall of 1896 was 41-year-old, Virginia-born Cyrus N. Woodson, pastor during the previous four years of the Payne Chapel congregation in New Haven, Fayette County, across the Youghiogheny River from Connellsville. The Rev. C.N. Woodson (as he was widely known) brought to Centre County his second wife, Della (née Kennedy; a native of Bradford County), and children Georgette (a.k.a. Georgie; Della’s daughter from a previous marriage), Wilhelmina (6), Leah (5), Wayman (2), and baby William.[56],[57] The Woodsons moved into a rented residence along N. Ridge Street near the crest of Jail Hill, in a section of Bellefonte that was home to half-a-dozen Black families, most of whom were active in the St. Paul AME congregation.[58]
Pastor Woodson had worked wonders in the Payne Chapel. It was reported upon his departure for Bellefonte that he had transformed the New Haven charge into “one of the best appointments in the [Pittsburgh] district. He has paid the last dollar of indebtedness on the church property and increased the membership from 30 to over 100.”[59] Expectations must have run high when the Rev. Woodson took the pulpit in Bellefonte’s AME Church in November 1896. From all accounts, he met and even exceeded those expectations over the course of the following five years.
Though suffering poor health during his first months in Bellefonte, C.N. Woodson managed to “greatly improve” the situation of his St. Paul parishioners, Presiding Elder W.H. Brown would report at the end of the minister’s first year in the Centre County seat.[60] The reception of two persons by baptism on February 8, 1897, was followed by the baptism on Sunday, June 20, 1897, of two long-time area residents in their mid-50s (Lavina Williams and Tilly Dorsey), along with five teenagers, including the pastor’s 15-year-old stepdaughter, Georgie.[61] “Rev. Woodson has increased his membership and paid off the [congregation’s] longstanding debt,” Brown declared in October 1897. “He is a great worker and has the respect and confidence of the entire community. This church is in a good condition and loyal to African Methodism. Rev. Woodson’s [ministerial] report will show a large increase over last year’s report in the various departments.” Elder Brown was pleased to note in particular that Pastor Woodson and his 61-member flock had raised nearly $1,500 “for all purposes” in 1897, and that the congregation’s financial “indebtedness” had been whittled down to “nothing.”[62]
C.N. Woodson also officiated at a number of weddings and funerals during his first year in Bellefonte. Among the nuptials was the Thanksgiving evening marriage of Katie Miller to William (“Manny”) Green, performed in the glow of incandescent lights in the recently-electrified church on Halfmoon Hill.[63],[64] Perhaps the first funeral Pastor Woodson was obliged to conduct was that of a neighbor on the north side of Jail Hill: 34-year-old Edith Skinner Mayhew, a St. Paul AME stewardess whom S.C. Honesty had baptized in 1894. Edith was also a stepdaughter of St. Paul alumnus George G. Skinner, now serving as a Pittsburgh District Traveling Elder in Homestead, Pennsylvania.[65],[66] With her barber husband Joseph, Edith had been caring for “a large family of small children” when she died “after a short illness” at home on September 2, 1897.[67],[68]
A few months later, death struck even closer home for the Woodsons, as C.N. and Della’s youngest child—four-month-old James Douglas—“died with whooping cough [on] Thursday evening,” November 11, 1897 (as reported in the Democratic Watchman). The funeral service in the Woodson residence along N. Ridge Street was conducted not by the grieving father but by his colleague stationed in Tyrone, the Rev. Alexander Smothers.[69] The hole in the Woodson family left by baby James’ passing would be filled in part by two brothers born within the next three years: Stewart Willard in September 1898; and Arnett (“Tom”) Kennedy in September 1900.[70],[71] The latter may have been named in honor of AME Bishop Benjamin W. Arnett.
With the approach of the fortieth anniversary of the 1859 groundbreaking for the church on Halfmoon Hill, the St. Paul congregation undertook a facelift of its recently-electrified home. During the year ending in October 1898, the building was “remodeled” and given fresh coats of paint inside and outside, lending it “a most beautiful appearance” in the view of Presiding Elder Brown.[72] The edifice may never have looked better than on Friday evening, September 22, 1899, when it hosted what church secretary William Mills characterized as “the first demonstration ever held in commemoration of the birth of the A.M.E. Church in Bellefonte.” Mills took “great pleasure” in recording what transpired during the Church’s Fortieth Anniversary, which he hailed as “undoubtedly a grand success.” His report, published a decade later, read in part as follows:
On the evening of September 22, 1899, the pastor and congregation convened in the church at 8:00, with the Rev. Cornelius Asbury, D.D., L.L.D., of Pittsburgh, PA, presiding. The meeting opened by singing a selection, “Keep me day by day,” by the choir. The Rev. C.N. Woodson then lead in prayer, invoking the blessings of God upon the church and service, after which the choir rendered another selection, “Oh, it is Heaven at last.” At the close of this rendition, the chairman announced that Rev. Woodson would deliver the welcoming address. Our pastor delivered a very excellent address, making the audience feel good humoured and perfectly at home. At the close of his address, the choir rendered another selection, and your humble servant, on being introduced to the audience, read an historical paper on the early organization of the A.M.E. society in Bellefonte. . . . The next speaker introduced was the Rev. H.C. Holloway, pastor of the Lutheran Church in Bellefonte, who represented Mr. F.E. Naginey, mayor of Bellefonte, who was to have spoken on behalf of the citizens, but was not present. Rev. Holloway spoke, at some considerable length, advising the church to be faithful to Christ and faithful to each other, in order to promote Christian happiness and success. He also reminded the audience of the charitableness of the citizens here, and said he believed the congregation would receive all the financial aid requisite. Hon. D.F. Fortney, president of the Board of Education, followed Rev. Holloway and spoke along educational lines. He spoke of the advantage of having good schools and gave the parents good advice, urging them to see that their children attend school regularly and take every advantage of the opportunities offered. In addition to this grand advice, he said that every facility was offered to the colored children as that of the whites, for an education, and recommended obedience to their teachers and the law which is the sure road to morality and good citizenship. . . . Ex Governor D.H. Hastings [a longtime Bellefonte resident who had just completed a term as Governor of Pennsylvania] was to have delivered an address on the “Emancipation of the Negro,” but for some unknown reason he was not present, and Rev. Asbury took up the subject and delivered a very able address, holding the audience spellbound for at least one hour, narrating the worth of the men of his race to this country and nation. He spoke of them in the highest commendation for their loyalty and bravery as soldiers on the field of battle, both in colonial days and during the Civil War. Speaking of Abraham Lincoln, he spared no language of eulogy for the stand [Lincoln] took in the emancipation of four million slaves. Rev. Asbury did great credit to the subject, and he elicited frequent and loud applause during his address. The next speaker introduced was my old familiar friend, Abraham V. Jackson. He concurred with the remarks of Mr. Fortney, especially that part which referred to taking advantage of the opportunities afforded for the education of our children. His speech was not lengthy, but full of advanced ideas, as it related to the early education and training of the youthful minds, thus qualifying them for usefulness in life. At times during the address, friend Jackson became quite humorous. I will mention one particular incident he related that occurred when he was about 10 years of age. It is as follows: “At the laying of the cornerstone of the A.M.E. church in 1859, he and other boys were privileged to place their contributions in the hollow square of the stone, which was gratifying to him. But a short time after, he became financially embarrassed, and concluding that his contribution still remained in the stone, determined if possible to get it. He made the effort to get his dollar, but being informed that his money had been taken out, to be applied to the building [fund], he found himself still minus a dollar.” The story caused considerable laughter. The Rev. Asbury then made a few remarks in response to the honorable D.F. Fortney, and then called upon the audience for a free will offering, receiving a neat sum for the church. The choir then sang the closing selection entitled “Blessed refuge of my soul.” This was the most soul stirring selection of the evening, animating the souls of the entire audience. At the close of this rendition, the Rev. Holloway pronounced the benediction. The ladies of the church then served refreshments, consisting of ice cream, cake and other delicacies which were enjoyed by all who participated. The total amount of money raised for the evening was $13.06.[73]
If, a year later, the St. Paul congregation marked the fortieth anniversary of its building’s July 1860 dedication, William Mills did not mention the occasion in his 1909 congregational history. He did, however, record in his ledger C.N. Woodson’s baptism of 11 persons (including the pastor’s 10-year-old daughter Wilhelmina) on Sunday, June 17, 1900. At least five of the inductees were “immersed”—presumably in the waters of nearby Spring Creek—during a sunrise baptismal service.[74] Pastor Woodson, the Church’s trustees, stewards, and stewardesses were also busy that summer constructing “a basement story” in the church along St. Paul Alley. That work, which would at long last afford the congregation dedicated space for Sunday school gatherings and business meetings, was completed by October 1900, as reported by Presiding Elder Benjamin Wheeler. In the Elder’s view, much credit for these “successes” was due to “Brother Woodson[, who] is a great hustler in the pastoral work. Success has followed him wherever he has been sent.”[75] Pastor Woodson fully expected to be sent elsewhere as that report was issued in the fall of 1900. He had served in Bellefonte for four years—“as long as [AME] ministers are usually permitted to remain” in one post, a Democratic Watchman reporter observed.[76] The pastor was thus surprised to learn at the annual session of the Pittsburgh District—held in Pittsburgh’s Bethel AME Church during the second week of October 1900—that he had been reappointed to the St. Paul congregation for yet another year.[77]
“Brother Woodson’s” evangelistic “hustling” hardly flagged in 1901. Perhaps his crowning achievement in Bellefonte was realized on Sunday, July 14, 1901, when he baptized 19 persons into church membership—some by immersion outdoors and others inside the church. This marked the second time in five years that 19 Bellefusians were added to St. Paul’s membership roll on a single occasion. The latest round of baptisms was particularly noteworthy in its inclusion of members of Bellefonte’s largest and longstanding Black families, including the Carters, Freemans, Jacksons, Millses, Overtons, Penningtons (a.k.a. Pendletons), Stewarts, Thomases, and Williamses.[78]
Pastor Woodson baptized two more persons during his final weeks in the Centre County seat, increasing to 46 the total number of baptizees during his five-year term.[79] Little wonder that editors of Bellefonte’s Centre Democrat and Democratic Watchman newspapers were inspired to laud him and lament his anticipated departure in the fall of 1901. In the words of the Watchman’s editor: “Rev. C.N. Woodson, who has served the A.M.E. church in this place so faithfully for the past five years, is about closing up the work of his pastorate here, preparatory to being sent to some other charge. He is the only minister who has remained [the five-year maximum] with the Bellefonte congregation, and in justice to him be it said that had all of the colored people in the town copied his courteous, respectful manners they would have profited amazingly in the good will of everybody. We have found Mr. Woodson a gentleman under all circumstances, never forward or presumptuous, but nonetheless dignified, and men of his character cannot but help lift their race. It seems to us that it would be only a fitting recognition of his unassuming life among us to help him close up his business affairs in a highly satisfactory manner.”[80] The Centre Democrat’s editor declared in the paper’s October 24, 1901, edition that the “Rev. Woodson has won the esteem of all his members whilst stationed in Bellefonte. He has the respect of our citizens generally for his gentlemanly and Christian deportment. He preached his farewell sermon on last Sabbath evening, . . . and [the Pittsburgh District] conference now in session will likely assign him elsewhere.”[81]
Pastor Woodson was indeed reassigned during that conference session. His posting to the New Haven AME Chapel in Philipsburg meant he would only relocate 30 miles westward from Bellefonte.[82] He made that move before the end of October, leaving his pregnant wife and six children (at least some of whom were attending Bellefonte’s integrated public schools) to continue occupying the Woodson home along N. Ridge Street.[83] The 47-year-old minister never reunited permanently with his loved ones. Midway through January 1902, he contracted pneumonia in Philipsburg and was confined to bed in his rented quarters. There he died a week later, stunning the Philipsburg and Bellefonte communities.[84] Six months after his funeral, widow Della Woodson gave birth in Bellefonte to the couple’s seventh and final child—a girl she named “Faith.”[85]
[86] Centre Daily Times, July 23, 1976:5