Recalling the past with Mrs. Charlie Wiley Reed
Going to church as a girl
Notes by
Norman E. Reed (dates unknown)
As told to
Norman E. Reed by his mother Mrs. C. W. Reed (Mrs. Charlie Wiley Reed)
Going to
church as a girl
as told to
Don and Dave by their grandmother
When I was a girl we attended Providence Baptist Church. We
had services in the morning twice a month and in the afternoon twice a month.
Our Methodist friends at Wesley Chapel Church had services twice a month in the
morning and twice a month in the afternoon. We always attended Providence in
the morning and Wesley in the afternoon.
Another Methodist Church, Limestone was three miles from my
home. I attended Limestone Methodist
Church either at the morning or afternoon services because brother Lewis was a
member. When they had conference meetings there I served the basket for him. He
was an old bachelor and needed someone to help him feed the congregation. I
always went and helped him.
I enjoyed services in all three of the churches and had
friends in all the places. We had services like that to cooperate and be one
big community of Methodist and Baptist together.
My mother and dad were wonderful church members. The first
time I can ever remember going to church I went to church in my dads arms. We
went every Sunday, we didn’t ask if we were going, we just knew we were going.
During the week my daddy would say, “Now Saturday get Delia,
the colored girl, to help you because we are going to have company Sunday” He
invited everyone that lived a distance from the church to go to our house for
dinner. We were just a mile from the church.
He stood under a big old cedar tree out in front of the
church and he invited everybody that lived a distance to go to our house to
dinner. He had built a row of stables, six in a row, that were beautiful, he
was a carpenter. These stables were for guest horses.
On Sunday a lot of the time some of his horses were turned
out because the stables were filled. He had twelve other stables he kept the
work mules and the two buggy horses in.
Folks came from miles and miles around. The superintendent
of Sunday School came and brought his grandchildren, some of them are members
of Park Street Baptist Church now and they remember going to my home to dinner
because they always went there on Sunday.
We cooked all day long on Saturday, baked a ham, because the
smokehouse was full of hams, roasted a hen. We had to dress the chickens
because there wasn’t any refrigeration then. We had a big bucket that was white
on the inside and blue on the outside. We used a big grass rope, the bucket had
a cover, we would dress three or four frying size chickens put them in the
bucket and let them down in the corner of the well.
After the hen and the ham were baked I baked 6 loaves of
bread and mixed up biscuits for the colored woman to bake till we got back from
church. I baked pies and cakes on Saturday. We put them out in the dairy house.
The milk was in the dairy house good and cool all the time.
The house was full, the tables seated 16, lots of time we have
two tables of guest on Sunday. The guest always ate at the first table and the
family at the second table when we had company.
The old church has been torn down and a new building put
there. I have a picture of the old building but I did not get a picture of the
big old cedar tree. The cedar tree is still standing where my dad stood to
invite people to come to our house for dinner. We really enjoyed going to
church.
Sent by N.E. Reed’s son, Don Reed to Tom Reed 12-2021.
Retyped into Word.
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