I found this photo of a group of children and adults at Holly Grove Baptist Church in Haywood County, Tennessee, a few weeks ago at my parents’ house. It appears to date to the early 1940s.
The people in the photo are hard to identify, but I am fairly certain my grandmother, Elizabeth Castellaw Williams (1915-1998), and my father and uncle, Bob and Jess Williams are in the upper left corner.
Holly Grove Baptist Church has an interesting history, and much of that history runs directly through my own family tree.
On the second Sunday in October 1885, 38 former members of Zion Baptist Church in Haywood County met in the Holly Grove School building to start a church for people in that community.
Until then, Zion had been the closest church, but it was several miles away, and to get there, one had to have a horse and/or buggy. The growing community around what is now Poplar Corner and Dr. Hess Road needed a church of its own. It would come to be known as the Holly Grove community. My father was raised there, while my mother grew up in the Zion community.
The group starting the new church met in a school built on land donated around 1880 by my third great-grandmother, Nancy Marianna Johnson Castellaw (1844-1921). She had married my third great-grandfather, Thomas Jefferson “Tom” Castellaw Jr. (1841-1879), shortly after the Civil War ended.
After Nancy donated the land and the community built the schoolhouse, her daughter, Jennie Castellaw Jacocks (1866-1946), became the school’s first teacher.
According to local history, the one-room schoolhouse stood in a cluster of holly trees, so local families called it Holly Grove School. However, there may have been another reason for the name. Many of the Zion Baptist Church members who built the school and later organized the church came from Bertie County, North Carolina, where a Holly Grove Baptist Church already existed.
George Williams, the first pastor of Zion Baptist Church and my third great-grandfather, had served as pastor of Holly Grove Baptist Church in North Carolina before he moved to Haywood County in 1838 to lead Zion. The name may have honored the group’s shared North Carolina roots.
In the Baptist denomination, each member’s church holds that person’s “letter of membership.” The minutes from a Zion Baptist Church business meeting held Sept. 27, 1885, included the names of members who planned to “move their letters” to the new church. Holly Grove Baptist Church met in the school until the congregation could acquire land and build a church building.
| Zion Baptist Church Minutes, Sept. 27, 1885 Brother John Ambrose Thomas presented a list of names of the members of the church petitioning letters of dismissal for the purpose of organizing a church at Holly Grove, whereupon, Brother Joshua Jones, in order to save the clerk from writing so many letters, moved that the names of the brethren and sisters who would be going into the organization of the church at Holly Grove be dropped from our roll book and the following brethren and sisters went into the organization. Adjourn. |
The clerk also saved time by writing only initials in the minutes instead of full names. Thankfully, Martha Jones researched the members and included their full names in her book, “A Journey Into Yesteryears.”
Brethern
- James Williams Castellaw, brother of my third great-grandfather, Thomas
Jefferson Castellaw Jr. - John Ambrose Thomas
- James Henderson Carvan
- Joshua A. Jones
- George W. Castellaw, brother of my third great-grandfather, Thomas Jefferson Castellaw Jr.
- Dr. George Rayner Thomas
- Jeremiah Fletcher Castellaw (1847-1915), brother of my third great-grandfather, Thomas Jefferson Castellaw Jr.
- James Bembery Booth
- Albert Cicero Booth
- William “Will” E. Williams, brother of my second great-grandfather, George Dempsey Williams
- Media Mathias White
- William Price Outlaw
- Moses “Mose” E. Lockard
- James William Castellaw Jr., brother of my third great-grandfather, Thomas Jefferson Castellaw Jr.
- Benjamin Franklin “Ben” Hughes
- John George Livingood
- Thomas Lemuel “Tommy” Rawls
Sisters
- Mary Caldonia White Carvin
- Jane Woods Jones
- Mary Aurelia Blaydes Castellaw, wife of Jeremiah Fletcher Castellaw
- Mary Catherine Rawls Shaw
- Nancy Marianna Johnson Castellaw (1844-1921), my third great-grandmother
- Catharine Pearcy Booth
- Lucy Albina Castellaw, daughter of Jeremiah Fletcher Castellaw and Mary Aurelia Blaydes Castellaw
- Lizzie Holland
- Mary Jennie Castellaw (1866-1946), daughter of my third great-grandparents, Thomas Jefferson Castellaw Jr. and Nancy Marianna Johnson Castellaw
- Mary E. Watridge, wife of Dorsey Watridge, who was a brother of my ancestors James F. Watridge and Daniel W. Watridge
- S. E. Hall
- Alice Evelyn Castellaw, daughter of James W. Castellaw, who was my third great-grandfather’s half brother
- Rebecca “Reba” Manie Williams, sister of my third great-grandfather, George Williams
- Ada P. Booth Stewart
- Elizabeth Thomas
- Rebecca Caroline White
- Amanda Crowder Williams, wife of Edward Williams, who was a brother of my third great-grandfather, George D. Williams
- Catherine E. “Katie” Williams, sister of my third great-grandfather, George D. Williams
A plot of land next to the school seemed like the perfect place for the new church. Dorsey H. Watridge (1840-1890) donated that land. Dorsey was the brother of two of my direct ancestors: my third great-grandfather, Daniel W. Watridge (1835-unknown), and another third great-grandfather, James F. Watridge (1823-1875). Watridge gifted the land to J. W. Castellaw and J. B. Booth in their role as deacons, and it was recorded in Haywood County Deed Book 11, pages 45-46, dated July 23, 1886.
Unfortuantley, Dorsey never attended a service in the new church building that stood on the land he gave. He died of malaria two years before the congregation completed the building.
In September 1890, Andrew Jackson Outlaw and Simeon Amherst Cobb helped write Dorsey’s obituary. It shows how important he had been to the church in its earliest years.
Brother deacon D. H. Watridge died at his residence of malarial fever seven miles northeast of Brownsville on the 12th day of September 1890. He was born in Haywood County, Tennessee, on the 18th day of July 1840. He professed religion and was baptized into the fellowship of this church by the Rev. Josiah Daws in September 1854. He was ordained a deacon of this church the first Sunday in May 1885. He was a devoted husband and affectionate and idolized father, a true friend and a good neighbor and citizen. He left a wife and seven children to mourn his loss.
Dorsey was buried in Zion Baptist Church Cemetery.
In 1892, the members of Holly Grove Baptist Church completed their first church building.
The congregation added another important part of the church property on Feb. 29, 1900, when Jeremiah Fletcher Castellaw donated the land west of the church for a cemetery. Jeremiah was the brother of Tom Castellaw. A few months ago, I wrote about Jeremiah’s move to Texas with his family and their later return to Haywood County.
According to local legend, the first person buried in the new cemetery was an unidentified Black man who had been found dead near the railroad tracks at Jones Station, a small rural railroad community between Brownsville and Bells. Since no one knew who he was, members of the community suggested burying him in the newly created cemetery.
The house in the distance in this photo of Holly Grove Baptist Church belonged to my great-grandparents, Bob Castellaw and Zula Watridge Castellaw. Bob was the son of Nancy Johnson Castalaw who donated the land for the school.
In 1948, the congregation tore down the old wooden church and built a brick building. Over the years, members have added to and remodeled the church, and it still remains a significant part of the community.
More than 140 years after that first group met in a schoolhouse in a grove of holly trees, many of their descendants still gather there to worship today.
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