11
Circuit Rider and Evangelist


T
he formation of a government for Perry County preceded the consti-tution of Ocmulgee Church by a mere fifty-three days - - less than two months.  The county government was located at Perry's Ridge in a crude log building constructed to serve as a temporary courthouse.  An 1819 map shows no roads leading to and from Perry's Ridge, which would serve as the seat of government for the next two years.  In May 1822, the county seat moved to Marion, which did not exist in 1820.   

This description of the first county seat in a log house on a roadless tract of land in the heart of the wilderness gives a feeling for the country to which Charles Crow moved in 1819.  For decades, most roads were no more than stump filled trails or paths through the woods.   Rain swelled unbridged streams causing the traveler to swim or abandon his journey. Travel on horseback or foot was the only practical mode of moving about in most cases.  As late as 1832, only one person attending the Cahaba Baptist Association meeting at Hopewell Church in western Perry County arrived in a buggy.  The rest came on horseback or foot.  There was no ferry across the Cahaba River until August 6, 1822 and the price for a man and horse to cross was twelve cents.   

While Charles was pastor at Ocmulgee, he did not serve that congrega-tion alone to the exclusion of other churches.  Ocmulgee met once a month leaving him free to direct his attention to other churches and ac-tivities.  This was a necessity in those days due to the shortage of minis-ters in Perry County and the State of Alabama.  There was no Baptist preacher in the state until 1808 -- eleven short years before Charles mi-grated to Alabama.  In 1820, there were only sixty preachers in the en-tire state.  

A review of Perry County marriages for 1820 shows that most marriage ceremonies were performed by judges and justices of the peace.  Of the first forty-two marriages recorded, Ministers of the Gospels performed only nine, or twenty per cent.  Isaac Suttles performed the first cere-mony by a preacher on October 8, 1820, and Charles Crow performed the second on March 1, 1821.  During the first three years of existence, only four ministers -- Isaac Suttles, Charles Crow, William Calloway and John Ryan -- performed ceremonies.  This indicated the dearth of ministers in Perry County.   Once outside the Oakmulgee Creek com-munity, ministers were rare.

Siloam Church historian Lovelace records, "There were few preachers in Perry County at this time and every minister served several churches.  Rev. Charles Crow was pastor at Concord, Hopewell, Shiloh, Oakmul-gee, Siloam and perhaps other churches during the years of 1820 to 1845."   These churches were widely separated.  Hopewell was about twenty-five straight-line miles from the Oakmulgee Creek area.  Con-cord was seven miles north and Shiloh about the same distance to the northeast.  Siloam, in Marion, was about twenty miles away. 

Another writer states, "During the years of his ministry in Alabama, Charles Crow labored mostly as an evangelist; preaching, baptizing, or-ganizing churches, yet always had pastoral care of one or two churches, preaching to them once a month as was customary in Perry County and Alabama at that time."   The memorialist of A. G. McCraw writes of Charles Crow's early days, "at this period there were few evangelical preachers . . . consequently there was a destitution of faithful laborers.  About this time, that holy man of God and eminent minister, Rev. Char-les Crow, came to Alabama, and became pastor of the Ocmulgee Church."   

There can be little question that Charles Crow labored as a circuit-riding minister to several churches in Perry County and as an evangelist to others.  To meet his appointments with scattered congregations, he traveled through mostly uncultivated country on horseback, swimming or fording streams and "resting at the close of a wearisome day in the log cabin of a poor brother who possessed only the scant necessities of sub-sistence yet welcoming with joyful heart the beloved messenger of good tidings."   In 1820, Charles was fifty years old.  His exposure to the ele-ments and routinely difficult journeys through unimproved woods must have become difficult as the years of his life added up one by one.  He was doubtlessly a hardy and strong individual who was, in the words of Dr. W. B. Crumpton, a "heroic pioneer." 

Charles seems untiring in his efforts to preach the Gospel.  Keynotes of messages from those days were God's sovereignty and man's depend-ence on God.  The evidence seems to indicate that Charles was popular and well received by the people as he went from settlement to settlement calling people to faith in God.

The reader should continue to reflect that preaching and church work occupied only a part of Charles' time and attention.  He had to earn a living for his motherless family of nine children in those early years.  It would be 1825 before his children would start to leave home and about 1842 -- three years before his death -- before the last child departed from his care.