At Home, November 1850.

My Dear Uncle & Aunt,¹

I believe I have said every week for two months, "If I live, I will write to Uncle James and Aunt Patsy next Sunday." But as regular as Sunday would come, something would turn up to prevent it. My eyes have been greatly affected for two years past, so much so that I make a poor out [sic] writing by candle light, and the worst of it is I believe I am growing lazy about writing. Have visited more during this year than for several years previous, and have done more work when at home. My health has been better, and you know in the fall and Spring those who have negroes have a great deal of sewing to do that you free state folks are happily rid of, though I presume you have not been gone from Ky. long enough to forget those troubles. This has prevented me from writing in the week. I have made apologies sufficient, considering you are a letter in my debt, but I do not think your delinquencies are any excuse for me, particularly as my old Mother insists on me to write you.

Southern Religous Meeting

I attended Licking Association² in September at Brian,³ and although some things happened that was painful, [sic] yet I do not know that I ever enjoyed a meeting so much in my life. And yet it was a solemn scene. We were early at the stand, and I shed some sweet tears whilst sitting in the carriage, watching the Messengers⁴ all making their way to the stand with saddlebags on their arms. Many of those old saints' faces have been perfectly familiar to me from my earliest recollection, and I have got their names so mingled together that I am afraid to attempt to call them by name when they offer me their hand, with joy and pleasure sparkling in their eyes, for fear of making mistakes. (If I live to attend another Association I will try to know their names.) How cordially they grasped each other's hands when they would get up to the stand where stood Brother T P Dudley⁵ to meet and greet them, all old soldiers and young soldiers of the cross of Christ.

It was a trying time with Br Dudley. He had been boldly accused of heresy. Falsehoods almost as numerous as the frogs of Egypt⁶ had been scattered both by letters and messengers, broadcast over the land, not even sparing his private character. And as he stood with tearful eyes, I was as usual imagining his thoughts and feelings as some of the old, greyheaded brethren grasped his hand. Ah, they were his own and his father's friends, and with warm, steadfast hearts they will see and hear their beloved preacher for themselves before they will believe him a heretic. And after they have tarried with him three days will they return to their homes with heavy hearts to say to their dear ones at home, "I have found Brother Dudley a heretic in reality, and we must give him up."

Not a word of it, dear friends. Each heart is satisfied that attended that meeting /with good motives/ and have gone to their homes not only to contend against Br Dudley's enemies but to contend manfully, so far as the Lord will give them talent so to do, for those glorious truths faithfully preached, not only by Br Dudley but by Brethren Thomas, Walker, and Theobald.⁷ And they now feel assured that all this trouble and confusion has been produced by those baneful passions, envy and jealousy.

Thomas Parker Dudley

I had some pleasant yet sad thoughts as I sat in the carriage watching the brethren and sisters walking up to the stand, meeting each other so affectionately (for you must bear in mind that those discordant spirits who had, with the expectation of self aggrandizement, brought all the mischief on Licking Association did not attend, with but few exceptions, and they had no business at the stand but stood on the outskirts striving to make converts enough to cover their wickedness). But to return to my thoughts as I saw those dear old brethren whom I had know as baptists, looked upon as christians from my childhood, I missed some, and I thought, "Where are they?" Some had probably gone off with his new sect [that] has sprung up among us. Many others are at home with their eternal Head. Thus I thought it is with us in this changing world. One by one, the Everlasting Father is calling his children home. The spirit returns from whence it came, to God who gave it. The body also returns from whence it came, to the dust from which it was taken. . . .

When Br Dudley closed the meeting with that sweetly appropriate hymn, "Oh, happy day when saints shall meet to part no more," I said in my heart, "It is enough." When I parted with him after meeting, he said, "What a glory is Jesus!" I answered promptly, "Yes, and if I had ten thousand tongues and all of them eloquent, I could not them speak half his praise."

This meeting probably will never entirely be forgotten by me whilst I live, and as I know you feel a deep interest in the well doing of Licking Association that this split, though it has and will (for it is not done yet) separated very [dear?] friends, yet I firmly believe that it will prove one of the best things that could have happened for her peace and happiness. Those jealous hearts that you will well recollect who always found something to cavil at are gone, and although they will /may/take some off with them that we all dearly love, and this will be painful too, but the atmosphere will be cleared, purer. There will be more peace and love than has been known for years amongst us. I most confidently expect this good result.

        The Righteous

Pilgrim, is the journey drear?
Are its lights extinct forever?
Still, suppress the rising fear;
God forsakes the righteous never.

Storms may gather along thy path;
All the ties of life may sever.
Still, amid the fearful scath
God forsakes the righteous never.

Pain may wrack thy wasting frame;
Wealth desert thy couch forever.
Faith still burns with deathless flame;
God forsakes the righteous never.⁸

At Home, January 8th 1854

My Very dear Sarah,⁹

I think I was both glad and thankful when I received your deeply interesting letter. My dear Mother wept like a child when I read it to her and remarked, "Sarah is a christian. I shall meet her no more in time but hope to meet her in heaven." I commenced a letter to you two weeks ago, but had no opportunity to finish it. We have had a great deal of company and a very sick Mother, too, and no superabundance of health or strength to keep me up. I got Anselm to write to Uncle James to let him know my Mother's situation, and have not until today had time to sit down quietly and write to you. And if I am disturbed now, before my room gets well warmed, by some of the friends coming in, I shall not be astonished.

My Mother has been confined to her room and mostly to her bed for six weeks with Erysipelas. Her right limb from the hip to the knee first came out in large, watery blisters and then became almost one entire running sore. Now the sores are healed up, but the itching causes her as much distress and probably more at times than when the sores were running. Her mind was greatly affected; she had very little hope of recovery, but for a week past mind and body is decidedly better, though she is harassed with spells of itching. Oh, Sarah, you cannot imagine how I felt about my dear old Mother when I thought she was about to lose her mind. I could neither ask for her life nor her death. I could not bear the idea of giving her up, and yet I thought death preferable to the distressing state of mind she appeared to be in. At times again she would be quite cheerful. My mind reverted to the time when I was watching Uncle Davy and Aunt Mima¹⁰ who had both lost their reason before their death, and my prayer — yes Sarah, my prayer — was that I might never see either of my parents in such a situation. I still hope I never may, but if it were the will of God that I should, He is to give me strength and fortitude, to support me under every trial and affliction that He in his wisdom sees fit to bring on me.

        Untitled, January 1st, 1855

Ah, Lord, with tardy steps I creep,
And sometimes sing, and sometimes weep.
Yet strip me of this trunk of clay,
And I will sing as sweet as they.

February 6th, 1855   At Wait's House.¹¹
My Own Thoughts

. . . About four weeks ago I went to Volney's,¹²

passing through some dense forest. My attention was arrested by the dead appearance of the trees; and it seemed to me, that I was about as destitute of spiritual life as those trees were of foliage. But remembered that spring would soon come, and those trees and bushes would again be clothed with a mantle of green. And I said to myself, "Will I ever live again?" By my walk and my conversation [I] prove to a gainsaying world that I have been with Jesus and have been taught of God. Shall my harp that has hung so long upon the willows ever again be tuned to the praise of my God and King? And like Ezekiel I said "Thou, Oh God, knowest." I staid at Volney's several days, and when I came home, what a change I beheld in the same woods, not only the trees but every little bush, weed, and the whole earth as far as the eye could reach was completely enveloped in a most beautiful, spotless robe of white. But the trunks or bodies of the trees remained the same. They presented the same dead appearance; they were only clothed upon. Thus it is with such poor, polluted worms as we. . . .

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Notes:

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¹ James Minor Clarkson (1792-1869), a physician, he had represented Bourbon County in the Kentucky legislature in 1824, before moving to Boone County about 1830 (where he served as a Justice of the Peace), and then on to Quincy, in western Illinois, in the 1840s. He had married in Bourbon County, 12 Nov 1818, his second wife, Patsy Young Neal, born abt 1800. His first wife, Sarah Barber, had died a year or so before, virtually a newlywed. (See below, A Relation of My Experience.)

View a transcript of a campaign broadside, addressed "To the Voters of Bourbon County," published 28 June 1824 by James Clarkson and his running mate, William Thomas Buckner. They ran on a platform of legislative supremacy and monetary stability.

² The regional grouping of Particular Baptist churches in the Bluegrass and northern Kentucky, covering the same general area as the Regular Baptist Elkhorn Association. Mary uses the term here for the meeting, rather than the organizational body..

³ Bryans Station (also spelled Bryants, Briants, etc.), one of the first white settlements in the Bluegrass. Site of an early Baptist church, founded in 1785 by Lewis Craig. Now within metropolitan Lexington, near the Army's Bluegrass Arsenal and the Bourbon County line, not far from Clintonville.

⁴ Church members selected by their congregations to bear official communications to meetings of the Association or to other congregations.

⁵ Thomas Parker Dudley (1792-1886) followed his father, the celebrated Ambrose Dudley, as a leading preacher to Particular Baptist congregations. He preached for six decades at Bryants Station and Elizabeth churches. His obituary appeared in the Paris Kentuckian:

MAYOR HARRISON'S STEPFATHER. Rev. Thomas Parker Dudley, who bore the names of his mother and father, died in Lexington, A.D. 1886, aged 94 years. He was born near Bryan's Station, Fayette County, May 31, 1792, and was, therefore, one day older than the State of Kentucky. He was one of fourteen children, three daughters and eleven sons.
Elder Dudley was twice married, — first to Miss Elizabeth Buckner, of Clark County, and lastly to Mrs. Harrison, of Fayette, mother of Hon. Carter H. Harrison, Mayor of Chicago. He had only two children, and they were by his first marriage. Both are dead, but his son John left two children, Thomas Dudley of Chicago, and Mrs. Bradford, wife of the present Representative of Bracken County. Mr. Dudley was in the war of 1812, first at River Raisin, where he was wounded and taken prisoner, but was saved from massacre by an Indian fancying him and afterward selling him to a white man. Afterward he was at the battle of New Orleans.
Mr. Dudley became a member of the old Baptist Church in 1820, and preached at four churches respectively fifty-five, fifty-two, fifty and forty years. He and his father were the only preachers at Bryan's Station, and the centennial celebration of its organization has recently occurred. Mr. Dudley, after he became too blind and feeble to leave home, would deliver a sermon every [day?] as though he had hearers.

(Quoted in Dean Dudley, History of the Dudley Family (Wakefield, MA: Dean Dudley, 1886-1894), 522. See also Armstrong's Biographical Encyclopedia of Kentucky.)

⁶ And apparently as noxious. The second of the plagues visited upon Egypt as recounted in Exodus, chapter 8.

⁷ Brother Thomas is not identified. Elder Jordan Walker was from Salt Creek Church in Anderson County. He is among many leaders mentioned in the memoirs of William Conrad, which are presented at Primitive Baptist Online. John M. Theobald of Owen County, was "regarded as one of the best preachers in the [Licking] Association, at present [1885]," according to a brief note in J. H. Spencer's History of Kentucky Baptists, 2:250. His son, named for Thomas Parker Dudley, became a judge.

⁸ Undated.

⁹ Not identified. Sarah was a favorite name. The most likely candidate was either Sarah Jane Clarkson (daughter of Uncle James and Aunt Patsy Clarkson) or Sarah Jane Breckinridge (daughter of Oliver Hazard Perry and Nannie Ellis Breckinridge), both living in western Illinois.

¹⁰ Most likely a great uncle and aunt on her mother's side. David had been a popular name among the Clarksons for at least 150 years. Mima is likely a nickname for Jemima, but none of the Clarkson wives is known to have had that name.

¹¹ One of several residences Mary mentions. Stephen Waite (1816-1886), who had married Statira's cousin, Almeda Stephens (1816-1896), owned a farm on Bank Lick Creek, within a half-mile of Reuben and Statira's place. They moved to Walton. (See below, 27 Mar 1855.).

¹² Volney Dickerson (1817-1886), Mary's first cousin, was the son of John Dickerson and Nancy P. Clarkson (see above, 1840 and 1841). He had married 27 Sep 1841 in Henry County, Sarah Jane Ellis (1822-1908), daughter of Robert Ellis and Jane Shelton Bristow, and his first cousin once-removed. Mary frequently refers to Sara Jane and the Dickerson girls as her nieces. They lived in the rolling hills about a mile east of Union, near the Kenton County line. Although some working farms survive, the area is now (1995) succumbing to suburban "estates."

 

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