They went to different churches, she to the stricter offshoot of the Southern Methodist Church, Nazarene, and he mostly went to the Birmingham Tabernacle or sometimes any one of the evangelical meetings and sometimes preached them himself.
He, Daddy Paw Knight, mostly would preach the missions dinners service during the years I can remember. and Mamma, (my paternal grandparents) came from a long line of Methodists for her father’s paternal line, Stripling.
The records bore out the stories of the preaching brothers the Revd Robert F Stripling (my 2nd great grandfather) and his elder brother who died in the saddle, so to speak, the Revd David Stripling. He died preaching in a heated oratory for revival.
Cousin James has a great tree on rootsweb which is free and he has notes on everybody.
https://wc.rootsweb.ancestry.com/cgi-bin/igm.cgi?op=GET&db=jamesstewart&id=I02382
Note:
Rev David Stripling was a Methodist preacher and church planter. Stripling Chapel was named for him. For many years he traveled by horseback as a circuit rider. This required four weeks to complete, after which he remained at home with his family only a few days before beginning a new tour.
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He died in Carroll County, GA at Shiloh Campground after preaching the morning service.
In Carroll County, GA in 1857 Stripling Chapel was organized just before the Civil War and was named after David Stripling who had rendered pastoral service in Carroll County for many years prior to and during the war. Brother Stripling’s grave is in the Smyrna Church yard. Some of his admirers, including the Honorable J. J. Thomasson and Judge J. T. Norman, led a movement to erect a monument to the memory of this noble servant of God. A beautiful monument now mARK his grave.
David was a Methodist circuit riding minister and farmer and his ministry is detailed in Harold Lawrence’s book Methodist Preachers in Georgia 1783-1900.
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Carroll County Times – Issue of Friday, AUGUST 18, 1882
COWETA County News
“A GOOD MAN GONE”
The Rev. David Stripling, well known throughout this county, died quite suddenly at Shiloh Camp ground on last Sunday morning at 11 a.m., after an illness of a little over an hour. The immediate cause of his death we have not heard stated.
The Rev. A. J. Hughes had preached the 8 o’clock sermon in the morning, and Uncle Davy, as he was familiarly called, had closed the services in a short exhortation, in the course of which he spoke of many familiar faces he missed from the congregation, calling over the names of a number who had been called from life’s fitful fever, to that bourne from whence no traveler returns, and warned the congregation of the shortness of life and the necessity of preparing for death. So far as he was concerned, he said that he thought this was the last time he would ever be at the camp ground and we would all have to be there our last time. Immediately after the exhortation he made his way to his tent, where he was prostrated by the disease which soon ended in his death.
The burial took place on Tuesday morning at Smyrna church. He was buried with Masonic honors by Carroll Lodge No. 69, F. & A.M. The number of people who attended these sad rites was unusual and attested the strong love in which the deceased was held by the people, among whom he lived for so long.
Uncle Davy was at the time of his death in his 83rd years. He was one of the very oldest citizens of the county and was a pioneer preacher here, in the early days of Carroll. We have heard it stated that he assisted in building the first church ever built in the county.
He was a man that was universally esteemed and possessed as near as it is the lot of man to do, the confidence of all classes. His life itself was a sermon, attesting to the realities of the Christian religion, and appealing to men’s hearts, by his example to live the better way. To his family and bereaved ones
in this sad hour, we, in common with many others, tender our sincere sympathy.
Our own Revd Robert also died in the saddle, sort of. y-DNA Haplogroup E1b aka E-M78. Our grandmother Mary E died early, after 1870 before 1880 – Mary E presumed to be Earle as son John Daniel Stripling named his first daughter Leila Earle Stripling and Mamma, spoke of the Earles our ancestors and our Earle cousin married to Judge Mudd who lived over at Arlington House. The ladies at the Arlington had Mamma to tea a few times and I doubt I behaved.
But Aunt Ethel, actually great aunt Ethel Mamma’s sister had the most time to tell stories of any one of her several stories she told over and over from – The Byrd’s Of Virginia to The Golddigger, the Miss Harriet Elvina Fox.
After great great grandmother Mary E died the younger daughters were with their daddy Revd Robert – he became a Bible salesman after him leaving the Methodist church in Heard County Georgia. Yes, they also owned three slaves this is that DNA side of the family that must be the warrior gene or something, but the descendants have progressed and my search for Wilson Wiley Stripling, his wife Amanda and their son Thomas is in its own story and place – If they were related, there is DNA everywhere they might test.
Daughter Emma married the Colonel West’s doctor son and they moved out west, sister Mariah Stripling went with them, leaving the Revd Robert Stripling to his own devices. Hearing the story of the gold-digging Miss Harriett Elvina who even had Revd Robert’s bible and Aunt Ethel had to go and get the bible under threat.
Combining the stories with the genealogical records I see in 1880 census Miss Harriett born about 1846 and her widowed mother Mrs Agnes Green Farley Fox born about 1812 were living together. I might imagine he could have been there to court the mother, if he were courting as the Revd Robert was born about 1812 to 1815 himself. His grave marker is in pieces and no obit found so far.
But the marriage record is there alright for Revd Robert to Miss Harriett Fox December 7th 1881 – her 35 and him 66. The date of his death is unclear the marker can’t be read, there was no vital records at the time but he did not live long. It was thought from his marker he died 1881 but… she later died in 1935
Revd Robert’s son by Mary E., my great grandfather John Daniel, was ordained and the justice of the peace and a part of the cemetery land beside the originally Methodist Church in Shelby County, Alabama was donated by the Stripling family. The plot is back left and the land butted against the Stripling land that ran from there north to the railroad tracks and where the family coal mine was. Mamma dug through weeds and finally found the mine entrance that I recall a last time. They had sold the mineral rights finally to Alabama Power and they were going to take responsibility to close it up. But I wonder if it is really sealed.
Harry met Pearl and Ethel both as the bookkeeper for their mother for the mine and farm. He boarded nearby but I am not sure which family. He remained a bookkeeper until he could not work but he was also an ordained minister, but his calling was to a more merciful G-d, than the G-d of the works church of his wife. Like President Jimmy Carter said about thinking a sin – you did it and you own it. And in our works church your salvation is lost with sin and you have to start all over again. Meaning multiple trips to the alter and baptism while growing up.
When I was very young, something came up from a taunting neighborhood child about my mother going to hell because she was a Catholic. But Daddy Paw, Harry, let me know this was a total mistake they did not know the word, which he shared with me from infancy, and my mother was going to be just fine and the kitten even when I had a horror fit finding the tiny thing dead in the morning. But that is another blog.
But Harry had a different view, and a different church and a different sermon. Ethel told the story best at the falling out. It was the depression and it was his Maylene church and he organized the soup kitchen type get together to share food. Now the really stupid thing on the part of the white bigots was that the Black folks had the most food growing their own and for them they were already sharing. But the story came to me of Ethel not recalling who had food, that Harry spoke of but the insane audacity of Harry Knight that he was going to have a soup kitchen type get together that would include Black folks in any way.
In 1962 and 1963 some neighbors gathered together in the white neighborhood – west of Center Street – to keep it white and where encouraging harry not to sell to blacks and they were already trying to buy up a couple houses of people dumping real estate. But harry said he didn’t mind if Black neighbors moved in and he did stay. We were the last white family for a couple blocks each direction, except for the apartments down on 8th Avenue.
Yes, Harry’s G-d was different from Pearl’s.
I of course had to love them both and follow the rules for each as well, plus my mother original Roman Catholic and my later step father’s Maronite Catholic. St George was very special, the priest was Father Joseph Raya. He not only taught some Arabic lessons he also was part of Birmingham’s Civil Rights movement. I only saw the world from a side observers view I remained too young, but mostly it was understood I would not be allowed to visit my mother if i was too far off the accepted norms.
This is from the biography of Father Raya:
WIKIPEDIA –
Birmingham and the civil rights movement[edit]
After serving as assistant pastor of St. Ann’s Melkite Catholic Church in Woodland Park, New Jersey he was appointed pastor of St. George Melkite Greek Catholic Church in Birmingham, Alabama in 1952. His championship of civil rights brought him into close friendship with Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. Raya marched several times at King’s side and suffered three times at the hands of the Ku Klux Klan,[4]including one occasion when he was kidnapped and severely beaten by three Klansmen.[5] Defying the threat of excommunication issued by Roman Catholic Archbishop Thomas Toolen, Raya helped King and other civil rights demonstrators organize protests and marches throughout Alabama during the 1960s.[6][7] Raya went on to found Saint Moses the Black Mission, the first Eastern Catholic mission for African Americans, located in downtown Birmingham.[8]
He was also very close to social justice activist Catherine Doherty, and he became the first Associate Priest of her Madonna House Apostolate in Combermere, Ontario, Canada on July 1, 1959. When he became Archbishop of Nazareth he ordained her husband Eddie Doherty to the priesthood.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Raya
So saints preserve us I was blessed with the most liberal loving sides of the holy word and also the most tormented and terrified interpretation of the hell fire and brimstone writings.
Harry came from the east Tennessee Knight McKnight family who were split – my line going back stood with the Union but one of the brothers stood with the south. Haplogroup y-dna of I2b to be exact so far I-Y5673.
The French Broad River where the Knight McKnights were settled early on Sevier County, Tennessee, what was Western North Carolina. I must let cousin Joseph McKnight tell our story now that we all have matching terminal SNPs – he still lives in South Carolina where our immigrant ancestor William McKnight landed with a first patent. Documented with DNA and traditional primary and secondary records.
East Tennessee had many families who stood with the Union, a loyalty to the nation that was deep. I wondered if they might have had a Quaker influence but I never found that but I also never found the wife of our Thomas Knight McKnight, Hatter.
Harry knew his maternal grandparents more than his paternal line. Baylis Washington Harrison Lewis y-DNA Haplogroup R1b R-M269 and Sarah Anne Rebecca Gillespie Lewis mt-DNA haplogroup H1ag1, moved to Tuscaloosa from Dayton Tennessee with son-in-law and daughter Jim and Mollie Knight when their son Harry was a child. Baylis was from school teacher families. Harry also stood with the teacher in the Scopes trial. Saying his G-d was big enough to have done all that and more and G-d expected us to learn.
No wonder he was ostracized in many circles.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scopes_Trial
I was blessed to see a bit of the world, the Far East, the Middle East and then the northernmost North America. While in the Far East and visited India I was humbled to see the same causes and beliefs in so much of their beliefs. It was so much you could see why there was a rumor that Jesus must have gone to India and studied spirituality because so much was from India. And then in the Middle East every major and minor religion – but the most important one to see was the Christian churches and Christians.
I for one felt shame that any missionary would ever try to tell people who have been Christians and worshiping as Christians for 2,000 years.
While many of the Europeans were still worshiping trees and deer antlers and the mother goddess as late as 1,000 years ago – the Middle Eastern and African Christians have worshiped often in the same church locations since the time of Christ. Yet we would tell them how they live anything wrong.
Marionetta Strung-Out 