GUIDE TO
THE CHURCH ROLL - VERSION 3
Edward Johnson
February 2005
This
Roll
is a list of all the people we have been able to find who are, or have ever
been, members of Cane Creek Baptist Church.
We hope that this information will prove useful to people investigating
their family roots. Below, we indicate where the names on our list have come
from. Then we give a guide to using the list. We end with a plea for you to
help us fill in the gaps. We give you an easy way to help us with this task.
This is our third version. It adds about 300
names (mainly from 1870 to 1920) and deletes about 100 duplications. The next
version will eliminate more duplications, indicate spouses and parentage, and
add missing dates
SOURCES OF INFORMATION
ROLLS. The Clerk keeps a roll of members. He adds new names
as people join and marks through names when people leave the church. From time
to time a new roll is created because an old roll can become so modified that
it is hard to use. After the fire of 1829, a new roll was created (our earliest
surviving roll). Another was created in 1856. Rolls also appear at the front of
Minute Books kept since this date.
MINUTES.
The Clerk keeps a record of business meetings. Up until the 1960s,
these occurred every month. Thereafter, they occurred as needed. The minutes (before 1960) record the names
of all new members, tell how they joined (by baptism or by transfer of letter),
and also record when members left the church through dismissal (I.e. the
granting of a letter that allows the bearer to affiliate with another Baptist
church), death, or exclusion for some offense against the church. The minutes
also refer to members by name when they are appointed to some task, come before
the church for discipline, etc.
Sadly,
we have gaps in the record. The church was founded in 1789. But minutes are
missing for about a third of these years. Fire in 1829 destroyed the first 40
years of minutes. The Clerk who kept the minutes from 1849 to 1864 lost them
and was excluded because of his carelessness. We are also missing the years
1933 to 1940. These are the largest of the gaps but there are scattered smaller
ones. A rough estimate of the number of
members Cane Creek has ever had assumes an average of about ten new members a
year. This gives a rough estimate of 2200 members. But Cane Creek has spun off
a number of "daughter" churches (including Antioch, Mars Hill, Cross
Roads, Bethel, and Hickory Grove). In the process, Cane Creek took in members
from other communities and then issued them letters of dismissal. This
increases our membership beyond the estimated 2200 by an unknown amount.
Presently, our list has about 2500 names and is growing slowly.
CEMETERY
LISTS AND OTHER SOURCES. We have
compared the names on our roll with names on our cemetery list in order to get
birth and death dates and to help clarify names. We have also gotten
information from descendants. And we have examined George Purifoy's History
of the Sandy Creek Association, the diary of James Mason, and other
historical documents for names.
A GUIDE TO THE LIST
One
line is devoted to each person. Each
person is identified by
- name:
First, middle, and last;
- sex: M or F;
- Dates: Joining, birth, death, dismissal, and
exclusion;
- Comments: Nickname,
spouse's name, parents' names, reason for exclusion, etc.
NAMES
Handwriting
is often quite hard to decipher. Many times, we have to make a guess at a name
or hope that it is written again more clearly. Another problem is that the same
person may be identified in different ways. Thus "J. Cates" may later
be referred to as J. C. Cates" or as "John Cates" or even
"Jack Cates." There may be no clue as to whether we are dealing with
one person or two or three or four. We have tended to give these variations separate
listings just in case they refer to different people. Variations in spelling
also may occur because the Clerk may not have been a good speller.
Another
problem has to do with maiden and married names. This listing contains two
entries for many female members, one with their maiden name and one with their
married name. If a woman married a second or third time within the church
membership, her name will be listed separately for each marriage. The listing notes (in the comment field)
when we know that this occurs. Since our minutes make no mention of marriages
there is no way of knowing where these duplications occur. We have consulted
family genealogies and asked our older members to search their memories in
order to fill in these gaps.
Still
another problem is when the Clerk refers to a couple not as "John and Mary
Smith," but as "John Smith and wife." So we list the wife as "Smith, (Mrs.) John." As we
discover wives' given names, we will add them to later versions.
DATES
Because
of the gaps in our records, it is not always possible to know the exact year
when a person joined. In this case, the list gives the earliest known date
followed by a minus sign. Thus 1856- should be read as "1856 or
earlier." Sometimes we use a plus sign. Thus 1856+ means "1856 or later."
If
a person joined the church by transfer of church letter, the date is followed
by "L."
Another
problem is the case when a name appears in our records for the first time when
the person is being disciplined, appointed to a committee, or issued a letter
of dismissal. This occurs well over a
hundred times. In these cases, the date joined will be this date
followed by a minus sign. Dashes are sometimes used to indicate uncertain
dates.
COMMENTS
The
comment field is used to indicate nicknames, who is married to whom, and who is
the child of whom. This field also gives the reason for exclusion in
disciplinary cases. Most early churches took on the responsibility of looking
after the behavior of their members. When an accused member failed to show
remorse and beg for forgiveness, he or she might be excluded and the reason
noted in the minutes. The language is quoted directly from the minutes and can
be quite raw. You will see the phrases "adultery," fornication."
bringing forth a bastard child," "fatally striking with a
hoe," "repeated
drunkenness," and "being
associated with a still." We hope that this can be read tolerantly for it
only indicates our human nature. As our preacher commented when we asked him
about the propriety of including this information: " I'm inclined to say
that we should include the information. We are not a perfect church nor are the
people who have been part of us perfect either. The fact that we have kicked
people out of the church is perhaps more of a black mark on those who remained
and did the kicking out. Isn't the church supposed to be a hospital for
sinners?"
PLEASE
HELP
We
need your help with the list. Here is a
brief list of information we need:
NAMES:
Help us with the spelling; supply missing middle names, names where we have
only initials; maiden names, and where a woman is known only as
"Mrs." We also need the names of people who have joined since 2000!!!
DATES:
Help us pin down exact dates where we have had to use plus and minus signs;
supply us with birth and death years.
COMMENTS:
Tell us who parents are; who is married to whom; where people went after they
left Cane Creek (town and state); and where people are buried. This is the sort
of information that genealogists want.
If
you live in the community, you can find a hard copy of the list in the church
office. Please feel free to write new information directly on the copy. Please
indicate the source of the information. For example, Mary Andrews should note
that she is the source of information on the Andrews family. You may borrow our
hard copy but please return it as soon as possible.
You
may obtain an EXCEL version of the list from me. This will facilitate
your own family research by enabling you to do sorts and other spreadsheet
operations. But please note that the list is copyrighted by Cane Creek Church
and that use of the information must be so credited (except for individuals
doing family genealogy).
Send
information by email to
Send information by snail mail to
Edward Johnson
6000 Buckhorn Road
Hillsborough, NC 27278