CHAPTER SEVEN Mary Ann Dorothy (Hodges) Bailey Founder, Greenwood Methodist Church Greenwood, South Carolina 4 June 2022
I. Who Mary Ann Dorothy Was and What She Did
Although Mary Ann Dorothy (Hodges) Bailey died at age 37, her impact on the church founding was disproportionate to her brief life. If there were a catalyst to realizing the founders’ dream of a church of their own, her first child probably, tragically, provided it. Mary Ann Dorothy, called Mary D., was born 23 May 1837 in the village of Cokesbury in Abbeville District, where her brothers and sisters also were born. She was the third of 11 children, 10 of whom reached maturity. 1 She probably attended the village’s co-ed pre-teen school and girls’ preparatory school. 2 Mary D. was a Methodist with deep roots in the church. In the 18 th century, her great-grandfather founded a Methodist chapel and meetinghouse. He and her grandfather were trustees of another Methodist meetinghouse. Her great-grandfather donated land for the village where she was born and raised. In a short while, the village became a Methodist mecca. However, her grandparents moved there when it was just developing as a summer resort. Then, the village quickly filled with full-time residents. Schools Methodists built and operated attracted non-Methodists and Methodists alike
1 Samuel A. Hodges and Mary A.D. Hodges Family Bible Records, 1747-1883, The Holy Bible (Philadelphia: M. Carey, 1814), “Births,” “Marriages;” barely legible photocopy of family records; folder “Archives-Family Histories-Hodges,” vertical files, Greenwood County, South Carolina, Library, Greenwood. Also, Margaret Watson, Greenwood County Sketches: Old Roads and Early Families (Greenwood, South Carolina: the Attic Press, Inc. 1970), 195, 265-267. Also, Rita Jones Elliott, The Herndon and Connor Families, Kith and Kin (Chattanooga, Tennessee: Privately printed, 1961), 102-107. Also, “Our Old Roads, No. 287,” The (Greenwood, South Carolina) Index-Journal , 29 June 1946, online archives (https://www.newspapers.com : 27 November 2020), p. 4, col. 2, para. 5. 2 Watson, Greenwood Co. Sketches , 103. Also, Joyce M. Bowden, Four Connor Generations , 1790-1920 (Amherst, Massachusetts: White Poppy Press, 2014), Appendix 2, 209-210.
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