CHAPTER EIGHT Anna Eliza “Annie” (Turpin) Calhoun Founder, Greenwood Methodist Church Greenwood, South Carolina 10 April 2022
I. Who Annie Was and What She Did
The family of Anna Eliza (Turpin) Calhoun, called Annie, was Methodist. Her father was a traveling Methodist preacher, her mother, a Methodist nearly all of her adult life and her brother, a teacher at a Methodist school. In addition, after her father died, Annie, her mother and brother lived with her mother’s sister and brother-in-law who were Methodists. Annie’s family was so completely Methodist that her brother and her uncle held an important lay position in the church - - each regularly visited members to collect the tithe. Annie knew few family members. She and her brother Alfred were two and four years old 1 respectively when their father Rev. Thomas D. Turpin died. Because of his long absences from home and premature death, Rev. Turpin’s influence on his children likely came through stories told about him. Annie probably did not know any of her father’s family because he was from a distant state. Her grandmother, Martha (Daniel) Daniel, her mother’s mother, died when Annie was age three. Annie’s Daniel aunts, Martha’s daughters, their husbands and children probably were the only family members she ever knew. At birth, both Annie and her mother Ann were named Anna but each was known by a nickname. So thoroughly were they identified by their nicknames that Annie and Ann were inscribed on their grave markers. Annie probably joined the Methodist women’s group in Greenwood at about the time the church decentralized its structure and two pastors moved to Greenwood to live. She had a Greenwood suitor who was studying medicine abroad at the time. Since they planned to marry when he returned and put down roots in Greenwood, women’s group members, likely eager for her 1 Ancestry, Find A Grave , database with images (http://www.findagrave.com : 1 February 2021), memorial 36186912, Anna E. “Annie” Turpin Calhoun, Oak Hill Cemetery, Bartow County, Cartersville, Georgia; gravestone photograph by AndyP. Also, Greenwood County, South Carolina, Cemetery Records , 3 vols. (Greenwood: Old Ninety Six District Chapter, South Carolina Genealogical Society, 1996, 2008, 2010), 2:155.
113
Made with FlippingBook Ebook Creator