participation, probably invited Annie to join even before she moved to the village from Cokesbury. Annie knew Mary Bailey who lived in Greenwood and was a member of the Methodist women’s group. Annie and Mary were only months apart in age, both born and raised in Cokesbury. Annie was born 24 August 1836; Mary was born 23 May 1837. 2 They were the youngest women’s group members. Despite their youth, their voices possibly were among the loudest, most insistent to urge Methodist expansion in Greenwood. Their entreaties to Rev. William H. Lawton, the pastor sent to serve the Greenwood area, to help them set up a church likely were the most effective. In them he probably saw Methodist conviction, experience and future family growth, with the possible participation of their husbands. Annie epitomized what the church could do if it were present in the lives of widows and their children. She instilled the women’s group with energy at a critical period. Her timely participation likely would have led the discussion about founding the church to a swift positive conclusion anyway. But Mary Bailey’s first child, epileptic and intellectually disabled from birth, brought the Methodist women’s advocacy full circle from Elizabeth Byrd and Emily Osborn’s conversations more than 10 years earlier. Ultimately, women’s voices about families in need, like the Baileys, compelled the church to act. Greenwood Methodist Church was founded in 1858. Annie married F.R. Calhoun, M.D., called Frank, 15 December 1859. 3 Frank was born 12 April 1834 near Greenwood. 4 In 1860 they lived with Frank’s sister Eliza Camilla (Calhoun) Logan and her husband Dr. John H. Logan in 2 Find A Grave, memorial 36186912, Anna E. “Annie” Turpin Calhoun, gravestone photograph by AndyP. Also, “Mrs. Mary D. Bailey,” obituary, Southern Christian Advocate (Mason, Georgia) , 14 October 1874, p. 164, col. 3, South Carolina United Methodist Collection, Wofford College, Spartanburg. 3 “Married,” The (Abbeville, South Carolina) Independent, 6 January 1860, online archives (http://www.newspapers.com : 3 February 2021), p. 2, col. 5. 4 Ancestry, Find A Grave , database with images (http://www.findagrave.com : 21 September 2018), memorial 36186915, Dr. Franklin Ramsey Calhoun, Oak Hill Cemetery, Cartersville, Bartow County, Georgia; gravestone photograph by AndyP. Also, Margaret Watson, Greenwood County Sketches: Old Roads and Early Families (Greenwood, South Carolina: the Attic Press, Inc.), 175-176.
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