Founding Mothers: Greenwood Methodist Church Greenwood, South Carolina, 1858 INTRODUCTION 28 November 2021
Eight Methodist women founded a Methodist church in a South Carolina village in the mid 19 th century. They had moved to the village for different reasons and at different times. The earliest to arrive had moved when the village was no more than a hamlet. Most did not know each other when they arrived. To them the village was not just a place on the way to some place else, they moved to put down roots. This book is about who the founders were, what they did to better the lives of Methodist women and children in the village and what in their own lives motivated them to organize and push for these changes. This book presents a different picture of a Methodist church than the customary one in which male itinerant and local preachers built the church. It shows the women had an entirely different view of the mission of the church. To them, the central question was “What does faith mean for parents, husbands and children?” The South’s demographic reality among white people was different from the rest of the country. Southern men died early and left behind them young widows with minor children to support. “[white] Women in the South needed to keep estates together for the good of the family. In New England, for example, wives were usually widowed at middle age or later. They could depend on grown children for financial assistance.” Widowhood affected all economic classes of South Carolina white women negatively, even well to do and upper-class women, because slaves and other personal property were not part of dower. 1 The founders were a socio-economically diverse group of white women. Some women were well to do, others were working women. They represented different generations; 38 years separated them in age. Two were widows, four were married and two were single when they founded the church. Four were daughters of widows. Only two founders’ fathers were living when they founded the church. Three grew up in villages, the others were raised in rural locations. The school record of only one founder was discovered but four founders probably had formal schooling.
1 Marylynn Salmon, Women and the Law of Property in Early America (Chapel Hill and London: The University of North Carolina Press, 1986), 160.
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