CHAPTER FIVE Caroline Rebecca (Redmond) Mounce Founder, Greenwood Methodist Church Greenwood, South Carolina 28 May 2022
I. Who Caroline Rebecca Was and What She Did
A deathbed wish Caroline Rebecca expressed to daughter Tallulah may have been fulfilled about 40 years later. Her body was reinterred to Greenwood from the upstate city where she died. Grave marker inscriptions are the receiving cemetery’s only records of the reinterment. “Mounce” is visible on the top of her grave marker plus on one side is the inscription “A Christian wife and mother.” To the right of her grave is the grave of a son. His inscription reads, “Our Little Calhoun, Aged 9 months & 18 days, Plucked from Earth to Bloom in Heaven. R.H. & R.C. Mounce.” A sleeping lamb is his grave’s footstone. 1 All authors who wrote about the founding of Greenwood Methodist Church named Caroline Rebecca a founder. To James F. Davis and George C. Hodges, she was Caroline Rebecca Mounce and to C.M. Calhoun, wife of R.H. Mounce. To S.H. McGhee and H.L. Watson, she was Mrs. R.H. Mounce. To W.K. Charles, Sr., she was Mrs. R.H. Mounts and to Rev. Harry R. Mays, she was Rebecca Redmond Mounce. Their nearly consistent identification is remarkable, especially because they wrote about the founding of the church over a period of about 100 years. Caroline Rebecca was one of only two all authors agreed was a founder. Eliza (Redmond) Osborn, her half-sister, was the other. These Redmond daughters probably were among the most active and visible founders, active because they probably had had unmet spiritual needs early in their lives and were determined not to let it happen again and visible because they lived and worked near the railroad station. The Mounce family lived about a block away from the station around the bend of Byrd Street, “the only house on 1 Coralee Walker, Fort Worth, Texas, to Margaret P. Motes, Newburyport, Massachusetts, photocopy of handwritten letter and Mounce family group record, 9 May 1992; privately held by Margaret P. Motes, Newburyport, Massachusetts, 2018. Also, Rock Presbyterian Church Cemetery (122 Rock Church Road, Greenwood; Greenwood County, South Carolina), “Mounce” [Caroline Rebecca Mounce] marker and “Our Little Calhoun” [William Calhoun Mounce] marker; personally read, 2018.
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