African American Music Culture

Chapter 1

THE BRUSH ARBOR

The church was the most important institution in the African American community. Its influence reached so far that some scholars concluded that the African American church was the African American community. Since the founding of separate, independent Baptist and Methodist denominations among African slaves and ex-slaves, during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, the African American church became the most dominant force of liberation in the African American community.

The African American church in America was often obscured in the plantation church experiences African Americans had, as they worshipped in balconies or to the rear of the master’s church. Frequently overlooked was that these African Americans worshipped as slaves, drove their masters to church, cared for their children, and performed other tasks. It was not in this atmosphere that the African American church emerged. According to Harold Carter in The African American Church: Past, Present, and Future, the African American church developed its own distinctive pattern long before official efforts to Christianize the New World African. Seventeenth Century society had a number of slaves who were considered infidels, and this very belief made it possible for the slave’s “secret religious meetings” to promote practices of beliefs they held dear.

Slaves, not masters, took the initiative to translate their African beliefs into English and into inescapably Christian terms. They also sorted through the Christian Bible and selected ideas useful to them in the new slave experience. By the time the masters were willing to concede souls to slaves, satisfied that the Christian faith could be used to enforce obedience and increase market value, the slaves had long since established their underground version of the true faith; and they were well along in their own “invisible institution”, or underground church.

The Piney Grove church was an example of an African American church whose origins began as an “invisible institution.” It evolved from a brush arbor to a sanctuary that was a constant source of solicitude for its parishioners. Though its physical structure changed over the years, many of its traditions and cultures remained relatively the same.

The Piney Grove Missionary Baptist Church celebrated its 169th birthday in June of 2003. Origins of the church dated back to the year 1834; however, the church may be older. Fifty to sixty years of the church’s history was lost prior to 1966. According to church records, the last secretary was Ommie Bell Wilburn of Cuthbert who served until 1966. The reason she gave up her position was unclear. However, according to oral accounts, she kept most of the church records in her possession. Numerous fruitless attempts were made to recover the records. Interviews with church elder members indicated that the history of Piney Grove extended much farther back than 1834.

The brush arbor marked the beginning of the Piney Grove Missionary Baptist Church and was Piney Grove’s first building for worship services. The brush arbor was also referred to as a bush arbor or yarbor, all of which had the same meaning. Its documented history consisted solely of oral accounts passed down through generations. These oral accounts have defined the brush arbor, what it looked like, its construction, and its purpose.

The church established in the northwestern area of Randolph County had its location about eleven miles northwest outside of the city limits of Cuthbert in Randolph County, Georgia. Randolph County, created from Lee County in 1828 and named for John Randolph of Roanoke, Virginia, had its county seat at Lumpkin, a town named for Ex-Governor Wilson Lumpkin. When Stewart County emerged from Randolph in 1830, Lumpkin became its county seat, and the seat of Randolph developed in a new town southwest of Lumpkin, named Cuthbert.

The church, located on lot number one hundred and sixteen in the ninth district, was once known as the Piney Grove Settlement, also referred to as the ‘upper corner.’ Piney Grove was among the first African American churches established initially within Randolph County as a brush arbor. Records did not emerge to indicate who the early members were. However, there was one oral account from an Anthony Sampson, native of Africa. A white man, Turner Harris purportedly purchased Anthony Sampson. There is no way to confirm this claim. Sampson, brought to Randolph County, Georgia, lived within the Piney Grove Settlement. Sampson took part in building the brush arbor structure that later became Piney Grove Missionary Baptist Church.

The brush arbor was what its name implied. Made of brush or bush tied together with rope or vine in the form of an arbor a small one-room structure resulted. Unfortunately, there were no photographs of the structure, but, oral accounts provided a vivid description of its physical appearance. One elder of Piney Grove, Jessie M. Calloway-Sampson, gave an idea of what the brush arbor may have looked like. Born in 1918 in Randolph County, Georgia, to Pluma and Elijah Calloway, she lived near the church and was a member of Piney Grove all of her life and worked diligently within it. Sampson taught Sunday school for a number of years, served on the usher board, and missionary board. She died on June 20, 2003.

Jessie Sampson’s recollections of the brush arbor came from her father, Elijah Calloway, as a child. Sampson’s father, Elijah Calloway, born in 1880 in Randolph County, was the son of a former slave. He remembered his own father as a part of Piney Grove during the years it met under a brush arbor. Elijah Calloway died in 1962. The following constituted the description of the brush arbor that Calloway shared with his daughter, Jessie M. Sampson and that she shared with the author:

It was [just] a plain rectangle building made out of brush that the slaves could find. Then they put a rope around the outside. They had no certain way to go in [they] just made away through the brush. They brought buckets and old crates to sit on and the children sat on the floor.

The purpose of the brush arbor was simple, a place in which one worshipped God. The elders of Piney Grove believed that the brush arbor was one of the few places to worship and act naturally. There one worshiped God, and described their troubles, and prayed for a brighter day.

According to the 1830 Census, there were 682 slaves in Randolph County and by 1840, those numbers had increased to 2,619. The brush arbor was used by slaves probably much like a praise house. It, according to Albert J. Raboteau’s, Slave Religion: The Invisible Institution In the Antebellum South, was a hut or building the slaves used for their nightly meetings of prayer and song. Sometimes these praise meetings were held in secret, in open fields. In these meetings the slaves vented their emotions and feelings about their life’s conditions under an attitude free from the restrictive presence of the master. The slaves practiced their religion conversions resulted. The slaves danced and poured out their hearts to God. Furthermore, slaves felt free during this time of secret worship:

As slaves, black people worshipped in secret, under fear of punishment and death, or they developed their own churches under the watchful eye of the white master. There was also evidence that the slaves enjoyed worshipping to themselves.

Albert J. Raboteau further stated:

[The Slaves] enjoyment was marred by the shadow of white control. When they attended church, slaves often felt inhibited by the presence of whites, so they preferred to worship at a separate service by themselves.

Worship was a vital part of the foundation of the Piney Grove Missionary Baptist Church. According to oral accounts, the elders believed that the members of Piney Grove worshiped in brush arbors for nearly thirty-six years. About 1870, the members decided to build a church, a wooden structure that stood as a foundation for generations to come.

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