Cypress Camp Meeting Transcript
- This is the second oldest. This was founded 1794. Cattle Creek at Branchville is the oldest. Methodism was not even established as a church until 1784 when they had the conference. And Asbury was on his way down to Charleston because of the conference when he stopped at Branchville. And he reached some German settlers, they were Lutheran, at Branchville and they started the Cattle Creek Campground, 1786. That's the oldest remaining. The Methodist campgrounds were very numerous back in the late 1700s and 1800s, and Cattle Creek is the oldest. Cypress here, we date back to 1794, eight years after Cattle Creek. And then Indian Fields, which is dated 1801. These are all in line. If you look at your map, you will see coming from Branchville, Asbury came straight on toward Indian Field, from Indian Field, straight on down here, and from here he went to his Charleston conference. Had a great charisma. He was welcome and he was effective. He had such a zeal to reach the inland settlers that nobody else seemed to care about. That was his whole drive. That was the reason why he left England when he was 26 years old and volunteered to come to this country and bring the gospel to their neglected American cousins. And that zeal drove him all the way from New York to where he first came to his annual tours, along the Atlantic Coastline, coming all the way down as far as Savannah, Georgia. Covered all those states. And we're thinking about, of course, this was when the 13 colonies, not states, of course. Do you realize what this did to those sparsely settled pioneers? It gave them something in common. And when they came first and experienced this meeting together and the joy of wonderful preachers and the joy of bringing their belongings and staying a whole week, having the spiritual revival, it was something that they wanted to do every year. And without Francis Asbury, it wouldn't have happened.
Congress declared Francis Asbury as on of the 50 persons who most shaped the character of this nation. I find that awesome, that one little man who came from England and had only six years of formal learning, came to this country and started such a great revival and reached so many people that he was credited with being one of the 50 persons. Just think of who that included. Your founding fathers, your presidents, and people who were so outstanding. Look how he ranked. And I stand in awe every time I think of him or speak of him, and I'm so thankful that he came here and left his lasting influence with us. My grandfather was named for him. My family came under his influence around 1800. My father's people who were Irish, the Dowling family in Dalton County, met and they too gave him the welcome in their homes. My Mother's people, Yabers, came down from North Carolina and following Asbury on his camp meeting. And because of the camp meeting that was held in Dalton County, he started there just what he did here. And my Mother's people and my father's people met because of that, and I'm a product of that. And he also, it so influenced my people, that the first hearers that many of that family went out as preachers, early preachers. His journal that he kept from day to day was very precious. I had hand-me-down word like Ms. Salvo, who knew from her family he had preached here, but we did not know how many times or the personal accounts that he gave. But in the 1950s, those journals were brought out and published in three volumes. And when I got hold of those journals and read them, everything came alive. All these people we had heard about around here, he named. And the places, the weather, everything was spelled out for us. And like I say, things like that really helped us connect the dots. This is not just something people do for recreation, but it's a heritage. And without Francis Asbury, it wouldn't have happened. The campground is centered by the tabernacle, which was part of the original plan for all the campgrounds. This tabernacle, we believe was erected in probably the very early 1800s. I wanna show you one of the pegs, which is used throughout this building to hold the upright pieces together. It was a round hole bored and the peg was placed in there. They used this instead of nails in the 1700s and 1800s, and that's one of the original pegs. The pulpit is also very historic. Many have said this is the original one that Asbury preached behind.
- That came out of the old, old church, and that would be the early one. Since 1978, Cypress Campground has been on the National Register of Historic Places. And this is our little plaque, a bit rustic, but that's the way they wanted things. The plaque just in front of the pulpit was placed here in 1984 and it lists when it was founded and the trustees down below is buried a vault that contains histories and a lot of pictures, information about the tenors, the newspapers of the time, that sort of thing. This will be taken up 2034, the conclusion of 50 years. Going back to the 1600s with the Lord's Proprietors, South Carolina had the most liberal policy of all as far as churches were concerned, and I think that's why we have flourished as we have. And this feeling that was established in Charleston, which was the first capital, has moved inland with the people in these various communities where the different denominations felt welcome. And I think it was the policy that was first established, and this was different, I understand, because it was the most liberal of all the surrounding states. John Locke played a great part in this in that his philosophy was carried over with the proprietors and the early statesmen of our colony, South Carolina. I believe that religious tolerance is one of the reasons why our colony flourished as quickly as it did and that our culture mingled and that we drew from each other's culture.
- [Interviewer] Well, is that reflected here, do you think?
- Very much so. Very much so. There are five different denominations that I've counted on taking part in this campground and I think that that's quite important. Showing that from the very beginning it was ecumenical and we involved the community, and still today these others feel welcome to come and join our services and to partake as tenors.
- How you doing?
- [Interviewer] All right. What you doing?
- Finishing my staff.
- [Interviewer] Tell me about a staff.
- This one's finished. This is about a 3/4 staff and I guess you could call that one a 3/4 also. So a full one will be about as tall as the person would be. This is made of tulip poplar and this is gum.
- [Interviewer] You get a shot of that.
- I'm his cane buddy and one of the cooks with this tent.
- [Interviewer] Yeah. Well, what do you cook?
- Well, so far right now we cooking barbecue chicken.
- [Interviewer] What else you gonna cook this week?
- We've cooked fried chicken, we cook fried fish. We've cooked Frogmore stew. We'll be cooking some ham and that's about all the meats.
- [Interviewer] How many people eat with you per sitting?
- Breakfast is about 10 per. On dinner or the mid meal, we've averaged 21 most days. Today was about 40. Evening meals is somewhere between 40 and 60.
- [Interviewer] Wow.
- Did you get the crucifix on your camera from the sticks? The hiking sticks here?
- [Interviewer] These are hiking sticks?
- Yes. It's just something I like to do. And I never know what I'm gonna exactly do with each individual stick until I get started. I get to certain spots on here when I'm taking the bark off and I see different things that I wanna do. Like this right here. Everywhere there's a crucifix here, is where a limb comes off of this stick. And right there in the center is where the limb was. So every little crucifix has a black dot right in the middle and that's where the limb protrudes off. But it's very therapeutic for me to just sit down and just start on one of these. I made one of these for my wife and it took 20 hours to complete it, and it was very similar to this.
- That's my Mother, Beverly. Mother, he's doing.
- [Interviewer] Hey. How are you?
- I'm fine.
- [Interviewer] It's good to see you. What do you remember about camp meeting when you were a little girl?
- My parents always tented and we used to have fire stands. Hi there, Dolly.
- [Dolly] Hey!
- How are you? Hey, Warren.
- I told Warren, I said, "Well, I just gotta go speak to her."
- Well, that's good. I mean, hey, Don.
- Hey, how you doing?
- Ain't nobody say a bold piece, taking your picture?
- And this is Warren Hughes and I don't know their name. Anyway. And you know my daughter Brenda. You went to college with their daughter. I remember the fire stands. They were high and they used to have old big stumps and lanterns and that's how we saw. We didn't have lights or nothing, but they had kerosene lamps over there under the tabernacle. And we used to walk around and when the fire, we used to put the wood on the fire. And yes, and it used to be so cold and it was the ice all the time. But it seem like the weather's changed.
- [Camper] 15 months?
- Oh yeah. I love it. Just love it.
- [Interviewer] How long have you been coming?
- Steady?
- [Interviewer] Yeah.
- Yeah, all my life.
- And it used to come in wagons and they used to keep chickens in the back. We had maids, about two to three cooks, and they cleaned the chickens here and they cooked them and Daddy, we used to kill a calf and a pig and, oh, we had a big camp meeting. It's so different now altogether.
- [Interviewer] How is it different?
- Lots difference. We go buy. We don't kill a pig. We don't. We just have to go to Piggly Wiggly to buy it. I mean it's changed. And the crowd's changed. We used to have it full every night and every day. But it's changed a lot.
- One through five. This is the third time I'm coming to you. Every fact is to be confirmed by the testimony of two or three witnesses. I hear that and understand that one statement above all things that if anything is ever brought to you and it's not confirmed as fact by two or more witnesses, don't believe it. Walk away from it. It's not true factual foundation. I have previously said when present the second time, and though now absent, I say in advance to those who have sinned in the past and to all the rest as well, that if I come again, I will not spare anyone. Since you are seeking for proof of the Christ who speaks in me and who is not weak toward you, but mighty in you. For indeed, He was crucified because of weakness. Yet He lives because of the power of God. For we also are weak in Him. Yet we shall live with Him because of the power of God directed toward you. Test yourselves. Now this is the key verse. This is a powerful verse to understand. Test yourselves to see if you are in the faith.
- [Interviewer] How young were you when you first remember coming?
- About five.
- [Interviewer] Five?
- Mm-hmm.
- [Interviewer] What was camp meeting like then?
- It was about the same. The tents and all were the same except we had big fires at night out in the middle of the, around the tabernacle. So you could walk and go around the tabernacle. And then a lot of people brought a lot of livestock like chickens. We'd bring them live and kill them here and do that type of thing. And we'd have big blocks of ice, you know? Instead of when it was in cubes like this. And the iceman would bring them out here.
- I couldn't tent if we had a tent like Mother and Daddy.
- [Interviewer] Why is that?
- Well, it was too much work. I couldn't handle it.
- [Interviewer] Mm-hmm.
- But Daddy and Mother and the maids. And he had helpers, you know? He had people that come in to work. We had... Well, I don't know, we always had cooks. We never just cooked back there. I mean, we had two and three colored ladies and they were good too.
- Ms. Gladys Thomas and Ms. Sandra Riley, over to my right.
- [Interviewer] Ms. Sandra, how are you today?
- Good, how are you?
- [Interviewer] Fine thank you.
- Gladys is gonna show you some of her dishes.
- This is red rice with onions, pepper, tomato. And I'm gonna put that sausage in here.
- And that's a pot of rutabagas.
- [Interviewer] Woo! Look what it did to my lens.
- Oh! Oh!
- [Cook] What it did?
- [Interviewer] Just fogged it up.
- [Host] They just fogged him up.
- [Interviewer] Just got it all foggy.
- [Cook] I'm glad they fog me up.
- The Southern food, our food, is different than a lot of the people that live up north. We do potatoes and rice and grits and fried chicken and collards and rutabagas. And it's just Southern food.
- Beans and tomatoes and okra and fried chicken and more fried chicken.
- Everything is made from scratch.
- We have two meats. We have fried chicken and ham. Or we have fried chicken and pork roasts. Or we have fried chicken and something every single night.
- [Interviewer] What's your favorite thing?
- Fried chicken.
- And we still don't have lights out here, you know? Light electricity.
- [Interviewer] You don't?
- Mm-mmm.
- [Interviewer] Well, how do you see at night?
- Well, I cook on a big furnace and a old stove back there.
- [Interviewer] Well, what do you use for light at night?
- Coleman lanterns and batteries.
- Yeah, when I was a child we used kerosene lamps and so we went back to them when I came down here, started coming to camp meeting. Which I've been coming to camp meeting down here for 40, 40 some years.
- [Interviewer] So at night is this- This is the light that I would see out?
- That's the light you would have, we would have in here. Yeah. In the living area over the table we have the two gas burners that is run from the back.
- [Interviewer] So the kids who come to this camp meeting actually get to see what it looked like?
- Oh yes.
- [Interviewer] 150 years ago.
- Yeah. A lot of them come out expecting to have electricity and TVs but we don't have that. We don't even have refrigerators. We have a big freezer, which we get 300 pound blocks of ice and put in it on Monday and it usually lasts us all, it'll last us all week.
- Now these are old freezers and we have blocks of ice down in the bottom. And we have to keep everything in it from eggs to pies and meats and whatever we're gonna cook.
- Then we get crushed ice and coolers to use for drinking water, or tea or whatever.
- [Interviewer] So this is one of the more primitive of the camp meetings in terms of-
- I guess so, because I know Indian Field has electricity.
- We went to Indian Field camp meeting about a couple weeks ago, and it was on a Saturday night and it was very hot, very warm, but they had ceiling fans. Now that's the first time I'd really been there to go and have a meal. But I thought, "Well, I'm glad ours is not in September." Because it was hot.
- We have been out here when it was hot.
- [Camper] Yeah.
- And we've been out here when it was cold.
- [Camper] Right.
- But it's a variation.
- Put the wood in here and you keep it fired up and then it has like, it has an oven. And we bake in that oven. This is your hot water heater, the, I guess, antique water heater. And you keep the water in there and as long as you've got heat on the stove, you've got hot water. And you can put food on the back and it'll keep it warm. And then now right over the fire would be your hottest part of the stove. I guess that would be high. And then the middle of the stove would be medium heat, and then the far right would just be warm. Well, it still would, you know, cook, but it still would not be as hot as right over the fire.
- [Interviewer] So that would be the hot, medium?
- Right.
- [Interviewer] And low.
- Right. If on your modern stove.
- [Camper] And this is my grandson from Florida.
- [Camper] Don't get into that.
- Of course we have American flag on the front. My husband's most patriotic person in South Carolina. First thing he does when he comes is hang his American flag. Well, we're mostly all kin folks. And next door, this is Joyce Hill now and her brother has the tent next door. And her brother is married to my husband's first cousin. So I guess we're all kin to a certain degree, eh?
- Yeah.
- It's all about family and fellowship and friends. And we love camp meeting.
- Yes we do.
- Or we wouldn't be here because it's a lot of trouble to get here.
- I think I've missed one year since we started coming and that's been 40 some years, and that was the year of Hugo.
- Yeah.
- [Interviewer] Why is it so important to you?
- Well, it's just the tradition. It's something that my husband, his family came when he was a child. And then when we got married, we started coming. When we got married, we were all in his old family's tent and it was five families in there. We had about 35 people that stayed every night.
- [Interviewer] Wow.
- And you slept real close. But then as our children got older, we decided to build this tent and then his brother decided to build the one next door.
- [Camper] 53 was the last available space on the campground.
- One thing about Cypress is that our camp meeting is about three weeks later than Indian Field. And we need, a lot of times we need heat, so we have the fireplaces and we have the wood heaters and we have, some have, the gas, little gas heaters.
- I'll let Reggie tell you about his stove he made. This is what we heat with in cold weather. It comes in pretty good. It heats up this building pretty comfortably.
- [Interviewer] Reggie, you don't have anything but just this stove to heat with?
- That's it.
- [Interviewer] Tell me about how you got this stove.
- I ordered a kit to go on a drum and it didn't come, and camp meeting was coming close. I said, "Oh heck. I can build one." So I got my material around the farm that all and really didn't cost me anything. That's my damper. Pull it open, the air goes in there, goes down to the bottom and go back up under the wood. It works real well. There's my damper right there. I give it the air, controls it like I wanted. The air goes in and come out at the bottom here and be down at the bottom. The wood burning.
- [Interviewer] And you made this yourself?
- I did.
- [Interviewer] How'd you know how to do it?
- I can do a little bit of everything. I can even mend a broken heart.
- [Interviewer] What kinds of things hold camp meeting together?
- I think the service, the Lord, the people goes up there and worships and prayer, that God is answering our prayers to hold our Christian faith together and to believe in God and have faith in God. That's it. The Lord is sending His guardian angels down to take care of us.
- [Child] That!
- But in Dorchester County, we call ourselves the Camp Meeting County because it's rare any place in this country to find four in one county. And this is traditional. The blacks go back to the 1870s and ours go back to the, like ours to the 1790s. And-
- [Interviewer] Have you any idea why, when you look in the North Carolina, South Carolina and Georgia, you don't find any other places where there's a cluster of camp meetings like this?
- Well, Asbury made his annual trip to Charleston. He would come all the way down from New York to Savannah on these annual trips and during his life, of course, as it said in an article, it's 300,000 miles it's said that he covered. But when he came to South Carolina and on his way to Charleston for the conference, he would come to Cattle Creek at Branchville, which is just across the border of Dorchester County. Then he come on into Dorchester County, he would come to the Indian Field campground, then he would come following this route, going down to Charleston. Next he would come to Cypress and then he'd go on to Charleston. And so he always go those three: Cattle Creek, Indian Field and Cypress, the three right together. Two black ones, St. Paul and Shady Grove grew out of the white campgrounds. They used to worship with the whites of course prior to the Civil War. Then after the Civil War in 1870s, they wanted a campground of their own.
- It's family. And it's so many families now they move away and they don't have the same roots. So one goes to New York, one goes to California, and there's not root in place for everybody to come. And here, I find that the families that stick together here, all live here. And the ones that have lost have separated and their families have broken up and moved different places. And with jobs and adult people, that's what happens now. It's the one thing that we don't have any control over.
- Christ is in you, I remind you. Not somewhere in the distance. But if you are saved, He's in you unless, indeed, you fail the test. Now the power of that verse is far beyond our understanding because of the depth of what it says: To test ourselves. Let me give you the definition of test according to Mr. Webster. Subjection to conditions that disclose the true character of a person in relation to some particular quality. Is Christ in you? And is the quality of Christ living in your very being? Is He Lord of all? Because if He's not Lord of all, then He's not Lord at all. And the relationship is based upon a salvation experience personally with a living Christ. Stay with me now. Because when God sent His Son Jesus, His perfect Lamb, to die on a cross that we might have life, He said, "The one thing I want from you more than anything else "when I give you my salvation is devotion to me." That means when I don't feel good, I still go to church. That means when I don't feel real well, I still support the ministries of my fellowship. That means when things are not going right, I'm still in there plugging because I know that my Lord is in me and greater is He that is in me than He that is in the world. That's-
- [Interviewer] In your research, did you ever hear of a horseback evangelist who accompanied Asbury named Black Harry?
- Oh yes! Yes!
- [Interviewer] Tell me about Black Harry.
- I don't know that Black Harry came here, but he did have him to accompany. I read in one place that he was so excellent that at one of the churches where Asbury was preaching, people came to hear him because he was so popular and renowned. And when they got near the church, the crowds outside were listening and the people gathered and they could only hear the voice, they couldn't see the speaker. They assumed it was Asbury and they thought, "What a great sermon!" And it happened that Asbury was inside the church and Black Harry was on the outside and they were listening to Black Harry, thinking they were listening to Asbury. But he was so dynamic that they didn't know the difference.
- [Interviewer] What else do you know about Black Harry? I suppose that he made a special appeal to the African American.
- I'm sure he did. I'm sure he did. I don't know an awful lot about him, but I do know that in one of the accounts of Asbury, when he was talking with an African who was a former slave, he said, "I'm glad that I was brought to this country as a slave "so I could come to know Jesus Christ." Because he said, "If I had stayed in my home country, "I never would've heard about Him." Asbury had that charismatic way about him that he just drew everybody. He cared so much about all people. And in the early days of camp meeting, the blacks attended, the slaves in the South, attended camp meeting with others. Some served as cooks, some served as helpers, but anyhow. And they attended the services. And so that's why they love camp meetings so. And they knew all about, you know, how it was done. So when they were set free after the Civil War, when they got back on their feet at 1870s, that's one of the first things they did in this area was to establish their own camp meetings. And they're very proud of theirs and they're very big and flourishing. Asbury was also interested, not only in the souls of all these people, but in the education. And he helped to start the Sunday Schools and he helped to encourage early education. And he also insisted that the slave children be taught to read. Many cases, it was the Methodist minister's wife, I've read, that took part in this. And contrary to what the state law was, that you were not to teach the slaves to read and write, this was being done according to record.
- Now, if you do not love God's children and there are those that you do not love, you need to examine your own relationship of love. Is it a genuine love in Christ Jesus that will get you beyond what you think about somebody or feel about them to a point that you can love them?
- All right. This a road that enters from the side road there by the church. If you look in that direction, you will see tents from there all the way around forming a rectangle. But the first ones on that side are from the Beach Hills section, which is now known as Gavans. Then as you come on around this way, you see the people from Ridgeville. And coming right on this way, you begin with people from what we call Cypress or community and that which joins with Ridgeville, they go right on down to the corner. And then as you come across, you meet the New Hope community. And then you go right on around and from the far corner on the left, from there on to the extreme left, that road is mostly people from the Lebanon community. And-
- [Interviewer] So they really cluster together?
- Yes. Yes.
- [Interviewer] As communities.
- Right.
- [Interviewer] They tent in a row together.
- Yes. The neighbors at home are neighbors out here, more or less. But that's been a tradition too, that you had your own. You don't just come and tent anywhere, but you want to tent with your own community.
- They have games on Saturdays that the children can play. And as they get to say, you just come and you promenate and invite your friends to come with you. And that's how I started. My friend invited me to come with her. When I was a child, they had a pitcher pump and you'd go out and you would pump the pitcher and then you would get, sometimes you would have to prime it, but you would get your water that way.
- Now this is the way they put water inside each tent because they don't have running water in these camps. So you have to come outside and get your own water.
- [Interviewer] This is for campers?
- Yes. Yep.
- [Interviewer] What tent are you staying in?
- 33.
- [Interviewer] 33?
- Mm-hmm.
- [Interviewer] What is this?
- It's the well.
- [Interviewer] The well? That's great. Thank you.
- You're welcome.
- [Child] Come to left.
- You see over there?
- This is the same place where Asbury found the Cypress Chapel that he wrote about in 1794. Cypress is at the exact location and I feel that if Asbury returned today, he would feel quite at home here seeing things as they were. Now if you'll come just inside the gate. This one was born 1797. Isaac Murray. Murray is old. The Murray family, we know were here in the early 1800s. And the Murrays would have been among the early settlers attending services on the grounds here at Cypress Church and camp meeting. Exact names.
- [Interviewer] That's all right. Where's he?
- Sarah Lawrence, whose little stone is shown here, was a young girl who lived here in seven- She was born in 1795. And so she would've been one of those who came to this campground and this church to hear Francis Asbury. Sarah Lawrence is the oldest I know, but there was several that we documented that were born in the 1790s. I'm thinking that we probably had some Revolutionary soldiers buried here because these people in the inland communities were taking part in the war. And my sister-in-law, who would now be way over 100, told me that when she was a child, that the back part of this cemetery was covered with wooden markers. There was cypress markers. And that was some of the earliest. Now you see no sign of them. I think this was one.
- [Interviewer] What does all this mean to you as you walk this graveyard?
- It's very dear and sacred. I relate to the past and here you see the interweaving of the community and the church and the effect that one had on the other. The community was enhanced by the church activities, the camp meeting. And also I think that the fact that certain persons lived in this area was why Methodism began early here. Because Asbury contacted someone here before he even came, so he knew who was here. There seems to be a correlation between everything. Most of the campgrounds, I think I stated, had the cemetery, the church and the campground. Sometimes the campground came first and the church came afterwards. In our case, the church's cemetery came first and then the campground. It's hard to separate them but this was the plan early. There would be a cemetery, a church and a campground. And that was very common back in the 1800s. Ours is unique in the fact that nothing has been moved. The tents, the tabernacle, the cemetery, the church, everything is just as it was in the beginning. And we have two tents that go back to over 150 years. Even though we've had many fires that ravaged oodles of tents at one time, still we're fortunate to have two that have survived so long. Inland, sparse neighborhoods such as Cypress did not have regular preachers back in late 1700s and the 1800s, and so when Asbury came all from Methodist societies and given them qualified preachers and a lot of personal attention, they were quickly drawn to him and to his all folk, and that's why I think so many became Methodist.
- [Interviewer] So there was a real effort to reach the common man though?
- Yes. Right. Because these were the people, like I said, who had little contact with the city churches. They were well taken care of, but not the people who had moved inland and who were mostly farmers and workers of that type. And they really felt like they had been neglected. At Cypress, there are five surrounding communities within a radius of 10 miles that've been doing this since the late 1700s. Just think about it. The same people, today, here, their ancestors were attending here back in, say, the late 1700s and early 1800s and on down to the present.
- Christ lives in me. He arrives in me. When Jesus came into my life many years ago, He saved me and stayed. Even through all of my problems, He stayed. Why? Because he loves me so He wants me to be transformed like Him, that when I get to glory, I can praise God with the joy that's within my heart in a body that is absolutely perfect and with a soul and a spirit that's been totally redeemed and I can be totally His. Now, life is the only place that you have to practice your faith so that when you get to Heaven, you can experience the greater joy of it. And today, when you get saved or a person gets saved, at that instant, the same Holy Spirit who was in Jesus, who went into the heavenlies at His crucifixion, who resurrected Him from the grave, who came back at Pentecost when He commissioned Him to do so 50 days after the resurrection, and abides in those who were there present in the first century, is the same Holy Spirit who lives in every believer who trusts Jesus Christ as Savior and Lord. There's not another Spirit. There's only one. It's God's Spirit. He is triune. He is God the Father. He is God the Son. He is God the Holy Spirit for all eternity. He's not gonna send another Comforter. He's coming Himself. And when the Spirit of God came, the third person of the Godhead left the glories of Heaven to dwell in humanity that we might be transformed, Christlike, that we might once again walk into the presence of our God.
