Studfast to the End

A religious sect of people called the Campbellites sometimes held ceremonies in our neighborhood and drew large crowds considering the size of the community. The people came from the hills, the hollows, the runs, the valleys, and sometimes as far as 10 miles away to attend their colorful and interesting meetings.

They were still in the area after the Union Church was built, which has no particular denomination, but was free to all having been established there as a shelter and accommodation for funeral services around 1879. After the services, the converts were immediately taken to the creek and immersed, the ice often being cut for the ceremony. My father watched these icy baptisms with interest, marveling that they never caused the participants to catch cold.

There was also a log schoolhouse across Salt Creek near a location known as the Comer Hollow and situated almost directly across the creek from our home. The ford nearest to this meeting place was called the State Ford, and a small state road at that time joined our valley with the wide valley east of Londonderry, now known as U.S. Route 50, but then called Middlefork since it was the middle fork part of Salt Creek. Near this State Ford there lived, in my grandfather’s log house, a distant cousin by marriage through a descendant of our first grandmother in Ohio.

The man was named William Burns, and he belonged to a lodge and was quite a socialite in his way, having what is now called, I believe, a split personality. Well, Mr. Burns had a boat, and he considered himself a very important person, rowing the church-going public back and forth across the creek. As he rowed, he would sing over and over:

“This old boat has landed hundreds, and she’ll land hundreds more.”

In this crowd that had to be rowed across was a man who took his religion very seriously, or deliberately. He pulled the stunt of going into a trance while at church, and had to be carried miles to be loaded into the boat. One night after several of these trances, someone decided to try to awaken him by sticking him with a pin. He responded very quickly and thus ended the trances.

Much to the amusement of these church followers, who believed in their members rising and giving testimonials, was a man whose name I do not remember. If I did, I am sure I would not reveal it to the readers of this journal because of someone who might be a descendant.

He always ended his testimony in the same way, and ladies and gentlemen alike knowing what to expect, immediately searched and brought forth clean white handkerchiefs from their pockets to hide the amusement at his closing remarks and to clear away a few drops of moisture from their eyes.

His testimony would always end like this:

“And so as a servant of God, I shall remain standing studfast to the end.”

I asked my father how the preacher reacted, but he said he was so busy hiding his own amusement that he could not truthfully say that he ever looked to see.

All these old customs may seem quite antiquated to anyone reading this today, but my father’s mother was 35 years of age when he was born, and my father was 46 when I was born, making me now, in 1978, age 70 years.