Today’s column is a continuation of Marianne Leaders research into her ancestry and family history in the Brooklyn and East Brewton communities. Her story will be concluded in next week’s column.

“Knowledge of the intermarriage of the Still and Bethea families helped me to understand connections between the Still family name and Goodman Bethea’s parents-in-law. Charlotte Grice, the wife of Goodman Bethea, born in 1793, was accompanied by her parents, Jacob Grice, born 1771 in S.C., and Abigail Harrelson Grice, born 1772 in S.C., in the Bethea migration from South Carolina to Alabama in 1817 to 1818, and on March 29, 1818, Jacob Grice died at only 47.

He was buried in the Still Chapel Cemetery in the county now called, since formation in 1868, Escambia County, Ala.

Since his date of death, 1818, is far earlier than any other in this cemetery, too, it appears that his remains might have been transferred into this cemetery later after the Still-Bethea marriage circa 1850, and/or perhaps after Jacob’s wife’s death in 1855 when the two graves could have been placed here together.

This area of the Still Chapel Cemetery is now in what is called the East Brewton area, and just to the east of this Still Chapel Cemetery in East Brewton is the site of what once was Ft Crawford, the fort built for protection of civilians and for deployment of soldiers.

The Seventh Georgia Regiment was occupying the military barracks section of the fort in its early days after erection in 1817 during the fierce Creek and Seminole Indian Wars of the early 19th century according to Rev B. F. Riley’s History of Conecuh County, published 1881.

These Indian Wars are often viewed as a kind of continuation of the War of 1812, the era of Andrew Jackson’s rise to fame.

In early 1818, beginning in the spring, raids against Red Stick Creek Indians—raids which went into the Spanish territory of Florida—were being conducted with both regular and volunteer forces out of Ft Crawford.

Perhaps the date of Jacob Grice’s death, March 29, 1818, is just a meaningless coincidence with the time of these raids against the Red Stick Creeks—which are considered a western action in the First Seminole War, while Jackson was fighting a bit further east in Spanish Florida.

But the dates are possibly indicative that Jacob Grice was slain in an Indian raid sent out from Ft Crawford against Creeks who had been armed by the British; Jackson’s invasion of Florida and thus the beginning of the First Seminole War was exactly in the Spring of 1818, while the troops and volunteers from Ft Crawford were deployed in action against the Red Stick Creeks.

What I have kept asking myself is: why was the Reverend Goodman Bethea in this particular area of Alabama in 1818?

He was a settler in Alabama just as his brothers were a bit further north in Wilcox and in Monroe Counties.

But he was a “Reverend” from South Carolina, apparently, in the Methodist Episcopal early church system—a system which required its ministers to serve a “circuit” of several churches—usually around three small churches in a district.

It is recorded that there were Methodist ministers in the area of Ft Crawford in 1817-1818, but I have not yet seen his, Goodman Bethea’s, name mentioned. Nevertheless, he must have been in that area in some fulfilling of duties as a Methodist minister.

It might be that he was somehow attached at some point to duties within the Ft. Crawford community as well as within surrounding settlements which would later be called East Brewton settlements.

The Methodist Church at that time was very eagerly sending missionary preachers to far-flung areas of settlement, even before territories became states.

The act of the Federal Congress to divide Alabama into a separate territory from the Mississippi Territory, of which it was once a part, had been approved in 1817, but Alabama was not to become a state until 1819, after the wars with the Creeks were more settled than they were in 1818.

Since I had been unable, in my searching, to find a clear connection of Rev Goodman Bethea to any particular Methodist congregation, I had begun to wonder about his title “Reverend.”

But just as I had begun to think about abandoning any pursuit in order to “find” him in a particular church, I discovered, on the SC Genweb site, in a Methodist publication of that era– the “Southern Christian Advocate”—an obituary which lamented the death in 1863 of the eloquent Goodman Bethea of the “Evergreen Circuit.” ( SC GenWeb) So, evidently, Goodman Bethea later moved his family further north from the East Brewton area to Brooklyn which was within horse-riding distance of Evergreen, Ala., in order to serve an “Evergreen Circuit;” but he had probably already been under an earlier assignment as a Methodist minister in 1817 to 1818 when he arrived in the Ft. Crawford area around what is now East Brewton, Ala.

Since the family is found in Brooklyn in the 1830 census, they moved there sometime between 1820 when Joseph Alston was born, and 1830.

This fact of the Methodist affiliation raises other issues in regard to ownership of slaves, as slavery was not an approved institution in the Methodist Church, especially not approved for a minister.

The split in the Methodist Church was to come later, during Goodman’s lifetime, in 1844, between Methodism North, and Methodism South. Before 1844, a Methodist Episcopal minister, whether in the North or the South, would certainly be running counter to church policy and moral rules were he to own or rent slaves, and such a minister could be excommunicated.

(John Wesley died an Anglican of the reformist Methodist movement, which was firmly opposed to slavery, and partly under Wesley’s influence, mainly under the influence of Wesley’s friend, Oglethorpe, and under the governance of most of the other idealistic trustees of the Georgia colony, slavery, though allowed from the beginning of colony South Carolina, would be kept out of colonial Georgia until 1750, only allowed after the moral leadership of the Georgia Trustees had come to an end.)

Anyway, after the schism of 1844 in the American Methodist Church, Goodman Bethea, Methodist minister, South, would have been permitted to own slaves under the rules of the southern church.

(Approximately a hundred years more along this route, apologies had to be made for the Southern Methodist schism that permitted slavery.)

Whether or not he was still employed as a minister at the time of the 1850 census, I do not know, but Goodman Bethea was enumerated in the 1850 census in Conecuh/Covington, Ala., as a farmer with a prosperous farm and slaves.

The tracing of the generations in Alabama after Goodman Bethea (born 1793, S.C.) of course were easier searches than I had carried out before.

Once in a while I had in my memory a story that Grandmother Sally had told, so that sometimes I could imagine a bit of personality behind a statistic recorded in a census or on a cemetery stone.

Until my grandmother was 13 years old in Brooklyn, Ala., her grandmother, Mary Ann Bethea, was still alive, and evidently quite lovable and communicative.

Her lifetime of 1825 to 1891 contained the War for Southern Independence almost exactly to the center, and she remembered the period very well, and talked about it with her grandchildren. Even though her husband, Michael W. Rabun, born 1820, had been killed at the Battle of Missionary Ridge in Tennessee (with First Florida Infantry, Nov 25, 1863) leaving her a widow with five children 13 years old and younger, she apparently had a balanced view of the past struggles between North and South.

She told her family a story to rearrange the impressions left by some other Southern tales of Yankee oppression.

She said that in the middle of a period of occupation by Union Forces, who were foraging in their area, outright stealing of foodstuff by Union soldiers, sometimes occurred.

In the middle of one of those years when no one in their area of the South had anything to spare, she had been outraged by the disappearance of what, she said, was their last ham of that season, a treasure they were keeping in the family’s smokehouse.

A trustworthy man, manager of the smokehouse, came to her and told her that it had been taken by a Union soldier.

She was in quite a fit of anger and agitation as she dressed and went out to find the officer in charge who was, according to what I remember, at that time, staying in Evergreen.

(Whenever I now think about her approach to that officer, I reflect that, as she was a preacher’s daughter, she would have had her words of Biblical indignation ready.)

But almost before she could finish her complaint to the Union officer about the injury and insult of this theft, he was making a polite bow and a kind apology to her and was offering her a cash repayment for the loss.

As she explained to her grandchildren, there was no such thing as a geographical location of human decency.

There were gentlemen North as well as gentlemen South; of course, the location of the one born South, being a matter of good fortune, was a fact to savor quietly but not to boast about!”

Once again appreciation is expressed to Maryianne Leader for sharing her genealogical pursuits and experiences. Her story will be completed in next week’s column.

Anyone having a question regarding this column is requested to contact this writer, Curtis Thomasson, at 20357 Blake Pruitt Road, Andalusia, AL 36420; 334-804-1442; or Email: cthomasson@centurytel.net.