Native Americans lived along Pedlar Creek at the top of the Blue Ridge

RUTH KNIGHT BAILEY, J.D., 

presented this paper to the Rockbridge Historical Society at its meeting of September 27, 2005 at    Southern Virginia University ]

Mormon Missionaries in the Blue Ridge, 1883-98

In its early days, from 1830 to 1846, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latterday

Saints was unique in that it was somewhat color-blind. (Church members

generally called themselves "Latter-day Saints" or "Saints," according

to the Bible. Almost everybody else called them Mormons. 35) The writings

of Joseph Smith, the first president, did indicate that lineage mattered to

God, with Israelites receiving covenant promises first and the descendants

of Cain receiving them last.36 The early church nevertheless welcomed all converts, "black and white, bond and free." 37 All people sat together in

system, because their existence

seemed to flaunt a violation of the

anti-miscegenation laws.22

Previous anti-miscegenation

statutes in Virginia had more flexibly

defined "colored" as more

than one-fourth Negro blood, and

"Indian" as non-colored with more

than one-fourth Indian blood.23

The Racial Integrity Act raised the

bar considerably by declaring that a

person with any "discernable trace"

of any color other than white would

be considered a "colored" person

who posed a danger to the purity of the white race. Furthermore, the act

required non-whites to register with local governments and pay a fee, 20

percent of which went into Dr. Plecker’s coffers in Richmond. 24 There,

government workers used state and colonial vital statistics, such as the

antebellum registers of free colored people, to pinpoint locations in the

commonwealth where descendants might be passing for white.2 5 Because two-thirds of the Amherst Indians 26had never registered as free issues

in the first place, the act segregated descendants from each other because

the Department of Vital Statistics labeled some as white and some

as black.27

Then the county clerk in nearby Rockbridge County denied Atha

Sorrells a white marriage license. Sorrels sued him and won by proving

that "colored" did not necessarily mean "Negro." She produced evidence

to show that she had a distant Indian ancestor but no black ones, thereby

falling within the legal exception for one-sixteenth Indian blood.28

Plecker chose not to appeal the ruling, perhaps fearing that an appellate

court could hold the Racial Integrity Act to be overly vague in

its definition of "Caucasian." Instead, Plecker increased the intensity of

his hunt for Virginians who might have a few drops of colored blood.

He widely distributed John Powell’s brochure, The Breach in the Dike: An

Analysis of the Sorrels Case Showing the Danger to Racial Integrity From the Intermarriage

of Whites with So-Called Indians. 29 Richmond bureaucrats under

his direction used the antebellum Amherst registers to trace individuals

named in it down through descendants who had dutifully obtained birth,

marriage, and death certificates.

f i g u r e 4

Dr. Walter Ashby Plecker, January 1935.

courtesy of the richmond times-dispatch

206 P roceedings of the Rockbridge Historical Society — Volume XIII Proceedings of the Rockbridge Historical Society — Volume XIII 207

The elders discovered the craggy landscape dotted with tiny log

houses, many belonging to members of the Mason family. One day, John

Mason took Kimball and Welch up to the cabin of his parents, Peter Mason

and Diannah Sorrells Mason. Fifteen family members gathered to

meet them.51 That night, Elder Kimball wrote in his journal: 52

[A] stranger sight I never saw. He [Peter Mason] was seventy years

old. [He] was born and raised at this same place (top of the Blue

Ridge Mts). He was of Indian descent, his skin being almost as dark as

an Indians. His hair was long and black. Mrs. Mason — his wife — was

very old. She said what she thought and was somewhat of a doctress.

They had seventeen children — twelve boys and five girls. Children

and grandchildren about forty-two. Indian blood was discernable in

most of their faces. Look which way you might — poverty was everywhere

to be seen. They were but little ahead of the Indian people in

education. None of them had ever belonged to a church of any kind.

If the elders had seen any indication that a group of Native Americans

lived along Pedlar Creek at the top of the Blue Ridge, they would

have sought them out as "chosen people," just as other elders had sought

out the Catawba Indians in South Carolina 53 and the Cherokee Indians

in North Carolina.54 In the Book of Mormon, the Israelite prophet Lehi

f i g u r e 5

Location of Indians in West-Central Virginia

Rugged uplands

Rivers and

creeks

Norfolk & Western

Railroad

Present-day county

boundaries

Tobacco Row

Mountain

H

Bear

Mountain

n

Amherst

nOronoco

n

Lexington

n

Collierstown

Buena Vista n

J a m e s R i v e r

n o r t h ( m a u r y )

R i v e r

s o u t h R i v e r

i r i s h c r e e k

p e d l a r c r e e k ( p e d l a r r i v e r )

N e l s o n

C o u n t y

r o c k b r i d g e

C o u n t y

amh e r s t

C o u n t y

nancy fischman

c o l l i e r s

c r e e k

meetings, including the few free-black members. All faithful men held the

lay priesthood, including at least two blacks.38

Then, in 1852, Utah governor and prophet Brigham Young asked

the territorial legislature to pass "An Act in Relation to Service," legalizing

slavery in the territory, though very few blacks lived there. In a statement

to the legislature, Young also denied priesthood ordination to Negro Latter-

day Saints.39

As Reconstruction ended and government-sponsored segregation

began in the South,4 0 former abolitionists in the Northeast turned their

full attention toward Mormons. Political cartoons in Republican newspapers

began showing polygamous Mormons allying themselves with other

dangerous minorities by marrying them and giving birth to mixed breeds

of every ethnic origin. 41 Federal government officials accused Mormons

of stirring up western Indians by promising them a restoration of ancient

greatness. 42 Mainstream Protestant ministers accused Mormons of barbarism

and immorality.43

In that context, it must have been a relief for the elders to journey into

the Blue Ridge Mountains and find a different set of challenges. On December

30, 1883, Elders4 4 J. Golden Kimball and Charles Welch stepped off the

Shenandoah Railway car at Riverside Station, three miles north of Buena

Vista in Rockbridge County. 45 On January 11, 1884, in a hard rain, the two

repeatedly waded the icy Pedlar Creek46 as it wound along the remote tops of the Blue Ridge Mountains in Amherst County.

* Eventually, they found

the home of a referral named Mr. Mason. Glad to have arrived safely, Kimball

wrote, "I could not stand erect in the house. They had two beds and

nine of us to stow away. It was accomplished but how I cannot tell."47

A few days later, the elders made their way to a nearby schoolhouse

where they intended to preach. A "Dunkard exhorter" finished his prayer

meeting and served them with a notice from the school commissioner

forbidding them to use the facility. So they stood outside in the snow, singing

hymns. Mason insisted that they spend another night with his family

and urged them to visit "any time . . . night or day."48

On January 20, 1884, twenty people, "who did not belong to any

church," showed up to hear the elders preach. Appalachian uplanders often

worshiped with obvious emotion. 49 Yet now they stood "without spirit"

in the winter cold. After the elders had preached for more than an hour,

not one person said a word about the sermon. Kimball was discouraged.

Then, surprisingly, most of the people quietly asked the missionaries to

call on them at home.50

* Although the waterway is now generally known as Pedlar River, the residents in

the community at the top of the Blue Ridge, and the missionaries whose diaries

recorded visits with them, spoke almost exclusively of Pedlar Creek.

208 P roceedings of the Rockbridge Historical Society — Volume XIII Proceedings of the Rockbridge Historical Society — Volume XIII 209

up the delicate subject. Hannah and John said they could prove they had

been married for seventeen years.6 8 Then Peggy Sorrells told the missionaries

that Marvel Mason had been living with her daughter without marrying

her.69

Although many in the neighborhood avoided recorded documents,

others willingly procured the proper marriage licenses and baptismal

certificates. 70 It appeared to the missionaries that the white uplanders

on Pedlar Creek assimilated with the Indians, rather than the other way

around. Or perhaps they had had Indian ancestry all along. In any event,

the "Mason neighborhood" on Pedlar Creek served as the hub of the

community, and it also became a Mormon mission headquarters for the

Virginia Conference of the Southern States Mission. 71 At the same time,

the missionaries, directed by the centralized priesthood hierarchy, continually

urged the Pedlar people to move to the American Zion in Utah and

nearby territories. Households, including those of two Mason daughters

and their families,72 began to emigrate westward. 73

As the months passed, a constant arrival of western elders moved

from family to family along Pedlar Creek. One end of the Pedlar community

came close to the Irish Creek community, in Rockbridge County,

where the elders found more uplanders who opened their homes and

their hearts to Mormonism. 74 On February 15, 1888, Elder John W. Tate

wrote his wife, telling her that several members from Irish Creek prepared

to immigrate in the spring, provided they could raise the money.

He added, "It is in the mountains we are called to labor, among the timber,

hills, holes, and rocks. It is only the poor that will receive the gospel.

There are no Saints in the valleys, people are better off down there and

will not listen."7 5

The Pedlar community in Amherst County and the Irish Creek community

in Rockbridge touched a lofty tip of a third county, Nelson, where

a group of "Campbellites" 76 asked for rebaptism as Latter-day Saints. Milton

Fitzgerald, their minister of sixteen years, led them west to Zion.77

Historic overlaps between some restorationist beliefs of these particular

Christians and the Latter-day Saints may also explain why Mormon elders

of the 1880s generally received a warmer welcome from religious people

in the mountains of Appalachia than they received from mainstream Protestants

in the valleys below.78

Industrial Boom and Administrative Change, 1890-1918

None of the Mormon elders of the 1880s predicted the dramatic political

changes of the 1890s that would take them out of the mountains and into

the towns down in the valleys. Change came for the missionaries when the

Mormon priesthood ended its dominion over Utah politics, its support of

brought his family from Jerusalem to the Americas during Old Testament

times. To Latter-day Saints, this made modern Indians a precious remnant

of one of the ancient tribes of Israel, who would gather in an American

Zion to welcome the second coming of the Messiah.55

Yet no Indian reservation existed in Amherst County, Virginia. 56 The

area looked like a fairly typical Appalachian mountain community, except

that the missionaries, who were familiar with western Indians, 57 clearly

recognized these particular uplanders as Lamanites, 58 one of the four main groups described in the

Book of Mormon and a word Latter-day Saints often used to describe American Indians. 59 Another visiting missionary,

Elder Newell Kimball, even described Peter Mason as a "full-blooded Lamanite."

60

The Masons and their upland neighbors confused the missionaries

by saying that they had never been baptized into any religion, but that

they loved the Bible. In fact, Kimball said that Peter Mason "was deeply

imbued with the doctrine of the Old Primitive Baptists." The old man

asked the missionaries to come again and again, said he would like to be

in their company all the time, and repeatedly "God blessed" them. Tears

rose in Peter Mason’s eyes when they read the Bible with him. But he felt

no call to baptism. In the old upland way, he had to wait until God told

him it was time, and not the other way around.61

"Mother Mason" healed the sick with herbal medicines. 62 The elders

helped her by anointing ailing people with consecrated oil and by laying

hands upon them.63

"Father Mason" warned the elders not to visit Old Man Vest and his

family because the Vests were "dangerous." All Latter-day Saint missionaries

feared the mob violence that sometimes formed against them. Although

the Ku Klux Klan and other mobs mainly targeted Negroes, they

also terrorized people they considered "social deviants," including Mormons.

64 Yet in spite of Mason’s warning, the missionaries climbed Stight

Cove Mountain, at the head of the Pedlar near Oronoco, in the snow.

Old Levi Vest "declared himself to be a great reasoner, reader of the Bible

and a Lover of the Word of God." Kimball wrote that Vest was an "Old

Iron Side Baptist, Hard Shell." Kimball hadn’t had much luck baptizing

"Primitive Baptists" in the past, but he didn’t think Old Levi Vest or any of

the Vest sons would hurt him, and they did not.65

One day, Hannah Mason announced that she was getting baptized

"on Monday at eleven o’clock." This was disquieting news to the elders.

First, they were not entirely sure that she had studied long enough to understand

the doctrine. 66 Second, it was dubious that most of the Masons could prove they were married; 67 Latter-day Saint rules forbade the baptizing

of people living in sin. Elders Kimball and Welch finally brought

210 P roceedings of the Rockbridge Historical Society — Volume XIII Proceedings of the Rockbridge Historical Society — Volume XIII 211

On December 22, 1895, Elder Thomas Romney and his companion

visited the mayor of nearby Lexington at his "beautiful brick mansion"

and had "a long friendly talk" with him. The mayor loved hearing Romney’s

stories about Mexico, and promised Romney that Mormons could

preach on the streets any time they wanted and that the laws of the city

would always protect them.85

Later that same day, Elder Romney wrote, "We find in the east end

of the city two or three families of Saints by the name of Mason who were

baptized in Amherst County. . . . They are reported to be part niggar."

Yet despite the "reports," Romney spent that night with one of the Mason

families." 86

A couple of years later, Elder David Call’s diary added that "some of

the members" in Rockbridge County "are part nigar" and that "some of

the leaders years ago baptized them through a mistake." Call wrote, "They

said they was Indian but I don’t." Call stayed overnight with Mormons

near Collierstown, rather than with the Masons.87

No previous missionary to Pedlar or Irish Creek had mentioned anything

about black people. Neither did any of the copious records that had

been sent to Salt Lake. The people did not look African American. Yet the

rumors persisted.88

In 1895 and 1896, President Elias Kimball, of the Southern States Mission,

directed all Southern states missionaries to shift their emphasis from

rural service to city service. He also told missionaries that members "should

f i g u r e 7

Buena Vista Hotel, shown in a postcard postmarked in 1909.

special collections, leyburn library, washi ngton and lee university

plural marriage, and its intense efforts to gather the tribes of Israel physically.

The federal government recognized Utah as the forty-fifth state in

1896, and Latter-day Saints began to assimilate into a more middle-class

mode of American life.79 At the same time, both industrialization 80 and segregation 81 dramatically altered the lives of the Appalachian uplanders

who had so kindly cared for the elders over the years.

For the people on Pedlar and Irish Creeks, the first indication of

change came in the form of a new boomtown named Buena Vista, in

Rockbridge County, at the foot of the Blue Ridge Mountains. Elder Edward

J. Eardley, writing home on April 30, 1890, described developers

grading streets and laying water pipes in what had been a "fertile plain

devoted to agriculture." Two railroads brought guests to four spacious

new hotels. The "splendid" Buena Vista Hotel sat high on a hill with a

"charming view of the new town and the North River." The railway companies

loaded their freight cars with goods from the newly built iron works

and paper manufacturers along the river, as well as from the new tannery,

saddle company, wagon firm, and fence supplier.82

While valley people welcomed the booming job market, they expressed

concern about the "influx" of laborers "from Amherst on the

other side of the Blue Ridge." Townspeople described the new workers as

"a rough, disorderly element, partly white and partly colored." 83

Beginning in 1895, Latter-day Saint elders shifted most of their missionary

efforts from the Amherst County mountains into Buena Vista below.

84 Jobs brought some of the younger Masons down into town, where

they continued to open their doors to the elders.

f i g u r e 6

Buena Vista, 1891.

special collections, leyburn library, washi ngton and lee university

212 P roceedings of the Rockbridge Historical Society — Volume XIII Proceedings of the Rockbridge Historical Society — Volume XIII 213

Recognizing Legally

Non-Existent People: 1932 . . .

Seventy-four years later, Will Southers

told what happened. He said, "I

remember the old men that started

the church at Pedlar Creek and

Cornwall. . . . They were mostly

Masons and Colemans. . . . My dad

and mother were baptized in 1912.

Elder Turley baptized me in 1913

when I was fifteen years old. It felt

real good. When the elders came,

they preached about every night on

top of the Blue Ridge Mountains."

Will added, "What schooling I got

was when we moved everything out

of a room and had to pay a teacher

to come." After trying for more

than a year to get a schoolhouse

through regular channels, Will and

his father, Robert Southers, finally

built a school themselves on family land for Will’s younger siblings. They

used streetcar ties and logs they cut in their own sawmill. "Seventy dollars

built it," said Southers, "and we had church there sometimes. . . . Jacob

Mason was one of the head members. He worked at a factory in Buena

Vista. He preached to us when there were no elders. He knew the Bible

pretty good."98

Years went by. And a remarkable thing happened, considering the

highly centralized nature of the larger Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day

Saints. Although the existence of Latter-day Saint meetings in and near

Buena Vista totally disappeared from official records before 1921, and local

members say that infrequent visits by elders ended before 1923,99 an

Appalachian mode of Mormonism continued — completely on its own.100

Myrtle Wilhelm Coleman, a great-granddaughter of Peter and

Diannah

Mason, said that in 1932, when she was nine years old, her family

had "always belonged" to the church, but "at the time we didn’t know

anything about elders or anything." 101

Members met at each other’s homes, or out under the trees, with Jacob

Mason and others preaching. They read the Bible and the Book of Mormon

with and to each other. They did not gather together every Sunday,

but met often enough that they held together as a distinct religious community

— even though families no longer lived along the same mountain

be restrained as much as possible from emigrating." He counseled missionaries

to organize locally led "branches and Sunday schools" * wherever there

were enough members to gather into a small group. He wrote, "Select good

men and ordain them priests to preside over the branches, and efficient

instructors to take charge of the Sunday schools." 89 Elders implemented

this counsel throughout the uplands of Appalachia, usually ordaining local

men whose families had faithfully harbored the elders for years.90

The mission president’s major shift of focus freed missionaries to

spend the bulk of their time in more populated areas where prejudice

against Mormons had lessened. Official church records show priesthood

ordinations taking place for local men in various rural areas of Virginia

during this time, complying with the mission president’s instructions.9 1

Yet no ordinations took place in Amherst or Rockbridge Counties.

The church records for Amherst and Rockbridge Counties from

1897 to 1918 show a distinct pattern of growth that clearly took them into

the "branch" or "ward" range:

■ ■ Between 1897 and 1912, elders established locally led Sunday

schools in Collierstown (Colliers Creek), Oronoco (Pedlar

Creek), Buena Vista, and Cornwall (Irish Creek).92

■ ■ June 15, 1918: Five hundred people attended the Latter-day

Saints meeting in Buena Vista. Missionaries wrote, "It completely

blocked the street; much literature was disposed of and

several invitations to homes were received by elders."9 3

■ ■ July 13, 1918: "The Saints in Buena Vista are anxious to have a

church built of their own," a missionary wrote. "They have subscribed

over four hundred dollars for that purpose. The site chosen

is in the Long Hollow near Brother Coleman’s residence." 94

■ ■ August 24, 1918: The branch conference held in Buena Vista

was so big that it filled the Star Theater twice.95

Then, suddenly, in spite of the large numbers of people interested in

Mormonism there, entries for Buena Vista, Cornwall (Irish Creek), and

Oronoco (Pedlar Creek) disappeared from all official Latter-day Saint

records. 96 Regular entries abruptly ended in the Sunday school mission

history. According to church records, church activity ended in and near

Buena Vista, Virginia, in 1918. No entry appeared for any of the three

locations in a 1921 list of all the Latter-day Saint branches and Sunday

schools in Virginia.97

The missionaries left. But where did the members go?

Actually, the members did not go anywhere.

* Congregations. Tiny Sunday schools could be conducted without priesthood, but

where enough members existed to form a "branch" or "ward," local priesthood

became a necessity.

f i g u r e 8

Will Southers

Courtesy of Roy and June Southers

214 P roceedings of the Rockbridge Historical Society — Volume XIII Proceedings of the Rockbridge Historical Society — Volume XIII 215

Brigham D. Madsen, another elder in the East Central States Mission,

knew Alvin Pocock during his second mission. Madsen later wrote108

that Pocock

began to proselyte in an African-American community and eventually

converted and baptized an entire congregation of about 150. . . . This

was at the same time, of course, when African-American males were

not allowed to hold the Mormon priesthood, a practice which was

reversed in June 1978. . . . I never learned what the church officials in

Salt Lake City in 1935 did about their new members or Pocock.

Indeed, church leaders in Salt Lake City faced an administrative

challenge. After Latter-day Saints demonstrated obvious patriotism during

World War I, they enjoyed increasing acceptance from the federal

government and the Protestant mainstream. Many church members became

rather Republican and middle class.109

But without a revelation from God through the current prophet, the

ban on priesthood for blacks could not be lifted.

It appears that boom-time townspeople in Buena Vista had tipped

off the missionaries as to what they might find if they read the vital statistics

in the courthouse: namely, that some of their members had been officially

classified as black. Without local lay priesthood leadership, the cen f

i g u r e 1 0

Latter-day Saints in front of the Long Hollow church house near Buena Vista, about 1944.

ewing studio, lexington — courtesy of leroy wheeler

creeks. Sometimes

they visited other

churches, but seldom

joined them.102

One day in 1932,

nine-year-old Myrtle

Wilhelm watched as

her Aunt Eva Southers

made biscuits

with "a rolling pin

full of moonshine."

An automobile with

two young men in it

stopped at the bottom

of the hill.10 3 Will

Southers said that the

men made their way

up through the field

to the house he was

building for his family.

Southers stopped

work on the floorboards.

Recognizing

the pair as Mormon missionaries, 104 Southers wondered where they had

been for the last many years.

Elder Alvin Pocock asked Southers, "How about us helping? And

then maybe we can have a meeting on your new floor?"

Southers nodded assent.

Pocock added, "Do you think we can get a crowd?"

In retelling the story nearly sixty years later, Will Southers laughed

out loud as he tried to describe the elders’ faces when people kept arriving.

People sat all over the house, porch, and hillside. Cars stopped to

listen. Excited people wanted to hear more, so the elders preached from

home to home and even up at the "school house on Pedlar Creek way up

in the mountains." 105

Pocock baptized scores of people in the South River near Cornwall106

and just about anyplace else where he could do a full-body immersion. Will

Southers said, "Elder Pocock baptized my wife, Lizzie, in the ‘blue hole’

from where they took the iron ore. They both like to drowned. I had told

him not to step back. At first he didn’t. He said what he had to say. Then he

put his left foot back to baptize her. And they both went straight down out

o’ sight. I jumped in and grabbed her by one hand and him by the other."10 7

courtesy of steven alvin pocock

f i g u r e 9

Mission program covers, 1930 and 1934. It was

unusual for an elder to serve two consecutive

missions

in the same place. Though his call could have taken

him anywhere in the East Central States, Alvin Poccock

worked in Buena Vista both times.

216 P roceedings of the Rockbridge Historical Society — Volume XIII Proceedings of the Rockbridge Historical Society — Volume XIII 217

Will Southers. though unordained,

served faithfully as his counselor.

Cash served thirteen years as the

only priesthood-bearer in the

whole congregation.1 14

Meanwhile, in 1934, William

Eugene Larsen moved his young

family to Waynesboro, Virginia,

where, with his new Ph.D. from

Purdue University, he worked for

E. I. DuPont DeNemours and Company

as a research chemist. After

being officially called through the

centralized priesthood hierarchy,

Larsen led a Latter-day Saint Sunday

school in his home and took

services to members who lived in

remote locations in the Blue Ridge

Mountains. The Larsen-led Sunday

school included blessing and administering

the sacrament, 115 which

required priesthood ordination.116

In the 1940s, two Irish Creek families named Clark moved into

Waynesboro. They held Sunday school, too, but without sacrament. The

Clarks knew about the Larsens, but the Larsens did not know about the

Clarks. After some traveling elders stumbled upon the Clarks and reported

their existence, Eugene Larsen rented the American Legion Hall so

that everyone could meet together. The congregation grew large enough

to form a "branch," with Larsen as its president.117

Jim and Elijah Clark’s father and mother had been baptized in 1911,

and other Irish Creek relatives had been baptized before the turn of the

century. Many Clarks had participated in home Sunday schools, though

members partook of the sacrament only when priesthood-bearing elders

visited from the Latter-day Saint communities elsewhere.

Now members of the new branch, the Clarks saw local priesthood

bearers administering the sacrament every Sunday, and they saw local

men laying healing hands on people. Soon Jim and Elijah Clark respectfully

asked Eugene Larsen to ordain the worthy males in their family. Jim

Clark was particularly concerned because his son Claude was nearly twelve

years old, the age of first ordination.118

Eugene Larsen, having heard the rumors about "colored blood" in

the Buena Vista congregation, asked the mission president what to do to

f i g u r e 1 2

Esau, Jacob, and George Mason

in the mid-1940s.

courtesy of peggy cash goodsell

tral church in Salt Lake City could not authorize formation of a branch of

that church in Buena Vista.

Early missionaries and local church members had considered the

black priesthood ban irrelevant in this community, given that these were

chosen people, descended from the Tribe of Joseph. 110 But before elders

ordained these remnants of the house of Israel, the mission president had

sent the elders out of the mountains, down into a society that classified

the Pedlar and Irish Creek people differently. Apparently, the courthouse

classifications swayed the elders. Although local people stayed with the

church in the Appalachian tradition, they remained loyal to the Mormon

model of lay priesthood authority, and waited for priesthood holders to

come and perform baptisms.

Then, in the midst of the Great Depression, along came Elder Alvin

Pocock and a tidal wave of baptisms and religious enthusiasm. 111 Some of

the older members argued against building a church house because of

the cost and because they had gotten along without one for years. Robert

Southers, however, went ahead and donated the land for a church building

in Long Hollow, next to the Coleman home. Families sacrificed to

donate money to the construction fund. Richard Clark, who owned a sawmill,

sold lumber at a discount. Salt Lake City sent two elders to help. Will

Southers said that Elder Burton knew what he was doing and worked hard,

but the "other elder was off reading out in the shade." All the members

worked on the new building. They lighted it with oil lamps and heated it

with a coal stove. In the end, the building cost between $400 and $500.112

On May 30, 1937, Elder Reid Tippitts wrote that the members in Buena

Vista "have succeeded in building a chapel." Some 130 people showed

up at Sacrament meeting that evening and sixty people attended Sunday

school. Tippitts added, "They were

very attentive, too. I quite enjoyed

the day. But these people do present

quite a problem. They claim

they are not Negro, but. . . ."113

In 1937, Latter-day Saint elders

ordained nineteen-year-old

Hansford Cash as branch president

for the Long Hollow congregation.

Although Cash’s sister married

into the Mason line, Cash had a

white pedigree at the courthouse.

f i g u r e 1 1

Oella Wheeler Cash and

Hansford Cash in 1941.

courtesy of peggy cash goodsell

218 P roceedings of the Rockbridge Historical Society — Volume XIII Proceedings of the Rockbridge Historical Society — Volume XIII 219

"No you’re not," he said.

"What do you mean I’m not?"

"They don’t give the priesthood to niggars."

"What’s that got to do with me?"

And he wouldn’t say any more. I guess he figured he’d said too much

already. I found out later they refused him the priesthood. He was

a couple years older. They refused him the priesthood! And sure

enough, I didn’t receive the priesthood when I was twelve.

Revealing Appalachian religious attitude, Claude added, "This is

where I really criticize the [priesthood] officials in the Buena Vista area.

. . . We have a way to find out anything we need to find out. [It is] a simple

matter for a branch president [to go] in prayer to Heavenly Father.

‘Should this person be allowed to hold the priesthood or not?’ Where

were their minds, their hearts, their spirits?" 120

In that summer of 1950, when Claude turned twelve, Eugene Larsen

was the Waynesboro branch president. He also served as district president

over several other congregations in the mission, including the Long

Hollow church in Buena Vista. In addition, he was the father of a boy

who was a little younger than Claude. When Wayne Larsen was twelve, his

father delayed Wayne’s ordination because he did not want to embarrass

Claude, Wayne’s friend. Eventually, however, Eugene Larsen and other

priesthood bearers called Wayne to the front of the congregation and

laid their hands on his head. Claude Clark stood up, strode out the door,

and did not look back. Claude’s uncle, Elijah Clark, the congregation’s

clerk, wrote the newest ordination

in the record book and remained

in his seat.121

In 1950, Joseph Anderson

Clark, Claude’s grandfather, still

lived near Irish Creek at the edge of

the National Forest land where his

ancestors had lived. He knew about

his Native American lineage. In

fact, he became a Mormon in 1911

because he believed that people

with the blood of Israel had special

responsibilities to prepare for the

second coming of the Messiah.122

f i g u r e 1 4 William Eugene Larsen and

his wife,

Tursell, in the 1950s.

courtesy of g. douglas larsen

"clear the Clark family." The mission president assigned a missionary to

search Clark genealogy. The missionary responded:119

May 1, 1951

Dear Brother Larsen,

I made a trip to Amherst and in the court house there I was shown the

marriage record of Joseph Anderson Clark and Mary Susan Clark,

the parents of Jim and Elijah Clark, and they were married in 1906 as

colored. May the Lord bless you in your efforts to solve the problems

in your branch. I know they are discouraging.

Sincerely,

Elder Wm. S. Tanner

In 1992, Claude Edward Clark, by then an experienced attorney,

reminisced about being twelve years old and Mormon in Virginia in 1950:

[It was] the week of my twelfth birthday. I was all excited. When you

are twelve you receive the priesthood. I told my cousin [in Buena

Vista] I was going to be ordained a deacon.

f i g u r e 1 3

Latter-day Saints in Waynesboro, 1951. Many of the people in the photo were Clarks,

originally from Irish Creek in Rockbridge County (and named in Plecker’s list of target

families, Figure 3). Wayne Larsen and Claude Clark are the twelve-year-olds with

large white collars at the far right. G. Douglas Larsen is the boy in the billed cap.

courtesy of g. douglas larsen

220 P roceedings of the Rockbridge Historical Society — Volume XIII Proceedings of the Rockbridge Historical Society — Volume XIII 221

Clark — on the tree. He also used

Atha’s evidence to show that Julia’s

parents were classified as white and

that Joe’s parents were colored--

Indian and white. He then proved

that his own father was Joe Clark

Jr.’s brother and his mother was

Julia Sorrels Clark’s sister, making

them double first cousins with

the exact same ancestors. 124 Joseph

Anderson Clark had produced legal

precedent indicating that "colored"

was not limited to "Negro"

in his family. President Larsen read

the documents carefully. Then he

looked Joseph Anderson Clark in

the eye and said, "Brother, I believe

you’re right.125

Claude’s "cousin’s husband,"

ordained in 1951, was immediately called to the Buena Vista Branch presidency.

126 Alvin Coleman and Garvis Wheeler, both direct descendants

of Peter and Diannah Mason, were also ordained that same day. So was

Hansford Vest, the great-grandson of old iron-sided Levi Vest.127

Hansford Vest credited his "Lamonite [sic] brothers" with "comprising

most of the membership of the Church in Rockbridge County as late as

1940," and he listed "a few of them" as Masons, Colemans, Southerses, and

Clarks. 128 Both Alvin Coleman and Garvis Wheeler later served as branch presidents, and Coleman as a bishop.129 In 1957, Elder Claude Edward Clark

served as the first full-time missionary from the Waynesboro Branch.130

From then on, the church record keepers in Salt Lake City kept detailed

records of the Buena Vista congregation.

In 1996, Latter-day Saint businessmen from outside Buena Vista acquired

the entire campus of Southern Virginia College, including the

building that was once the "splendid," boom-time Buena Vista Hotel.131

At about the same time, Garvis and Juanita Wheeler, both from Buena

Vista, participated in an unpaid Latter-day Saints mission, as retired

couples often do. A distinguished member of their mission presidency

told them that when he was nineteen years old, he had served a proselytizing

mission in Buena Vista, Virginia. Excited to meet people from Buena

Vista, this prominent priesthood leader asked Garvis Wheeler, the greatgrandson

of Peter H. Mason, "Are there any white people in the Buena

Vista ward now? It used to be an all-black congregation." 132

f i g u r e 1 6

Mary Susan Clark and Joseph Anderson

Clark in the 1950s.

courtesy of joyce howdyshell floyd

A couple of genealogical missionaries from Utah visited the Long

Hollow church shortly after his twelve-year-old grandsons were denied

the priesthood. Brother Clark took them to the Rockbridge County Court

House. Although Clark had never attended school, by the time he was an

adult he could read sufficiently to search through the dusty document

boxes. Together the missionaries and Brother Clark found court documents

pertaining to the 1925 Atha Sorrells case.12 3 They photographed

the pages, creating a roll of microfilm that Clark took to President Eugene

Larsen in Waynesboro. Clark showed him a court exhibit containing

Atha Sorrell’s family tree. He carefully identified Atha, her mother,

and her maternal great-grandparents — Joe Clark Jr. and Julia Sorrels

f i g u r e 1 5

Courtroom exhibit, Sorrells v. Shields , Circuit Court of Rockbridge County, January 9 and

10, 1925. Atha Sorrells (here spelled Sorrels) used this family-history chart successfully to

show that her supposedly "colored" ancestors were, in fact, Indian and white. In 1951,

Joseph Anderson Clark used the chart for the same purpose. Key elements read as follows:

courtesy of g. douglas larsen

1 2 3

1. JOE CLARK, SR, born 1797 . . . . JOE

CLARK owned slaves and bought Peter

Curry the father of Daniel Curry who was

sold at auction. (INDIAN and WHITE)

2. POLLY CLARK (NÉ CLARK) . . . was

mother of JAMES CLARK [who bought

a writ of] Mandamus for white marriage

license – white license granted County

Court order Book 1876 pages 137, 174

(INDIAN and WHITE)

3. [Left box) John Whiteside / Always

white NO question"

[Right box] BETT IE SORRELS / Always

white NO Question

4. [Left] PATERNAL / JOE CLARK JR.

[Right] MATERNAL / JULIA CLARK (NÉ

SORRELS)

5. ATHA SORRELS / R.L. PAINTER

WHITE LICENSE REFUSED

ON ACCOUNT OF ATHA SORRELS