Fayetteville's Downtown Churches

    Leaving the Arsenal and going back down Haymount hill, one can perhaps imagine what the area looked like during the time Charles Chesnutt lived as we read what George Tryon could see of Patesville below.

Below them lay the picturesque old town, a mass of vivid green, dotted here and there with gray roofs that rose above the tree tops. Two long ribbons of streets stretched away from the Hill to the faint red line that marked the high bluff beyond the river at the farther side of town. The market-house tower, and the slender spires of half a dozen churches were sharply outlined against the green background.

    The changes in the Fayetteville skyline make it impossible to test the realism of this description. Yet, it is clear that this description has thematic significance in the context of the novel. The prominence of the church steeples in this view of Patesville suggests the importance of the churches to the town. Chesnutt knew many of the same downtown churches that we know today: Hay Street Methodist, St. Joseph's Episcopal Church, First Baptist on Old and Anderson, and First Baptist, currently on Moore Street, but formerly on the corner of Franklin and Maxwell Streets. We have already mentioned Chesnutt's association with Evans Metropolitan Church, and his references to First Presbyterian and St. Patrick's. St. John's Episcopal, with its gallery for Blacks, seems to be the basis for the fictional white Episcopal churches in "The Bouquet," The Colonel's Dream. In the latter we find this description:

The funeral took place [in] the Episcopal Church... of which old Peter had always been an humble member, faithfully appearing every Sunday morning in his seat in the gallery, long after the rest of his people had deserted it for churches of their own. (270)

At another point in the same novel we read

There had been a time when colored people filled the galleries of the white churches, and white ladies had instilled into black children the principles of religion and good morals. But as white and black had grown nearer to each other in condition, they had grown farther apart in feeling. (262)

    Chesnutt gives an accurate account of the churches in Fayetteville. Before the war, Blacks had worshipped in the galleries of the downtown churches, but, after the war, there were splits between the White and Black congregations in the downtown churches.

    Returning to The House Behind the Cedars we find this account relating to the downtown churches. In the latter, we find this description,

After the war, she [Molly Walden] formed the habit of church-going, and might have been seen now and then, with her daughter, in a retired corner of the gallery of the white Episcopal church. Upon the ground floor was a certain pew which could be seen from her seat, where once had sat a gentleman whose pleasures had not interfered with the practice of his religion. She might have had a better seat in a church where a Northern missionary would have preached a sermon better suited to her comprehension and her moral need, but she preferred the other.

The gallery in the church is evidence of social divisions not only because Blacks are placed in the gallery, but also because Molly Walden attends the white church so that she can recall the privileges she once enjoyed as the mistress of a white man.

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