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Excerpt from Oral History Interview with Louise Pointer Morton, December 12, 1994. Interview Q-0067. Southern Oral History Program Collection (#4007) See Entire Interview >>

Religious practices in rural communities

Morton briefly describes how the community's minister, Reverend Eli Thomas, would travel to their church in Granville County, North Carolina, from Durham once a month for a church conference. Her comments are indicative of the religious practices of rural communities during these years.

Citing this Excerpt

Oral History Interview with Louise Pointer Morton, December 12, 1994. Interview Q-0067. Southern Oral History Program Collection (#4007) in the Southern Oral History Program Collection, Southern Historical Collection, Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Full Text of the Excerpt

EDDIE McCOY:
Who was your first minister that you knew of when you was coming up?
LOUISE POINTER MORTON:
At Jonathon Creek?
EDDIE McCOY:
Uh-huh.
LOUISE POINTER MORTON:
My first minister was Reverend Eli B. Thomas from Durham. He baptized me. We was baptized in the creek.
EDDIE McCOY:
How did he get way up there? Come and stay overnight from Durham, or what?
LOUISE POINTER MORTON:
See, they had conference on a fourth Saturday. And Reverend Eli Thomas would come and he would stay all night and sometime he'd go home and then he'd come that Sunday. But a lot of times he would stay. Him and his wife, Mrs. Thomas, they would stay all night a lot of times.
EDDIE McCOY:
Uh-huh. At people's houses up there? One would have him one night and another—?
LOUISE POINTER MORTON:
No, who had picked the preacher was the deacons and their wives. My daddy was a deacon.