The history Providence Church has its roots in the reign of James VI of Scotland who ascended to the English throne as James I upon the death of his cousin Elizabeth I in 1603. In order to pacify and control rebellious – and Catholic – Ireland he encouraged the settlement of Presbyterian lowland Scots in northern Ireland. These Scots built homesteads and defended them against the native population, thereby becoming adept in pioneer’s skills. And they relished the independence they had thus gained from their hereditary landlords in Scotland.
By 1700 they numbered one million and Ulster, which they had subdued, seemed crowded. English policy toward Ulster had by then turned antagonistic due in part to the strong competition the successful lowlanders offered to the English wool industry. Presbyterians were also classed as “dissenters” when the crown sought to establish the Church of England in Ireland and they thus became subject to many of the same restrictions as were Catholics.
A new “promised land” beckoned from across the ocean. First a trickle and then of flood of Ulster Scots immigrated to the American colonies. Between 1725 and 1768 alone it is thought 1/3 of the entire Protestant population of Ireland came to America and by 1775 they comprised one sixth of the population of the 13 colonies.
Upon arrival in American ports – mainly Philadelphia and New York – these already skilled and experienced pioneers spread out into all colonies but very many of them moved directly into the western Pennsylvania backcountry and from there southward into the Shenandoah Valley where new land was available and cheap. In fact they were notorious squatters who frequently settled on lands technically owned by absentee land speculators and dared anyone to put them off it. They tended to be clannish and contentious. They handled Indians roughly and were only a little more restrained in their dealings with colonial authorities of whom they were generally suspicious.
Those attitudes were reciprocated by the social/political/religious establishment. For example we have an English-born Anglican missionary’s description of the people he encountered in the Waxhaws as “Ignorant, mean, worthless, beggarly Irish Presbyterians, the scum of the earth and the Refuse of Mankind.”
As their numbers in America grew they (along with English Quakers, and German Lutherans and Moravians) steadily moved southward down the Great Wagon Road into the Carolinas and settled in the piedmont wilderness. One group carried with it the name of the congregation or community they had come from in Pennsylvania: “Providence.” One of our Church’s keepsakes is a metal plaque which reads “Providence 1730” and is believed to have been brought from Pennsylvania by the first group of settlers arriving here. An unswerving confidence in God’s providence sustained these strong willed people as they wrested a living from the wilderness. They and others who had been driven from western Virginia by Indian depredations during the French and Indian War (1754-1763) settled in what is now Mecklenburg.
As a group, these Ulster Scots (who in America came to be called Scotch-Irish or, sometimes, simply Irish) were overwhelmingly poor, but they were also naturally practical and possessed of unbending pride, a strong of sense justice, and contempt for arbitrary authority. Life was hard and mean for them but the freedom to live their own lives and make their own way made the effort worthwhile. Unshakable faith in God’s providence and the certainty of God’s grace through Christ which was so deeply engrained in them gave them the strength and provided the moral foundation on which they built their communities.
So despite their experience and supreme self-reliance it is also characteristic that among the first acts of the Scots settlers were organization of a worship community and petitioning synod officials (in New York) for a minister. And ministers of the gospel were in very short supply. The synod did send circuit missionaries who covered huge areas by horseback. The Providence congregation is first mentioned in the minutes of the Synod of New York in 1765.
Providence Church is one of the original seven colonial Presbyterian churches in Mecklenburg around which settlements coalesced after about 1750 (the others were Sugaw Creek, Rocky River, Poplar Tent, Centre, Hopewell, and Steele Creek) and it is the center of the Providence Community. By 1764 Rev. Alexander Craighead (who established the Sugaw Creek and Rocky River Churches) was occasionally preaching atop a large rock in what is now our Church Cemetery but was at that time no more than a woodland clearing beside an Indian trading path. That rock marked the location of a spring just off the path that had refreshed travelers long before white settlement.
The path came up from the Waxhaws and onward to intersect with another Indian path atop a ridge a few mile further to the northwest. It was around that intersection of trading paths that the village of Charlottetown was established in 1768. This road leading southeast out of the village to the Providence community then became known as the Providence road. Thus everything in Charlotte named Providence takes its name from Providence Road but the road itself was named for Providence Church.
A member of the congregation, David Rea, originally owned what is now the Church land. He gave it to the Church sometime after its formal organization. The spring, just down the hill, provided water for baptisms and refreshment for speakers, listeners, and horses and it still flows today.
Born, educated, and ordained in Scotland Craighead was known as a “firebrand” and was in frequent conflict with synod authorities for his free and open expression of colonist’s rights in opposition to the Crown. He belonged to a group known as “Covenanters and Seceders” who were philosophical heirs of the Scottish “Covenanter” movement of the 17th century that had stoutly resisted Royal attempts to reign in and control the Kirk by imposing Anglican hierarchy and liturgy on it. His fiery ministry incarnated the traditional Scot’s resistance to English domination. In 1742 when he led his congregation to recognize King Jesus rather than King George as the their only rightful sovereign Craighead’s Pennsylvania presbytery condemned his actions as treasonous.
Shortly after that Craighead left Pennsylvania and made his way southward. After a sojourn in Virginia he ultimately arrived in the Carolina backcountry in 1758. The Mecklenburg frontiersmen readily received his message. He preached the supreme importance of the individual as it is the individual who must stand before God on equal footing with all other men. It is the individual who God elects for salvation. The Presbyterian Church is built upon the recognition of the individual who must recognize God’s plan for his life. The individual is an equal member of the congregation of individuals to whom ultimately the Church hierarchy is answerable. And one of the founding precepts of the Scottish Reformation and thus the Presbyterian Church was that ultimately the Church is not subject to any temporal authority – up to and including a monarch – if it flaunted the laws of God. He advocated the right to build a New Jerusalem here in the new world and to do so unmolested by the British crown.
When Craighead began his American ministry in the late 1730’s he was a “man before his time,” but within 35 years very many Presbyterian clergymen were of this same attitude. One can readily see how this kind of self reliant, isolated, backcountry Scottish Presbyterian society could spell serious trouble for royal authority that might seek to interfere or assert itself.
Rev. William Richardson, pastor of the Waxhaws church, and uncle of William R. Davie (Revolutionary hero, father of the University of North Carolina, and governor of the State) first passed through Mecklenburg in 1758 on his way to carry the gospel to the Cherokee. That mission to the Indians failed but his missionary zeal was useful in organizing churches among the white settlers. He returned to this area, married one of Alexander Craighead’s daughters and set about establishing churches in Chester, York, Union, and Newberry counties in South Carolina and one church in Mecklenburg. He formally organized Providence Church in 1767. By then Richardson made his home in the Waxhaws and served both the Waxhaw and Providence Churches for the rest of his life.
Mr. Richardson ordained and installed the first ruling elders elected by the congregation: Archibald Crockett, Aaron Howie, John Ramsey, and Andrew Rea. Archibald Crockett was the grandfather of Davy Crockett, Tennessee politician and hero of the Alamo. A log meetinghouse was built behind the rock near the spring in the far side of what is now the Cemetery.
In England William Pitt referred to the uproar that broke out in America in 1775 as “that Presbyterian revolt.” And after the Revolution Horace Walpole remarked, “There is no use crying about the matter. Our America cousin has run off with a Presbyterian parson, and that is the end of it.” It is not coincidence that our representative form of government so closely parallels the organization of the Presbyterian Church and it is not an accident that the North Carolina legislative body is named the General Assembly.
So it is also not surprising that during the Revolutionary War one of Lord Cornwallis’s officers described Carolina back country Presbyterian churches as “sedition shops” and another to have famously characterized Mecklenburg as a “hornet’s nest of rebellion.”
Members of Providence community played pivotal roles in the Revolutionary War. In September 1780 the main body of Cornwallis’ army – 2200 strong – moved up along the Waxhaw road to Charlotte foraging liberally all along the way. The depredations of smoke houses, corncribs, hog pens, and chicken coops by British foragers became part of Providence families’ lore for generations.
Col. Davie and his small band of mounted militia harassed the advancing British army but could not stop it. It is said that Davie used Providence as a headquarters until the British advance forced him back into Charlottetown. It is also thought that the British army camped near the Church grounds just prior to the Battle of Charlotte. Davie commanded Patriot forces in that battle.
Mr. Richardson’s wife Nancy Craighead Richardson had a close friend and neighbor in the Waxhaws, Elizabeth Hutchison Jackson whose husband died shortly before she gave birth to their third child in 1767. Only twelve years later young Andrew Jackson was serving as a mounted orderly for the nephew of his mother’s friend, William Richardson Davie, during his Revolutionary service.
At least seven recognized Revolutionary veterans are buried in our Cemetery. But since the forces opposing the British in Mecklenburg were exclusively short term militia, which kept no muster records it, is likely that there are many more Patriots than that lying in our Cemetery.
The Cemetery grounds include the old Slave Cemetery and historic Providence Spring. The Cemetery grounds were divided by a stone wall built many years ago. The graves face east in anticipation of the Last Day, even though Church buildings are today west of the Cemetery. There are 2,030 plats in the cemetery of which 1,087 are occupied (Church records include dates of death for 96% of these) and 315 reserved (July 1, 2002). The oldest grave is that of John McKee who was buried in 1764 – three years before the establishment of the Church and during the period when Craighead began preaching on the rock. This conclusively demonstrates that the area between the spring and the “preaching rock” was the de facto site of community worship for several years prior to the formal organization of the Church. Veterans of all our wars through the Vietnam are buried here. Church files also include published obituaries for 431 burials, records of many epitaphs, and photographs of many of the headstones. Many of the apparently open areas of the cemetery are actually filled with 18th and early 19th century graves. Their original markers – wooden headboards, fieldstone cairns, etc. – have long since disintegrated or been dispersed. Tombstones were very expensive and so did not become common here until the 19th century.
A project was undertaken in conjunction with Mecklenburg County to identify and recognize the slaves who are buried here also. In 2004 our church held a special dedication service of the slave section of our cemetery. In addition to our own church members, Mecklenburg officials and representatives of the daughter churches that were formed by the freedmen of Providence after the Civil War also attended the service.
Among the more prominent families of Mecklenburg in the years following the Revolution was the Knox family and one of the daughters was named Jane. She was a great grandniece of John Knox himself, a student of John Calvin, a catalyst of the Scottish Reformation, and a founder of the Presbyterian Church. Her father, Captain James Knox was a pillar of the Hopewell Presbyterian Church and a hero of the Revolution.
Another prominent family was the Polks, which had become large and prosperous. One member of that family (though not living in the Providence community) was Thomas Polk – the foremost champion of independence in Mecklenburg and whose house stood directly across from the courthouse in what is now downtown Charlotte and scene of the Battle of Charlotte.
Another scion of the family was Samuel Polk. He married Jane Knox in her home church, Hopewell, in 1794 and brought her to his large farm near present day Pineville which then lay within the bounds of the Providence Church. She delivered a son the following year and named him after her father, James Knox Polk.
Despite the great piety of his wife, Samuel Polk was something of a freethinker and was forming opinions that would eventually lead him to embrace what is variously described as agnosticism or deism. But in deference to the young wife he obviously adored he carried her every Sabbath to Providence Church and attended the worship services conducted by the equally strong-minded minister at that time – Mr. James Wallis (who lies in our Cemetery).
When the day came to baptize the Polk infant, following the usual practice, Mr. Wallis asked both parents to affirm their Christian beliefs. Samuel refused to do so whereupon Wallis halted the proceedings and refused to baptize the child. The dispute simmered for 11 years until Samuel Polk followed other members of his family and moved to new lands in Tennessee. Son James was sent back from there to attend UNC from which he graduated at the head of his class. Returning to Tennessee he became a political protégé of another fellow from the old neighborhood, Andrew Jackson (even to the point of being called “Young Hickory”) and was eventually elected President of the United States. But owing, no doubt, to the controversy of his youth he was not baptized until he was on his deathbed – and then by a Methodist minister.
Following the Revolution a moral lethargy seemed to set into the new Nation. That in turn spawned what historians call the Second Great Awakening just after the turn of the 19th century. This nation-wide revival was the beginning of the “camp meeting” phenomenon which we still see today – particularly in the South, but no longer so much among Presbyterians. In North Carolina one of the largest and most famous of the great camp meetings took place in the Providence community – though not on the church grounds – which drew 5-8,000 people, and ran for 4 days in March 1802. At least 14 ministers conducted the preaching on a rotational basis through the great camp (twelve Presbyterian, one Methodist, and one Baptist). Even the most cynical and suspicious observers remarked on the manifestations of God’s transforming power that were widely in evidence.
Owing largely to the spiritual re-invigoration of the Great Revival a larger Church building was erected in 1804 and the log meetinghouse was then briefly converted into a schoolroom before being torn down. The Scots-Presbyterians were devoted to education. Presbyterians were instrumental in the founding of schools and colleges throughout the South – especially in the Carolinas – including as already noted the University of North Carolina. Ironically the reason the Presbyterians “lost out” to the Methodists and Baptists in proselytizing and “churching” the rural South is their unswerving insistence on an educated clergy. Illiteracy was seen as a reproach and an actual impediment to salvation. A central Presbyterian tenet was that every person should be able to read, understand, and apply the Bible to his own life’s circumstances. This, in large measure, also is what made them so querulous, opinionated, and independent minded. To this day our Book of Order affirms that “God alone is the Lord of conscience. . . .”
One writer has noted this group’s extraordinary zeal for education: “The school house and kirk went together wherever the Scotch-Irish frontier moved.” Providence Church provided the school facilities for the Providence community from 1775 until the first quarter of the 20th century, building separate and dedicated school buildings. Indeed the church operated a series of schools and sometimes more than one school simultaneously.
In 1792 the Church established Providence Academy. The Church established Providence Library to serve the community in 1845. By the 1850’s Providence Academy was recognized as the best school of its type in North Carolina. By 1852 the Church was operating Providence Female Academy and led the South in its emphasis on secondary education for women.
Minister Samuel Craighead Caldwell who served Providence Church from 1819 to 1821 – a grandson of Alexander Craighead, a nephew by marriage of William Richardson, a son of David Caldwell the founder of the Caldwell Academy (the “Log College” near Greensboro and the best college in the N. C. prior to the opening of the University in 1792), and the grandfather of a later Providence minister was the driving force behind the eventual founding of Davidson College. Two of Samuel Caldwell’s successors in the pulpit at Providence went on to become the first two presidents of Davidson College.
The state and county began gradually shouldering the educational burden in the 1870’s but did not fully assume that responsibility from our Church until 1928. In 2002 CMC School System built a new elementary school adjacent to our Church and named it Providence Spring.
Following Mr. Caldwell at Providence in 1821 was Dr. Robert Morrison, son of a prominent family, a classmate who shared top honors at UNC with James Polk, and collaterally related to the Morrisons of the Providence community. He was ordained at Providence but served as pastor for only one year. He gained such renown as a compelling speaker that he was hired away by a highland Scots Presbyterian congregation in Fayetteville for over $1200 – many times what Providence could pay. This highhanded display of wealth by the highland church rankled the people of Providence deeply. Dr. Morrison had a long and distinguished career that included an eventual return to Mecklenburg and the pastorate of the Sugar Creek Church. He was a moving force in the founding of Davidson College and ultimately served as its first president.
Five of Morrison’s daughters married men who served as high-ranking Confederate officers including D. H. Hill who attained the rank of Lt. General. But one of the daughters, Mary Anna, handily eclipsed them all by marrying a widowed and un-promising instructor at the Virginia Military Institute in 1857. Also a fervent Presbyterian, Thomas Jonathan Jackson demonstrated a remarkable facility for command and tactics when the War came and won enduring fame as “Stonewall” before his death in 1863. Anna returned to Charlotte after the war and reigned as “Widow of the Lost Cause” for the rest of her life.
In 1858 a new, third, and present sanctuary was built across the road from the old building and Cemetery. It was built in an eclectic Greek Revival style which was then so popular in the U. S. – especially in the southern U. S. and which was most particularly favored by Presbyterians for both churches and schools. This new building’s design included tall, airy upstairs galleries to accommodate the enslaved Church members who then comprised 33% of the communicants. Previously these “colored members” (as they were referred to in Church records) had to sit in a loft in the older church building which they were forced to access by climbing a ladder on the outside and entering through a sort of window. The ceiling of the loft was too low for a man to stand upright. The gallery in the new building was exclusively for the use of the colored members and was accessed by a door on the north side door of the building that has since been removed. After the War as most of the “colored members” withdrew from Providence – forming Murkland Presbyterian and Jonesville AME Zion Churches the gallery was closed for a time. It should be noted that some colored members remained at Providence into the 1890’s.
The cost of the new building is recorded in Session minutes as $2,800 (equivalent to a little more than $55,000 today). The work was largely done by the members themselves – and most likely with the help of their slaves. One side of the building sits on an outcropping of bedrock (this outcrop was likely the determining factor in the building’s site selection) and the other side is on a foundation of field stone rubble and brick. The frame is oaken post and beam topped by hand fitted trusses secured with pegs. The columns under the gallery are each made of multiple boards with beveled edges that were glued together (the same way ship’s masts of the time were made). The interior walls are shiplap paneled. The ceiling is board and batten. The floors are heart pine and remained bare until 1885 when carpet runners were put down in the aisles. The first full carpet was installed in 1912. It was green. The interior color scheme is original: the pews and trim dark stained or painted and the walls and ceiling white washed and later painted.
The building was originally heated by a stove placed in the rear (the hole in ceiling for the stove pipe is still visible) and pull-down oil lamps provided light. In 1911 a central coal burning furnace was installed which necessitated the excavation of a basement and access to that through external steps added on the south side of the building. The Church buildings were wired and electrified in 1939 when electric service was first extended to the Providence community. The light fixtures in the Sanctuary date from then and were given as memorial gifts by Church members.
The windows are triple hung and are approximately 18 feet tall. In addition to flooding the interior with light, when opened they allowed any passing breeze to blow through in the summer. Many of the windowpanes are original – of blown glass rather than the sheet glass of today. These original panes are readily identifiable by their wavy irregularity. The windows are protected by large exterior shutters. It is thought that all the shutters are original except those on the south side of the building. The abundant ventilation and high ceilings made the building remarkably comfortable in an era prior to air conditioning.
Because the size of the building exceeded the needs of the congregation in 1858, pews were built and installed only as necessary. Thus it was not until several years after the War that all the pews were finally installed. All the downstairs pews are original. The seats and backs of these pews are each made from single hand-planed pine boards. They are fit into the walls. The center division is for bracing.
Originally there were two separate front doors. In 1900 this was modified to the present double door to permit, for the first time, the passage of coffins for funerals – after some division over the propriety of bringing a body into the Church building. The pulpit furniture dates from about 1940. One of the two pedestals at the front of the sanctuary was originally for the minister’s water pitcher and glass and the other pedestal was for the baptismal bowl. After the Second World War they came to be used for flowers – after some division over the propriety of bringing decorations into the sanctuary. The cherry table in the foyer was the original communion table.
The building’s grace and simplicity eloquently reflects the faith and sensibilities of the hardworking congregation who erected it. And it remains substantially unchanged today. Both the sanctuary and Cemetery are included in the National Register of Historic Places.
As this new building was completed the shadow of war was stretching over the land. Providence’s minister in 1860, Mr. Jethro Rumple served as a commissioner to the last General Assembly prior to the division of the Presbyterian Church into northern and southern churches which was necessitated by the secession of the southern states. The Church remained divided for 125 years after the end of the War.
The outbreak of hostilities was met with as much enthusiasm in the Providence Church as throughout the south. At least once, at the beginning of the war, there were recruiting speeches made here and many Providence men answered the first call for troops. But the constraints and sacrifices the War demanded became an increasing burden. Men in the Church family were wounded and killed by both battle and disease. The Session granted permission to the minister to serve as an army chaplain for 3- 6 months at a time as required. Our cemetery lists 18 recognized Confederate veterans buried there. But given North Carolina’s almost universal military service, as with the Revolutionary veterans, there are most likely many other, unrecognized, Confederate veterans there.
It is surely an example of God’s providence that this building was erected during the prosperous antebellum years. Because following the War the community plunged into deep poverty and over the next 80 years the Church could rarely afford to pay a full time minister and at times could not even afford a half time minister.
In 1885 a supply pastor, Mr. Robert Alexander Miller, succeeded in getting a simple two-pedal organ installed in the sanctuary. This provoked a furious debate within the congregation over the propriety of using such a worldly instrument in church services. Prior to that the only instrument employed for hymn singing was a tuning fork. It is a testament to Mr. Miller’s tact and persuasion that there was no permanent breach in the harmony of the congregation.
In the 1890’s Providence was served by Rev. Jesse Siler who loved hymn singing and music so much that he led the congregational singing himself. There was no Church choir per se. The whole congregation was Mr. Siler’s choir and he introduced the practice of men and women sitting on opposite sides of the Sanctuary to facilitate the singing. That seating arrangement persisted well into the 20th century. (For the Church’s first 125 years seating was by family pew.)
Through the last 10 years of the 19th century and into the 1920’s “community picnics” or “Sunday school picnics” were held on weekdays during the “laying-by season” (August) which drew large crowds – as many as 2000 people. On these occasions games and races were held in the road in front of the Church.
The Homecoming Day celebrations on the first Sunday in May have been held since at least 1914. And contrary to a near universally held tenet of faith it actually has rained on Homecoming Day – once, in 1935. The congregation responded to that disaster over the next year by pulling down the by then abandoned schoolhouse and using the salvaged material to build the first Education Building – more commonly referred to as the “Community House” which would serve as shelter should rain ever again fall on a Homecoming Sunday.
Prosperity returned after World War II. In 1948 the Church was able to confidently call a full time minister for the first time in many years and embarked on a series of capital improvements. A new manse was built in 1949 (since razed). A new organ was installed in the Sanctuary in 1950. The next year the Church grounds were graded and landscaped for the first time, parking areas were delineated and graveled, and walkways were paved. The present fellowship hall was built in 1957.
The dawning of the 21st century has found Providence Church thriving. Our Christian Life Center was opened in 2004 and is the locus of our children’s, youth, and fellowship ministries. Plans are drawn for a new sanctuary building which will stand in the present parking lot. But the beloved present structure will always be preserved as witness to the strength and durability of the faithful of Providence.
As the area’s population grew over the last 240 years, additional churches were founded in whole or in part by members of Providence. Ten churches in southeastern Mecklenburg County are recognized as “daughter churches.” These are Clear Creek (now Philadelphia), Sardis, Sharon, Murkland, Pineville, Matthews, Banks, and Siler Presbyterian Churches, as well as Jonesville AME Zion Church and Harrison Methodist Church.
How is it that we are still here?
We want you to know, brethren, about the grace of God which has been shown in the churches of Macedonia, for in a severe test of affliction, their abundance of joy and their extreme poverty have overflowed in a wealth of liberality on their part. For they gave according to their means, of their own free will, and this, not as we expected, but first they gave themselves to the Lord . . . .
2 Corinthians 8:1-3, 5
Bibliography
Buchanan, John, The Road to Guilford Courthouse (John Wiley & Sons, 1999)
Matthews, Louise Barber, A History of Providence Presbyterian Church (Brooks Litho, 1967)
Morrill, Dan L., Southern Campaigns of the American Revolution (The Nautical & Aviation Publishing Company of America, 1993)
Smylie, James H., A Brief History of the Presbyterians (Geneva Press, 1996)
