My brother Charles recently ran across Jane Poster’s article about the first general agents of the South Carolina Baptist Convention, 1866-1878, which outlined the contributions of Dargen, Pope, Morrall and Lamar.
We find this of personal interest because our great-grandfather was the Thomas H. Pope described in her article. Her story truly captures the hard times South Carolinians went through after the Civil War and makes us humble for what all our forefathers contributed.
We were not aware of many details of our great-grandfather’s life during this period. He was from the eighth Pope generation here in the U.S., born in Newberry, educated at Furman University and Princeton Theological Seminary. He signed up to serve his country for three years in the war but was only able to serve for four months due to repeated attacks of typhoid fever. For three generations, our grandfathers were all named Thomas Herbert Pope, using no junior, senior or III. The Pope referred to in the article was the second Thomas H. Pope.
We would like to thank you and Jane for including our great-grandfather and the other three pastors in this article, because we agree with Jane that this type of history needs to be remembered and recorded. This will be passed down into our family history because we know our Grandfather Tom truly loved the Baptist faith and all Christian values Baptists stood for then and now.
Editor’s note: Poster’s article can be read at http://www.scbaptist.org/scbchistoryservices, and the related Baptist Courier story is available at http://www.baptistcourier.wpengine.com/4924.article.
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