Friends of the Restoration
Chronicling the lives of those who have impacted the Restoration Movement
Church Planted by T. B. Larimore
July/28/2009 14:29 Filed in: West Tennessee
This photograph of the Colverport church of Christ building, Colverport, TN, was taken by Gerald and Gail Mills shortly before the building was demolished. A special thanks to them for providing additional history about the church.
While a student at Freed-Hardeman, I preached my fifth sermon at the Cloverport church of Christ in Hardeman County, Tennessee on Sunday, December 25, 1966. I went on to preach for the church at Cloverport for almost a year. The church disbanded around 2000. I recently was given the pulpit pictured above which is in my study in Henderson.
I am researching the history of the Cloverport. John Pigg of Jackson, MS did some of his first preaching at Cloverport. William Woodson held a couple of gospel meeting there. Other than that information, I have known little of the history of the Cloverport church.
Recently I was given the following information about the beginning of the Cloverport church from the book, Larimore and His Boys by F. D. Srygley.
On August 25, 1872, he [T. B. Larimore] went to Cloverport, now called Greenwood, Tennessee. We had but one member there - a brother Pyrtle [Pirtle]. The meeting was held under an immense shelter for want of a house. The "straw" in the "altar" was badly worn by a long "mourners bench" revival that had just closed. The meeting continued ten days and resulted in sixty-one additions. Before he preached the first sermon brother Pyrtle said to him: "you call do nothing here now-you have come too late."
The fourth day of the meeting he preached by request of a prominent Presbyterian gentleman from Revelation 6:17. When he closed the sermon and stepped from the platform the Presbyterian brother, perfectly elated by the power of his preaching, caught him in his arms as if he had been a long lost son just found.
A lady who was a sort of sectarian spit-fire and altogether more religious than courteous said to him: "If you are safe, I am too. I have been as deep under the water as you." To whom he replied in his mildest manner - "My dear sister, I hope you are not depending upon water for your salvation. No one can be saved by water alone."
Mrs. Dr. T. J. Rohinson, now of Mariana, Ark., was outspoken and emphatic in her opposition at the beginning of the meeting. She and her husband had worked very zealously for the revival that had just closed when he [Larimore] began; but she declared she would not do any thing to help him in his meeting. She said her husband might do as he pleased, but as for her, she would furnish neither chicken, shelter, nor pie "for that other preacher." About the fourth day of the meeting she hunted up her husband when the invitation song was started and went with him to make the good confession. They have both made good members.
[Larimore] He was called away from that meeting when the interest was at its very best, and when he had every prospect of sweeping the whole country, to marry a couple at Jackson, Tennessee. He felt in duty bound to attend to the marriage, as he had before promised to do; but he has never ceased to regret the untimely break in that meeting. Writing about it years afterwards he said: "Little things should not be allowed to interrupt a good meeting. It would have been far better for a common squire to have married that couple rather than break off that meeting just at that time." A good church was established at Cloverport, as the result of that meeting.
It is proper to state that he engaged to preach for the church at Jackson, Tennessee all of his time during vacation of 1872, so that the two meetings at Cloverport and Pocahontas were mainly projected and directed by the Jackson church.
Larimore and His Boys, 186-87.
Writing in the text of Larimore and His Boys, Mrs. Walter Howell wrote: "My grandmother, Mrs. Andrew Jackson Vernon, was one of the sixty baptized. My mother was born in October 1872 following her [grandmother's] baptism." She also wrote: "I'm sure the old brother Pirtle mentioned was my daddy's father, John B. Pirtle. The writer did not spell his name correctly."
Mrs. Howell wrote in the front of the book: "Page 186 concerns my family. Cloverport church has only a few members, but they still support a young preacher who comes from Freed-Hardeman College every Sunday."