Historic Mt. Moriah Fellowship Baptist Church celebrates 191 years Part 3
By Mary Alice Beatty Carmichael
History, long ago and recent
It was Willy J.’s father, Robert Yeldell, who married Frances Powers, granddaughter of Col. Warren.
Yeldell in 1858 completed the home that was called “the home house” and known today as “Dellmont.” The Luckie and Yeldell homes were next to each other in the country sense of the word, i.e., of not very close, if you are used to “city neighbors.”
On the property line between them there is a deep draw from which several springs flowed from both properties. These springs have never gone dry, a very fortunate situation for both residences.
Many years after the Luckies married, they built their new home directly across the road and it was in that home, directly across from ”Dellmont” that the writer in the early 1960’s had the opportunity and good fortune to meet them and grow to love them.
They loved baby-sitting our first baby, Don Carmichael, Jr., while they encouraged us to walk and hike across their land, some of which was prairie, some of which was forested.
And their daughter, “Little Rose” knitted our infant son a beautiful blue and white “flame pattern,” crib sized afghan that we also used with our grandchildren when they were infants.
Claude is first mentioned in the Records of Mt. Moriah Church as an active adult leader when on Aug. 4, 1913 he was elected as a delegate to represent the church at the Association with Mt. Pleasant Church.
Almost annually he was elected as delegate to different meetings of the Association in various locations: Forest Home, Indian Creek, etc., and Mrs. Claude Luckie was noted to be on a number of committees to help raise money for different church campaigns.
They were mentioned from time to time with different responsibilities of the church throughout the rest of the Records of the Church, which end in 1941.
When Claude and Rose Luckie became the last living enrolled members of the Mt. Moriah Fellowship Baptist Church, the three Volumes of the Records were taken to their first home where they had a small safe to which they brought the Records for safe keeping.
Prior to the 1955-56 building of the new church but in the time it took to transcribe/translate one of these book of Records and have it printed prior to the 1956 Dedication, the original Volume One, 1828-1847, was taken (probably by physician-historian, Dr. William James Donald, M.D., whose ancestors had been members of Mt. Moriah since the beginning.)
He was Director of the Alabama Department’s Bureau of County Health Services, 1955-1973. He was close friends of the Director of the Archives, and thought this Record book was worthy of being printed by the Alabama Department of Archives and History, which was done.
It was published by The Alabama Historical Quarterly, Peter A. Brannon Editor, in Winter Issue 1955, Vol. 17; No. 4.
It is a most interesting look into the rugged/civilized life of pioneer Alabama and into a recently-opened-up-for-settling section of territory of our country with such an influx of all types of people that it was called “Alabama Fever.”
And it describes from Records kept by the Church Clerk, the monthly conferences of the Mt. Moriah Church which lay bare the life, character, foibles, morals and faith, of its black and white congregation, slaves (among whom was one of the twelve founders of the church) and masters, all brothers and sisters in Christ, where the church was the only social controlling entity for enforcing morals and ethics on a people in a wilderness.
