By Eddie "Bush" Bernard
At about 7 p.m. on June 6, 1847, 18 people gathered at the Methodist Church on Jackson Street to officially form the Presbyterian Church of Thibodaux. They were a diverse group including lawyers, farmers, teachers, business people, housewives and plantation owners.
Although many of the founders had just moved to Thibodaux in 1847, Presbytery records show that there were Presbyterians here almost from the start of the settlement of Thibodaux in the early 1830s. The Rev. Silas H. Hazard, who was the first moderator of the Amite Presbytery, reported to the Synod in 1838 that he had established a Sunday School with 30 people in Thibodaux the year before and that he had preached to an audience of respectible size.
But the meetings in Thibodaux were sporadic and there is no other record of a Presbyterian church in town until the Rev. Daniel McNair came to Thibodaux eight years later.
Reverend Daniel McNair was the founding pastor of the Presbyterian Church of Thibodaux. He was born in North Carolina in 1806. He was a professor at Oakland College who was assigned to preach in the Mississippi Valley and South Louisiana. He came to Thibodaux in 1846. He preached two Sundays a month in the Methodist Church in Thibodaux, where he found just a few Presbyterian families when he arrived. That number soon grew and by June 6, 1847, he had 17 people who were willing to formally organize a church here.
Reverand McNair was a man of great piety. Reverand Levi Tenney, a Texas minister who edited a Presbyterian newspaper, said he was rather stout in build and grave in face and speech. Reverand Charles M. Atkinson, who was an evangelist in Thibodaux in the 1880s, called Reverand McNair the pioneer of the Presbyterian Church west of the Mississippi River.
Reverand McNair was a widower when he came to Thibodaux and in 1848 he married Martha Goode. She was one of the founding members of the church and the daughter of Louisiana Goode, who was also a founding church member. Mrs. Goode owned a plantation east of town near the street which bears their family name today.
On that first night 150 years ago, Reverand McNair preached a sermon and then went about the business of organizing the church. The roll of the church was called:
The first order of business was to elect an elder. That task fell to Shubael Tenney, who had been ordained an elder in another Presbyterian church before he moved to Thibodaux.
Shubael Tenney, was born May 12, 1804, in Dunbarton, New Hampshire. He was 42 when he moved to Thibodaux in 1847 and opened the Thibodaux Female Institute, a high school for girls where he was the principal. The school quickly gained a reputation across the South as a great school for young ladies to learn refinement.
Mr. Tenney was active in the community and was a member of Thibodaux Benevolent Lodge No. 90 Free and Accepted Masons. He served as the sole Elder of the church until May 15, 1859, when he resigned and moved to Fayette, Miss.
Mr. Tenney returned to Thibodaux in 1867 and reopened the institute, which had been hurt by yellow fever epidemics in the mid 1850s and then by the Civil War.
He died on March 30, 1870, at the age of 65, from injuries he received when he was thrown from his buggy and paralyzed. He is buried in St. John's cemetery.
There were some politicians among the founding members.
Joseph Williams had been an attorney in South Alabama before he moved to Thibodaux for what he called "health reasons" in 1847. He bought Gayoso Plantation southeast of town. He became a member of the Lafourche Parish Police Jury and was elected in 1853 to the state House of Representatives, where he was successful in fighting a bill that would have allowed a company to drain Bayou Lafourche and run train tracks down its middle.
John Larue was also an attorney. He was elected as a judge in the First District Court in New Orleans. He is most remembered for resigning his post in 1853 because the pay was too low.
While most of the founders were affluent members of the community, some of the women stood out because of their strong will and ability to handle what was then considered "men's" work.
Louisiana Scudday Goode was born March 28, 1803, in Edgefield District, South Carolina. She was the wife of Sidney Moore Goode. They had seven children and owned a plantation east of Thibodaux. After her husband's death she ran the plantation.
She joined the Presbyterian Church in Houma in 1861. However she was listed as a member of the Thibodaux church in the revised membership roll of 1879. She died Sept. 19, 1883. She is buried in St. John Cemetery.
Martha Winder and her husband Van Winder owned Ducros Plantation in Schriever. Mr. Winder, who was not a member of the church, died of yellow fever in 1854, leaving Mrs. Winder to run the plantation and raise their family. Under Mrs. Winder's care, the plantation increased its production so that by 1861 it was the highest producing plantation along Bayou Terrebonne.
She supervised the construction of a new plantation home in 1860. That house still stands today and is on the National Register of Historic Places. It is undergoing renovations by the Bourgeois family and can be seen on the west side of Highway 20 just before the Schriever overpass. She died in November 1891.
Ann Larue was most likely the wife of Judge John Larue. She was removed from the church's membership roll in 1855.
Mary Ann Tenney was the wife of Shubael Tenney and half owner of the Thibodaux Female Institute. She died in 1856.
The Ligon sisters lived with the Tenneys and were probably teachers at the Female Institute. They married and left Thibodaux for Baton Rouge in 1853.
Eunice Boatner was the wife of Isaac Boatner and they lived and worked on Leighton Plantation on land they bought from Leonidas Polk, the Episcopal bishop for Louisiana.
Sadly, she was the first of the founding members to die, passing away on May 19, 1849. She left two sons, aged 5 and 3. Court records list nine slaves among her and her husband's property at the time of her death.
Abigail Holden was the wife of B.F. Holden, one of Thibodaux's earliest entrepreneurs. They came to Thibodaux from Ohio. Mr. Holden was a barge captain and made his living by bringing groceries and other supplies from Ohio to Louisiana.
In Thibodaux, Mr. And Mrs. Holden opened a dry goods store, a hotel and operated Thibodaux's first stagecoach company. Their stage coach would take you to meet the train at Lafourche Crossing for 50 cents. It cost you another 50 cents if you wanted to get back to town. A trip to Donaldsonville was $3.
She died in 1860.
Little is known about the other founding members. Emily Fleming may have been the wife of Henry Fleming, a plasterer who was on the town council. Martha Clifton switched her membership from Thibodaux to the Lockhart, Texas, Presbyterian church, in 1853. John B. Cutliff and William Orr's names were removed from the membership roll in 1855.
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The first church building was on what is now called West Fourth Street where the Woodmen of the World building is. It was made of wood and was finished in 1853 at a cost of $4,400.
The church building could hold 400 people and served as a gathering place for community activities in its first years, including the town's Fourth of July celebration in 1854. A bell was added to the church in 1854. A white picket fence was added in 1855.
Lightning struck the bell tower during the Civil War. The church was used until 1905, when church members decided to sell it and build a new church on Canal Boulevard at the corner of East 11th Street.
Seven ministers served in the first church building. They were Reverands McNair, N.P. Chamberlin, R.S. McAllister, C.M. Atkinson, Edward J. Young, H.W. Wallace and John Nelson Blackburn. Reverands McNair, Chamberlan and McAllister served the church as pastors more than once between 1847 and 1876.
The Reverand Nelson P. Chamberlin was born in New York City in 1818 and graduated from Princeton Theological Seminary in 1845. He was ordained in Clinton, La., in 1847 and came to Thibodaux as a stated supply minister in 1850, when Reverand McNair left to be pastor in St. Louis, Mo.
Reverand Chamberlain served in Thibodaux until 1855 when he left to become the first pastor of the Carrolton Presbyterian Church in New Orleans.
The Reverand Robert Samuel McAllister was born Dec. 4, 1830, in the Abbeville District of South Carolina. He graduated from the Columbia Theological Seminary in 1855, and was ordained in New Orleans in 1856. Thibodaux was the first church where he was a pastor.
Reverand McAllister was described as a sickly child. But in his first year in Thibodaux, he showed he was a survivor. Reverand McAllister took a vacation in early August, 1856, staying as a guest of the Lingard family at their home on Last Island. He was there when the infamous Last Island Hurricane struck. In 1892, he recounted the harrowing experience for the Southwest Presbyterian newspaper.
Reverend McAllister served as pastor until 1859, when he left to become pastor of the church in Shreveport. Reverend Chamberlin returned to Thibodaux and was pastor from 1859 to 1866. Although he took ill and was incapacitated in 1864, the congregation asked him to remain as pastor. They held Bible studies and prayer meetings in his home until he left in 1866 to live with his daughter in West Virginia.
Reverand McAllister returned as minister from 1867 to 1869. Reverand Chamberlin died in 1869 while on a steamer on the Mississippi River headed back to Thibodaux, where he had hoped to preach again. He was buried in Memphis. The church erected a stained-glass window in his honor in its new church, but it was destroyed in a hurricane in 1926.
Reverend McNair served as stated supply pastor from 1869-1876, although his health was poor too.
These weren't easy times for the Presbyterian Church of Thibodaux.
In 1859, the congregation elected John D. Fulford as an elder to replace Mr. Tenney, who moved away. Mr. Fulford was originally from Virginia. He was the brother-in-law of B.F. Holden and worked in his brother-in-law's hotel and store before opening a a carriage shop on Jackson Street in 1853. He served as the Presbyterian Church's only elder from 1859 until 1867, when Mr. Tenney returned to Thibodaux and the church for the first time had two elders.
In 1870, Mr. Tenney was thrown from his carriage and died and Mr. Fulford, who was 52, took ill and died. Both died within a few months of each other, leaving the church without a regular pastor and no ruling elder. The congregation elected Eugene L. Tenney, Shubael Tenney's son, and Dr. Joseph F. Joor as elders in 1871. But Eugene Tenney, who had taken his father's place at the Female Institute, resigned from the church in 1873, when he moved to Shreveport and Dr. Joor ceased to function as an elder sometime between 1873 and 1875.
Although Joseph S. Goode, a Thibodaux attorney and youngest child of Louisiana Goode, was elected elder after that, he declined to accept the office and the church went without elders until March 21, 1908, when Charles Shaver, a banker, and Leslie C. Waterbury, who owned a lumber yard in Thibodaux, were elected at a congregational meeting.
All was not lost however. Although there was no regular church service, the Sunday School continued to meet every Sunday, just as it had done since before the church's founding.
When Reverend C.M. Atkinson took over as pastor and evangelist for the area in 1878, he credited that with keeping the church alive for another generation. He gave the credit to Mary King Fulford and her sister, Fannie Holden, B.F. Holden's second wife, who ran the Sunday School.
Mary King Fulford was born in 1822 in Georgetown, Ohio. She and her husband, John, came to Thibodaux in 1847. She transferred her membership from the Second Presbytarian Church in Memphis to the Thibodaux Presbyterian Church on May 20, 1854.
The Fulfords had seven children, most of whom died at an early age. They owned a house at 622 Jackson Street.
Mrs. Fulford was the childhood sweetheart of Ulysses S. Grant. When her husband died in 1870, Mr. Grant was president of the United States. He appointed her post master, making her the first woman in Thibodaux to be appointed to the job. She declined the job and only served five months.
Mrs. Fulford died in 1903, two years before they tore down the old church where she had kept the Sunday School going in tough times. She is buried with her family in St. John's Cemetery.
Sadly, the Sunday School closed in 1905 and did not reopen until the new church was completed in late 1906, ending the continuous record Mrs. Fulford started.
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Reverend Atkinson became evangelist for this area in 1878 and moved to Thibodaux in 1880. He lived on St. Louis Street, two lots south of where our church annex is now.
The Reverend Charles Moody Atkinson was born on June 17, 1819, in Newburyport, Mass. He was an educator and school principal before he entered the seminary in 1845. He was ordained in 1849 and served churches in Mississippi for more than 25 years before coming to Louisiana in 1874.
Reverend Atkinson served our church until 1888, when he moved to Centerville. He died in Centerville on Nov. 4, 1906. The church in Morgan City is named after him.
In the 1930s, a black minister named William Spencer of Nashville, Tenn., attended one of the Presbyterian Church services in Thibodaux. He told the congregation that he had been a janitor for Reverend Atkinson as a child and through Reverend Atkinson he learned to love the Lord.
Reverend Atkinson updated our church records and most of Volume 1 is in his handwriting.
After he left, there was no regular minister for the area until 1891, when Reverand Edward J. Young was ordained and became pastor of our church and churches in other communities along the railroad circuit.
Edward James Young was born Oct. 24, 1851, in Auburn, Maine. His family moved to New Orleans as an infant and he grew up there. He was a teacher and journalist in Washington, D.C., before he was licensed as a minister.
He served the churches in Thibodaux and Houma until 1898, when he resigned for health reasons.
Reverend Young wrote an annual narrative on the life of the church while he was minister here. He was not happy with the way the Sabbath was generally ignored by the townspeople. What really bothered him, though, was there was a total lack of family worship in Thibodaux.
He held a variety of pastorates after his health improved. He eventually moved to Florida where he held several church offices. He died on May 21, 1921, in St. Petersburg, Fla. He died right after he and his wife completed their family worship service.
Reverend Henry Williams Wallace took over as evangelist for the area in 1899. Reverand Wallace was a native of Mississippi who was ordained in the Methodist Episcopal Church. He served as a missionary to French-speaking Louisiana and joined the Presbyterian Church in 1897.
Reverend Wallace remained in Thibodaux for a year. The churches in the area were without a regular pastor until 1900 when Reverend John Blackburn took over the churches in Thibodaux and Houma.
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John Nelson Blackburn was born in Athens, Ala., on July 14, 1875. He graduated from the Southwestern Presbyterian University in 1901. The Reverend B.M. Palmer asked Reverend Blackburn to come to Houma and Thibodaux and keep the churches alive while waiting for more Presbyterians to come to the area.
By then, they had given up any hope of converting the French-speaking people from the Roman Catholic church and Reverend Palmer wanted him to act as a care-taker.
Reverend Blackburn did what was asked. But he wasn't ready to give up on the French-speaking people of the area. He founded the Bayou Blue Presbyterian Church on April 23, 1924. It was the only church in the area made up of charter members who were at one time members of the Roman Catholic Church.
Reverend Blackburn was pastor of our church until 1938, making him the longest serving of our ministers. He remained active as a minister in the area, filling the pulpit when we needed him until his death on July 31, 1971, at the age of 96.
He kept meticulous records and they are on file at the Presbyterian archives in Montreat, North Carolina. He performed 471 baptisms and 235 marriages between 1901 and 1969.
At Reverend Blackburn's urging, the congregation voted on Jan. 7, 1905, to incorporate the church and change its name to the First Presbyterian Church of Thibodaux. Four months later, on April 4, 1905 they agreed by a vote of 21 to 6 to sell their 50-year-old church building and build a new one on Canal Boulevard across from Moses Baptist Church.
The new church was dedicated on Jan. 13, 1907. One of its most prominent features were four stained-glass windows. One was dedicated to the memory of Reverend Chamberlain, another to Mrs. Fulford. Sadly, they were destroyed in a hurricane in 1926 and there is no record of what they looked like. The other two were donated by James McBride in memory of his mother, Olive McBride, and his sisters, Eudora Grisamore and Anna Duane. They were saved from the storm and adorn our church today.
Olive Ann McBride was born Aug. 15, 1806, in Poughkeepsie, New York. In 1839, she and her husband Peter and their two children moved to Cuba. They stayed there a few months and then moved to Louisiana, living in New Orleans and Donaldsonville before settling in Thibodaux in 1840. Mr. McBride decided to move the family to California in 1850 after gold had been found there. But he got sick on the voyage to California and died. He was buried at sea. Mrs. McBride and their seven children remained in Thibodaux.
Mrs. McBride joined the Presbyterian Church on Feb. 8, 1851. Her oldest son, Robert R. McBride, went on to become a trustee of Thibodaux's government, postmaster and parish assessor, as well as a member of the Presbyterian Church. Her son James owned Belle Grove plantation in Schriever. Mrs. McBride died on March 10, 1888. Mrs. Betty Wurzlow, a member of our church, is Mrs. McBride's great-granddaughter and James McBride's granddaughter.
Eudora McBride Grisamore, was born in Thibodaux in 1844. She joined the Presbyterian church on Dec. 17, 1866. She was the wife of Silas Grisamore, a member of St. John's Episcopal Church who was a businessman, newspaper editor and active in politics, having served as mayor of Thibodaux and as a member of the Lafourche Parish Police Jury and School Board. She died on Dec. 26, 1904.
Anna McBride Duane joined the church on Nov. 14, 1852. She moved to Brooklyn, New York in 1879.
The church grew under Reverend Blackburn's guidance. For the first time in 28 years, the church had elders again. And although church membership fluctuated, there were several people he could depend on to help guide the church. Chief among them were John Schrodt Jr., who served as Reverend Blackburn's best man when he married Stella Horner, daughter of Mr. And Mrs. James McBride, in 1914. And Mr. V.G. Ballard, who would serve our church as an elder for 49 years.
Vivian G. Ballard grew up in Jackson, Ala., and moved to Thibodaux in 1915. He was one of the first Mutual Life of New York agents in the area. He joined the First Presbyterian Church on May 23, 1915. He was ordained as an elder in 1922. He served as the Sunday school superintendent for many years here and in the Bayou Blue church. He married Elizabeth Long, who was a member of the church in Thibodaux. Mr. Ballard served as moderater of the Presbytery of New Orleans. He died on March 7, 1971.
John Schrodt Jr. and his wife Emma joined the church on Feb. 23, 1908. He was manager of the newly formed telephone company in Thibodaux and provided hearing amplifiers for church members who were hard of hearing. Mr. Schrodt served as a trustee of the church. He died in 1967.
The growth which Reverend Palmer spoke of in 1901, came true. The church rolls swelled with Reverend Blackburn in the pulpit. Membership reflected the town, with a mixture of Anglo and French names.
On Oct. 10, 1920, Reverend Blackburn baptised Alice Roth. She became a member of the church on April 29, 1928. Mrs. Alice Roth Frost has been an active member of our church longer than anyone else today.
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On the night of Aug. 25, 1926, a hurricane struck Thibodaux. It caused serious damage in town and knocked the new church building off of its foundation, destroying two of its beautiful stained-glass windows. The new Bayou Blue church was flattened.
Many felt the hurricane was an omen that the church should not have moved from downtown Thibodaux. Legend tells us that the storm struck while Reverend Blackburn was out of town and church members had the building dismantled before he could return and try to repair it.
A deal was quickly struck with Thibodaux Fire Co. No. 1 for a lot on Green Street behind their fire station. The Presbyterian Home Missionary Society took charge of financing the new church. That church, which we occupy today, was dedicated in September 1927.
The Sunday School remained open this time. For the year they were without a building, they met in the Woodmen of the World hall, which was built on the site of the original church.
The church continued to grow even when it didn't have a building. By 1938, the church decided it needed a new minister and issued a call to Warner Dubose Jr., who served as pastor from 1938-42. He was followed by J. Holmes Smith III, who left Thibodaux to work as a missionary in Africa in 1945, Walter Bader, Robert Kilgore, Fitzhugh Clark and David Shepperdson Jr., who served as stated supply in 1953 and 1954.
While it seemed like pastors came and went, the membership continued to grow. And the church gained some valuable members.
Ben Roth Jr. joined the church on Jan. 5, 1936. When World War II broke out, he joined the Navy. Mr. Roth became an architect. He was ordained a deacon in 1949 and an elder in 1961. Mr. Roth, who died in January 2000, served as an elder for 39 years, longer than anyone except Mr. Ballard, who was an elder for 49 years.
Gus Zimmerman, a native of New Orleans, moved to Thibodaux with his wife Alma in 1946. He was a state auditor and she was a teacher. They joined the church on Feb. 6, 1949, the same day Mr. Gus was ordained a deacon. Mr. And Mrs. Zimmermen served the church through Sunday School as teachers and superintendent. Mr. Gus was ordained an elder in 1961. Miss Alma was ordained an elder in 1988. Mr. Gus died in December 1996. Miss Alma remains active on the session.
In 1938, there were 68 adult church members. By 1960 there were 156 adults and 132 children. The church building was expanded in 1955 to accommodate the growth. And we named the new Sunday School in honor of Mary King Fulford.
We had two more pastors in the 1950s, Neil Leach from 1954-59 and Fred Low for a year in 1957 when Rev. Leach took time off to study. They were followed by the Reverand Gaylord Dodgen, who served from 1960-67. In 1968, the church called the Reverand Buddy Chadwick to serve as its pastor.
Reverand Chadwick served as pastor until 1991, making him the second-longest serving minister in our church's history.
The Reverand Howard Lawson filled our pulpit for a year after Reverand Chadwick left and then the Reverand Walter Hackney, who was pastor for six years. The Reverand Louise Randall served as interim pastor from 1998 to 2000. She was the first woman to hold the post of pastor in the Thibodaux church's history.
We finally made it into the 20th Century when Betty Roth Hebert and Lola Taylor were ordained as deacons in 1971, becoming the first women to hold that job. When the boards of deacons and elders were merged in 1980, the church suddenly had five women elders. Reverand Holland Mitchell served as interim pastor until the church issued a call for Reverand William Crawford in 2001.
The Presbyterian Church has taken leadership roles in many organizations including the Christian Women's Club, Promise Keepers and the Thibodaux Habitat for Humanity.
The steeple of the Presbyterian Church of Thibodaux rises above downtown Thibodaux in this photo taken about 1890 from atop the Dansereau House on the corner of West Fifth and St. Philip streets looking to the northeast. That's the city's water tower in the background. The church building was torn down in 1906.
The Rev. and Mrs. John Blackburn
A hurricane on Aug. 25, 1926 knocked the 20-year-old structure that was the second Presbyterain church building off its foundation and destroyed two of four beautiful stained-glass windows. The church was on the corner of East 11th Street and Canal Boulevard, across from the present First Baptist Church.