Chapter 8: Religion
In northwest Louisiana, Catholicism and Protestantism, including Baptist,
Methodist, and African Methodist Episcopal denominations, co-existed since
at least the early 19th century. At that time, a minister, a
“mulatto” according to Sobel (1988:193), established the first
Baptist church about 35 miles south of Alexandria. People of French heritage,
the Hertzogs and families of Creoles of color, and a number of blacks traditionally
have been Catholic at Magnolia. The plantation became more ideologically
diverse by the late 19th century with the introduction of Baptist
and AME churches. Additionally, a Masonic Lodge might have been established
in Derry just before the Civil War. It would have provided another organizational
basis, a fraternal order, for civic action within the context of spiritual
beliefs. It extended the social support available to black communities by
functioning primarily as a burial society that helped black members inter
their deceased kin. Early this century, the lodge reportedly relocated to
Natchitoches.
Baptist and Methodist Churches
Two churches closely identified with Magnolia’s black community are
St. Andrew Missionary Baptist Church and St. James AME. Members of St. Andrew’s
congregation, especially the deacons, who also served as traditional church
historians, described the 1875 establishment of the church with encouragement
from Natchitoches’ First and Second Baptist Churches (Baptiste n.d.).
Originally constructed on Upper Cat Island in Derry at Hypolite Hertzog’s
plantation, the first building was leveled by a storm sometime around 1903.
The congregation reconstructed it with some of the original lumber on newly
purchased land at its present Cat Island site. About the same time, at the
turn of the century, the St. James AME congregation was taking shape at
Magnolia. One black elder recalled that services were initially held at
the quarters in one of the two-room cabins temporarily occupied by the visiting
pastor and his wife. The couple would come from Natchitoches and remain
for brief periods, ministering to the black community and sometimes accepting
compensation in the form of foodstuffs. The AME church was built for the
first time, probably around 1910, with land and timber donated by Mr. Matt
near the bend on the banks of Cane River, down an old dirt road. Later,
after Highway 119 was graveled and blacktopped, the congregation moved the
church up from the banks and closer to the road, to another site donated
by the plantation. The new location was still opposite St. Andrew. Mr. Matt did not
provide for a cemetery at either AME site.
People remember that throughout the history of St. Andrew and St. James
as co-existing structures, the two churches were partners in many, if not
most, events. Both were located near the riverbanks almost directly opposite
each other. Using boats or the footbridge in existence until the 1940s,
congregants regularly crossed the easily forded Cane River to participate
in each other’s services and special events. Some people recalled
even fording the river on foot when the waters were low. From weddings,
funerals, and river baptisms to church gumbo suppers, box suppers, fish
frys, and June 19th emancipation or freedom celebrations, the
church-sponsored activities drew participants from both sides of the river.
Additionally, without a cemetery, St. James AME congregants would hold funeral
services at their church, then transport the deceased by barge, over the
bridge, or around Highway 119 and Highway 1 to St. Andrew for the burial
in its cemetery. The practice is reflected in the headstones at St. Andrew’s
cemetery; about half of them bear surnames identified with Magnolia. Ritual
or ideological differences between the two churches created “no hard
and fast separations” between the members in life or death.
Members recall church suppers as busy and well-attended cooperative community
events that occurred at least once a month. Dunn’s 1940 description
of the AME “camp meeting” describes the celebrants construction
of temporary brush arbors or “brush harvests” to shade themselves
and their foods. The arbor was built by driving forked saplings into the
ground and placing poles in the forks in order to form a roof. Willow branches
were tossed over the frame as cover for the roof. At night, the arbor was
ablaze with every available lamp, candle, lantern, and homemade light. One
customary light was made with a wick of twisted “grass sack”
or burlap sack, which was squeezed into a beer bottle filled with kerosene,
or “coal oil.” When lit, it cast a light as bright as a large
candle, an observer remarked. Former residents recall the good times sitting
with friends and family on the many benches under the arbor and busily preparing
meals in the small kitchen constructed alongside St. James. The ruts of
the old parking lot adjacent to the AME church site give clear evidence
of a well-trafficked area.
The churches might have frowned on dancing, but members of both churches
adapted to the restrictions by organizing suppers under church auspices,
for the benefit of the church, but at their own homes. Rotating the event
and its associated responsibilities among different homes throughout the
year, people made and sold gumbos, fried fish, popcorn, meat pies, and other
favorites to raise funds. The Creole band that played at the store and in
the Big House sometimes entertained at church suppers too. The churches
were venues for community social services as well. For example, St. Andrew
served as a Relief Center during the depression, distributing commodities
to people working on a Works Progress Administration (WPA) road crew. St.
Andrew, as we noted, also briefly housed the black public school, and St.
James likewise had a school, although it might have been a Sunday school.
One former resident of the quarters recalls tutoring children with their
alphabets at St. James.
Residents in the quarters also relied on several other churches for access
to religious support systems and cemeteries. Some joined St. Matthew Baptist
Church north of Melrose. Another Baptist church located at a considerable
distance from Cloutierville’s center, St. Davis Lane, where the kin
of former Magnolia residents are buried, occasionally drew members from
Magnolia and the surrounding countryside. Burials of deceased former Magnolia
residents still occur at these two churches if parents or a parent had been
buried there. Burying the deceased in the cemetery with their mother’s
grave has meant separating longtime partners at death, if parents are buried
in two different cemeteries. However, this practice asserts the lineal relationship
to a parent.
More than places of worship and sources of spiritual and social support,
or as a dimension of them, churches offered Magnolia’s black residents
opportunities to develop and demonstrate political leadership and responsibility
beyond the boundaries of their own families. Earlier, this might have been
the only public context within which men and women community members could
aspire to visible roles, such as deacons, mothers of the church, or members
in women’s support groups, roles that gave them responsibility for
decisions or influence within the black community or congregation as a whole.
In this sense, the church was not only the principal vehicle for otherwise
unavailable opportunities for advancement in the community but, as we know
from other situations, a training ground too for effectively mobilizing
public sentiment and performing civic roles.
Catholic Churches
Figure 17: Portrait of Augustin Metoyer in St. Augustine Catholic Church. Photo: M. Crespi.
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The Magnolia plantation had no Catholic church within its borders, but Catholic
events and practices were well represented in the Big House and at a nearby
chapel and church. In 1910, the Hertzog family built a small private chapel
in the back gallery of the Big House to accommodate Mr. Matt’s ailing
mother. Christmas and other holidays brought Father Becker of St. John’s
Catholic Church, in Cloutierville, to give mass there, and the Hertzogs
still use it for special family celebrations. A religious physical presence
was also evident in the fields in the statue of St. Isadore, known as the
farmers’ patron saint, that Mr. Matt had suspended on a pole across
a field “gate” near the Big House. Annually, before planting
started and rains were needed, Father Becker would come to bless the plantation
and its fields. Compensating for the absence of a plantation church, a small
Catholic Chapel had been constructed near the Derry Bridge, on the Derry,
not the Magnolia, side. Public mass was held for local people from time-to-time,
especially when the lumber towns were thriving. One Magnolia Creole of color
recalls going to the Derry chapel occasionally, although she regarded the
Cloutierville Church as her own. People also recalled Mr. Matt urging them
to attend church on Sundays and even parking his truck at the store, offering
congregants rides to Cloutierville, to St. John’s Catholic Church.
Most Magnolia sharecroppers, who were Creoles of color, probably belonged
to St Augustine Catholic Church on Isle Brevelle. First constructed in 1803
with an adjoining cemetery, then replaced in 1916 by the present structure,
St. Augustine was started by Augustin Metoyer, son of Marie Thereze Coincoin
and a principal progenitor of the Metoyer line of Creoles of color (Figure 17). A full-length painting of him hangs in the church entryway.
St. Augustine is an active center that serves the spiritual and community
needs of its primarily, but not exclusively, Creole congregation from Isle
Brevelle and the surrounding area. Residents who had relocated to Natchitoches
still regularly return to St. Augustine.
The Catholic churches drew support from the congregation’s donations
after regular services or at special celebrations during the year. Additional
help came with the annual tithe planters paid after the cotton harvest.
Ms. Betty Hertzog recalled that each local planter contributed enough cotton
to make up a bale, which churches would have ginned and then sold for the
upkeep of the buildings and their clergy.
African/Christian Systems
This brief study found no obvious evidence of the syncretic religion known
as vodun or voodoo. A dynamic religious system, vodun had developed in the
New World, the Americas, among people of African heritage who adapted African
beliefs, practices, and paraphernalia to the new environment and integrated
them with Christian features. At most, we learned that someone in the quarters
may have been expert with “hoodoo,” the techniques, such as
cutting cards, associated with soothsaying or fortune-telling, and people
mentioned a knowledgeable Upper Cane River woman who might have ministered
to Magnolia people in the quarters.
Mechanization, Rural Exodus, and the Church
One black elder observed that: “... after they got big cotton pickers,
they didn’t need anyone to pick cotton. And those plowers broke up
the land. When my husband and I farmed we had to plow our own land. And
we had to hoe it. But those big machines plowed land and planted it.”
Unneeded, the family, like others, vacated Magnolia and found new homes
and places of worship.
Out-migration necessarily diminished the size of the rural congregation,
but even before emigrating, Magnolia residents were becoming dependent on
cars or trucks to reach churches outside the immediate vicinity. Sometimes,
one former resident explained, rural people continued as members of the
AME church but attended one in Natchitoches where they were served by the
same preacher who had periodically ministered at St. James AME. By the time
the Second World War started, St. James might have been used only once a
month, and by the time it ended, the shift to mechanization and the related
exodus had intensified, leaving few rural church members. The last remaining
deacon died in the 1960s. About that time, vandals began attacking the building
and stealing its trappings. Eventually the congregation abandoned the church.
It was still standing in 1974 when a drunken driver hit it, knocking the
weakened structure off its foundation. Efforts to repair it ended when problems
created by severe termite infestation so complicated other structural problems
that the Magnolia management decided to level the building. St. Andrew drew
some of the previous St. James congregants and St. James became a ghost
on the landscape, serving as a place marker of former activities and ways
of life.
People who relocated to Natchitoches often remained bound to their home
churches and periodically returned to the countryside to participate in
major events. Those events no longer regularly include river baptisms because,
people noted sadly, urbanization in Natchitoches and new industries have
been polluting the waters. Still, rural churches became mechanisms for linking
city and country residents. More than that, the church also became a venue
to celebrate homecomings, when people return periodically from Texas, Illinois,
and elsewhere to renew family ties and introduce, as well as meet, newcomers
to the group. Although small, the St. Andrew’s congregation remains
active even today and still meets in Derry. St. Augustine continues its
central role for Creole communities in the countryside on Isle Brevelle,
Cat Island, and in Natchitoches. Religious study groups, various cultural
heritage events throughout the year, and a flourishing membership help keep
St. Augustine viable.
Relocation did not necessarily terminate all relationships among former
residents of the quarters or between them, sharecropper families, and the
Hertzog family in the Big House. Former residents might continue to do occasional
small jobs for the Hertzogs, see and greet the Hertzogs in the local bank,
or greet the Hertzogs on the streets of Natchitoches.
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