Thomas Henry, memoir
in reference to 1854-1859
"I heard of a lot of ground up in the Manor that could be bought on very reasonable terms.
This lot belonged to Mr. Jacob Rikehardt, my old employer’s son. It was close by old Mr.
Hogmyer’s camp ground, where the Rev. Jacob Gruber was arrested for preaching a sermon from
this text: “Righteousness exalteth a nation, and wickedness is a reproach to any people.” He
was tried for his life and was acquitted. I can say, with a certainty, that I know all of Brother
Gruber’s opponents in that case; but they are gone from this world, and I will not call their
names.
We purchased the lot and put the church on it. I consecrated the church and named it the
Daughter of Bethuel, after Jacob’s wife’s grandfather (Genesis, chap. xxviii). We held divine
services in this church for about four years, and the membership and congregation increased
daily, and much good was done in the name of the Lord. There were about fifty-seven members
that I had got together when I was a local preacher at this same church, and although the M.E.
Church was much opposed to me on account of my leaving that Church, in the space of four
years there was but one man who was not a member of Bethuel. At the expiration of the four
years the church was burned to the ground, and I will safely assert that no white man burned it.
The members and congregation, after the church had been burned, held their meetings wherever
they could get a place to hold them, sometimes at one place and sometimes at another. I often
felt sorry for the burning of Little Bethuel, for, as Jacob said, it was God’s house and heaven’s
gate to many precious souls.
About the year 1859 I left Washington County Circuit and was placed in Eastern
Maryland..."
Author
Name: Thomas Henry
Unit: N/A
Document Information
Type: Memoir
Subject(s):
- African American
Event Location: Washington Co., MD; Ringgold's Manor
Document Origin: N/A
Source
Rev. Thomas W. Henry, From Slavery to Salvation, The Autobiography of Rev. Thomas W. Henry, Jean Libby, ed. (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 1994), 32-33
Transcripts
document-90.pdf 
