Another tidbit about my anti-lynching Alabama great-great-grandfather
Hewitt: He enlisted as a 1st Lt., Co. C, 20 Alabama Infantry, CSA, in
1861.

As far as I know, he never owned a slave, but his grandfather, another
Methodist minister, did. The Rev. Capt. James Tarrant (1753-1840;
commissioned by Thomas Jefferson) moved from Virginia to South
Carolina after the Revolution and then to Alabama in 1820. He and his
slave Adam together built a log church in Bethlehem, AL. "The Rev.
James Tarrant died in the thirties, at his home, and was buried on his
own premises, a few hundred yards from Bethlehem church; and Adam, the
negro, died in the eighties. The master and the slave were both good
men, true Methodists, and useful Christians. Some time before Adam
died he said to a friend and brother who had known him long and well:
'For sixty years I have not told an untruth, and for forty years a
drop of liquor has not gone in my mouth.' There was a noble example of
integrity and of sobriety." Anson West, _History of Methodism in
Alabama_ (Publishing House, Methodist Episcopal Church, Nashville TN,
1893), p. 292. Francis Asbury Hewitt preached the funeral sermon for
Adam "who was noted for his religious excellence." The church was
still in use when I visited it in 1981.

As I said before, people are capable of holding contradictory
principles. Tarrant worked side by side with Adam and praised him
often as a good man and exemplary Christian. He recognized his slave's
marriage and apparently treated Adam kindly. Nevertheless, his will
leaves "to my son James Tarrant Junior and to his heirs, my plantation
on which I now reside, containing one hundred acres more or less. . .
also . . . my household and kitchen furniture, my negro man Adam and
his wife Mary, one sorrel mare, all my farming utensils, my waggon and
work steers, all my stock of cattle and hogs, and all my personal
property, of whatsoever description".

Kathleen
The Book Doctor