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Bethel College and McLemoresville's Inseparable History  

 
Bethel Alumnus Dennis Kiefer Teams with Town and Church Historians Rachel McKinney and Susan Gore to add Insight - and some Confusion - to the Colorful History of Bethel College and One of West Tennessee's Original Frontier Settlements  

Among those present to lay fresh memorials to Bethel College's early leaders were (l to r): McLemoresville Historian Rachel McKinney, Bethel College Development Office Representative Virginia Claire Edwards, and Cumberland Presbyterian Church Historical Foundation Director Susan Knight Gore. (Back row, l to r): Bethel Alumnus and Project Spearhead Dennis Kiefer, Harold Blow, President of the McLemoresville Cemetery Association, and Pete Ramsey, Session Clerk of the Bethel Cumberland Presbyterian Church in McLemoresville.  

In the cemetery, located along Highway 105 and West College Street in McLemoresville, lies the bodies of two Cumberland Presbyterian officials who played important roles in the early history of the college: Reverend John Roach and Reverend Reuben Burrow.  

Rev. Roach, who was the third principal of Bethel Seminary according to the Historical Foundation, reportedly rode into town on horseback with his wife behind the saddle.  

Rev. Roach is credited by the group as the first president of Bethel College since he was principal of Bethel Seminary (which was chartered by the State of Tennessee in 1847) when the institution became a college.  

The tall, aged marble monument in the cemetery confirms his status as Bethel President, reading in both English and Latin, "REVEREND JOHN NEAL ROACH, PRESIDENT OF BETHEL COLLEGE: In memory of whose many excellent virtues and distinguished abilities as an eloquent, divine and able instructor of youth, and in admiration of whose character as a patriotic citizen, a kind neighbor, a devoted husband, and affectionate father, this marble statue is erected by his beloved pupils and friends. He was born in Wilson County, Tennessee, May 15, 1816, embraced religion and entered the ministry at a very early age, consecrated his life to the great interests of education and religion and died a martyr to his calling November 19, 1852, aged 36."  

Unspoken was the controversy that was alluded to in his funeral service, which was conducted by Bro. A. E. Cooper, to a crowd that reportedly filled the church to overflowing. Church history reads, "The speaker correctly remarked, that 'the deceased shared the fate of all bold and fearless minds, determined on doing good - 'Envy heard his fame, and saw his works of love with envious eye; Slander at him hurled her poisonous darts; but all in vain. In conscious rectitude he stood, and defied the storm, and labored on, As though he thought each day might be his last.' Like the pure gold tried in the furnace, he passed the fiery ordeal unhurt. The poisonous shafts of calumny and persecution fell harmless at his feet, and he has gone down to his grave in peace and full of hope of a glorious blissful immortality. He has left a rich legacy to his bereaved family and friends in his good name, and in his noble deeds and labors of love. The memory of the just is blessed."  

Reverend Burrow, to whom has been credited the first presidency in college literature, is not listed among the presidents cited by the Historical Foundation, which include - spanning a time period from Rev. Roach's death in 1852 through the Civil War, when the college was temporarily closed - Professor Philip Riley (1852-1854, maybe interim), Rev. Azel Freeman (1854 - 1855, maybe interim), Rev. C.J. Bradley (1855-1856), Rev. Felix Johnson (1856-1858), and Rev. Michael Liles (1858-1861).  

Their records are also confusing, however, considering the fact that the 1852-53 Bethel College Catalog stated: "The vacancy occasioned by the death of President Roach has been recently filled by the appointment of the Rev. C.J. Bradley."  

Rev. Burrow's own extensive written history (which can be read at www.cumberland.org/HFCPC/minister/BurrowR.htm) states that in 1807 in Bedford County "the country was new, and covered with a thick and heavy forest. I was trained to industry, but was surrounded on all sides by dissipation, irreligion, and the desecration of the Sabbath, and for several years the state of society seemed, instead of growing better, to grow worse. There were schools of the common kind, conducted by incompetent teachers, but very little, if any, improvement was made for some time. Consequently, the opportunities afforded for an education were very indifferent."  

Around 1820, he wrote, "I found peace with God in the dreary forest of what is now Carroll County, about twelve miles from what is at present McLemoresville. This occurred in the spring of 1821. That summer I returned to Middle Tennessee, and joined the Cumberland Presbyterian Church."  

His record ends before his 1852 appointment as Professor of Systematic Theology at Bethel College. He also became pastor of the church in McLemoresville and, in 1853 or 1854, received the Degree of Doctor of Divinity from the school.  

He became ill in 1867 and died in Shelby County on the 13th of May 1868, but was brought home to McLemoresville for burial. During the course of the Civil War, which raged from 1861, when the college was closed due to the war, through 1865, Dr. Burrow lost three sons among his nine children, also losing his wife, Elizabeth, in 1863.  

 

Dennis solemnized the occasion by playing "Amazing Grace" on the Highland pipes, known colloquially as "bagpipes."   Adding excitement to their quest, Dennis and Susan learned Mrs. McKinney had in her possession a photo of the original Bethel College building. Mrs. McKinney also advised them the site of the school was not on the side of the highway that bears a historical marker attesting to its presence, but was actually located where the West Carroll Elementary School building now stands.   Bethel College evolved from the McLemoresville "Brick Academy".  

"The Brick Academy was a good school that attracted students from other communities, Alvin Hawkins among them," said Mrs. McKinney. Alvin Hawkins was the Kentucky-born legislator who served as a Justice of the Tennessee Supreme Court from 1865-68 and was Governor of Tennessee from 1881-1883.  

The Cumberland Presbyterian Church bought the Brick Academy and established Bethel College in 1842, initially calling the school Bethel Seminary. The school was devoted to training young men for the ministry as well as those seeking higher education.  

During the Civil War, both Union and the Confederate Armies occupied the facility. Consequently, much of the laboratory and classroom equipment and supplies were destroyed while many of its students served in one or the other of the armies. Union forces confiscated a large telescope they thought was used as a spy device. Later returned to the school, the telescope is now in the safe keeping of the college though Mrs. McKinney wishes it were on display in the McLemoresville Museum.

Bethel reopened in 1865 under the administration of the Rev. Mr. B.W. McDonnold. At this time, women were accepted into the institution for the first time.  

Before the War, Mrs. McKinney related, McLemoresville was a thriving town that was a shopping and shipping center as well as being a center for education.  

"There were also plenty of refreshments with several saloons in town," she noted.  

Plans had been made for the construction of a railroad that Mr. Kiefer says would have cut between the cemetery and the school.  

"The war changed the lives of many people," said Mrs. McKinney, "the construction of the railroad moved to McKenzie and Bethel went with it to be near transportation."  

The Methodist Episcopal Church bought the college property from the CP Church in 1886 and established the McLemoresville Collegiate Institute, whose first president was L.S. Mitchell, the grandfather of current McLemoresville resident and city board member Angie Martin.  

"That was also a good school," Mrs. McKinney said. A new building was built in 1912 and in 1926 a separate church building was built in order for the schoolhouse to devote its entire space to education. In 1930, the school became a public institution.  

It's the years between 1872 and 1886 that perplex Mrs. McKinney. "The school for a little while was privately run by somebody," she said. A "subscription school" taught by Johnny Hall may have filled or partially occupied the missing era.  

"If they didn't have money they paid him in groceries," she related. "I wonder sometimes what happened between 1872 when Bethel moved and Methodists bought the school in 1886. I don't know who ran it during that period; I wonder if that's when they had the subscription school or if it was when the town was young."  

"I turned a deaf ear to a lot of things like we all do when we're young," laments Mrs. McKinney, feeling she could provide more history had she only paid closer attention. Her father-in-law Conrad (Connie) McKinney and E.H. Harrell, she says, taught school a long time and left notes from a long time ago.  

"Those people knew the very first people in the area," she says. She hopes to have time this winter to devote to deciphering the information that is still in longhand form. For now, however, Mrs. McKinney, at 85 years old, has an acre of lawn and a yard full of flowers to look after. Check back next week for the personal side of McLemoresville's noted historian.  

This was the first building to house Bethel College, according
to local historian Rachel McKinney of McLemoresville.  

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