Our Harvest Founder
Here, Then Is My Legacy...
I leave you love. Love builds. It is positive and helpful. I leave you hope. Yesterday, our ancestors endured the degradation of slavery, yet they maintained their dignity. I leave you the challenge of developing confidence in one another. This kind of confidence will aid the economic rise of the race by bringing together the pennies and dollars of our people and plowing them into useful channels. I leave you thirst for education. Knowledge is the prime need of the hour. I leave you a respect for the use of power. Power, intelligently directed, can lead to more freedom. I leave you faith. Faith in God is the greatest power, but great too, is faith in oneself. I leave you racial dignity. I want Negroes to maintain their human dignity at all costs. I leave you a desire to live harmoniously with your fellow man. I leave you finally, a responsibility to our young people. The world around us really belongs to youth for youth will take over its future management.

1869-1955 Selected History
Note to Church members:
Names of Pastors Acknowledging the Year of Their Appointment beginning with 1869 citing pastors appointed to Center Grove {and its predecessors} and their affiliation with the Methodist Episcopal Church- Northern Branch.
Many people of color after the American Civil war joined with the Colored Methodist Episcopal Church, African Methodist Episcopal Church, or African Methodist Episcopal Zion congregations. However, our congregation remained with the Methodist Episcopal Church. What was the work of Center Grove people between 1865, Emancipation and 1868? Our Church History may have already answered this piece of the puzzle, if so, “Thanks Be To God”. If not, then we still have research to pursue. During my research, care was also taken to list the Presiding Bishop and the Presiding Elder {PE} and District Superintendent {DS} during this same time frame.
You will appreciate the various ways that some of the congregations’ names were spelled as well as the spelling of names of the pastors. I did not make corrections as this was part of the official record of the Methodist Minutes. I have researched this information since Harvest 2010. The names of Center /Centre Grove and Cedar Grove were always before me I took all care to include the information when noted. Also, Center /Centre Grove and Cedar Grove would at times be on the same Circuit, however, the Bishop would not read out nor would there be a listing of every congregation on the Circuit. I encourage the Church Historian and Church History Committee to seek out the congregation’s history prior to 1869. Family Bibles, marriage records, deeds are also great clues to former pastors. I also encourage the Committee to begin an Oral History Section and record the memories of the senior members of the congregation. You may have a wealth of oral history sitting within your midst even in 2011. It is my hope that I have not reinvented the wheel in sharing this information nor is it my attempt to replace the written history that the church possesses. Please accept this as a supplement with my best regards. My information was taken from primary sources of the General Minutes of the Methodist Church and Central Alabama Conference Minutes.