News from Ravensworth Baptist Church

Now the time came for Elizabeth to give birth, and she bore a son. (Luke 1:57)

I'd like to tell you about an Elizabeth in one of my family branches. Elizabeth Bruce, born in Greenville County, South Carolina, on June 21, 1807, was my grandfather's grandmother. I'm guessing that she was named after her great-grandmother, Elizabeth Quinn. Elizabeth married my great-great grandfather, William R. Hyde, in 1831. Sometime before 1850, the family moved to Lafayette, Mississippi, where Elizabeth died in 1892. In 1880, when her son, Robert Vasco Hyde, became the new father of my grandfather (Poppy), Elizabeth was living with them in Lafayette, for her husband had died in 1876.

Elizabeth's parents were Joel Bruce (1785-1840) and Mary West (1790-1828). Thanks to the Internet and my enterprising daughter-in-law, Kristi, I'm looking at a picture of a grist mill, still standing, which Joel Bruce built in 1812, and a picture of a small building adjacent to the Milford Baptist Church in Greer, South Carolina (seven miles from Greenville), a church built in 1832 which is still active. The small structure is a baptismal building. Joel Bruce's father was Charles Bruce, Elizabeth's grandfather, and the caption under the picture identifies the baptismal building as the place "where many of the children and grandchildren of Charles Bruce were baptized."

So I'm almost certainly looking at where Poppy's grandmother (and my great-great grandmother), Elizabeth, was baptized!

This affects me in a couple of ways. Suddenly, Elizabeth is not just a name on a genealogical chart. Until a couple of years ago, I didn't even know that the earliest Hydes in Mississippi were actually South Carolinians. And--it reminds me how textured my family history is.

So is yours.

I hope when we read the story of Elizabeth and Zechariah, and their son, John, who used a river to baptize, we can realize, as I've been reminded by a few of my many ancestors, that they were real people. And their stories have many layers of history and meaning.

I'd say on an average of once a week, someone will hear my accent and ask, "Where are you from?" After mentioning that I've lived in the D.C. area for 30 years, I'll say that I'm from Arkansas. I may start saying, "I'm from Paragould, Arkansas, and Greer, South Carolina, and Lafayette, Mississippi"--and other places, too.

We all have complicated histories of origin. Advent is a season for looking ahead, but also over our shoulders at those who came before us. As you know, both Matthew and Luke present a genealogy of Jesus.

With our genealogical charts in one hand and our Bibles in the other, we might find after a lot of digging around that we belong to one family.

Steve