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Floyd Kilpatrick the Planter - Sharecropping has been described as a method of land lease that replaced slavery in the South. Unlike slavery, it would be inclusive of the white and black man alike. Sharecroppers definitely did not prosper under this system, they were, for the most part, subsistence farmers. Work was hard and days were long during planting and harvest season and there were chores that had to be done everyday not matter the time of year. They raised corn, but had to split their yield between their landlord, the miller, themselves, and their livestock. Around here sharecroppers raised cotton as a money crop, but had to split its yield with the landlord and the gin owner. Usually money from their cotton just paid off their debt to the landlord and to the local store from the previous year. Disposable income was a rarity among sharecroppers. Money went to buy coffee, sugar, flour, shoes, and anything else they needed that they couldn't make or raise for themselves. Many people left farming for work in the mills. Working in the cotton mills was harsher work, the days were just as long (and there was no rest in laying by time nor in the winter), but housing was better and pay was twice that of farming. Farm subsidies programs of the 1930's were, in come cases, instrumental in driving sharecroppers from the lands that they were working. Many were forced into northern cities to compete with the few jobs there or on to one of the Resettlement Administration's farms such as the one on Skyline Mountain, Jackson County, Alabama where Lonnie Kilpatrick helped build the houses the resettled farmers would live in.Great-Granddad Floyd Kilpatrick was a farmer, a planter. Sometime a sharecropper or tenant farmer, sometime a land owner, he tilled and planted for a living. He tilled the soil in Northern Madison County at Deposit, Bell Factory, Hurricane, and Beaver Dam. He likely also farmed down in Marion County, Florida. Floyd also tilled another kind of soil and planted another kind of seed, a seed sown to the Spirit (Galatians 6:8).
I am not sure when Great-Granddad began his work in preaching The Word. The 1959 edition of "Preachers of Today" says he began preaching in 1931, but his evangelistic work began to some extent in Hurricane valley in the 1920's. The Greenfield church still meets in Hurricane Valley in the building that they built in 1951. The church first started meeting in 1923 at the home of Floyd and Lorena Kilpatrick. When the weather was good, they met in grove of trees next to their home, and in rain or winter in their house. They began with three families (including Floyd's and Lorena's family). One family came six miles out of Sharp's Cove to worship. Another family came three miles from the other direction. These distances seem nothing to us today, but at this time walking or wagon were the modes of travel. Cold weather didn't stop these folk from assembling. They trudged through the worst of it, sometimes arriving with their outer clothing stiff with ice. In 1929, the congregation at Greenfield bought land on which they would set up their first building. The building was an one room school house that they moved in sections on wagons from Rice (southwest of New Market). It took a week for the men to move and then reassemble the building. They then made slat benches from logs that they had cut. Great-Granddad Floyd made a table for the Lord's Supper from an old bedstead. About this same time, Floyd's son Carl, or maybe it was Clayton, acquiredan old T-Model Ford. The Kilpatrick family would pick up some of the members to ride to worship. Sometime they would have as many as twenty-one people in and hanging onto that old T-Model going to worship.
One Sunday morning in 1936, the Kilpatrick family set out for Greenfield not having enough gas to get there and no money to buy any. A man and woman flagged Great-Granddad down and wanting him to marry them. Now I don't know this couple's real names, but the man's nickname was Churnhead and the lady's was Applecore. Churnhead produced a marriage licensee and Great-Granddad married them in the middle of the road. When he was done, Churnhead asked Floyd what he owed him, to which Floyd replied, "What's she worth to you?" The man paid Great-Granddad fifty cents with which he bought gas to continue on to church.
Greenfield was not the last (and possibly not the first) that Floyd would help establish, but just part of an over thirty-five year long work. Great-Granddad never was a "located" preacher, he was a itinerant preacher, an evangelist. Traveling by car, bus, and by train and relying on the hospitality of christians for accommodations, Floyd would preach in much of North Alabama, several locations in Tennessee, in Western Mississippi, East Central Kentucky,Georgia,and in Florida (probably in Lake and Marion Counties).
Great-Granddad Floyd held meetings in several Tennessee towns and communities. even as far away as Hartsville and Lafayette which are northeast of Nashville. Holding a meeting in one rural Tennessee community's church, Great-Granddad preached hard against the false teaching of the Baptist church. One man threatened Great-Granddad with death if he kept preaching against the Baptist doctrine. The following nights Floyd preached all the harder, and nothing came of the threats.
In North Alabama, Great-Granddad preached in Madison, Marshall, Jackson, Limestone, Lauderdale, Lawrence, Colbert, and Franklin counties. Here in Limestone county he preached in Gospel meetings in several congregations, in lectureships at Athens Bible School, and even on the court house steps. One congregation he spoke at was Craig's Chapel in the western part of the county.
Craig's Chapel Old Building Moved to Another Location Craig's Chapel Present Building Located Across the Road From Where the Original Building Stood. Pictures Courtesy of Van and June Bowers
In Madison County Floyd preached in meetings at most every congregation in the county including Dallas (East Huntsville), Lincoln, and West Huntsville. He also had a radio program on WBHP. For a while he would have to be at the WBHP studio at six o'clock in the morning for his broadcast, but later he bought a wire recorder and was able to record his lessons a day a head. He still had to make the trip into town to deliver the recording and in the winter time the cold battery wouldn't crank his old dodge, so the boys would hitch the mule to the car and pull it off.
At the coal mine camps in the vicinity of Corbin Kentucky, Floyd would simply park his car and begin preaching over a loud speaker mounted on his car. Soon he had an audience. He helped established about seven congregations in that area.
The only work that supported Great-Granddad full time was in Lawrence County Tennessee where he was the county wide evangelist from 1944through 1947.
Great-Granddad preached in congregations in Marshall County including Arab, Albertville (1948), and Columbus City (1952-1959). He also had a radio program on WAVUin Albertville for several years.
Great-Granddad Floyd participated in seven debates with denominational preachers. One of these was with Holiness Preacher A.C. Weaver. The Debate was held at the West Huntsville Church of Christ. The house was packed so that there was not even standing room. Many were standing outside of windows to listen. Some even climbed trees to look in.
Great-Granddad's philosophy on preaching was "preach with love in your heart and your hat in your hand", which is the basic thought of II Timothy 4:2, 3, "Preach the word; be instant in season, out of season; reprove, rebuke, exhort with all longsuffering and doctrine. For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine; but after their own lusts shall they heap to themselves teachers, having itching ears;". There was no "whipping the devil around the stump" for Floyd Kilpatrick. Though his sermons were seasoned with sometimes humorous illustrations, he didn't pull any punches. He understood that a person's soul was important, too important to worry about sparing feelings. One example of this was at a congregation where Great-Granddad was not greeted with the hospitality you would expect of God's people. In fact, he had been treated much better at a Baptist church that he had stopped at by mistake that same morning. In his lesson he said, "This church has a more hospitality than any other I've come across. I know you have a lot of hospitality, because you haven't used up any of it." Being an old country boy that had grown up hard and having little formal education, he was able to present The Word in a way that everyone could understand. People hungering and thirsting to hear God's Truth came from miles around to hear Great-Granddad preach it. They sat for two or two and a half hours, on slat benches, trying to stay cool with funeral home fans, listening to him as he preached God's Word. Funny how we complain now after we have to sit through a forty-five minute sermon on padded pews in an comfortable building.
Great-Granddad also encouraged other men to preach the gospel. One was Lawrence Kilpatrick of Lake County, Florida. Lawrence was the son of Willie Kilpatrick, Floyd's younger brother. Lawrence began preaching about 1952 and continued preaching in Lake and Marion Counties (as much as his health would allow in his later years) right up until he preached his last sermon about week before he died in the summer of 2001. Floyd gave Lawrence several of the charts he had used in his work including "The Wheel". Great-Granddad would influence other men to preach including several of his grandchildren.
Great-Granddad preached up until he suffered a debilitating stroke in 1962.
Sources:
Information about the church of Christ at Greenfield is from "History of Hurricane Valley" by Elaine Stiles Russell Gotvald."Preachers' of Today, 1959 Edition", Gospel Advocate
Thanks to my dad Jimmy Kilpatrick and his uncle Leon Kilpatrick for most of the information I have on Floyd Kilpatrick's evangelistic work.
Thanks to Wayne Kilpatrick for providing the excerpt from "Preachers of Today".
Thanks to Elbon Kilpatrick and Jim and Sharon Williams for information on Lawrence Kilpatrick's evangelistic work.
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