Developing Horizons Magazine (2).pdf Spring 2015 | Page 24

Mountain Moments
Holding to His Hand
By Irma Flanagan
What a sweet and glorious thought that comes to me:
I’ll live on. Yes, I’ll live on.
Jesus saved my soul from death and now I’m free.
…I’ll live on… Thru eternity, I’ll live on.
–T.J. Laney

Reverend Henry
and Maude Brown

Back in the day when Methodists and Baptists were

Reverend Lovick
and May Adams

his parishioners talked to him about a similar problem
the dominant denominations in North Georgia and
and the next day, she found on her doorstep the follownobody had ever heard of “Reformation Gap” (in
ing recipe along with a sample: ginseng, yellow lady
Union County) where there is now a Lutheran Church, slipper, black cohosh, lion’s tongue, spignet and a bit of
Presbyterian Church and a Catholic Church, Reverend white lightning for the preservative. It could be made
Henry Brown (Baptist) and Reverend Lovick Adams
fresh every day, but the alcohol kept it from spoiling for
(Methodist) traveled near and far tending their flocks several weeks. This concoction has come to be known
both separately and together. Two of the most highly
in the mountains as “Nellie’s Cure or Kill.”
revered preachers in the mountain area in the early
and mid-1900’s, they each baptized several thousand
Unlike Jonathan Edwards’s “Sinners in the Hands of
people.
an Angry God,” a hell fire and damnation sermon that
started the Great Awakening in 1741, both Adams’s
The Reverend Professor Lovick Adams was a formal- and Brown’s sermons were hopeful and love focused.
ly educated man who came to Young Harris College
Adams’s regular sermons usually had a mischievous
from Danielsville in 1898 as a student and returned
twinkle somewhere along the way. Adams was an optisome time later to teach Bible classes and Hebrew. He mist. Tommy Flanagan remembers sitting on a bench
came in a one horse hack and, in his words, “never got in front of the Mountain Regional Library talking to
stuck but once.” That was at the foot of Track Rock
Professor Adams who said, “Everybody wants to be
Gap on the south side where Alfred and John Bridges
doomsayers about things. They say we’re living in the
brought their team and dragged him out of axle deep
worst times we’ve ever lived, but that’s not true. We’re
mud. Trained in the school room of academia, he was living in the best times we’ve ever lived. Fewer kids go
active both on campus and in the community.
hungry. They’re better clothed and tended to. We’ve
got electricity and other modern conveniences; we’ve
Reverend Henry Brown was self-educated and
got better opportunities for education and we don’t
had preached since his childhood; that is, as a child
have to work as hard.”
he practiced preaching to the farm animals and his
siblings. His first stint as a pastor began in 1901 at
At Union Hill Methodist Church in Towns County,
West Union Baptist Church in Young Harris. His bare Adams was preaching once and sparks from the wood
feet may have drawn some attention though most folks heater caught the roof on fire. Some men went nearby
knew he had severe arthritis. At some point God gave to Marlor Garrett’s house where they got a ladder. They
him a remedy for that. It just so happened that one of climbed upon the roof, kicked off the board shingles,
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