Monroe Mission
Prior
to the removal period of the Chickasaw Nation the enslaved Blacks and Chickasaws
were documented to have attended religious services together in their ancestral
home of Mississippi.
The Monroe Mission of Holly Springs, Mississippi was their place of religious instruction. The records of Monroe Mission provide great insight and genealogical material for those who research the Chickasaw Freedmen.
The following pages are extracted from the record of the church and those individuals who were members. Based on the dates of the membership rolls one can possibly discover an answer who was alive in the early 19th Century and make a connection to a descendant on the Dawes Rolls of 1898.
Back in 1999 the person who provided the insight into this important work "Father Stuart and the Monroe Mission" by E.T. Winston was T. C. Patrick (a descendant of the LOVE and COLBERT lines) made a great observation on the Monroe Mission Church.
Tania wrote; "...It contains 20 or so pages of his baptisms of the Holly Springs bunch. Henry Love and others were big participants. A touching note is that the slaves translated the sermons for the Indians who did not understand English. The slaves were most all already Christians and could speak both English and Chickasaw."
It is important for researchers and descendants to remember, those formerly enslaved among the Five Civilized Tribes lived not only the culture in which they labored as enslaved people, but they were very much apart of the culture of the tribes in which they lived.