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Lena Allen Conner

L. A. Conner

Grandmother Conner

(1880-1954)

Lena Allen Conner, Florence's mother, wrote a brief autobiography from which this passage is taken.

I was born in the country December 29, 1880, and lived for ten years in a country environment. My parents went to a country church three miles from Mayfield, Georgia, and I went along with them. Mother put a quilt pallet on the floor between the benches that I might have a place to sit or sleep.

With Horeb church are associated some of my happiest memories. How overjoyed we children were when the season came for us to begin practice on our songs for Children’s Day at the annual camp meeting. Methodists and Baptists shared the cottages around the camp ground. The whole county was privileged to take some part at one time or another.

Country people find Sunday School and church a chance for friendly relationships as well as a place for worship. Saturday was Conference Day, and that was not a day for trifling, either. Quite often an offending brother heard his doom pronounced.

My parents believed in going to every association or ministers and deacons meeting within reach, and sometimes that meant across the county, perhaps 30 or 40 miles–no mean distance for horse and buggy days. One of my earliest was an association at Bethlehem church. The crowds were immense, and I got lost. I had on a new dress, a darned net made by my Aunt Georgia Duggan. Cousin Corley Duggan found me crying, took me on his shoulder high above everybody’s head (I remember that especially), and walked around until we found my mother.

When preparations were going forward for another big meeting at Horeb church, my mother sent me out to the store for something she needed. Some Negroes were there with a bad dog. He ran for me at once and bit me in the side, dragging me to the ground. Several women who had already arrived rushed me into the house and put hot poultices of dough or bread or something on the wound, and I lived to tell the tale.