Some time ago an appeal was made through The Church Intelligencer to the wealthy and liberal churchmen of this diocese, imploring them to give of their abundance a small mite, to aid a feeble and struggling congregation of ladies in erecting in a community in which the Church is just being planted, as it were, a plain, but comfortable house of worship. Nearly two months had elapsed before any response was made. While bowed down by disappointment and despairing of success, our heart was made glad by the reception of a kind letter from “Elm Grove, N. C.,” sent by some “lady subscriber” to the Intelligencer, enclosing us $5.00, the free-will offering of, I doubt not, a pious heart. Some fair daughter of the Church sympathized with us, and contributed as she was able, to the relief of our pressing necessities. May heaven reward her a hundred fold! We have succeeded in raising more by subscription than we thought we could do, and we now lack about $100. Shall we ask in vain of the Church in North Carolina the small sum of $100, when that amount, with what we have subscribed, will enable us to build a Church on the ruins of the isms that have lived and died there? I have too much confidence in the liberality of the churchmen in this diocese to think so for a moment. I know this lack will be supplied: if by no one else, by the liberal Christian women of the Church, who are always foremost in good works for the Church. Nineteen more such as the one at Elm Grove will supply our want, and I know the Church in this diocese can count other such members by the hundred. The female members of the Church, although, as a general rule, less able to give, seem to realize much more fully than the other sex the truth of that saying, “It is more blessed to give than to receive.”
(Source: “Our Church at Hunstville,” The Rev. S. S. Barber, Mocksville, N. C., July 13th, 1860, in The Church Intelligencer, July 26, 1860, p. 145)
