The Story of T. B. Sipuel

Telling Big Mama's Story.....


This is something I want me and my brothers and cousins to do... in a book style.

I searched the newspaper film in the OK History Center several months ago.   I found these words in a White- Daily Oklahoman Newspaper rendering this story  (dated September  1946).

HEART ATTACK FATAL TO NOTED NEGRO LEADER

"A heart attack was fatal for the Reverend Sipuel, prominent negro leader of the city last week in Oklahoma City.  He went to a garage in the city to have his car fixed which had been in a wreck.  When the garage man said it would cost $400 to repair the car he slumped with a heart attack from which he never recovered."

Such a lie to be posted by the media!

Beulahland COGIC

Another Family name was PAXTON in Geary OK


The Driving Distance from OKC to Geary = 53 miles /// about 58 minutes   !!!  

DEMOGRAPHICS

Geary is a city in Blaine and Canadian counties in the U.S. state of Oklahoma. The population was 1,280 at the 2010 census

Median household income ($) : $63,456

---

Geary, OK (income), Calumet, OK (income)
73014, 73040

Population: 880
Households: 381
Family households: 229 (60.1%)
Non-Family households: 152 (39.9%)

White Population: 721 (82.1%)
Black Population: 12 (1.4%)
American Indian Population: 115 (13.1%)
Multirace Population: 30 (3.4%)

Read more: http://www.city-data.com/city/Geary-Oklahoma.html#ixzz2qaJkQhcL

Family Names from Geary, OK COGIC

This might be an area of research........   The Colberts,  

My google search found this tid-bit

Karen Y. Howell

Diocesan Missionary

  ENCOURAGING WORD CHURCH RCOGIC INT'L SUPERVISOR OF WOMENS WORKS

Missionary Karen Colbert Howell was born in Bridgeport, Oklahoma. She was the third child of eleven born to George L. & I. Marie Colbert. Along with her family, she attended Beulah Land Church of God in Christ in Geary, Oklahoma where Elder Howard Huggins was the Pastor.

After moving to El Reno, Missionary Howell became a member of Holy Temple Church of God in Christ, Elder Herbert Sanders was the officiating pastor at that time. She served as Choir Director for approximately 2 years.
A new church named Faith Temple COGIC was built in El Reno under the guidance of Elder George Nelson as pastor, there she served as Choir Director, Church Secretary and Adult Sunday school teachers.

Missionary Howell is the mother to five beautiful and gifted children, grandmother to eight and great grandmother of three wonderful little ones.

God has been very good to me in my years and my greatest desire is to please GOD. I remember a scripture in the Bible that reads "I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills from whence cometh my help. My help cometh from the Lord which made heaven and earth" Psalm 121:1-2.

http://www.ewcrcogicintl.org/EWC--Biographies.html

The Reformed Churches of God in Christ International 

Church Roots COGIC in Oklahoma !

My daughter (law enforcement) and her co-worker made a trip to GEARY OK.... she called and said yes she remembered that Papa Huggins pastored in a little town called Geary,OK.   Affecectionately --- daddy had events where members would hug us.... and he referred to them as his GEARY GIRLS !!!   Good stock, good families!!

So daughter made the drive around the small town, asked me to remember the name of the Church..... I only knew COGIC.... there was one Holiness church, one Methodist church, etc in that community...   

So apparently.... after daddy left in maybe 1980-something..... A new Pastor was assisgned and certainly.... the old small building that I remember was torn down.... And a wonderful new structure is in its' place.    I don't remember Daddy updating or re-building in Geary. 

I told my daughter that I remember a PARSONAGE.... (what's that?)   It's the small home next door to a church -- providing a place for us to stay (thinking of kinda itinerant preachers or the cotton-farming communities of the 1950-1960's...who often had large families to support).

So here goes..

I google-searched to find information on the Pastor..??

 This shows the address of South and Blaine Avenue..... This was a small house near the church !!!

I'm grinning from ear to ear .... to recall and cherish my family history.....

Beulah Land Church God & Christ

Last Updated by Bquiltin Studio < 1 minute ago

Beulah Land Church God & Christ 725 South Blaine Avenue Geary, OK 73040 (405) 884-2828

What a delight.....

Misery Loves Company!

Tana said that she has a letter... that mama wrote on her old typewriter... with white-out paste-over errors...
It was a one page obit for Big Mama's funeral March 17-1971.  ....said hearing mama's voice and style was something else to envision...  

But the very content stunned me!...... Big Mama attended a Baptist Church (college background...??) and when she converted to COGIC.... her family disowned her... wanting nothing to do with that holiness message of early 1900! 

Well, she only had Lucinda - her mother with her during the time in AR that she met and married T.B. Sipuel.      

History repeated itself as I was raised Holiness... and married Lawrence and I have spent the rest of my days (my kids) in the Baptist church! 

more later.... that's another story!

Tugbake Dining Hall

On this COGIC bullentin board.....

So now I know it had to do with a COGIC Missionary project into Liberia - Africa, County of Maryland..... town of TUGBAKE.

Mother Bailey & The Board of Seven. . . . COGIC Leaders??

Dr. Annie L. Bailey, National Supervisor COGIC, President Women's International Convention (Served 1964-1975)

Six names (Bishops) were pasted: Wyoming Wells, A.B. McEwen (Chairman Emeritus), J. Bailey, O.M.Kelly, J.O. Patterson (secretary) L. H. Ford

Second photograph is T.B. Sipuel (Oklahoma 1944-1946), ev. Carl Prather, Rev. John Goodman, Rev. Jone Kemp.

Right Up Under My Nose...... Rather

On a wall in my garage. . . there has been hanging for YEARRRRRRssss.. a COGIC poster hung by my daddy - Howard Huggins!

So, hubby pulls it down... I've taken the notes, recording each individual in the photos, several poems, and the 1919 Annual Convocation speech by C. M. Mason! The two great men of my heart are photographed... Bishop T. B. Sipuel and Eld. Howard Huggins

I visited Grandmother Huggins at St. Ann's Nursing Home yesterday evening.... she immediately said that Brent Butler gave this posterboard to your daddy... His mother made it. He didn't want to throw it away... and figured daddy would keep it.

This must have been in the mid-70's.....I notices in the 1987 St. John Church directory - a picture of Rev. Brent & Toni Butler worshipping there for a short time after they left Madison Street COGIC. Mama said he was now living in the Dallas TX area.

Another good instance of my mother's ability to recall and discuss. Just luvin every day she is alive and well and with us!

Good facts running thru my mind! PLUS

FOR thirty years - I guess- that long ago.... my daddy hung a great big poster inside the Woodridge garage. About 40" x 60".... attesting to "...this is the Church of God in Christ!" I can hear the old song....."you cannot join in.... you have to be born in.... this is the Church of God in Christ!"

Quite a treasure.... I hopin it is still legible and not worn as the paper pictures are posted onto it. Where he got it from... I don't know. But I can see why I'm having this thirst to connect to those who have gone on before.

Anxious to get home and photograph the poster tonite. Really thinking of a way to scan and further preserve quite a few old papers daddy has on COGIC.

http://americanhistory.pppst.com/cottongin.html

Dad Sipuels' Personal Experience and

background is reflected in COGIC dogma ..... Much like Mason -- our religious experience has sought to reached out and lift up Black Americans primarily in the 19020's from a rural setting -- exhorting them to seek an escape from the Jim Crow South and migrate/move Northward to seek a better way a life, although the 40's-50's and 60's presented harsh realities of urban life.

The primary thinking of the sanctified church has been "If you got individual souls saved, it would lead to transformation of the larger society"

A motto is oft repeated..." AChild Saved.... is a soul saved." (plus a life)!

"The COGIC is possibly the prime example of the self-help tradition in America," says general board member Ithiel Clemmons. "It is a people that started as the children of slaves—sharecroppers, farmers, oppressed people. They asked no one for anything. They migrated to the major cities of America and became successful. They felt that the experience of the baptism of the Holy Ghost took the apostrophe and the t from the word can't, so they could say, 'We can do all things through Christ who strengthens us.' "

I Thessalonians 2:14 COGIC

(1897) “Church of God in Christ” was revealed to Bishop C. H. Mason, Little Rock, Arkansas.

COGIC (pronounced COE-jik) is an acronym for Church of God in Christ, the largest Pentecostal, and second-largest African-American church denomination in the United States. But more than being an abbreviation, COGIC has become a word of embodiment. http://www.pctii.org/cyberj/cyberj9/millner.html (except portion)

Akin to NAACP or GOP, COGIC conjures up images of the expressive and emotionally intense, hand clapping, foot stomping, tongues speaking, bible toting, joyous singing, body healing, Jesus professing, God fearing, Spirit indwelling experience of a group of black religious folk, collectively known as the sanctified church.

Scripture basis:
“For ye brethren became followers of the Churches of God which in Judea are in Christ Jesus: for ye have suffered like things of your own countrymen even as they have of the Jews.”

Recording My COGIC History - A Timeline

My husband, two daughters and my brother Wendell made a family trip to Lexington MS in June 2008: photos of the First-Historic COGIC.

In their book The Black Church in the African American Experience (Durham: Duke University Press, 1990), C. Eric Lincoln and Lawrence Mamiya wrote that because the Church of God in Christ was the only incorporated Pentecostal denomination in existence from 1907 to 1914 - - - - - it was the sole ecclesiastical authority which could ordain ministers.

By 1914, the realities of segregation caused white Pentecostal ministers ordained by Mason to organize the Assemblies of God.

By 1924, most white constituents of remaining interracial churches withdrew to form their own churches, leaving little contact between black and white Pentecostals.

http://etd.library.vanderbilt.edu/theses/available/etd-0328101-224926/