Reverend M. P. Lowrey was born in Tennessee on December 29, 1828. As a young man he served as a private in the War with Mexico. Although he arrived too late to participate in the fighting, he acquired military training which would prove to be of great value in subsequent years. In 1899, he married Sarah R. Holmes, a native of South Carolina and a woman of character, courage, and rare common sense. His family had settled near Corinth in northeastern Mississippi where he married and reared a family of five daughters and six sons. After he married, he purchased an eighty-acre farm at Kossuth, not far from Corinth, which he operated himself in addition to his work as a Baptist preacher. During the years before the Civil War, he was a missionary for the Chickasaw Baptist Association. As associational missionary he visited these rural churches, such as Cherry Creek, Fellowship Church, always advocating more and better schools and more and stronger churches. Ile visited in the home of Nathan Berry, of Joel Halbert Berry, of Joel Bruton Gambrell, of Lucinda Halbert Berry, and of James M. Leavell. He became intimately acquainted with all of them.
At the beginning of the Civil War, he organized a company of which he became captain; but by reason of his previous military training, and his rare ability as a leader, he was immediately and rapidly advanced to the rank of Brigadier General. Throughout his life he was known as the "fighting parson." It is said he prayed with his men in their tenth, preached to them in their camps, and led them in their battles. When he entered the military service, he left his wife and several young children on their farm at Kossuth, near Corinth. During the war, for safety reasons, his wife and young children left their farm and moved to his brother's home near Blue Mountain, Mississippi. When he returned from the Army, the entire country was prostrate; and many of the plantation homes were for sale. He sold his eighty-acre farm near Corinth and bought a fine old ante bellum residence known as the Brougher place at Blue Mountain.
He was a strong believer in education; and immediately upon his return, he resumed his work of pastoring churches in this area, serving as Moderator of the Chickasaw Association. He helped to rebuild the churches which were destroyed and helped to establish day schools, country schools, and other places where a person might at least obtain the fundamentals of an education. lie was a member of the Board of Trustees of Furman University. In 1868. he was elected president of the Bantist General Conven-
38 THE BERRY FAMILY LN MISSISSIPPI
tion of Mississippi, a position which he held for ten years. These ten years were the most difficult time in the history of the state.
During this post-war period, he often visited in the home of Joel Halbert Berry who was an active deacon in the Fellowship Baptist Church at Pleasant Ridge and who was Chairman of the Executive Board of the Chickasaw Baptist Association. On many of those occasions, Reverend M. P. Lowrey brought his family with him, including his oldest daughter, Modena-a very charming and lovely young lady. A close friendship developed between Modena Lowrey and William Edwin Berry, a son of Joel Halbert Berry.
Over in the Pleasant Ridge community, Joel H. Berry and his family and his cousin, Jane Gambrell, and her husband, Joel Bruton Gambrel!, helped establish the Fellowship Baptist Church. His two sons, Reverend William Edwin Berry and Reverend Julius Simpson Berry, were ordained as ministers by this church. Dr. James B. Gambrell was licensed to preach by this church before he moved to Cherry Creek.
In these early days in northern Mississippi, there was a young Baptist preacher, Reverend Mark Perrin Lowrey, who became intimately acquainted with the Berrys, the Gambrells, the Leavells, the Machens, and the Burrisses. He, too, had settled in this section and had much influence over subsequent religious and educational activities in Mississippi and in the South.William Edwin Berry at the age of seventeen enlisted in the army and served the last year of the war. He returned to his father's home and assisted his father in rebuilding the farm.He also helped to rebuild the Fellowship Baptist Church and the schools in that area. During this stay at home, he was ordained to the ministry. While Modena Lowrey was attending the Baptist Female College at Pontotoc, William Berry was a student at Mississippi College, a Baptist institution at Clinton, Mississippi. He graduated in 1875.
In the fall of 1873, after Modena and Margaret had graduated from the Baptist Female College, General Lowrey and his daughters established Blue Mountain College. They used the old Brougher plantation home as a place for the young ladies who were students to board. He built a small building containing two classrooms on the plantation grounds. There were about fifty students the first year; and the faculty consisted of only General Lowrey, Modena, and Margaret.
During the student days of William Edwin Berry and the early teaching days of Modena Lowrey, the friendship between them continued to develop with the result that after William Edwin Berry had graduated from Mississippi College and had
CONTRIULITIONS OF THE BERRY FAMILY TO MISSISSIPPI 39
finished one year of theological study at Furman University at Greenville, South Carolina, he and Modena were married. This marriage took place at Blue Mountain in June, 1876. At the same time, William Edwin purchased a one-half interest in the college. Throughout the remainder of their lives, they devoted all of their time to the affairs of this institution which has grown into one of the most influential Baptist schools in the South.Reverend William Edwin Berry taught Creek and Latin and was business manager of the college. He relieved General Lowrey of much of the administrative responsibilities, which left the latter free to pastor churches, to perform his duties as president of the Baptist General Convention of Mississippi, to visit associations over the state, and to speak, preach, and lecture throughout the state in behalf of better educational facilities.
William Edwin Berry continued to teach Greek and Latin and serve as business manager of the college until his death in 1919. William and Modena have three children: Joel H. Berry, a business executive in Norfolk, Virginia; Perrin Lowrey Berry, a member of the faculty at Mississippi College; and Clara Etta Berry, who has been associated with Blue Mountain College all of her life.
Mother Berry, as Modena was affectionately called, was one of the greatest women of modern times. All of the people of Mississippi loved her and felt the influence of the rich, full life she lived.