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Introduction.  Most of the photographs on this website are from “Old Ways: Church and Family,” an exhibition held at the Center’s Gammill Gallery in the fall of 2001.  The pictures were made at Hurricane Creek Primitive Baptist Church and Rocky Mount Primitive Baptist Church, both located in rural north Mississippi and both pastored by 92-year-old Elder Robert Atwater.  Each church held worship services once a month – Hurricane Creek on the first Sunday of the month, Rocky Mount on the fourth.  Since the two churches are only thirty miles apart, members of one usually attended services at the other.  On the second, third, and occasional fifth Sundays, Elder Atwater often led a caravan of church members and their families to worship at other Primitive Baptist churches in northern Mississippi, southwestern Tennessee, and eastern Arkansas.  Elder Atwater died in August 2001.  He had preached at Hurricane Creek since the mid-1960s and at Rocky Mount since 1971. 

I met Elder Atwater in April 2000, and as we got to know each other over the next few months we became friends.  Although he was 92 when he died, his passing was unexpected.  His sudden absence left a hole in the lives of everyone who knew him.  This website is dedicated to his memory. 

“Old Ways: Church and Family” was undertaken with the generous support of the Mississippi Humanities Council. 

- David Wharton