This story originated as a letter from Kirk Peiffer in Germany to Warren Dorsey in Frederick, Maryland. Kirk also sent a copy to Jack White.
By Kirk Peiffer
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— Excerpt —
While a few details are missing, and others are to the best of my knowledge, but maybe not quite accurate, this is what I can tell you about the church pew and how it came to be the wall seat at my kitchen table.
Anna Loper had died. Anna and Clarke Loper were the tenant farmers at the Beasman Farm, much of which is now Fairhaven. They had received a bit of land from the Beasmans, had it parceled and developed, and built their retirement home nestled between Anna Lane and Clarke Drive. This is one of the things I love about being from Sykesville. There are countless instances where I know why the roads are named as they are. But I digress.
Mrs. Loper — we never called her anything more familiar — was also the mother of my Uncle Gerry. Uncle Gerry is the husband of my father’s sister Ginny. The Loper family was big and we knew them all. Anna Lane and Clarke Drive are just up the road from our house, so of course we went to the estate auction.
I asked about lots of things in the auction. When we went to see Mr. and Mrs. Loper, we of course always went to the back door. We never went further than the kitchen and often stopped in the breezeway, so I did not know about the curiosities and treasures in the house. The Victorian bedroom suite was among the most fascinating furniture I had ever seen. It had belonged to the Beasmans.
The church pew, I learned that day, had been decomissioned in the late sixties. Both white and black people attended Springfield Church. The whites sat in the main sanctuary on oak pews with scrollwork at the top of the ends. The blacks sat in the balcony on pine pews. As segregation ended, the pews in the balcony were replaced to match the ones in the sanctuary. People who donated money for the new balcony pews could have one of the old balcony pews. Mrs. Loper had done so.
I was fascinated by this story on the day of the auction. It was brand new information for me, though my family had attended Springfield Church until the mid-Seventies.
“Bid on the pew,” I asked my father. I was 13 and not yet allowed to bid.
“What are you going to do with that old thing?” my father responded.
“I don’t know. I want it. I will pay for it from my savings account. I have $185 and you can spend up to $135. Please just bid on it.”
We went back and forth and the bidding ended before we were finished discussing. I cried.
— End of Excerpt —