Rev Benjamin Roper Rosser

https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/90956938/benjamin-rosser

From "A Memorial of Benjamin Rosser" by Levin Vinson Rosser:

Benjamin moved in 1800 with his widowed mother, from NC to Hancock CO,GA. Here on the frontiers of GA, according to his own rather severe account, he grew up to be an illerate, wild, and wicked young man. Having been refused in marriage by Miss Betty Vinson, on account of his wild life, he at the next camp meeting of the genuine Whitfield-Wesleykind, made peace with the Lord and with Miss Betty at the same time.

In the War of 1812, he was drafted to go to the front. But by this time he had acquired conscientious scruples against fighting and killing and being lth to leave Betty and the baby, he hired a substitute. This substitute, a very wicked man, was instantly killed in battle, fighting the Indians. This circumstance bothered our Benjamin all the rest of his long life.

Benjamin moved, 1820-21, after the death and burial of his mother, from GA to Tuscaloosa CO< AL. Here, he and his neighbor, Robert Martin, werethe pillars of Center (Afterward called Old Center) Church in the Big Sandy Valley. Here they founded a strong and influential Methodist Society, which flourished for many years, and was noted not only for thepiety and plain living of its founders, but also for the open and cleanlife of its members, sober and chaste, and just and honorable always.' The Big Sandy Valley was settled in small plantations of a few hundred acres of land each, by planters owning a small number of negroe slaves.Being under the immediate care and protection of their owners, thenegroes flourished and multiplied rapidley, thus adding to the weath oftheir owners. When slavery was abolished, the glory of the Big Sandy Valley departed forever. Benjamin, faring the fate of all the others wasleft in his old age with nothing but a burden of poor sandy land. The contributions of sons and grandsons of Benjamin to the Confederate Army stands as a grand memorial of his loyalty to the old South.

(The Old Center Grave Yard (OCGY) is located 13 miles south of Tuscaloosa, midway between the Greensboro Public Rd and the Marion Public Road. Tradition says that the Indians knew and used this hill or ridgeas a council hill. Among the white settlers, this locality early

NOTE: The cemetery located off Rosser Road on Jones Spur Road is NOT the Rosser Cemetery. Across the street and up the hill near the radio tower is the location of Benjamin Rosser's Grave and family members.