Alan J. Pitts
Re: Regiment of John D McClanahan
Fri Jun 29 16:01:34 2001


Rev. McClanahan appears to have been a well-known minister in Morgan County. Here's a story about him from minutes of the Morgan County Baptist Association:

A final account was first told at the anniverary of Enon Baptist Church in Lawrence County, where establishment of the Morgan County Association was announced in 1919. Members told of the time that their pastor, J.D. McClanahan, had "prayed the rain down." It seems that Lawrence County was in the grip of a serious drought about the turn of the century. Rev. McClanahan called for a prayer meeting. . . As he rode up to the church on horseback, under a sky that was shimmering with the heat and free of any sign of a cloud, Rev. McClanahan unsaddled his horse and carefully put the saddle under a shed. He told puzzled bystanders, "Don't want the saddle to get wet when it rains." Inside the church he led the assembled farmers in prayer for a rain that would be a "gully washer and a fence breaker." Then he began his sermon. Minutes later a small black cloud about the size of a man's hand rose in the south. McClanahan continued his preaching. . . Toward the end of his sermon the assembly was startled by a loud crash of thunder and a heavy rain that shook the small church. Members who were present say that gulleys were washed out and fences broken from the force of the downpour.

To this day, older residents of Morgan County maintain that J.D. McClanahan was one of a kind, whose likes will never be seen again.

He went to his reward in 1943 at the age of ninety-nine.