My name is Charles Valentine. I was born, grew up in Bainbridge and graduated from Ole BHS, Class of 1946. Yep, it really was The old Bainbridge High School. I believe it was located on Potter Street.

The grammar school and high school were directly across the street from each other. Still have my Purango’s (Annual) from 1943, ’44 and ’45.

I subscribe to The Post-Searchlight and enjoy several of the regular writers featured in it. I have intended writing you for awhile. I have found your articles timely, interesting, well written and worthy of reading. You apparently invest considerable time and effort in each and every one.

I especially enjoyed the recent article on Pilgrim’s Rest Primitive Baptist Church. I have never before known of this church but your article makes me want to “go see it” the next time I get to Bainbridge.

My wife is from Statesboro, but she grew up in a Primitive Baptist Church, and when I read her some of parts where it referred to the events she said that was how it was. She did not travel by wagon (not quite that far back) but the all-day services, dinners, once a month meetings, etc., she could identify with that.

In the article you mentioned a William Grimes. Of course, it could be a coincidence, but for the last several years, I have become interested in genealogy, especially on my father’s side, and recall the name William Grimes. It could be another person, but in searching for my grandmother Valentine, I first found her living in the household of William Grimes, wife Martha. She was not a Grimes but a Cowart. She and her mother were living with the Grimes family. I never knew any of my grandparents, both maternal and paternal had died before I was born. Have often wondered what it would have been like to have known them. But life is what it is.

The cemetery must be in the neighborhood of the Whites Bridge that you wrote about recently.

Sometimes (thanks to the U.S. Mail) I won’t get a paper for a week or so, have even gotten four in two days. Therefore, I’m not sure which paper it was in.

I will continue looking forward to the paper and reading the very good articles you write.

Sincerely,

Charles Valentine

Jacksonville, Fla.