Robert Daniel Haymore

Robert Daniel Haymore, the third son, was born on Stony Creek, Surry County, 1840; rather small in stature, but well proportioned and when grown had rather a soldiery bearing. While a boy be displayed noticeable capacity for public speaking and at any time when he, with other boys in the field at work, could spare time he would voluntarily mount a stump and deliver a speech. When his parents moved to Ararat River, near Mount Airy, North Carolina, in 1857, he took advantage of his mechanical turn and operated a blacksmith shop, but in less than two years later and while at the anvil, and amid the sparkling iron and roaring furnace, heard the call of Higher Power to go into the ministry.

He did not hesitate, but went at once and for a while was a student under Rev. L. H. Shuck at Madison, North Carolina. Limited in money and education but urged on with a zeal like an Apollo, he entered actively into the ministry, having joined the Missionary Baptist Church, and while his brother, John B. Haymore, was a soldier in the Confederate army at Fredericksburg, Virginia, he joined the company that his brother was in and became its chaplain, and served until he became disabled from an attack of typhoid fever, was released from his service and sent to a private home in Floyd County, Virginia, for treatment. Recovering from this attack, he resumed his ministerial duties, traveling long distances and preaching in schoolhouses and under bush arbors in different states.

On one occasion while passing through Henry County, Virginia, he came across a vast crowd assembled near the little village called Penn’s Store, Patrick County. He naturally stopped and joined the crowd, when he was informed that it was a Masonic celebration and that their selected speaker failed to be present. While the crowd was about to disband some one suggested that there was a young minister, R. D. Haymore, in the crowd. The committee urged him to fill the delayed speaker’s place, and with modest reluctance he was conducted to the stand and introduced to the crowd; the boy preacher had just received initiation into this particular order of Masonic fraternity. Some of the ablest lawyers were present, and those best qualified to judge said that the speaker entranced the audience with an appropriate selection of subjects and a gracefully made speech and the Masonic order was charmed with his efforts. This speech made an indelible impression. The people said of him that in style and magnetism he was like a Beecher or a Spurgeon.

This effort so introduced him to the people of that community that he was employed soon thereafter by the Baptist State Board of Virginia, the Hon. H. K. Ellyson, of Richmond, Virginia, now deceased, its president, to evangelistic work in the Blue Ridge Association, embracing the territory Floyd, Franklin, Patrick and Henry counties, Virginia. With these appointments he organized and built a house of worship at Jacksonville County Courthouse of Floyd, also at Stuart County Courthouse of Patrick and one at Rocky Mount, Franklin County; he organized and established the work at Martinsville, Henry County, Virginia; also in Pittsylvania, Virginia, the home of his parents; for more than ten years in succession he had care of a group of wealthy churches, erecting church buildings at Mount Hermon, Ringgold and Sherron, branches of the Kentucky Church. He organized and built a church at Cascade, Pittsylvania County, Virginia; was pastor of the First Baptist Church, Bristol, Tennessee, for seven years, building a house of worship there; at Chattanooga, Tennessee, was pastor of the Central Baptist Church for seven years, purchasing a valuable lot on McCauly Avenue, and afterward a house of worship was erected thereon. He left the impress of his life and ministry throughout that section of Tennessee and Virginia, was frequently called on to render special service in many parts of Tennessee, Virginia and Georgia, and in many southern cities held revival services. Hundreds of persons were converted at these revival seasons.

Finally he tired of the drudgery of city pastorates and longed to see again the great congregation of the country church; he preached to them out of the fullness of his heart; he sighed for the home of his boyhood and the companionship of those he had known and loved so long. He wanted to live a simple life and look out on his native hills while his sun was going down. He came back to Mount Airy and became pastor of the First Baptist Church, the county of his birthplace, where he preached to the delight of his friends and relatives. He was entirely without those little jealousies which marred the effectiveness of so many otherwise good men and servants of the Lord. He loved the old Gospel and preached it with strange and wondrous power under the unction of the spirit, sometimes rising to great heights of eloquence. He possessed a marvelous,versatility; he could speak a logic that convinced with eloquence that charmed. In private life he was as simple and artless as a child; his devotion to his ever faithful and confiding wife was beautiful to behold. He died in the harness, having spent near fifty years in the ministry, telling the story of a Crucified Savior to dying men and women and was buried in the Oakdale Cemetery at Mount Airy.

He married the daughter of a prominent physician of Henry County, Virginia, Dr. Robert A. Read. Of this union four sons were born and raised to manhood and success, popular and well-to-do men of Chattanooga, Tennessee, where they all reside. The younger, Dr. Germaine P. Haymore, named for his parental grandfather, Germaine Haymore, Sr., is well educated, having given himself all the opportunities for thorough training and proficiency in so important a profession, attending in Europe the Medical Congress held there for the advancement of new diseases, new symptoms, developments, advance treatment, etc., considered authority in malignant typhoid, pneumonia and spinal meningitis, and now owning with Dr. J. B. Wolford the Highland Sanitarium and Hospital at Chattanooga.

Source: History of North Carolina: North Carolina Biography, by special staff of writers, 1919.

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