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Stained glass window memorializes
Whatley’s founder
By Jim Cox
A stained glass window in memory of the founder of Whatley was a part of the old Whatley United Methodist Church for years. When the church closed in 1997, the window was initially given to the Clarke County Museum. However, the museum could not find a place to display it and it was given to the Grove Hill United Methodist Church where it was recently installed in the Fidelis Sunday School classroom. It is located on a western wall where the afternoon sun highlights its centerpiece lamb and multicolors. Franklin Benjamin Whatley was born in Clarke County Oct. 1, 1826. His grandfather, Elder Willis Whatley, had migrated to Clarke County from Edgefield District, South Carolina about 1817. Whatley was 23 when he married 14-year-old Martha Senith Allen in 1849. They lived in what is now the Whatley community and reared 11 children. Before he married, Frank Whatley volunteered for service on Dec. 2, 1847 in the Mexican War. In his enlistment papers he is described as "six feet tall, fair complexion, blue eyes, light hair and twenty-years-old [the age should have been 21]." He served seven months and was discharged in June 1848 and received a bounty of land for his service as provided by law.
Fifteen years later he would again volunteer for duty, this time in the army of the Confederate States of America. The Rev. T. H. Ball, Clarke County’s earliest historian, married a Creighton from a nearby family and knew Whatley. "He is a good, practical farmer, is a carpenter for his neighborhood, is ingenious and intelligent, a thriving upright citizen," Ball wrote. The railroad was building its way up through the center of the county, running along the Bassetts Creek valley, in the 1880s. As they neared Whatley’s home, railroad officials approached him about providing land for a depot. Whatley and his wife deeded land to the railroad on Nov. 7, 1887: "...for and in consideration of one dollar in hand paid by the Mobile & Birmingham Railway Company...and in further consideration that the station on said railway be located on said land be named Whatley." On Aug. 20, 1890, the name of the post office near the railroad was changed from Horeb to Whatley. Horeb Baptist Church, which had moved twice since being organized in 1825, had located in the community in 1889. In 1889, the Whatleys donated land to the Methodist Episcopal Church, South [the forerunner of today’s United Methodist Church] for a sanctuary. The family had long been Baptist but in 1895 joined the church they deeded land to. Whatley descendants have been active in the denomination since and the family has produced many Methodist ministers. Frank B. Whatley died June 8, 1896 and was buried in the Whatley Cemetery. His wife died May 7, 1916 and was buried beside her husband. Many of their children and other descendants are buried in the cemetery too. Two daughters never married and while the last of the 11 siblings died in 1959, it wasn’t until the 1980s that the estates were settled and then it was prompted by the widening of U.S. Highway 84 through Whatley and the need for additional right-of-way that belonged to descendants. Another stained glass window from the old Whatley church is also in the Grove Hill church. A window in memory of Dr. John C. Godbold, longtime Whatley physician, is in the prayer chapel. Information for this article was taken from an article by Ramona Mae George in the book, The Heritage of Clarke County, Alabama.
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