Charles H. Rollins: Building Freedom in Leon County

From Enslavement to Landownership, Prince Hall Masonry, Agriculture, and Public Service

Mt. Olive Lodge No. 5

By Jerry Urso

A Life Reconstructed

Charles H. Rollins lived through one of the greatest transformations in American history. He was born in Leon County when slavery defined nearly every aspect of the lives of African Americans in Florida, and he died in 1919 as a landowner, farmer, church builder, public servant, Prince Hall Mason, and Royal Arch Mason. Between those two points was a life that cannot be understood simply as a story of one man accumulating property after emancipation. Rollins invested his freedom in institutions. He built a family with Susan, accumulated land, participated in Black Baptist life, entered public service, helped establish Mt. Olive Lodge No. 5, eventually served that lodge as Worshipful Master, and late in life established Tabernacle Baptist Church.

Much of the foundation for understanding Rollins has survived in census schedules, Freedmen’s Savings and Trust Company records, deeds, homestead records, Masonic records, government documents, and the extensive research later assembled by the John G. Riley Center & Museum. Yet a contemporary account published only months after Rollins’s death adds important details that were either absent from, or received little attention in, the later historical record. On December 8, 1919, the Jacksonville Journal published “Life and Death of Charles H. Rollins.” The article reached backward nearly nine decades and described his birth under slavery, his parents’ Virginia origins, his early labor, his marriage and family, his religion, his public service, his Masonic life, and his role in establishing Tabernacle Baptist Church.[1] The surviving clipping is identified as the Jacksonville Journal, December 8, 1919, page 13. rollins

That obituary is especially valuable when read beside records created during Rollins’s lifetime. It does not replace the Freedmen’s Bank records, census schedules, deeds, Masonic Proceedings, or other primary documents. Instead, it provides another voice from close to his own time and sometimes confirms what those records already tell us. At other points it introduces information not found in the surviving records presently available. It also creates questions. Names and dates do not always agree from one source to another. Rather than erase those differences, they must become part of the story. Charles Rollins left enough of a documentary trail that the contradictions themselves can sometimes lead us closer to the man behind the records.

Born into Slavery

The exact year of Charles H. Rollins’s birth remains uncertain. His Freedmen’s Savings and Trust Company deposit record, completed August 25, 1866, identified him as thirty-three years old and Florida-born. The 1870 United States Census gave his age as thirty-five, while his gravestone gives 1832 as his year of birth. His death record reported that he was eighty-eight when he died in August 1919. Taken together, the records place his birth in Leon County during the early 1830s.[2] The variation is not unusual for a man born enslaved, but it is important not to force the records into a precision they do not possess. 01001415_Text

The newly recovered 1919 account provides a more personal description. It states that Rollins was born in Leon County about 1831 on one of the plantations of a man the newspaper identifies as “Mr. R. Garrett.”[1] That name presents an important documentary problem. Rollins’s own Freedmen’s Bank record identifies his last enslaver as Edgar Garnett.[2] The later National Register research also traced Edgar Garnett and the Garnett plantation outside Tallahassee through Leon County property records.[3] We should not silently change the newspaper’s “Garrett” into “Garnett.” The two sources must stand beside one another until additional evidence establishes whether the newspaper contained an error, referred to another person, or preserved a relationship not yet understood. 01001415_Text

Rollins provided another invaluable piece of his family history when he opened his Freedmen’s Bank account. He identified his parents simply as Tom and Rachel. No surnames were recorded. His later death certificate identified his father more fully as Thomas Rollins.[2] The bank record also stated that his parents had been born in Virginia, a detail independently echoed decades later in the 1919 newspaper account, which reported that his father and mother had migrated from Virginia, where both had been born.[1] Two sources separated by more than fifty years therefore preserve the Virginia origins of the generation before Charles.

The 1919 account also provides a glimpse of Rollins’s life while enslaved that is easily lost when his later accomplishments dominate the story. It describes him as having been reared in his enslaver’s household and eventually permitted to hire his services when he became a man.[1] That recollection fits the broader evidence that Rollins developed marketable skills while still enslaved. His labor was varied. He worked at different times as a farm laborer, carriage driver, boarding-house waiter, carpenter, and in the boot and shoe trade.[4] These were not yet the occupations of a free businessman. His labor and the terms under which he could sell it still existed within slavery.

The obituary preserves another significant detail. It states that Rollins was among the early laborers who worked on the first railroads coming into Tallahassee.[1] That statement deserves to remain exactly within the limits of the evidence. The newspaper does not identify the railroad in the surviving passage, and until another record connects Rollins to a specific line or construction project, one should not be supplied for it. What the account does establish is that those who remembered Rollins in 1919 associated his early working life with the first generation of railroad labor around Tallahassee.

Susan and the Making of a Family

Charles Rollins’s life cannot be reconstructed without Susan. Their family began under slavery, years before either could know what emancipation would eventually make possible. A biographical sketch published during Rollins’s lifetime reported that he married Miss Susan McClain in 1853 and that they became the parents of four sons and one daughter.[4] The Freedmen’s Bank and census evidence identifies those children as Noah, Julia, Charles, Thomas, and John. By 1866, Noah was recorded as twelve, Julia eleven, Charles ten, Thomas eight, and John six.[2] 01001415_Text

Here again the newly discovered obituary complicates the existing record. The Jacksonville Journal called his first wife “Miss Susan Clayton,” rather than Susan McClain.[1] That difference should not be hidden. At present, the evidence gives us two surnames for the same woman in sources separated by decades. The earlier biographical tradition identifies her as McClain, while the 1919 account identifies her as Clayton. Until a marriage record, family record, or other primary document resolves the discrepancy, both names belong in the historical record.

There is also uncertainty surrounding the precise date and legal status of their marriage. The family was already established well before emancipation. The ages of their children support a union beginning in the early 1850s, and the contemporary biographical account places the marriage in 1853.[4] Later records associated with the family provide additional marriage information that must be considered separately rather than used to erase the earlier history. For an enslaved couple, the distinction between forming a marriage and later having that relationship formally recognized under civil law is particularly important. The final chronology therefore must distinguish the beginning of Charles and Susan’s family life from any later legal documentation of their marriage.

By the following year, according to the biographical account of Rollins’s early life, Charles began hiring his time from his enslaver. The arrangement meant that Rollins paid a required amount for the privilege of hiring out his own labor, although he remained enslaved. The surviving account describes payments that changed over time as he continued the arrangement until emancipation.[4] This did not make him free. What it did give him was experience negotiating labor, handling money, developing trades, and supporting a growing family within the narrow space slavery permitted him.

Susan’s own story is beginning to emerge more clearly as well. Her Freedmen’s Bank record indicates that she was born in Georgia, although her age varies substantially among the surviving records. When asked her age on her February 14, 1870 bank record, she reportedly answered that she did not know. Her gravestone later gave 1833 as her birth year.[2] She had a sister, Harriet White, living in Leon County, providing one of the few surviving clues to Susan’s family before emancipation. 01001415_Text

The 1919 obituary adds something much more personal about her adult life. It remembered Mrs. Susan Rollins as a trained nurse who practiced for many years and was considered highly proficient in her work. It also reported that she died in March 1902.[1] That contemporary description gives Susan a professional identity beyond the census designation of wife, mother, domestic worker, or keeper of a household. It should not automatically be changed to “midwife” unless the underlying record establishes that separately. What this source supports directly is that Susan Rollins was remembered in 1919 as a trained nurse.

Charles and Susan therefore entered freedom not as two people beginning their lives from nothing, but as a family that had already survived years together under slavery. They had five children. Charles had developed several trades and learned to negotiate the hiring of his labor. Susan had held the family together through those same years and would later be remembered for her nursing. Emancipation would transform the legal meaning of their labor, their marriage, their children, and eventually their ability to own property. What they did with that freedom would soon leave a documentary trail far richer than the one surviving from their years in slavery. [5]

Freedom, Banking, and the First Property

Emancipation changed the legal condition of Charles and Susan Rollins, but freedom alone did not provide a house, savings, land, or security for their children. The documentary record after the Civil War shows how deliberately the family began turning freedom into something permanent. One of the earliest surviving records is Charles Rollins’s account with the Freedmen’s Savings and Trust Company. His deposit card was completed on August 25, 1866. It recorded him as Florida-born, identified his parents as Tom and Rachel, named Edgar Garnett as his last enslaver, and placed Rollins among the formerly enslaved people who used the new banking system to protect and accumulate their earnings.[2]

The bank was not simply Charles’s institution. Susan had an account of her own, and their sons John and Charles also appear in the Freedmen’s Bank records. Charles additionally acted as trustee for a Missionary Baptist Sunday School account. By the mid-1870s, records associated with the bank showed nearly $1,200 connected with Charles’s savings.[6] The significance of those accounts becomes clearer when placed beside his earlier experience hiring his own time while enslaved. Before emancipation, Rollins could work and negotiate his labor but remained legally owned by another man. After emancipation, his earnings could be deposited under his own name and directed toward the future of his family.

Land soon became part of that future. On August 3, 1868, Charles Rollins and Nelson Jackson jointly purchased ten acres from Wilkinson Call and Lucinda Lee Call. The consideration was only partly monetary. The transaction called for five dollars together with “certain work to be done on a house in Tallahassee” belonging to Lucinda Lee Call. On October 16, 1869, Rollins and Jackson divided the property, each receiving one-half. Rollins took the southern five acres, an area later bounded in part by what became Sixth Avenue and Rollins Street.[7]

That transaction tells us something important about how Rollins converted a skill learned before freedom into property after freedom. His labor had value. Instead of looking at his carpentry merely as an occupation listed on a census schedule, the 1868 transaction shows that skilled work itself could become part of the consideration through which he acquired land. By 1870, the federal census identified Charles as a carpenter and valued the family’s real estate at $500 and personal property at $300.[6]

Sometime before February 1874, Rollins acquired another two-thirds of an acre from Philip T. Pearce for twenty dollars near Old Bainbridge Road. Together with the earlier acreage, this became the site of the family’s first home after emancipation.[7] Within only a few years of slavery’s end, Charles and Susan were no longer living on land controlled by an enslaver. They were raising their children on property connected to their own names.

Their children were also being prepared for a different future. The 1870 census shows the Rollins children attending school and able to read and write. Susan’s own surviving records suggest that she did not possess the same opportunity for literacy. Her bank card bears an “X” for her signature, and the 1880 census recorded her as unable to read or write. Charles, by contrast, was not marked as illiterate in that census, and his signature survives on legal documents.[8] The difference between the parents’ educational circumstances and those of their children illustrates one of the most consequential changes emancipation brought to the family. Charles and Susan had been denied educational opportunities under slavery, but their children were going to school.

Faith and the Building of Black Institutions

Religion was already woven into Rollins’s public life before his long Masonic record began. His connection to the Missionary Baptist community appears not only in later recollections but in records created during the first years of freedom. The Freedmen’s Bank material associates Charles with a Missionary Baptist Sunday School account for which he served as trustee.[6] This was more than private religious belief. Rollins was participating in the financial and organizational work required to sustain Black religious institutions.

By 1869, his name was connected with the emerging organizational structure of Black Baptist life in Florida. When the Bethlehem Baptist Association was organized in October of that year, representatives associated with Bethel included Elder James Page, John N. Stokes, and Brother C. H. Rollins. Rollins served on the Committee on Credentials, and the following day he was appointed to a Committee on Preaching.[9] These assignments place him inside organized Baptist work years before the public offices and Masonic leadership for which he would later become known.

The newly recovered 1919 account makes those early records considerably more meaningful. Looking back over Rollins’s life, the Jacksonville Journal reported that he had “embraced religion at an early age” and joined the Missionary Baptist denomination. The account remembered him as willing to assist churches and portrayed religious service as a continuing part of his life rather than an interest confined to Reconstruction.[1]

That continuity matters because decades later Masonic records would sometimes identify him with the title “Rev.” By 1908, the Mt. Olive Lodge No. 5 record includes “Rev. Chas. Rollins.”[10] That title should be preserved exactly as the record gives it. It does not by itself establish when or whether Rollins underwent formal Baptist ordination, and no ordination certificate has yet been identified. But the title no longer stands in isolation. It belongs beside evidence reaching back to his Missionary Baptist activity in the 1860s and forward to the church he would establish late in life.

The culmination of that religious story came with Tabernacle Baptist Church. The 1919 biography states that approximately nine years before his death, Rollins withdrew from Bethel Baptist Church and established Tabernacle Baptist Church so that he could worship according to his conscience. More significantly, the article states that the church from which he was eventually funeralized was the church that he had principally purchased and built.[1] Until the property deed is placed beside the newspaper, the exact legal details of the land purchase should remain a separate question. What the contemporary account establishes is substantial enough: Rollins was remembered not merely as a member of Tabernacle Baptist Church, but as the man principally responsible for purchasing and building it.

The church therefore belongs within the same pattern visible throughout his adult life. Rollins repeatedly placed his labor and resources into institutions that could survive beyond him. Banking, education, church organization, landownership, and later Prince Hall Masonry were not isolated chapters. They were different expressions of the same movement from a world in which institutions had been controlled by others to one in which African Americans were creating and sustaining institutions of their own.

Landownership and the Road to Rollins Pointe

Rollins continued expanding beyond the family’s first property. On March 2, 1875, he purchased the southern portion of Lot 131 on Adams Street in Tallahassee from David Welters for $100. Because taxes for 1874 had not been paid, Rollins later paid an additional $16.90 at a July 1875 tax sale to secure the property. He eventually sold the parcel to Matthew T. Papy on February 8, 1877, for $132.50.[11] The transaction demonstrates that Rollins was participating in Tallahassee real estate as both purchaser and seller rather than limiting his property ownership to the family residence.

The more consequential acquisition was north of the city around Lake Jackson. In August 1875, Rollins pursued federal land through the homestead process. The surviving documentation includes a homestead affidavit dated August 12, 1875, Homestead Application No. 1870 through the Gainesville Land Office, and the associated receiver’s receipt.[12] The claim involved land in Sections 27 and 28, Township 2 North, Range 1 West. Part of the tract became entangled with land claimed for railroad purposes, eventually reducing the acreage Rollins could retain. The surviving federal documentation records the dispute and the process through which his claim was adjusted.[13]

By January 1876, Rollins had established improvements on the property. The record described a home and the working structures necessary for an agricultural household, including a stable, cotton house, corn crib, and kitchen.[14] The house was not merely purchased by Rollins. Charles was a carpenter, and the surviving architectural documentation identifies him as the builder of the Rollins House. The house therefore joined two parts of his life that had begun long before emancipation: skilled labor and the determination to establish a home of his own.

The federal land process continued. In November 1877 Rollins appeared in connection with his claim, with William Carr and H. S. Harmon serving as witnesses. He exercised the right to commute the homestead claim and paid for the land rather than waiting to complete the full homestead period.[15] After the complications involving the railroad lands were resolved, a federal patent was eventually issued in December 1885 for approximately 46.8 acres around Lake Jackson.[16]

The land would become known within the family as Rollins Pointe. Its importance cannot be measured simply in acreage. Charles Rollins had been born into a legal system under which he himself could be treated as property. By the middle of his life, his name appeared on deeds, bank accounts, tax records, homestead papers, and ultimately a federal land patent. The transformation was not abstract. It could be located on the ground.

Agriculture would make that property productive, but Rollins Pointe would become something still larger. It became the land that Charles eventually prepared to pass to the next generation. The story of how he farmed it, enlarged his economic position, and protected the property for his descendants belongs to the next stage of his life.

Agriculture and Economic Independence

Rollins Pointe was not simply a residence. It was a working farm, and the agricultural record allows us to see what Charles and Susan were building there. By 1880, the agricultural census recorded approximately eighty acres of improved land and another ten acres of woodland or unimproved land associated with the farm. The farm itself was valued at $650, with farm implements and machinery valued at $200. The schedule recorded a horse and a mule, poultry and egg production, and substantial cultivation of corn and cotton, together with sweet potatoes and other production.[17] These figures give physical dimensions to what otherwise might be described only as Rollins’s “success.”

The farm also shows that Rollins had moved well beyond the occupational identity of carpenter. Carpentry remained important because it had helped him acquire and improve property, but agriculture became another foundation of the family economy. The Rollins household had land, livestock, crops, tools, buildings, and the labor necessary to operate them. By this point Charles was not merely earning wages from another person’s property. He was directing production on land connected to his own family.

The significance of that change is especially clear when placed against his early life. Before emancipation, Rollins had hired his time but still owed money to an enslaver for the privilege of controlling a portion of his own labor.[4] At Rollins Pointe, that relationship had been reversed. His labor, his carpentry skills, and the agricultural production of the property were now being used to strengthen an estate belonging to his family.

That economic independence did not remain confined to Charles and Susan. Their children had received schooling, family members held bank accounts, and land increasingly became the means by which one generation could provide for another.[6][8] Rollins Pointe would eventually pass into the hands of their son John, who enlarged and consolidated the family holdings. The later agricultural, dairy, fishing, recreational, and other enterprises associated with the Rollins family should not be projected backward and credited personally to Charles. They belong to the next generation. What Charles established was the foundation upon which that later family economy could grow.

Public Service in Leon County and Florida

Rollins’s growing economic independence developed alongside an increasingly visible role in public life. The State Archives of Florida preserves a particularly important record of his county service. The Directory of Elected and Appointed Officials in Leon County, 1870–1969, created from records of the Florida Secretary of State, identifies Charles Rollins of Tallahassee as a Leon County Commissioner beginning September 23, 1874. The same record states that he was removed on January 3, 1877, and reappointed October 3, 1877.[18] Florida Memory

Those dates are important because they allow Rollins’s public career to be documented from an official state archival source rather than from a later biographical summary. They also place his county service directly within the period when he was acquiring property and developing Rollins Pointe. Rollins was simultaneously building his own economic independence and participating in the government of Leon County.

His public service eventually reached the state level. The official historical roster of Florida lawmakers lists Charles H. Rollins of Leon County as a member of the Florida House in 1883.[19] Florida Memory This is independently consistent with the biographical account of Rollins published during his lifetime, which also identified him with the Florida Legislature.[4] The 1919 Jacksonville Journal biography remembered the same service, stating that Rollins had represented his people in the lower house of the state legislature.[1] The combination of an official state roster, a contemporary nineteenth-century biography, and the 1919 account leaves little question about this portion of his public career.

The newspaper record adds another dimension. In October 1884, Judge Settle appointed Charles Rollins as one of the Republican supervisors of election for Leon County. His name appears under the Republican appointments in “Supervisors of Election,” published in The Weekly Floridian on October 28, 1884, page 4.[20] A report of the appointments also appeared in The Florida Times-Union on October 22, 1884, page 4.[21] These contemporary newspaper notices extend his documented public activity beyond his legislative term.

The records therefore show Rollins serving at several levels of civic life rather than holding a single isolated office. He served Leon County as a commissioner, represented Leon County in the Florida House, and later appears among those appointed to election supervision. The surviving sources do not require us to speculate about his motives or reconstruct political positions for which evidence has not yet been found. What they establish is that a man born enslaved in Leon County became an identifiable participant in county and state government within

Farming Freedom at Rollins Pointe

By the time Charles and Susan Rollins established themselves at Rollins Pointe, landownership was becoming something more than proof that they had escaped the economic restrictions of slavery. The property became a working farm. The 1880 United States agricultural schedule provides one of the clearest surviving pictures of what Charles was doing with the land. His farm contained approximately eighty acres of improved land and another ten acres of woodland or unimproved acreage. The farm itself was valued at $650, with implements and machinery valued at $200, while the value of farm production was reported at $250.[17]

The schedule shows a diversified operation rather than a single crop holding. Rollins reported a horse and a mule, along with poultry production. Forty acres were planted in corn, yielding approximately 350 bushels. Thirty acres were devoted to cotton, producing five bales, while three acres of sweet potatoes yielded about eighty bushels. The household also reported ninety poultry and seventy five dozen eggs.[17] Those figures allow us to see Rollins Pointe not simply as property appearing on a deed, but as a functioning agricultural enterprise.

There was a striking transformation behind those numbers. Charles had once worked the land because an enslaver controlled his labor. At Rollins Pointe he was cultivating land connected to his own name, deciding how it would be used and building an agricultural base that could eventually pass to his children. His experience as a carpenter remained equally important. The surviving Rollins House was built by Charles himself, joining his skilled trade to the land he was developing.[18]

The farm also belonged to a larger family strategy. Charles and Susan had bank accounts, property, a house, agricultural production, and children who had attended school. None of those achievements should be isolated from the others. Land produced food and income, carpentry produced both wages and buildings, savings provided capital, and education offered their children possibilities that had been denied to their parents under slavery. Rollins Pointe became the physical center where those different forms of independence came together.

Public Service in Leon County and Florida

Rollins’s growing economic position was accompanied by public service. The State Archives of Florida preserves a particularly important record in the Directory of Elected and Appointed Officials in Leon County, 1870–1969. It records Charles Rollins of Tallahassee as a Leon County Commissioner beginning September 23, 1874. The same entry records that he was removed on January 3, 1877, and reappointed October 3, 1877.[19] The record establishes the dates without explaining the political circumstances surrounding either action, and those circumstances should not be supplied without additional evidence. Florida Memory

His public involvement was not limited to county government. By 1883, Rollins represented Leon County in the Florida House of Representatives. Florida’s official historical roster of lawmakers identifies “Rollins, Charles H.” as a House member from Leon County in 1883.[20] Florida Memory That service is especially significant when placed against the beginning of his life. A man born enslaved in Leon County was now participating in the lawmaking body of the state in which he had once been held as property.

The Jacksonville Journal remembered this part of his life in 1919, stating that Rollins had represented his people in the lower house of the legislature and had been active in politics.[1] The obituary was looking backward after his death; the official legislative record independently confirms the 1883 House service. The two sources therefore perform different functions. One records the office. The other shows how that service remained part of the memory of Rollins’s life decades later.

Another newly recovered primary source expands the political chronology. On October 28, 1884, The Weekly Floridian published a notice titled “Supervisors of Election.” It reported appointments made by Judge Settle for Leon County and listed Charles Rollins among the Republican supervisors of election.[21] This places Rollins in election administration the year after his legislative service. It is an important addition because it comes directly from a contemporary Tallahassee newspaper rather than a later reconstruction of his career.

Rollins’s public service therefore extended across different levels and forms of government. He served Leon County as a commissioner, represented the county in the Florida House, and was later appointed among the county’s election supervisors. These positions should not be used to make assumptions about every political position he held or every faction with which he may have associated. What the records establish is already substantial: Rollins participated directly in county government, state government, and election administration during the decades after emancipation.

Mt. Olive Lodge No. 5: From Junior Warden to Worshipful Master

The most substantial expansion of Rollins’s biography comes from the surviving Proceedings of the Most Worshipful Union Grand Lodge of Florida. Read together rather than as isolated rosters, these records allow us to follow his Prince Hall Masonic life across more than three decades. They also establish something that the earlier biographical treatment of Rollins did not fully develop: Charles H. Rollins eventually served as Worshipful Master of Mt. Olive Lodge No. 5.

The documentary trail begins in 1877. The Grand Lodge Proceedings for that year list “Mount Olive, No. 5, Tallahassee, Fla.” On page 16, C. H. Pearce appears as Worshipful Master, H. Garnett as Senior Warden, and C. H. Rollins as Junior Warden, with Joseph White as Treasurer and E. C. Jones as Secretary.[22] This contemporary record places Rollins directly in the leadership of Mt. Olive during the year of its charter. It also corroborates the surviving charter evidence identifying Pearce, Garnett, and Rollins in those respective stations.

The record does not end with the lodge’s beginning. In 1886, page 26 of the Grand Lodge Proceedings lists Charles Rollins as Chaplain of Mt. Olive Lodge No. 5.[23] By then, nearly a decade had passed since he appeared as Junior Warden. The following year, 1887, page 33, Rollins appears among the lodge members rather than among its officers.[24] In 1889, page 65, he again appears in the Mt. Olive membership.[25] These rosters are important precisely because they show continuity. Masonic office was not a single ceremonial appearance in Rollins’s life.

Then comes the crucial 1891 record. On page 68, beneath the heading “Past Masters,” the Proceedings list Henry Garnett, Henry Sutton, Lynus Johnson, Chas. Rollins, and Wm. Franklin.[26] That entry establishes that by 1891 Charles Rollins had already served as Worshipful Master of Mt. Olive Lodge No. 5, the highest elected office of the lodge. The exact year of his term has not yet been identified, and it would be improper to assign one. But the fact that he had occupied the East is no longer a matter of inference. The Grand Lodge itself listed him among Mt. Olive’s Past Masters.

Rollins remained connected to the lodge into the twentieth century. The 1907 Proceedings, page 93, list him among Mt. Olive’s Master Masons.[27] He appears again in 1908 on page 81.[28] That 1908 record is particularly interesting because the name appears as “Rev. Chas. Rollins.” In light of his long Baptist activity and the later evidence concerning Tabernacle Baptist Church, the title deserves preservation. It does not by itself prove formal ordination, but it demonstrates that the religious title was being attached to Rollins during his lifetime.

The 1909 Proceedings, page 90, again list Charles Rollins among the Master Masons of Mt. Olive Lodge No. 5.[29] We therefore possess a documentary Masonic trail extending from his service as Junior Warden in 1877 through his continuing membership more than thirty years later. Somewhere within those decades he also served as Worshipful Master, as conclusively demonstrated by the 1891 Past Masters roster.

And even that is no longer the end of his Masonic story. The newly recovered 1919 obituary reveals that Rollins advanced beyond symbolic lodge Masonry. It identifies him as a Royal Arch Mason, states that he lived according to the rules and principles of the order until his death, and reports that he was buried with Masonic honors by Mt. Olive No. 5, F. & A.M., Tallahassee, Florida.[1]

That discovery changes our understanding of the place Masonry occupied in his life. Rollins was not simply one of the men whose names appeared on Mt. Olive’s early charter. The Proceedings now allow us to follow him from Junior Warden, to Chaplain, to Past Master, and through decades of continued membership, while the 1919 account carries his Masonic story to Royal Arch Masonry and finally to his burial with Masonic honors.

The precise date when Rollins entered Royal Arch Masonry, the chapter to which he belonged, and any Royal Arch offices he may have held remain to be discovered. Those questions are particularly important because another Mt. Olive Mason, John G. Riley, would later become Grand High Priest of the Royal Arch Masons of Florida. Rollins’s documented Mt. Olive leadership reaches back to 1877, placing him within an earlier generation of Tallahassee Prince Hall leadership. The new Royal Arch evidence now opens another chapter of that history that has yet to be fully reconstructed. [30]