Cane River Baptisms
Solemn and serious religious rites of passage, baptisms were once common up and down Cane River and are occasionally still performed there. In the town of Natchitoches, congregations often gathered together to conduct baptisms along Front Street near the Church Street bridge.
They had baptizing right there on Front Street on this side of the river in the shallow area down where they shoot off fireworks.
Candidates dressed in white were baptized by full immersion, while congregants gathered on the banks of the river sang hymns and read scripture.
They baptized us in the river…. The minister and one of the deacons would stand out with two sticks, standing where they were. They put sticks out there to measure the depth of the water and they would stand by those two sticks and … face the people on the shore….Two more of the deacons would bring you out to them and they would baptize you and they would bring you back. And Reverend Brown, he was the pastor of Rockford Baptist Church at that time, he’s the one [who] baptized me.
I remember the baptizings in Cane River. I was baptized in Cane River, but my sister was baptized in Chaplain’s Lake, right off of NSU’s campus. This was fun, and it was very meaningful to go down in the water as they on the bank would sing those good ole gospel songs. Today the memory is as vivid as it was way back when.”
Urbach Collection, Box 3, 1954, Cammie G. Henry Research Center, Northwestern State University [CHRC]