Bob Childress

One Of Ararat Virginia's Big Three

From The Hollow To The Buffalo

Reverend Bob Childress

"The Man Who Moved A Mountain"

Young Bob Childress

Robert Childress was delivered by mid wife Orlean Hawks Puckett who was made famous by her cabin along the Blue Ridge Parkway on top of Groundhog Mountain just north of Ararat.

Left to right, Bob Childress, George Guynn and Harry Epperson

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Bob and Pearl

Pearl Ayers Childress is shown sitting on left above and below.

Pearl Ayes Childress is buried in the rock wall cemetery shown below near the intersection

of the Boyd Hollow Road and the Friends Mission Road in Ararat, Virginia.

Bob and Lelia

Lelia Montgomery Childress

Cabin on Trucker Highway in Ararat, Virginia, where Bob Childress lived with one of his wives.

Looking at the Crossroads (Today where the Ararat Highway intersects with the Squirrel's Spur Road/Unity Church Road.

Bob Childress lived on this ridge with one of his wives

A sign of the times. Clark's Creek School was a segregated school behind Clark's Creek Baptist Church.

Bob Childress's blacksmith shop is believed to have been in sight of the church.

Bob Childress's black smith shop is believed to have been in this pasture near Clark's Creek Church along the Squirrel's Spur Road and Ararat Highway.

Was it from this blacksmith's shop that Childress heard the African-American children singing that would later lead him to invite them to the rock churches he ministered? Certainly, a bold move in the times before the Civil Rights movement that has left him with many friends in the Black church goers at this church.

Fred Brim and his sister where two of these children who Childress invited to the Mayberry Church. He tells that Childress told the children to come in signing as to surprise his parishioners.