GRACE & TRUTH

Our Snow White…

Pastor Webb hoggard

During the most challenging days of the great depression, which in some respects our towns never recovered from, there was a dreamer.

Sarah Elizabeth changed Bertie County. She was a preacher who was passionate about finding the hopeless and hurting. Sarah planted three churches in Bertie County, which are still flourishing today. Her last name was Snow-White, and that’s how most remember her.

Snow-White planted churches in Windsor, Askewville and Colerain (Perrytown). She started all three congregations around 1930 and ministered to each every Sunday. She would preach at Windsor Assembly for the morning service, then to Perrytown for an afternoon service, and ended up at the crossroad of Buena Vista near

Askewville for the PM service.

The crowds began filling these spaces with hungry disciples of Jesus that have fanned into flame a passion for missions, worship and reaching the next generation.

Our Snow-White preceded Disney’s by several years. The Disney classic hit theaters in 1937, yet Bertie’s SnowWhite’s ministries had begun to function and flourish in communities desperate for hope.

She was willing to love in ways that were unfamiliar to most. She endured

many heartaches but never relented in the mission and call of God on her life.

And, because of faithfulness, she helped a lot more than seven dwarfs.

Our Snow-White built three

assemblies that may be seen as small from the outside, but these bodies of believers have brought hope to hundreds. Today, these three churches are among the most active in evangelizing the world. Planting churches and sending missionaries is a hallmark of her passion for reaching the lost.

She was laid to rest in Edgewood cemetery at the age of 89. Snow-White was an ordained minister for 56 years and saw great things come of the work she started.

Her legacy testifies that if you give wholeheartedly the little you have, God can make much of it. One of the few

miracles mentioned in all four gospels of the New Testament is the feeding of the five thousand men.

Her legacy testifies that “ if you give wholeheartedly the little you have, God can make much of it.

Jesus was handed two fish and five small loaves, and he fed perhaps ten thousand people until they were all satisfied. Little is much when God is in it, and God has richly blessed hundreds of folks from Bertie County because a lady took the mission of Christ seriously.

Emanuel Webb Hoggard is Pastor at Askewville Assembly of God and a resident of Edenton. He can be reached via email at

pastorwebb@hotmail.com.