1905-1929

Falcon a haven for children

J.A. Culbreth's tabernacle is a testament to faith.

"An island of security in a sea of change." That's how state Sen. Charles Hipp described the Falcon Children's Home during a 1985 visit.

He could have easily been talking about the surrounding town. For some, Falcon has been a place of security, salvation and, most of all, sanctification for more than 100 years.

The Falcon Children's Home opened in 1909. Its history starts 11 years earlier when Julius Culbreth and his wife, Venie, were "saved" at a tent meeting in Dunn.

Julius Culbreth returned to his family farmland and built an octagonal-shaped tabernacle, which was used for nondenominational worship. The tabernacle still stands.

In 1900, Culbreth helped organize a tent or camp meeting in Falcon.

The success of the camp meetings caused some people to move to Falcon. Edward Jolly had his house in Parmele (north of Greenville) dismantled, shipped by train to Godwin and then by wagons to Falcon in northern Cumberland County.

He moved so his children could attend the Falcon Holiness School and to take his family to a place that was "away from the sins of the outside world," according to historical accounts.

An orphanage was proposed at the 1908 camp meeting and it opened in February 1909.

The orphanage was chartered to provide "proper moral, religious, intellectual and industrial training."

Donations to the orphanage were sometimes few, but Culbreth, in his 1923 report, said, "we never saw the table without food nor the children without clothes."

About 60 children lived at the orphanage then. The home is now licensed to care for 90 children, ages 2 to 21.

In 1911, the Fire-Baptized Holiness Church and the Pentecostal Holiness Church merged to form the Pentecostal Holiness Church. When they merged on Jan. 31, 1911, the combined congregation gathered to sing "Blest Be the Tie That Binds."

The International Pentecostal Holiness Church has operated the children's home since 1943.