USA > Iowa > Washington County > History of Washington County, Iowa from the first white settlements to 1908. Also biographical sketches of some prominent citizens of the county, Vol. I > Part 16
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Catholic priests came in here very early, on horseback, to say mass in private houses, carrying all the necessaries in a grip, then passing on, as Park- man says the priestly heroes did in Canada three hundred years ago. The first star that fixes itself is Father Sullivan, in '53. Father Mann was drowned in Main creek, fording it. Slatterly, of Mt. Pleasant, came in '55 and built the first church, a frame thirty-five by sixty-five, in '61. It was later sold to Jesse Phillips. In '65 Philip Shanahan became the first resident priest, followed, next year, by M. Schiffmacher ; he taught school, and married the first Catholic couple, Mr. and Mrs. James Casey, Sr. Jos. McDermott in '70, in '71 to '76 Father Harding, Dunn filling one of these years. Harding built the first school and brought the Sisters here in '74, and all his little spare time he played the flute like an angel. M. M. Tierney built an addition to the school from '76 to '78. D. J. Flannery, a jolly Pat, held forth from '78 to '82; he bought for five hundred dollars the four lots the church and parsonage
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REV. ABIJAH CONNER
REV. ROBERT HUNTER First Resident Minister Clay Congregational Church
REV. CHARLES THOMPSON Pastor of Baptist Church
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stand on, and built the latter for two thousand six hundred dollars. J. J. O'Brien, Kirkpatrick, and Moron succeed, and the king of them, B. Jacobs- meier, arrived July 20, '93. His great work was the organization of societies as aids in spiritual work, the Rosary, Sodality for either sex, League of the Sacred Heart, St. James Sanctuary Society and Sewing Circle, with some three hundred and seventy members. The school was built for ten thousand dollars in 1901. Aside from city school taxes paid, they have spent thirty-five thousand dollars for the education of their children. The parish numbers four hundred and the communicants over three hundred. Father Walsh is in charge now-a man of ability and, being Irish, his fund of humor is up to par.
The Presbyterian church was founded September 23, '43, by Rev. L. G. Bell, then missionary, and the first Presbyterian minister in the state, it is said. He introduced Presbyterian whiskers here in that year. It was organized in the old court house by Samuel Culbertson and wife, John Hawthorn and wife, and C. B. Campbell, a prominent man here then, a courtly gentleman, brother to Mrs. A. H. Patterson, and for whom Cam. Patterson was named. He and Culbertson were chosen ruling elders." He served in the first convention to form a state constitution. He had been in the war with General Harrison, and in the battle of Lundy Lane, and was promoted to the rank of major. He was clerk of the church sessions ten years, but left us in '53 for Kansas. A more elegant Christian gentleman never breathed our air. Culbertson long kept the Iowa House and a store in it. All that first company are gone. The first church was built in '46, on Main and Green streets, the Library corner, but it and the lot were sold for one thousand two hundred dollars, in '65, and a three thousand dollar house built on East Washington street, close to the Burlington tracks, but to escape the noise, the society bought a lot east of the academy, which had long been hallowed by Mother Axtell's hashery, where such noted bachelors as Norman Everson, Colonel Scofield, bankers J. R. and Cass Richards, lawyers Lewis, Bennett, Sherman, McJunkin boarded and cut up high jinks. It became as noted, locally, as the taverns in London where Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, Dr. Sam Johnson, Goldsmith, Lamb and others put up and made immortal with their Noctes Ambrosianae.
It should have been said that B. P. Baldwin, Sarah Ross, Patrick C. Mckenzie and George Brokaw also belong in the row of "pillars" in this church. This is a roster of the pastors:
Bell, Mcknight Williamson, T. H. Dinsmore, W. H. Porterfield, Robert S. Dinsmore, F. A. Shearer for five years, T. D. Wallace for ten years, J. D. White till his early, untimely death, B. E. S. Ely, Jr., H. R. Stark, L. D. Young, and John Calvin Abels has lately begun his promising pastorate.
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In 1858, a minority declining to enter the union forming the United Pres- byterian church, organized the Associate Presbyterian or Seceder church. Matthew and Wm. Nelson and wives, Wm. Robertson and wife, Thomas and Andrew Duke and wives, H. D. Titus, Robert Boyd, James Stephenson, S. B. Coulter, Robert Martin, Robert Meck and wives. Mrs. Fleming, Mary and May Duke were of this party. In '62 they built a one thousand seven hundred dollar frame church, Rev. Samnel Hindman pastor, a profound Bible student. scholar and genius. I can see the remarkable and, most peculiar man now in my mind's eye, Horatio, his figure and bearing are so unique and his dress so quaint. He should have been painted for the county historical society, he and Captain Sam Russell, the two most original, if not aboriginal, men in our history. Ile was followed by Rev. G. F. Fisher and, after his untimely death. by Rev. D. J. Masson, who still serves. That church is usually called "Seceder."
The Reformed Presbyterians, or Covenanters, organized a church in '64. and Rev. S. M. Stephenson was ordained and installed, serving as pastor till '71. In 1873. Rev. W. P. Johnston took charge, and in a series of years made a profound impression as thinker, writer, scholar, preacher. Eventually, he was persuaded to conduct the academy. His going to the presidency of Geneva College in Beaver Falls, Pa., caused universal regret. He was fol- lowed as pastor by Rev. T. A. H. Wylie, the sweetest, humblest of all saints. a Ben Adhem, in fact, a dear, delightful man, his soul as white as snow but as warm as blood temperature. He died of tuberculosis while in flower.
A three thousand dollar church was built in '66, and it was remodelled into a pretty structure under the pastorate of Rev. W. C. Allen. In 1907 he was transferred to a Chinese mission in Oakland, Cal. His was a delightful family, and its going was widely regretted.
In '62, our colored people pined for a church, and Geo. W. Black and A. C. Carter brought Rev. E. C. Joiner, of Muscatine here, and a church of eight members was formed, Mr. Black being the sole survivor, though Carter, a local preacher for over fifty years, kept living for one hundred and four years. The church almost petered out during the war, but it sprang up again. and over thirty pastors kept it afloat.
First and last this church furnished us as many quaint and enjoyable characters as all the other churches put together. There were Uncle and Aunty Coe : he was amusingly sincere and honest, and she had a genius for extemporizing birthdays for herself ; she picked 'em right off the bushes like blackberries. Whenever she needed a birthday in her business, she grabbed baskets and sailed around to her white friends and came home laden with bits of carpet, clothing, foods, nick-nacks of all sorts. She was a canny, slick
First House of Worship. SECOND UNITED PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH
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EUREKA METHODIST EPISCOPAL CHURCH
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old party, and fairly tickled the "slats" of the community. Then there was George Davis, who long enjoyed a sound lung and a mated lung that was done gone. He and his wife, dear, delightful Sallie, used to appear in con- certs, in their native togs, and their voices, judged by the approving smiles of the audiences, were all the better for being cracked, and quite lumpy. When a revival was on, the house was crowded, and the whites were as deeply edified as the colored folk. Two or three of their pastors were amusing char- acters. That humble little church has done a heap of good here. Of the "pillars," mention must surely be made of Uncle Ned Skinner, Sam Hall and Wesley Moore. You could hardly get Uncle Ned to come out to night meet- ings-he was so dreadfully "skeered" of "evil sperits and other varmints," and he was deathly afeared dey would git hint. He sawed wood, saved his money, holed up at dusk, and kept his eyes peeled for ghosts. If boys teased at his door at night, Ned would shiver out the night in terror of the dark and the awful creeping and flying and screeching things in the supernatural world. Probably he suffered thousands more deaths than any man that ever lived here. The church did not seem to allay his fears and give him comfort. What he lacked was the voice of George Davis and his laugh, and especially "Old Barney's" laugh. Boys used to pay Barney's way into shows to get the recompense of that tremendous laugh. Armed with those explosives of either men, Uncle Ned could have routed all the cvil spirits this side of Oklahoma. And what a rich character Jeff Armstrong was, tho' not very pions !
The Methodist church was first organized at Wm. L. Harvey's home a mile and a half southwest of town, near the old Indian village, October 20, '39. The original members were Jesse Ashby, wife, and daughters Polly and Julia, Mr. Harvey and wife, William, Ann and Mary Connor and Eli Patterson. Later active ones were the Dickenses, R. H. Marsh, J. R. Davis, "Billy" Moore, the Chilcotes, Wilsons, Mother Ferguson and so forth. At first there was preaching every two to four weeks. In '40 they moved into the first log school house in town, on a lot north of the Seceder church ; in '41, used the first court house ; in '43 moved into a brick school house on the lot where Mrs. Col. Cowles now lives ; in '47. used the court house in the square, and began building their first church. a frame twenty-eight by thirty-eight, near the Commercial Club, dedicated by Presiding Elder Reed. In '55 a two-story brick was built on the corner of Second and Madison streets, the site of the present church ; the lower story was finished for use in '56, and the whole structure was dedicated June 27, '57, by Dr. L. W. Berry, at a cost of six thousand nine hundred dollars. The present church, already quite out-grown, the Methodists grow so fast, cost twenty-three thousand dollars. and was dedicated April 10, '92.
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The pastors have been Kirkpatrick, Hayden, Reeder, Nichols, Case, Twin- ing. Jamison, Butt, Hardy, Teas. Dennett. Harris, Lucas, Banner Mark, H. W. Thomas, Power, Miller, Frank Evans, Reineck, Morrison, Jennis, Wells, Spaulding. Chaffin, the evolutionist, Coxe, McDonald, Stafford, Kemble, Stryker, Wing, the humorist, Boatman, Thorn, Schreckengast, U. S. Smith now in charge as a free lance and bold preacher. How many do you clearly recall, their foibles, whims, idiosyncracies, etc? As this church has always made a specialty of the Sunday school, let the superintendents be named- Jesse Ashby, R. H. Marsh, Isaac Ditmars, Dr. Chileote, W. Wilson, Jr., Judge J. R. Lewis, Mrs. Margaret Wilson, Prof. D. W. Lewis, Tom S. Dougherty, C. H. Keck, Martin P. Miller, J. T. Anderson, S. W. Neal. The school stacks way up above the thousand mark in numbers, and every kid always knows the golden text-except when they forget it. They are a gay bunch on a fine spring day, as pretty as a garden of sweet peas or Wordsworth's spot of daffodils in March.
From the first, it was an enterprising, kindly society, aggressive withal, advancing from glory to glory in architecture, zealous in music, putting in a pipe organ about the same time as the Presbyterians and Baptists, and before there were opera houses or adequate halls, the Methodists were hospitable to lecturers, etc. In the winters of '66-67 and '67-68, the church before the pres- ent one echoed with the wise, eloquent voices of Emerson, Wendell Phillips, Theodore Tilton. P. T. Barnum ( the wise, shrewd, canny Ben Franklin of the whole group, tho' a mere showman), Fred Douglass, Beecher, Abbott, Anna Dickinson, Mary A. Livermore, Susan B. Anthony. Washington has never had such splendid courses since, for the raw material is gone.
The church has entertained the annual conference four times; in '62, Bishop Baker ; '73, Bishop Bowman and under the same in '86; in '92, Bishop Andrews. Perhaps this is neck and neck with the United Presbyterians, who entertained the general assembly thrice. And nobody and nothing in Wash- ington or vicinity was more keenly aware of the presence of these seven stately bodies than the-chickens.
A Congregational church was started August 1, '56, D. P. Sturges, D. P. MeConahey, Albert Allen et al. being pillars in it, and, years later, Ed. Cleaves. Jackson Roberts, Norman Everson, George and Bill Hale, and Bur- rell, though lay members and sort of nephews to that branch of the local Zion, put their shoulders under the crumbling old thing, but it went dead, and this scribe has always felt sore since that all the "remnants" went pell mell into the Presbyterian church.
Its last church was a frame "catacornering" from the Joseph Keck home. and when the Second United Presbyterians sought a place nearer town, they
BAPTIST CHURCH
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bought our church and put an annex or appendix on its rear, making the structure look like a dachshund, as long as three Pullman cars tandem, and the under-pinning was so infirm, the floor under one's tread worked up and down like a bad-fitting set of store teeth. Delicate folk got sea-sick walking on it, it was such a choppy sea. Several times Colonel Palmer reeled on it, en route to the choir loft. It needed an operation for appendicitis.
I think Rev. M. K. Cross was the first pastor of our church. He had to fight nerves all his days, and nerves are as exasperating as fleas. The next preacher was Rev. Philo Canfield, a shrewd, genial, merry, witty, sarcastic, ironical man, but disabled by bad health. The world furnished him a good deal of amusement, and he passed it along or shared it. George M. Langdon was the last clerical sigh of the Moor, the best story-teller who ever struck this town, not excepting Wing, or Kellogg, or Fred Smith, or Henderson Walker, superb as they are, but George was king. He had been a soldier, knew the world, played with it as a kitten with a ball. He ought to have been a vaudeville actor. Fine scholar, too, whose secular bible was The Nation paper, edited in heaven, since nothing on earth ever suited its finicky nibs. After a year, Langdon went back to his native Michigan, became a lawyer, married, and may heaven have mercy on his soul. He was a fine fellow. His irradiating presence often gilded the dusty cobwebs in the Press office.
The Congregational church disbanded July 20, '77. R. I. P.
What became of that old Congregational meeting house? It was a snub nosed, ugly, squatty, homely thing, nothing but a dry goods box. It had no more beauty than a cross-eyed, flat-nosed, shovel-teethed, freckled, awkward girl. It was an architectural crime, and it was an insult to God to dedicate such a nightmare to Him. It has puzzled me always, what becomes of the dedication of a church that lapses into a dance hall, music hall, barracks, barn, etc. The holy effluence seems to go down the vale like morning smoke from a chimney and fade utterly out. As communities get rich enough to build pretty churches, they tear down or move off structures, usually forgetting to photograph them for curios in later times, and the dedication evaporates. It should be canned.
The United Brethren fell into line in '59. The leading men were Wm. G. and Nelson Stewart, Henry Lease, W. Poland, Michael Nelson, Wm. Baker, Rev. R. Thrasher. A one thousand dollar church was dedicated by Bishop Markwood. The church failed.
Of the other churches, brief mention should be made of the Church of God, lasting from '68 ten years; Christian Science, July 15, '97, established in the prettiest little gem of a church in town ; St. Paul's German Evangelical
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church, started July 12, '03, the church built three years later, the first pastor being Rev. K. Michels, an interesting man, but he was called to Burlington and the present minister is Rev. Conrad Sprenger.
Perhaps it is not profitable to go farther into detail. We have gone far enough to show that the earlier settlers made sacrifices of money, time and service to supply religious education.
A various fate has been that of the rural and village churches, as well as of the provincial schools. Deaths, removals, the coming in of foreigners and alien sects and cults, have depleted the rustic churches, as the gradual enlarge- ment of farms and the flight of young folks to factories and cities have reduced country schools to their lowest terms, as if they were vulgar fractions.
It is plain all through the tracings of the several church histories, that the Sunday school was the feeder of the church, some churches laying more stress than others, but all aware that it had a nursery office and value. There was a vigor in this impulse, like the pulse of horseradish in spring, for it was a force but recently discovered and applied. When these Washington county churches began, the Sunday school was hardly fifty years old. Robert Raikes in England had in 1781 but just pressed the button and set the wheels going, and by the time this part of lowa was settled, every church felt the tingle in the wire.
The Sunday school has put a fresh gilding on childhood and youth. After the Sunday dawn, the beautiful musical and floral service paints a new and fairer dawn on that day. The nice clothes, the gay greetings, the beauty in which the morning swims, dip the world in cool dew. With it all, children pick up here and there a bit of fact or fancy, a truth that has worth ; and there is innocent merriment, which is, perhaps, as good a service as any, as, when a teacher asked a little girl what Noah's dove brought back at last after the water fell, she said, "A pickle, please." Important, if true, and if not true, pleasing and funny, and harming nobody by error. When I was a youth, my Sunday school teacher in an Ohio county-seat, the eloquent Methodist min- ister, was also dealing with the flood, and said all the animals, birds. reptiles were drowned, save those in the ark, nothing remained alive, not a thing. I ventured to ask if the fishes did not live-"No," he roared, "all the fish were drowned, too." He did not know quite as much as Huxley. Roosevelt would have called him either a nature-faker or a later Ananias. Nevertheless that Sunday school was of distinct use to me, and no doubt every pupil in this county gets value received for the time spent, and the study, and perhaps for the idleness and day-dreams also. I got good also, esthetic good, from a teacher whose bay hair curled tightly and as close to his head as ivy to brick walls. I fell in love with him at Sunday school, and felt it in my bones that
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ST. MARY'S CHURCH, RIVERSIDE
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if I could ever get reddish hair as curly as that, I, too, might be beautiful and a satisfaction to myself if not to any one else.
I do not know why Congregationalism does not flourish very well in this county. One would think otherwise, for as a polity that church is absolutely its own boss-no czar of a bishop, no high tycoon of a presbytery, general assembly, general conference, or other generalissimo lording it over com- mon democrats and republicans. Who is not at times in the mood to knock the lightning rod and weather vane off from those tall, stuck-up things so full of pride and oftentimes of arrogance? But out here Congregational churches are not apt to last. Some bad element in the soil here? The beech tree will not flourish in this county, or in Iowa as a whole -- some soil condition adverse. There are but two beeches in this county, and they are runty.
People now have lots less veneration for and awe of the clergy, but far more affection, than a generation ago, for the cloth is a much less high and mighty and awful creature. Time was here, an old settler told me, years ago, when parishioners would stand uncovered in the street, no matter how inclem- ent the day, while talking to their pastors. Luckily, they did not remove their shoes and stockings and catch their deaths of colds. And the pew now is almighty independent, and does not, necessarily det the puplit lead it by the nose as to politics, amusements and the like: " The pew-man does his own thinking and his own acting also, praise be!
Churches are now run on business principles, 'and pay as they go, the only safe and sensible rule in all of our economies, for it is moral. It was not moral. was not common-honest, to cheat the minister out of his pay, and try to dress the scales by giving him donation parties that kept him poor, tho' possessed of boundless junk. The present day Sunday pay envelope is as moral as a bank's daily balance sheet. Such museums of truck as folks did bring to the preacher once or twice a year, and call it benefaction. It was calamity. It was insult added to injury.
Members and clergy are more jolly and social and less solemn and pokey. They stop and visit, the pastor no sooner saying "Amen" than he hikes for the front door and shakes hands like a president at a White House reception. And the sisters come up and purr nicely and lay a soft, white hand in your honest palm and smile and tell you the nicest fairy story, how glad they are to see you here, and "please come again." Thanks! The loan of such a velvet hand would bring a fellow even if he had the "slows" like a snail. Come? I should remark. It accelerates also if there be a slight but discreet squeeze in those hands given without interest on the investment. It's about the best part of the service, and I don't care if all the clergy regard that flat heresy and look hard and sour at me. I tell you, if it were not for the sisters,
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of all ages and sizes, flocking there, there wouldn't be much doing in the churches. The young fellows go there to see their favorite girls, especially at evening service, to see the dear creatures safely home, don't you know-they are so apt to get lost after dark unless the spark is along. It is that variety of la grippe that fetches most of the men to church. Don't try to cure it, if you want the church to last and be enthusiastic.
The moral tone of the church has mounted on the sacramental wine ques- tion as it did on the slavery question. It uses now only the unfermented juice of the grape-tirosh, not yayin. There is not a taint of booze in it, as formerly. And then the good folks are onto germs and say skiddoo and twenty-three to germs by using individual cups. Churches, however, have not yet succeeded in carrying hygiene so far as to stop kissing. Microbes-well, every body knows where their favorite rendezvous is. But it is great gain to install the separate cups.
The churches seem to be through with their infantile troubles, something like mumps, measles, whooping-cough, chicken-pox, etc., I mean the fuss about instrumental music, stoves in meeting houses, buttons, hooks-and-eyes. the abolition of tokens, etc. I mind when the Catholic church in Ohio was rent on stoves in church, have 'em or not? Mad as blazes, old moss-backs said "No," in horror ; young folks said "we'll be blanked if we come here to freeze." People nearly fought over instruments, and about whether clothes should be fastened with buttons, or hooks and eyes, or just common honey- locust spikes. A local antiquarian lately showed me two tokens, one a circular disk, metallic, with a dull, leaden look, the size of a nickel, "R. P. C." on one side, an apparent wreath on the other. The second was three-quarter inch long. half an inch wide, stamped with "G. C. S .. " plain on the obverse. Long ago, in troublous times in Scotland and Ireland, these tokens were precious, as certifying the owner's right to a place at communion table. Naturally, by the operation of the law of relation and association, these trinkets became fetishes-sacred. holy per se. idolatry, in fact. People almost unavoidably became superstitiously attached to them, and probably did not discern that the token was a virtual idol. Brother Williamson refused point blank to use them, when he first came to the First United Presbyterian church. and no doubt many of the older members felt a sharp shock of grief. It was vandal- ism, profanation, but all have got over it, and no one is left to see spiritual value in these curious things.
Ministers have an easy time now. comparatively ; get good pay, and promptly, needn't preach over twenty to thirty minutes, and dilute the thinking as much as they like, and the pure food law can't touch 'em. Mr. Vincent in the '4os never got over three hundred dollars a year, and often hadn't
METHODIST EPISCOPAL CHURCH, 1909
METHODIST EPISCOPAL CHURCH Second Place of Worship
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