USA > Illinois > Kane County > Geneva > Fifty years of Unitarian life : being a record of the proceedings on the occasion of the fiftieth anniversary of the organization of the First Unitarian Society of Geneva, Illinois, celebrated June tenth, eleventh and twelth, 1892 > Part 8
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A Man without Guile.
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brink of excess; thought himself charitable, but finds he never made a disinterested sacrifice in his life; hospitable, but he was on- ly ostentatious; zealous for truth, but it was only for a system; patriotic, but he was only a partisan; forgiving but only cowardly. Can we bear to be stripped of our fancied excellencies, and have .our motives ready for analysis? Do we venture to look with a steady eye into our own hearts? Dare we read to the bottom of the page?"
I wish I had time to tell you how cxacting this young man was of himself, how honesty in business, uprightness in everything was his standard. It has been said of him that he carried this too far to succeed. Perhaps he did, if success means making money and knowing how to keep it. He was a thorough business man in the best sense of the word. Promptness, accuracy, thrift, talent in an artistic way, and public spirit he had. A man who had the foresight, the energy to inaugurate the public school system in his town, was surely a success.
His favorite text, "Whatever ye do, do all to the glory of God," he carried into his every day life, his business and social re- lations. He taughtit in the way he drilled the choir and managed the Sunday School, always drawing out the best work and endeavor of the young people in everything they did; helping them to make a success of everything they undertook, if it were only entertain- ing themselves.
I remember his manner, dignified but cheery, sympathetic, magnetic but quick, imperative, and, as one of our musical friends used to say, staccato in his style. He was kind, considerate, but rather strict in his family, always busy working out his mechanical and artistic ideas in many pretty pieces of furniture and house- hold conveniences. He believed in the dignity of labor and taught it to his children and showed infinite wisdom and patience in some of the most difficult problems of life. He had many good ideas regarding woman's dress, which they are only now beginning to sce. He could teach your mothers how to take better care of their babies, as I have occasion to remember.
With Schuyler Colfax he was active in establishing the I. O. O. F. in this state, and was grand master of the state and grand representative. He was also a Mason but was never so active in that order.
When the wild storm of war spread over all the land he was among the earliest to the front, and shared in all the terrors and hardships of those first dreadful days. Fort Henry, Fort Donald- son, Shiloh, were names whose meaning he knew only too well. After more than a year of most trying hardships, when his health had utterly failed, he was "honorably discharged;" the surgeon said, "that he might go home and die peacefully with his family." There are some here who will remember the solemn day when the
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Other Pioneers.
two ministers came back to the little church together, and one gave no token in return for the loving greetings, but lay speech- less and cold, and the other, (only a wreck) said a few, trembling, parting words, before you bore him away to sleep among kings.
Little by little he fought his way back to a trifle firmer hold on life, but the day was forever darkened. His eyesight was much impaired, preventing him from very active work the rest of his life, excepting a few years he held the position of Professor in the college at Fulton for the soldiers' sons. There his influence was fine upon the youth about him.
Few of the young people who came under his influence but were the better for it. His home and home life impressed every one who came within its influence as very sunny and bright. No friend ever crossed the threshhold of the Woodward house with- out being made gladly and heartily welcome; and after all, is not home influence more potent and far reaching than any other, es- pecially upon the young ? And it is in behalf of the young people of the church at that time, that I gladly pay this tribute of affec- tion and grateful remembrance to the second pastor of our little church on the corner.
Other Pioneers,
REV. T. B. FORBUSH.
Nor much fastidious as to how and when: Yet seasoned stuff and fittest to create A thought-staid army or a lasting slate.
We feel that this is a celebration not only of the Geneva Unitarian Society, but that it is a celebration of Unitarianism in the West; and especially of the Western Movement which the Geneva church seems to typify in so many ways. We will hear from Mr. Forbush,- a man who, from his position, as overlooking the field is well fitted to tell us something of "Other Pioneers."
MR. FORBUSH'S RESPONSE.
It is one of the felicities of being a Unitarian minister, that , you are perfectly sure, if you only live long enough, when you die you will be reckoned one of the Saints; and as I think back over the list of men whom in the early years of my ministry I was privileged to know in this wostern country, it seems to me that they all ought to have the "St." prefixed to their names. This church in order of establishment was the eighth church west of the Alleghanies. The 'pioneer church was the church at Mead-
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ville, founded by that grand old man, Hiram Huidekoper, in 1825. Through the influence of Mr. Huidekoper, there came to Cincin- nati and Louisville Ephraim Peabody and James Freeman Clarke, both establishing themselves for a little while in those Southern. towns in 1830; then in 1831 came William G. Eliot to St. Louis. In 1836 the church of the Messiah in Chicago got itself organized, though who its first pastor was I do not know. In 1840 the church at Quincy was established and in 1842 this church at Geneva. When it was my privilege first to make the acquaintance of- the west, Hosmer at Buffalo, Stebbins at Meadville, Livermore at Cin- cinnati, Heywood at Louisville, Eliot at St. Louis, Shippen at Chi- cago, Mumford at Detroit, Billings at Quincy, and your own Conant here in Geneva, were the ministers of the West. That was in 1853; and of those men only three now remain to us. Two with the very aureola of sainthood around their reverend heads; those dear old men, Heywood at Louisville and Livermore in his retreat up among the hills of New Hampshire; while Shippen is our honored minister at the Nation's Capital. At that same time or very soon afterwards, there came to Alton, Haley with his beautiful young wife; his friend Withington following very soon afterwards to Hillsboro. About the same time, for they were all classmates, John Murray organized the Unitarian church at Rockford, and Kelsey, Conant's brother-in-law, established himself at Dixon.
The first sermon that I gave in the state of Illinois was spoken in the little church at Dixon, where the voice of a liberal minister, I am sorry tosay, has not been heard for ever and ever so long.
What shall I say of these men? Simply that they were faith- ful soldiers in the beginning of a crusade here in this western country against the old theology, and in favor of the enlightened liberal religion in which we now rejoice. Some of them succeeded. In the sight of men some of them failed. The matter of success or failure was not so much a matter of faithfulness and earnestness as it was a matter of location. I am told that William G. Eliot preached the first winter in St. Louis half the time to less than a dozen people. St. Louis grew and William G. Eliot's church grew with it. My friend Kelsey went to Dixon and preached there to a congregation larger than Eliot's. But Dixon did not grow and Kelsey was forced to leave.
I must not dwell upon these early pioneers; I can only mention them. Their very names will call up to you memories more swcet and more refreshing than any which my words would awaken. Just so it is to-day all over this great western country. For where fifty years ago there were seven churches west of the Alleghanies, to-day there are between one hundred and thirty and one hundred and forty churches, and a great many of them are working among just the same obstacles, with just the same possible chances of suc- dess or failure, that Geneva had fifty years ago; that Rockford,
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and Dixon and Alton had afterwards. I was very much interested in the paper which we heard this morning concerning Mr. Conant, because it recalled to me so vividly just the things that are coming into my daily life now, of men working here and there on the wide plains of Dakota, in the fastnessses of the Rocky Mountains, and away up in the frozen wilds of Manitoba; working just the same, whether in log cabins or in little school houses, wherever they can get a chance to speak the word which is to them and to many of their hearers the word of life. And when I recall how some of them do not get any more than that two hundred and fifty dollars , which Mr. Conant received, and have to take some of that in "truck," then I feel that the conditions of pioneering are not over yet in this country. There is pioneering still to be done here in Illinois. There is pioneering all the way west until you strike the Pacific Ocean. And when it is all done here, we may be left. to pioneer in the Sandwich and Fiji Islands.
Friends, this same spirit that stimulated Conant when he planted himself here at Geneva is what we want in our young men to-day, and the same spirit that animated the people of Geneva when Conant planted himself here is the spirit we need all over this wide West to-day. I firmly believe that wherever there is that spirit in the man and that spirit in the people, success is sure.
Let me tell a little story, to illustrate the other side of the case. Why did Geneva succeed and Dixon fail ? The morning after I preached at Dixon I was riding into Chicago with a Dixon man who came and sat by my side and said to me very confidently "My friend, there can be built just the biggest church right here in Dixon of anywhere in the state of Illinois, provided you will send us the right man." "Now," he said, "We could easily raise a thousand dollars a year for Starr King." That is the secret of the whole thing. Geneva took the man that came to it and gave him what they could. Dixon waited for Starr King at a thousand dol- lars a year, and is waiting yet.
Letter,
ROBERT COLLYER.
I don't think I ever heard of a Unitarian during the first eighteen or twenty years of my life, except in terms that tended to prejudice my mind against them as a class of people to avoid as I would avoid a pestilence. The one man who did more than any other to remove that prejudice was Robert Collyer in the few times that I heard him at the University Chapel, and occasionally meeting him at the Sage College table. And although he
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cannot be with us to-day he has sent his greeting, which I will call upon Mr. Harvey to read.
LETTER READ BY MR. HARVEY.
DEAR FRIENDS :-
I would love to be with you when you celebrate your golden wedding in the church made sacred to me by many memories, but I eannot come and so must send my greeting and blessing by what the Scoteh call "a scart o' my pen."
But it comes from my heart you may be sure because you are enshrined there, and as far away as I am from you, when once and again I find some one who ean tell me how you fare; it is almost as when I light on a man from the old home nest over the sea, so eager I am to hear all about you and wipe the film from the pieture I treasure of the old chapel and of those who gathered there when I first came to know you more than thirty years ago. You had not eome to your silver wedding even then, but had given bonds for this you are to celebrate in the faithful keeping of the vows you made to have and to hold a ehureh of your faith and order in Geneva "for rieher, for poorer, for better, for worse," so long as you should live, and to maintain her as we try to maintain our homes in all good will and good fellowship toward the ehurehes of other names but still to say, here is our home place and worthy of . all our love.
And it was no wonder that I should be drawn to you and yours because it was my good fortune to know your first minister and to count him very soon among my dear friends; to see him often in the two years that lay between our first meeting and the time when he went as ehaplain to give his life to the Republic; to ren- der my poor tribute to his rare and noble manhood when his dust was brought home for burial, and to write a memoir of his good, true life. And it was in writing the memoir that I caught the thread of the story of your chureh he gathered and organized fifty years ago and of the little band of men and women who were his "helpers in the Lord;" the noble and beautiful story of the faith and courage which lay in the sowing that has ripened for your reaping and happy harvest home; how a hope dawned first that sueh a chureh might be gathered-rather a forlorn hope I said as I read liis journals, but here was the man to lead it-and the twenty all told who said, we will follow, and so the hope won the day by faith and courage. So the house of the Lord was built at which he he worked as he found the time with his own elever hands and then from the date of his settlement to the elose of his ministry among you of sixteen years he was only absent from his own pulpit on three Sundays.
Nor eould the pulpit and parish, with what these mean to so
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many of us now, satisfy his desire to be "a workman that needeth not to be ashamed." He must labor with his own hands at many things besides the church that he might not be a burden to you when you were all poor together in this world's goods and only rich in faith and hope. He must do many things one never thinks of doing now, that he might make ends meet and tie, and usc the pioneer's axe and saw on week days as truly as he used the Bible on Sundays. And so in the journal he left there is the raciest rec- ord of minister and man I have ever laid eyes on. Sunday is sacred but the week day's work is blended of the secular and sacred while all flames sacred as you read because of the man as he tells you day by day how he "Wrote at a sermon and made a door. Worked at a sermon and doctored sore eyes. Made a plan for a ser- mon and a pair of quilting frames. Read Neander and made a chair. Wrote at a sermon and drew wood,snow two feet deep. Doctored a sick horse and cut wood. Read Neander and horse died. Rcad Ne- ander and mended a pump. Wrote at a sermon, read Neander and made a wheelbarrow. Planned a sermon and made a bedstead for the cobbler."
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The cobbler was a cripple, helpless and very poor when he came to live among you. He could mend shoes if hc could find a place to live and work in, but there was no place. Well, your minister built a place for him and furnished it with his own hands: got him all the wood he wanted for the winter, sawed, split and piled it for him; got in provisions for him. You gave him work to do, who are still alive and remain, and the result was the hap- piest cobbler in Kane county, with never a doubt in his heart about such a liberal Christianity. So the story stands to his name first and then to yours of the early years when he was your minister and faithful friend, while he has no word to say of a day lost in dis- mal reflections over the contrips of nature and the world we live in, or in growling because things do not always run to suit Augus- tus H. Conant, no report of a fevered Saturday or a blue Monday. And so he being dead, yet speaketh on the day of your jubilec and it is all as healthy as well baken brown bread, and apples, swect and sound to the core. I mind also with affection the minister who was with you when we first foregathered Mr. Woodward whose face was a benediction. He also was my friend, but here I must pause and only stir up your minds by way of remembrance, leaving the story of the later years to be told as it lies in your own hearts and minds.
But may I say now that in these years I have wondered once and again whether the good old church would hold on to her life in the hard times you have had to mect and master; but there you are and will be, when this script comes to you, singing the song of your golden wedding and looking forward from that to your well rounded century. And then from that as my faith and hope stands
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Early Women. 105
those who will be with you as little children now, may be so great of heart that they will only be content to look forward to the thousand years when the small one of the faith we hold has be- come a great nation, for sure I am that this truth of the one living and true God, our Father on which our churches are founded, will be that of our common Christendom in the good time coming, but greater still and nobler then as the harvest is greater and nobler than the sowing of the seed, for believe me,
"Through the ages one increasing purpose runs, And the thoughts of men are widened with the process of the suns."
New York, May 23, 1892.
Indeed always yours, ROBERT COLLYER.
Carly Women. MRS. MARY P. JARVIS.
Through suffering and sorrow thou hast passed To show us what a woman true may be.
You heard it said this morning that "This has always been a woman's church" and now Mrs. Mary P. Jarvis, one of the women who helped to give us such an honor- able reputation will tell us something of the other "Early Women."
MRS. JARVIS' RESPONSE.
It is rather hard for you, after hearing thesc speeches, which must have been so clear to you, to be obliged to listen to one who is not accustomed to public speaking.
Of the work of the women in the earliest days of the church I have no personal knowledge, but the Church and Sunday School in which, I was interested from the time we came to Geneva, in 1855, showed the effect of their faithful work. Among these, and of those whose work had then ceased were, Mrs. Scotto Clark, Mrs. Betsey Stelle Carr, and Mrs. Mary Jane Whiting, (who was inde- fatigable in the work while here, and continued her aid, even after her failing health required her to leave Geneva, ) and others whose names are unfamiliar to me.
I found the Church, Unitarian as it was, had already inaugu- rated two Saints, St. Polly and St. Maria-Mrs. Sam'l Clark and Miss Maria Clark-all who knew them, know that they were worthy of canonization.
The first thing which strack me as a newcomer, was the hos- pitality which welcomed us to the church and made it a home to us.
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The Original Geneva.
Though a Unitarian from childhood my first home-fecling in a church was in the little church of Geneva. As an illustration of this hospitality, I well remember that one Sunday when Mrs. Chas. Patten called for me (as was her frequent custom) she said, "We must have very little to say to each other to-day, for there are many strangers present, and we must devote ourselves to them."
The teachers of the Sunday School were chiefly women; a few of the men (to their praise be it spoken) also had classes. An in- cident in which Mrs. Chas. Patten was concerned as a teacher, oc- curs to me, an amusing effect of Unitarian teaching. In Mrs. Patten's class was a little black girl whom Miss Orton had taken to bring up. Going home from Sunday School the child passed through our place, and was attracted by the ripe, red cherries, climbed the trees and helped herself bountifully. Miss Orton tried to bring her to repent of her wrongdoing, but in vain. "Oh," said the child, "There is no hell, Mrs. Patten says so. I ain't afraid."
This hospitality of which I have spoken, was shown in the homes of these women as well as in the church. I well remember the pleasant social gatherings at Mrs. Chas. Patten's, who having no children, was more free for social duties but not infrequently the gatherings were at Mrs. Wilson's, Mrs. Dodson's, Mrs. Larra- bee's, Mrs. LeBaron's, Mrs. Geo. Patten's and at many other of the homes. Gatherings for charitable purposes, for Sunday School teachers, etc. I have not time for the further mention of names- I wish to make no invidious distinctions. I can only say of these women that they did what they could.
It was a great pleasure to me to fecl with what unanimity they worked, each doing what the circumstances of her separate life made possible; but all zealous for the success and welfare of Church and Sunday School. I remember no dissensions, even no differ- ences; all was harmonious combination for the one purposc-the success of the little Church so dear to them all.
The Original Genera,
MR. B. W. DODSON.
-- methinks I would not grow so fast,
Because sweet flowers are slow and weeds make haste.
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This morning I welcomed you first to Geneva. Ge- neva is just now trying to have a boom; at least, we are growing a little, and I know you will be interested in knowing something about the early days of our city. I
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will call upon Mr. Dodson to tell us of the "Original Geneva."
MR. DODSON'S RESPONSE.
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Mr. Chairman, having no address to offer you to-day I will, with your permission, speak my excuses from the floor, or from the ground, properly speaking. I had not thought to say anything, but this fetching poetry that you have put into the toast for the "Original Geneva" is a great temptation, and if I made no further address it would be to inquire the meaning of that poetry applied to Geneva. I am not sure as to whether the inference is that Ge- neva is growing too fast or that there is a superabundance of weeds here. Perhaps it might be claimed both ways. In lieu of attempting to speak on the "Original Geneva," which I am sure you will all agree must have been a very beautiful Geneva, judging from the reports we hear about it, I have thought to offer a sugges- tion, and with your permission, Sir, I would like to suggest that prior to the friends leaving this assemblage that they shall take occasion, each and every one of them to sign the visitors' register which has been started here, as friends in Geneva would like to retain a written record of everybody, every individual who has honored us with his presence to-day. I have nothing further to add, Sir.
Vorm-Fifty years. MRS. JULIA DODSON SHEPPARD.
We are now to liave what is always regarded as a great treat, an Author's Reading. You will notice on the back of our little card a poem by Mrs. Sheppard, which she has kindly consented to read to us, and I hope that she will see fit, or that the spirit will move her, to talk to us also.
MRS. SHEPPARD'S READING. 1
My friends, it is a disastrous thing to invite a person to any entertainment who thinks she writes poetry. I have been proud this winter because I have been making butter, all my relatives have had a portion of that butter, and once when invited out, I took my butter with me, and said to my friend, "You have heard of certain poets who when invited out to tea, ask, 'wouldn't you like to hear my last poem ?' " I only ask, would you like some of my last butter ? My friend replied, "I can stand the butter, but I could not the poetry." I thought when Mr. Penney asked me to
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read my own poem, how proud that friend would be if she could hear me on this occasion.
Fifty years! Oh little church upon the plain, Tell us your story, is it loss or gain? You who for half a century have stood Contending for the striving after Good, Instead of unbelievable belief;
Hold you the battlefield in joy or grief ?
* * * The old walls seem to echo all around, "With everlasting gain I hold the ground; Here have true men and patient women stood,
And lived, and died, just trying to be good, Thus have they strengthened others for the strife 'Gainst sin and self, and blessed this earthly life, Thus to their children's children given
'None other than a ladder up to heaven.' "
Letter REV. JNO. R. EFFINGER.
We had hoped to have with us one who has always taken a deep interest in this Society, Mr. Effinger, but he sends his greeting, which I will read to you.
MR. EFFINGER'S LETTER. .
MY DEAR MR. PENNEY :-
As the week advances and the cold, damp weather shows no disposition to depart from the even tenor of its way, I think I must be content to be with you in spirit and by letter, rather than in the bodily presence.'
Please convey to the First Unitarian Society of Geneva my hearty congratulations on having attained the ripe age of fifty years. It is a great event in the history of one of our western Unitarian churches to celebrate its scmi-centennial. It is a mat- ter not only. of local, but general interest to our body. If I am not mistaken there are but few older churches west of the Alle- ghanies, namely those at Louisville, St. Louis, Chicago and Quincy.
All honor to the pioneers of our faith in this western land! I would offer my little tribute of thanks and praise to the men and women, who, planting their homes on the wide and then lonesome prairies of Illinois, set up there the beacon-light of a religion of reason and the moral sense. There are a few of us whosc hearts have not glowed with new zeal on reading the story of the "Man in Earnest," who, with cqual skill and grace could plough a field
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