USA > Illinois > Winnebago County > Rockford > Golden anniversary exercises, historical record and manual of the Second Congregational church, Rockford, Illinois. November 7, 1849. November 7, 1899 > Part 12
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In northern Minnesota was a church of nineteen women and one man. The women not only kept the church going, but opened a W. C. T. U. read- ing room for the lumbermen, and did missionary work among the Indians. The lone man member proved a bad stick and was excommunicated. To have church business done according to rule, those devoted women had to borrow a man from a church miles away to make an Elder.
Our own ecclesiastical ancestry in the early history of Rockford was not reduced to such straits, for the noble Christian women who came hither when this was frontier ground, did for the churches and schools of this city and region what no historian can ever fully relate until the garnered results are visible in Heaven. Of the outgrowths of their work it is my privilege to speak to-day.
The Woman's Foreign Missionary Society .-- The society of which this was an outgrowth, was organized in May, 1838, one year after the organiza- tion of the First Congregational Church of Rockford, Ill. A preliminary
126
HISTORICAL RECORD AND MANUAL
meeting was held in March at the house of Mrs. E. H. Potter for the pur- pose of forming a benevolent society. Foreign Missions was selected as the object. It was called " The Ladies Foreign Missionary Society of Rockford and vicinity." It was the first Woman's Missionary Society west of Detroit, and as far as can be ascertained, the earliest in the whole coun- try which has continued to be active from then till now. It antedates the rise of denominational interests. The first president was Mrs. Elizabeth Morrill, and the preamble of its constitution read as follows : " In view of the deplorable condition of millions in this and foreign lands, who are desti- tute of the Word of Life, and esteeming it a duty and a privilege to aid by prayer and contributions and influence the great work of evangelizing the world ; we, the ladies of Rockford, feeling that united influence is far the most powerful, agree to form ourselves into a society for the promotion of this most interesting object."
In 1871 the society became auxiliary to the Woman's Board of Mis- sions of the Interior. In 1849 the First Congregational Church divided and the Second Church was organized, but the ladies of the two churches con- tinued to sustain the same missionary society till 1873, when at one of its regular meetings a motion was made, discussed and carried, that the ladies of the Second Congregational Church withdraw and form a society in their own church. It was the sincere conviction of the ladies that each church was strong enough to support its own society.
These historical facts have been largely quoted from an admirably prepared report by. Mrs. R. H. Tinker, which was read at the sixteenth annual meeting held ten years ago, October 5, 1889.
In 1874 Miss Naomi Diament, a devoted missionary to Kalgan, China, was adopted and her entire support shortly assumed, which obligation was met till her death in 1893. Besides the money contributions for her sup- port, numerous boxes of choice gifts were sent to cheer her and assure her of our sisterly love, for she was a member of our church. Our society has now adopted her successor, Miss Elizabeth Sheffield, of the same mission, also assuming her entire support.
Another member of our church, Miss Martha Lathrop, has been for more than a quarter of a century a missionary in India, though not sup- ported by this society, and for a season, Miss Ada Haven, now in China, was with and of us while in the Seminary here.
The annual " Thank Offering " meetings have always been occasions of generous giving and great interest.
127
SECOND CONGREGATIONAL CHURCH.
The receipts in money of this society in the twenty-six years since it separated from the parent church, have amounted to $11,168.34, and its presidents for that time have been Mesdames Harriet Sanford, Foltz, Wood- bury, Taylor, Dickerman, Talcott and Gibson.
The Woman's Home Missionary Union .- As the years went on, in re- sponse to a growing conviction in the minds of our women, that the claims of our own country upon us as Christians demanded a specially organized Home Missionary Society, there was formed our Woman's Home Mission- ary Union. "Union " because the freemen of the south, the " mountain whites," the Chinese and the Indians were uniting with the millions crowd- ing to our shores, in unconscious, unuttered, and so most pathetic petition for God's help through us.
This Union was organized in 1885, and Article II of its Constitution reads thus : "Its objects shall be to diffuse missionary intelligence, to in- crease interest and prayer for missionary work, and to send the gospel and the means of Christian education to the destitute portions of our land." So from month to month, year by year our hearts have gone out to, and our con- tributions been distributed through the needy parts of our country from Flor- ida to Alaska. Its monthly meetings have alternated with those of the Foreign Missionary Society, and carefully prepared programs for both of these societies have kept us informed of many phases of missions both at home and abroad. "Mite Boxes " and " Thank Offerings " have year by year had their special meeting, and since 1891, the Rev. William Howard Watson, a most indefatigable and consecrated worker in southern Montana. has been in constant touch with us and aided by us. It would transcend the limitations of this paper to specify all the seminaries and schools, churches, Sunday Schools and home missionaries aided by this Union. The amount of money contributed by it in the fourteen years of its exist- ence is $7,940.23. In addition to this amount, two members of the Union have sent $5,000.00 to support a home missionary, buy the land and build an academy at Burnside, South Dakota ; and $500.00 for the re-building of Chadron academy, Nebraska, making a total sum of $13,440.23. The presidents of the Union have been Mesdames Townsend, Ticknor, Clemens, Emerson, Barrows and Warren.
The sum total of all monies, contributions of both Foreign and Home Missionary Societies is $24,608.57. But there is another gain which can- not be computed in dollars and cents. This is admirably expressed by one of the presidents of the Foreign Missionary Society, who is vitally inter-
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ested in both home and foreign work, when she writes: " I think the two missionary societies have developed the women of our church more than any other one instrumentality.
Aid Society and Social Union .- As." no well regulated " church is with- out its Sewing Society, that venerable progenitor of the unnumbered women's clubs of to-day, so we cannot remember when we were without one. Its beginnings are prehistoric. The earliest mothers of Rockford used to meet to sew for benevolent objects. When there came the sepa- ration from the parent church, there was also transferred the Sewing So- ciety, which in all the years from then till now has been one of the most efficient adjuncts of church work.
May 1 be pardoned if I recur for a moment to those " good old times," those dear old times, for there are still a few with us who remember them. Then there was no church parlor, no hall for meeting, so each home in turn was opened to receive us. Sometimes the capacity of the house was very limited but the hospitality always unbounded. The afternoon would be spent in sewing for some definite object, in friendly converse, with perhaps the reading of some missionary magazine, and our hearts would be thrilled with the life story of some devoted worker in the still farther west than ours ; and, as ever before and ever since. one part of " woman's work in the church " as out of it, has been to minister to " the brethren " so the close of the afternoon brought us to the preparing of the supper, to which gath- ered the said brethren, and at which they acquitted themselves like -well, like men. That supper was not ordered on just such lines as the supper of to-day. The inevitable salad was absent, and as to ice cream,-why, the wildest flight of imagination would not have suggested it. That was re-
served for Rockford's state occasions. But the first essential to a feast was never lacking-in those strenuous early days " good digestion did wait on appetite." After the discussion of the supper came the discussion of the " burning topics of the hour "-the new bridge, the new railroad, the possibilities of the then almost unused water power, and Rockford's pride, the Female Seminary, now Rockford College. Those occasions were club, reception, party and sometimes musicale all in one.
Would that the early Rockford mothers could have seen in prohetic vision the environments of our present Aid Society and Social Union ; our cheerful rooms for sewing with their work closets, swift sewing machines and piano ; our beautiful dining hall, capable of seating four hundred per- sons at once, with its dainty table belongings and perfect culinary service, all provided by this same sewing society.
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it is interesting to note that the subject under discussion that year was a series of fifteen conversational studies in moral science, with topical out- lines prepared by Dr. Woodbury. Among the subjects considered were The Right or Virtue ; Wrong or Sin; The Conscience ; Divine Govern- ment ; The various Duties of Piety ; Philanthrophy, Patriotism, Self-Cul- ture, Self-Control, Usefulness, Fidelity and Truthfulness.
One channel of usefulness entered by the Union was the establishment of a Mission Sunday School which was held on Sunday afternoons in the old lecture room in Masonic Block. This work was continued for about two years, 1886-1887, the latter part of the time under the auspices of the Endeavor Society, but it was found that most of the children who came were at the same time attending our own or other Sunday Schools, and the work was therefore dropped.
The year 1884 saw the organization of a Young Ladies' Missionary Society. Invitations were issued to the young ladies of the church to meet at Mrs. G. A. Sanford's house, where, after listening to a stirring mission- ary talk by Mrs. Magoun, wife of the President of Iowa College, it was de- cided to form a society, and our giving thus began in time to have a part in building that noble institution, Marash College, in Turkey. For several years the society prospered, holding monthly afternoon meetings and rais- ing from fifty to one hundred dollars a year, and sometimes more by means of entertainments of various sorts. It was finally concluded that the young men of the church ought not to be deprived of its privileges, and the name was therefore changed to the Young People's Home and Foreign Mission- ary Society, the meetings. thereafter being held on the first Friday evening of each month.
As no masculine names appear on the topic cards issued under the latter name for the year 1889, it may be inferred that they took no active part in the meetings, though I believe some of them did contribute finan- cially.
In the fall of 1884 one of the members of the Young People's Union left home for Harvard College, one who in his first months there nailed his colors to the masthead of his college ship by hanging in his room certifi- cates of merbership in the " Harvard Total Abstinence Society " and the " Society of Christian Brethren." . His course was assured through storm and sunshine because the Captain of his craft was Christ believed, Christ acknowledged, Christ followed.
In the First Church in Cambridge was a Young People's Society of Christian Endeavor in which this young man became so interested that Hist. Rec. 16.
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HISTORICAL RECORD AND MANUAL
when, two years after, he was obliged to give up study and come home, he thought it was just what our church needed. Interest was lagging some- what in the Young People's Union, and it seemed that the time had come to make a change. After frequent conversations with his pastor, Dr. Woodbury, he called the young people together, and within six weeks the pledge was taken and the society was in active working order, with this young man of twenty, Ralph Emerson, Jr., its first president. That position he held for about two years, until business called him away from home, proving continually his trustworthiness. In his death in August, 1889, the society and church lost a true leader, one whose life influence still lingers in many hearts.
The Christian Endeavor Society was largely composed of the mem- bers of the Young People's Union which was disbanded to reorganize un- der the new name and with the motto, "For Christ and the Church." Broader fields were opened to the society, and its work did not stop with the home church. One line of work is the Missionary Work which had its place here from the first. In February, 1891, we find that the Young People's Home and Foreign Missionary Society agreed to disband and accept the invitation of the Endeavor Society to join in missionary work with them. The missionary committee of the latter recommended that the Endeavor Society come into communication with six of the regular channels of missionary work in Congregational churches; that the third meeting of each alternate month be a missionary meeting, and that at the following consecration meeting an offering be made by each Endeavorer for this work. A few months later the society voted to take two five dollar shares in the public kindergarten work in the city. About the same time a Junior Society was organized with twenty-nine charter members (August 28, 1891).
Our pastor said not long ago that " enthusiasm is the one element without which nothing can be done as it ought to be done," and when that dies out work lags. It had died out in the Missionary Society and the in- terest in the Endeavor Society also diminished until it was finally disbanded during the past summer, and as the fall work was taken up a new Endeavor Society was formed of generally younger and presumably more enthusiastic material. We believe in this new society which has already over fifty members, and we expect great things from it if the members only stand close by the pledge.
During the year 1890 as the plans for the new church were worked out, a society was organized called the Young People's Association, whose
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main object was to raise money for the organ which would soon be needed. At first the association held regular meetings of a combined business and social nature but these were gradually discontinued. Lectures, concerts. etc., together with monthly dues from each member had brought about - $7,000 into the treasury, when the fire came and left us longing for the sweet tones whose charm had been all the greater to us because of our share in obtaining the organ.
" The Yesterdays are lost in the Past," but I wish I could answer the question that comes to me, " Why did the enthusiasm and the interest in these societies die out ?" Perhaps Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney gives us a clew in her remark that something always has to be crowded out, and when love of ease and pleasure crowd in, love of Christ and His work is crowded out. We always have time for the thing that we really want to do. I be- lieve there never was a time when there was so much room for young peo- ple's work in the church as at the present, and there are surely enough young people if they only take hold of church work as they do of other work and pleasures.
Did you ever lift a basket with some one else ? What hard work it was if the person on the other side did not hold up his end. There is one burden as large as the world, so that the people who carry it are out of sight of each other, and so, occasionally, the people at one end forget and drop it, which makes those at the other end "eat bitterness " as the Chinese say. Only as those at each end lend a hand does it move triumph- antly on. It isn't so hard for a little while, but would there were more who possessed the one talent of steady pull.
Just a word as to ways in which the young people can help along the work of the church : First, by being glad to go to it as was the Psalmist of old. Second, by being present at the various services on week days as well as on Sundays habitually. Third, by helping to keep the church compact and strong in its finances, its benevolences and its business methods ; and Fourth, by praying daily for the peace and prosperity of the church.
The time for the older ones to respond to the call for work in the church is rapidly passing, that of the children has hardly come ; now is the time for the young people to think prayerfully on the motto written on the old Grecian temple, " Know thy opportunity."
" Other foundation can no man lay than that is laid," . . . but " let every man take heed how he buildeth thereon."
WOMAN'S WORK IN OUR CHURCH.
WRITTEN FOR THE FIFTIETH ANNIVERSARY CELEBRATION BY MRS. JULIA E. CLEMENS.
W OMAN is in the church to-day, numerously, actively and usefully. What shall she do in it and for it? Some would limit her church activity to sitting in the pews and paying for the priv- ilege, singing hyms, teaching in the Sunday School, and filling missionary boxes. In secular life the open doors of woman's work have multipled ten times within a generation,-yes, twenty times, up to many hundred possi- ble occupations. It would be strange if the women of the church were to find only three or four paths of usefulness open to them to-day, the very same which their grandmothers and great-grandmothers meekly and loyally trod. This must not be considered a criticism, scarcely a suggestion,-it is simply the query if woman's work in the church is keeping step with her work elsewhere.
The New Testament gives her a goodly record of manifold work for the Master. Dorcas served him with the needle; Lydia with courage and an open mind ; Phœbe with money and probable service as deaconess ; Damaris with educated powers; Mary of Ephesus did much labor of many kinds, and Junia is called an Apostle ; Tryphena and Tryphosa labored faith- fully in the Lord, a very comprehensive statement, Persis, the beloved, had labored long and well when the apostle sent his salutation to her ; Pris- cilla toiled with Paul at tent making, is usually named before her good hus- band, and with him, gave the eloquent Apollos his final preparation for his successful career. Timothy's mother and grandmother trained him up from infancy to be Paul's missionary comrade. Phillip's four daughters prophesied, or as we should say, preached. Mrs. Poyser tartly remarked of Dinah Morris, that she " had a maggot in her brain " because she did likewise. There were doubtless Mrs. Poysers in the first century, but Paul never forbade Christian women to prophesy, if only they were capable of doing so to edification and wore a modest head covering in that ribald age.
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SECOND CONGREGATIONAL CHURCH
Whatever may be thought of woman in the pulpit, it was a great loss to the church, according to one of the ablest of American preachers, when it lost the public prayers of its godly women. Slowly it is regaining this source of power with God and man. A church in New England was torn with inward dissensions and on the point of being rent asunder. In a con- gregational meeting, called to settle their difficulties, the strife became so sharp that the case seemed hopeless, when a saintly woman fell upon her knees and poured out her heart to God in such earnest and loving petition that all hearts were melted, the breach was healed and a strong church saved.
The pioneer churches of our country owe an incomputable debt to the pioneer Christian women of America. What have they not done by their prayers and their piety, their hospitality and downright drudgery to make straight the way of the Lord in the American wilderness !
Horace Bushnell's grand parents moved to Vermont in its early days. There was neither church nor minister within reach. But the faithful woman from whom that religious genius drew both lineage and inspiration, had brought with her an ardent love for the Master and a few good books. She invited the scattered neighbors to their log cabin, put a volume of sermons into the hand of a young man, and thus had weekly religious service. As one result of her fidelity to Christian principle, that young sermon reader became a Christian, and afterwards one of the best and most grandly executive bishops of the Methodist Church in the United States.
In northern Minnesota was a church of nineteen women and one man. The women not only kept the church going, but opened a W. C. T. U. read- ing room for the lumbermen, and did missionary work among the Indians. The lone man member proved a bad stick and was excommunicated. To have church business done according to rule, those devoted women had to borrow a man from a church miles away to make an Elder.
Our own ecclesiastical ancestry in the early history of Rockford was not reduced to such straits, for the noble Christian women who came hither when this was frontier ground, did for the churches and schools of this city and region what no historian can ever fully relate until the garnered results are visible in Heaven. Of the outgrowths of their work it is my privilege to speak to-day.
The Woman's Foreign Missionary Society .-- The society of which this was an outgrowth, was organized in May, 1838, one year after the organiza- tion of the First Congregational Church of Rockford, Ill. A preliminary
126
HISTORICAL RECORD AND MANUAL
meeting was held in March at the house of Mrs. E. H. Potter for the pur- pose of forming a benevolent society. Foreign Missions was selected as the object. It was called "The Ladies Foreign Missionary Society of Rockford and vicinity." It was the first Woman's Missionary Society west of Detroit, and as far as can be ascertained, the earliest in the whole coun- try which has continued to be active from then till now. It antedates the rise of denominational interests. The first president was Mrs. Elizabeth Morrill, and the preamble of its constitution read as follows : " In view of the deplorable condition of millions in this and foreign lands, who are desti- tute of the Word of Life, and esteeming it a duty and a privilege to aid by prayer and contributions and influence the great work of evangelizing the world ; we, the ladies of Rockford, feeling that united influence is far the most powerful, agree to form ourselves into a society for the promotion of this most interesting object.".
In 1871 the society became auxiliary to the Woman's Board of Mis- sions of the Interior. In 1849 the First Congregational Church divided and the Second Church was organized, but the ladies of the two churches con- tinued to sustain the same missionary society till 1873, when at one of its regular meetings a motion was made, discussed and carried, that the ladies of the Second Congregational Church withdraw and form a society in their own church. It was the sincere conviction of the ladies that each church was strong enough to support its own society.
These historical facts have been largely quoted from an admirably prepared report by Mrs. R. H. Tinker, which was read at the sixteenth annual meeting held ten years ago, October 5, 1889.
In 1874 Miss Naomi Diament, a devoted missionary to Kalgan, China, was adopted and her entire support shortly assumed, which obligation was met till her death in 1893. Besides the money contributions for her sup- port, numerous boxes of choice gifts were sent to cheer her and assure her of our sisterly love, for she was a member of our church. Our society has now adopted her successor, Miss Elizabeth Sheffield, of the same mission, also assuming her entire support.
Another member of our church, Miss Martha Lathrop, has been for more than a quarter of a century a missionary in India, though not sup- ported by this society, and for a season, Miss Ada Haven, now in China, was with and of us while in the Seminary here.
The annual " Thank Offering " meetings have always been occasions of generous giving and great interest.
127
SECOND CONGREGATIONAL CHURCH.
The receipts in money of this society in the twenty-six years since it separated from the parent church, have amounted to $11,168.34, and its presidents for that time have been Mesdames Harriet Sanford, Foltz, Wood- bury, Taylor, Dickerman, Talcott and Gibson.
The Woman's Home Missionary Union .- As the years went on, in re- sponse to a growing conviction in the minds of our women, that the claims of our own country upon us as Christians demanded a specially organized Home Missionary Society, there was formed our Woman's Home Mission- ary Union. "Union " because the freemen of the south, the " mountain whites," the Chinese and the Indians were uniting with the millions crowd- ing to our shores, in unconscious, unuttered, and so most pathetic petition for God's help through us.
This Union was organized in 1885, and Article II of its Constitution reads thus : " Its objects shall be to diffuse missionary intelligence, to in- crease interest and prayer for missionary work, and to send the gospel and the means of Christian education to the destitute portions of our land." So from month to month, year by year our hearts have gone out to, and our con- tributions been distributed through the needy parts of our country from Flor- ida to Alaska. Its monthly meetings have alternated with those of the Foreign Missionary Society, and carefully prepared programs for both of these societies have kept us informed of many phases of missions both at home and abroad. "Mite Boxes " and " Thank Offerings " have year by year had their special meeting, and since 1891, the Rev. William Howard Watson, a most indefatigable and consecrated worker in southern Montana, has been in constant touch with us and aided by us. It would transcend the limitations of this paper to specify all the seminaries and schools, churches, Sunday Schools and home missionaries aided by this Union. The amount of money contributed by it in the fourteen years of its exist- ence is $7,940.23. In addition to this amount, two members of the Union have sent $5,000.00 to support a home missionary, buy the land and build an academy at Burnside, South Dakota ; and $500.00 for the re-building of Chadron academy, Nebraska, making a total sum of $13,440.23. The presidents of the Union have been Mesdames Townsend, Ticknor, Clemens, Emerson, Barrows and Warren.
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