A History of Missouri from the Earliest Explorations and Settlements Until the Admission of the state into the union, Volume III, Part 25

Author: Louis Houck
Publication date: 1908
Publisher: R. R. Donnelley & sons company
Number of Pages: 405


USA > Missouri > A History of Missouri from the Earliest Explorations and Settlements Until the Admission of the state into the union, Volume III > Part 25


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At first considerable success attended the missionary cause, but afterward it seems to have inspired many of these Baptist elders with the fear that if the missionary preacher and idea should become popular with the people, they would demand abler and more intel- ligent local preachers, and so they would be superseded. When Peck first preached at Bethel church he received a liberal missionary contribution, amounting to $31.37, being the second collection to the missionary cause ever made in Missouri; the first collection of $12.25 having been made at a meeting of the Missouri Association in the October previous. Certainly, these were large sums for those times. But he mournfully records that afterward "Bethel church, the oldest in Missouri, had Ichabod written on her doors," and had become " a selfish, lifeless anti-mission body.""


St. Francois church, already mentioned, near the present town of Greenville, was organized in 1816 by Rev. John Farrar, of St. Michaels (as the settlement where Fredericktown is now located was then known), and Elder James P. Edwards. Elder Street, who came to the country during the Spanish government, was an old settler there. He was one of the first white settlers in what is now Wayne county. Although not a regularly ordained Baptist preacher, he nevertheless exhorted the people in a "private way." Another early member of this church and pioneer of that locality was Ithamar


"2 Baptist Repository, 1844, p. 78.


" Life of Peck, p. 114.


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Hubbell, a native of New York and a Revolutionary soldier, who at one time resided on Hubbell creek in the Cape Girardeau district, this creek being named for the family. He seems to have moved to the St. François river from there. Peck preached at this church in 1818, but tells us that the people took no interest in the missionary cause, and that "they knew not the name of a single missionary on earth, and could not comprehend the reasons why money should be raised for the expenses, or why ministers should leave their own neighborhood to preach the gospel to the destitute." 34


The mischief done by the perverse course of the anti-missionary ministers at that time gave the missionary preachers no end of trouble, and for a time it appeared as if there would be a division of the Baptist church on this question, because of the opposition "of ignorant and selfish preachers" who were continually endeavoring to thwart the good work." 35


Another common idea prevalent among all the members of the Protestant denominations of the time, which must have made the work of the early preachers unusually laborious, vexatious, and some- times humiliating, was the opinion that ministers ought to preach without hope or promise of compensation from their hearers or con- gregations. Many of the early pioneers then thought that the gospel ought to be preached literally "without money and without price," and that they were entitled to take the time and talents of the minister for their own use and "rob him of the support due to his family." Under such circumstances the prospects of the "worldly success" of a Protestant minister in the Missouri territory then were not bright. Flint says, "No minister of the Protestant denomination, to my knowledge, has ever received a sufficient living two years in succes- sion," or enough "to pay his ferriage across the rivers in his tours,""


" Life of Peck, p. 122. Elder James Street died in Wayne county in 1843 or 1844, at a very advanced age, probably 90. Peck says he had intelligence, kindness of heart and a courageous spirit, but "a hard field to cultivate." It is remarkable how these early characteristics seem to follow a community, not only in a religious sense, but otherwise. Wayne county to this day is still a "hard field." Here is the way the early settlers are described; "They mani- fested the same apathy in their business, a small crop and a truck patch was the height of their ambition. Venison, bear meat and hog meat dressed and cooked in the most slovenly and filthy manner, with corn bread baked in the form of a pone, and when cold, hard as a brick-bat, constituted their provisions. Coffee and tea were prohibited articles in this class, for had they possessed the articles, not one woman in ten knew how to cook them. Not a school had existed. A kind of half savage life appeared to be their choice."- Life of Peck, p. 122. " Life of Peck, p. 206.


" Flint's Recollections, p. 115.


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and adds, that "the people think in general, that attendance upon preaching sufficiently compensates the minister." To some extent this idea was fostered by the antagonism of the uneducated pioneer preachers who looked with jealousy and envy upon the new and more cultured preachers who came to the country to spread the gos- pel. For many years the older men had preached the doctrine of a " free salvation," hence they had little tolerance for educated minis- ters, who expected some compensation, and who in many places began to supersede them. It was perhaps expecting too much from preachers who at their own expense had traversed the wilder- ness on foot and on horseback, camped at night under trees or in the open air, forded creeks and crossed swollen rivers, not without peril and danger, in order to spread the gospel and establish churches, that they should meekly and without a struggle give way to more educated and learned men, just as devout and zealous as they, but more refined and intellectual, expecting, if not demanding, for their spiritual labors, at least enough salary to eke out a pre- carious subsistence.


One of the conspicuous ministers who thus sacrificed himself and his family by preaching the gospel without reward or compensation, was Elder Luke Williams, of the Mount Pleasant Association on the Missouri, whose name first appears as a licentiate on the minutes of that association in 1820. He traveled in the western part of the territory and state at his own expense, receiving nothing for his spiritual work. No one aided him, but he gave away many hundreds of dollars. He died in poverty in 1824, leaving a destitute family, and then an abortive attempt was made to raise some money to pay for the land upon which he had settled. But even after his death the promises and pledges of the early Baptists did not materialize. From circumstances such as these Flint does not wish us to draw the inference that the country was peculiarly bad, or "indisposed to religion," or that the people were "a degenerate race," but rather that the evil must be found in human nature placed in such circum- stances. In the Cook settlement, now St. Francois county, on one occasion $150 was subscribed to pay a regular salary to Elder Farrar. The anti-missionary folks, however, burned the subscription list. The elder bore this with meekness and patience, but we are told, and it seems to have been the only consolation the missionary ministers had, that "the church never prospered."37


17 This Elder Farrar died in 1829.


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Returning now to north Missouri we find that on the border of Coats' prairie at the house of William Coats, the first settler of that region, a small Baptist congregation gathered in June, 1818. Peck also was the first Baptist preacher that visited this locality on a spiritual errand. Coats and one member, Thomas Smith by name, kept up this congregation by prayer meetings. Coats came from Tennessee in 1817 and was ordained a Baptist preacher in later years. Smith was an active, intelligent man with a strong mind. He was the son-in-law of David Darst, one of the first settlers on the Femme Osage during the Spanish dominion.


Rev. James E. Welch preached at Franklin, Oct. 8, 1820, and at Boonville on the evening of the same day. Rev. William Turn- age was an early Baptist minister in the Buffalo creek settlement, in 1817, and in 1821 he preached at Bluffton in Ray county. He was perhaps the first Baptist minister in that vicinity. In 1817 a Baptist church was organized about 20 miles east of Old Franklin, by Elders William Thorpe and David McLain, the latter being the McLain who so narrowly escaped the Indians in Illinois. Another Baptist minister in north Missouri was David Doyle of North Carolina, who settled near Two Mile Prairie.


Occasionally too, a "wolf in sheep's clothing," a clerical swindler, would come into the country pretending to be a Baptist. Thus in 1820 Rev. James E. Welch, Baptist minister, warns against one Sam Clark who travels through the country "pretending to be a Baptist preacher."


Women's Mite Societies, to aid in spreading the gospel, were organized in north Missouri in 1819. One of the earliest of these societies was formed in Howard county. Mrs. Lucretia M. Duff was president; Mrs. Henrietta C. D. Findlay secretary; Mrs. Mary Ann Campbell and Miss Ann Green assistant directresses. Another such Mite society was formed at Coats' Prairie. But in the previous year of 1818 a similar society had been formed at Jackson in Cape Girardeau county, of which Jason Chamberlain was president; so also one in the town of Cape Girardeau, and one at Ross' Point. Of the Cape Girardeau Mite Society, which met at the Bethel church in 1819 and 1820, Hiram C. Davis was president.


The first Sabbath school west of St. Louis and north of the Mis- souri river was organized at Chariton by the Baptists as an auxiliary of the Philadelphia Sunday and Adult School Union. In 1820 there were three religious societies in Chariton; the Baptist, with Rev.


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John B. Logan and Rev. William Thorpe; the Presbyterian, with Rev. Ed. B. Hollister; the Methodist, which had thirty members with Rev. Joseph Piggott.


Schultz, who visited St. Louis in 1807, says that the few Protestant American families that had settled in the town, not able to erect a church of their own, made arrangements with the priest of the village ".to give them a little lecture in the chapel every Sunday after- noon." $8 According to Peck, to the Rev. Gideon Blackburn, a Presbyterian minister, belongs the honor of preaching the "first gospel sermon in the town of St. Louis." Blackburn made this visit "to this remote village," in the summer of 1813. A large and "respectable audience attended the services, and listened to the sermon." 3º Robert M. Stephenson, from Bellevue, writes Hemp- stead that Blackburn "is indeed a burning and shining light." But he was not popular, and seems to have come into friction with other clergymen.


In 1812 Rev. John T. Schermerhorn was appointed, with Rev. Samuel J. Mills, by the Missionary Society of New England, "to ascertain the religious state of the western country, the places most destitute of religious instruction, with a view to enter into some plan for the regular supply of such places with missionary labor." They intended to go to St. Louis, but abandoned the plan because advised that the route from Vincennes to St. Louis was not safe, and concluded to go to New Orleans, but from Fort Massac wrote Mr. Stephen Hempstead a letter making particular inquiries as to "the state of religion" in up- per Louisiana, desiring particular information as to the number of clergymen in the terri- tory, and where settled, the prospect of estab- lishing societies and forming churches of the "Congregational or Presbyterian order," also requesting information whether infidelity STEPHEN HEMPSTEAD prevailed much, whether the Sabbath was "religiously observed," whether error abounded much, whether it was practicable to "found a Bible or religious tract society." In case the latter was advisable, they would engage to send 200 or 300


38 Schultz's Travels, vol. 2, p. 40.


" Life of Peck, p. 89. This story is related as to his eloquence as a preacher. It is said that a French lady who listened to him wept very freely, and that a few


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Bibles (some in French if desired) and a box of tracts for distribution "among the poor, destitute and thoughtless." This naturally greatly interested Mr. Hempstead, and in reply he wrote that he rejoiced "that the Lord of the harvest is about opening a way to send laborers to this part of His vineyards which appears to me are now ripe and ready for the harvest." He then proceeds to give a pen picture of the religious conditions prevailing in St. Louis and the territory. "St. Louis," he says, "is populating very fast with American citizens; there are forty families containing three hundred persons, and no stated religious worship of any kind in the place," that there is "an old Roman Catholic church where they have services at times, having no priest steadily, that the people desire to have a Presbyterian clergy- man if one of good moral character and professional ability and talents could be obtained," that some of the Presbyterians have joined the Methodists "which itinerate through the territory," that these have six preachers "men of very little education and small talents," who preach "at the Courthouse once a month." He also says that "there are some Baptists in this territory, the number not so many as the Methodists," that they have ten churches and 276 members, and adds that "the preachers that I know are not of that repute with the inhabitants they should be to be useful," and finally concludes his report with the statement that he knows no place in the United States that needs Presbyterian missionary labor more "than this territory," to plant "churches in these deserts, that shall bud and bloom like the rose," so that "all this great wilderness may become a fruitful field." As to a Bible society he observes "that but very few know anything" about such societies, and that among the people a diversity of opinion exists as to the usefulness of such a society, but he thinks a few Bibles and tracts might be of great service. Accordingly, in September, 1814, Mr. Mills sent Mr. Hempstead from Marietta, Ohio, a box of Bibles, a part of a dona- tion of 600 Bibles committed to his care for distribution by the Massachusetts Bible Society. The expense of the transportation, however, had to be defrayed by Mills. The cost of the freight on these Bibles weighing 500 pounds, from Philadelphia to Mari- etta he says was $5 and he adds, "this sum I have paid; I know not how I shall be remunerated unless you can remit to me, or rather days after the priest met her and said, "Ah, Madam, I hear that you have been to hear the heretic priest, and that you cry whenever you hear him; why is it that you never cry when I preach?" Her answer was, "If you will preach like Mr. Blackburn, I will cry all the time."- 10 Presbyterian Quarterly, p. 97.


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to Robert Ralston, Esq., Philadelphia, the five dollars." He then writes that he has once been "through the western and south country in company with Mr. Schermerhorn," and that he has in view on his present tour "to visit St. Louis" if practicable, accompanied by "a missionary brother, the Rev. Daniel Smith." In this year, according to promise, Rev. Samuel J. Mills and Rev. Daniel Smith visited St. Louis, in the words of Peck "as evangelical explorers." They only remained, however, a short time. But they traveled extensively in the Mississippi Valley, distributing the Scriptures and endeavor- ing to ascertain the spiritual wants of the new settlers. Their visit gave "much satisfaction" to the inhabitants of St. Louis, says Mr. Hempstead, but more so to the "professed friends of Zion." Their sermons were listened to by crowded audiences, and many people would gladly have retained Mr. Smith especially. A Bible society was organized by them, and three hundred dollars subscribed.40


Mills was a native of Connecticut, and subsequently became a pioneer of the Colonization Society in founding Liberia in Africa. Smith finally settled at Natchez, Mississippi. In 1815 he wrote Hempstead that he had sent him a box of fifty French Bibles for dis- tribution. He speaks of going down the river in a keel-boat and, coming ashore in skiffs to give away Bibles, and says that he found this "a very pleasing employment." He reports that he found the people on the banks of the Ohio and Mississippi " extremely destitute of Bibles, and a few very grateful for the gift." At New Madrid he left 65 French Testaments to be distributed at that place, and he also distributed some Bibles at Point Pleasant, ten miles below New Madrid.“


After the visit of these ministers Mr. Hempstead continued to agitate the organization in the territory of a "church of Christ of the Presbyterian order." In a letter to Rev. William Channing of Boston, dated June 25, 1815, he suggests that two missionaries be sent, one to reside constantly in St. Louis, who would "lay the foun- dation for an academy, by teaching a school" and "preaching the gospel," and the other to itinerate and to be there occasionally. He greatly laments the fact that a territory having 25,000 inhabitants should not have within its borders a single Presbyterian minister or society, and mentions that there was a "revival of religion in one settlement up the Missouri seventy miles from this place" that


" So stated on authority of the Presbyterian Quarterly, vol. 10, p. 96.


" Hempstead Papers, Missouri Historical Society Archives.


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"some Baptist and Methodist preachers appear to have been made the instrument of the work," and concludes by saying, "the time appears most favorable to begin the work."


In May, 1816, the notable Rev. Timothy Flint arrived in St. Louis. When he came he found the place without a single Protestant church or preacher, and says there never had been, as far as he could learn, the celebration of a Protestant communion in St. Louis, and that he administered this ordinance there for the first time. "Many affecting circumstances accompanied this communion, the narration of which," he says, " more properly belongs to a work more exclusively of religious intelligence. One circumstance took from its pleasant- ness and comfort, and rendered the duty perplexing. The mem- bers that communed, were from different states and countries. Each professor seemed pertinaciously to exact, that the peculiar usages of his church should be adopted on this occasion, and seemed not a little shocked that in order to meet the feelings of others, equally attached to their peculiar modes, something of medium and compromise must be observed." The worshipers differed on trivial circumstances, and the more trivial the more pertinaciously they clung to them. Where at first all was harmony, soon everything was discord. It is charged by Flint that the Baptists were just as exclusive as in the older region of the United States, and he records that even among his own Presbyterian brethren there was a rivalry between the pupils, doctors and schools of Andover and Princeton. "People," Flint reflectively remarks, " are apt everywhere to regard the form more than the substance of religion." He seems to have come west on his own initiative without being specially appointed for the territory. He wrote Mr. Hempstead in October, 1815, advising him of his contemplated visit, and in March, 1816, in another letter says that his commission allows him to choose "the ground" of his labors "according to circumstances," and then referring to the fact that Mr. Giddings had been appointed missionary for the Missouri territory says that "there will be enough range for both Mr. Giddings and myself," that he was so firmly determined to visit the territory that he had refused " a proposal for a settlement in the comparatively polished region of Kentucky."


The Rev. Salmon Giddings," mentioned by Flint, arrived in St.


" Flint's Recollections, pp. 111, 112.


" Salmon Giddings was born at Hartford, Conn., March 2, 1782; educated at Williams College and Andover Seminary; ordained at Hartford, December


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Louis in August, 1816. He was the real pioneer Presbyterian mission- ary of St. Louis. This Rev. Giddings was one of "the most quiet, patient, plodding, self-denying and faithful missionaries the Presby- terians or Congregationalists ever sent to this country."" His labors were for some time wholly itinerant. He visited the villages and settlements along the Mississippi searching for persons who had been members of the Presbyterian church, "as wandering sheep, to gather them into the fold." Thus he collected and organized on August 12, 1816, the first Presbyterian church west of the Mississippi river, in Bellevue valley, ten miles south of Potosi. Here as early as 1807, there were settled four Presbyterian elders belonging to some church in North Carolina, "that did not, as many others have done, hide their light under a bushel, but bore it with them to their new home." Their practice was to meet every Sabbath and hold a prayer meeting and read a sermon, generally one of President Davis', and thus they continued until the Methodists came, when they worshiped with them until the arrival of Dr. Giddings. Robert M. Stevenson, one of the leading members of the congregation, writes Mr. Hempstead that the people were very much pleased with the preaching of Mr. Giddings, but that they would have some difficulty to organize a church so " as to give no offence to Jew or Gentile nor the church of God." "My dear friend," he says, "I can not express the gratitude I feel to the great head of the church for sending the blessed gospel among us in this wilderness * * * less than fifteen years ago the haunt of savage beasts or more savage men."" On September 7,


20, 1814, and arrived at St. Louis 1816; on his journey west on horseback, he preached every Sabbath; when he arrived in St. Louis he took up casually a newspaper and found that it contained a caution against him as having been sent from Hartford on a political errand. On the 21st July, 1816, he adminis- tered the Lord's Supper to a little group of four persons, that is to say, Mr. Hempstead, Mrs. Lisa and Mr. Thomas Osborne. He died February 12, 1828, universally lamented, and from 1200 to 1500 persons attended his funeral.


" Life of Peck, p. 89.


" The names of the members of this first Presbyterian church formed west of the Mississippi, male and female, old and young, as preserved by Robert M. Stevenson, were: Jason Frizzel, Miles Goforth and wife, Mary McCreary, William Henderson and wife, Robert Sloan and wife, James Robinson, wife and mother, Elisha Baker, William Campbell and wife, Joseph McCarty, Robert M. Stevenson and wife, John Baird and mother, John Pettigrew and wife, Anthony Sharpe and wife, John McClintock and wife, William Sloan and wife, Nicholas Hays and wife, John Walker and wife, Thomas Jordan, Josiah Bell, John Gibbins and wife, Samuel Gibbins, Thomas Baker and wife, John R. Broker, Ananias McCoy, John and Luke Davis, Samuel Henderson, Daniel Gallagher, John Blair, Daniel Phelps, John P. Alexander and wife, French Strother and wife, Samuel Sloan and wife, James Johnson, Abraham Beckman, Joseph Gibbins and wife, John T. Webb and wife, John Clarkson


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1817, the Rev. Thomas Donnel took charge of Bellevue church and remained there for more than 25 years, being installed as pastor in 1818 by the Rev. Giddings. Donnel was from North Carolina, a man of respectable ability as a preacher and " as a Chris- tian had no superior." 46


Flint and Peck both lament that ministers were poorly paid at that time, but, although somewhat reluctant to compensate ministers for their spiritual work, we are told that they were everywhere entertained by the people hospitably. Near the Maramec Peck tells us that he tarried with a Mr. Moore, who furnished him with a buffalo skin, on which he "lodged for the night very comfortably," and he adds that " a puncheon floor with a buffalo skin for a bed and a saddle-tree for a pillow furnished no mean lodging in those frontier times."47 So at Horine's, not far from Van Zant's mill, located at what is now Sulphur Springs, he tells us that although the family kept a house of entertainment as a means of support they declined to make any charge; he says that seldom was a charge made anywhere when it was ascertained that the guest was a minister of the gospel. Flint praises the unvarying courtesy with which ministers were received by the people. Even Nicholas Kuntz, an old German keeping tavern on the old Boonslick trace, though "rough and wicked," hos- pitably entertained the preachers.


When in 1816 Flint first came to St. Charles, he found not a single professor of the Presbyterian faith, but within six years the Presbyterian congregation consisted of 240 members, with "a small but neat house of worship built out of brick." In addition, he claims and wife, John McCormick, William Davis and wife, Patrick Estes and wife, Andrew Goforth, Timothy Phelps, William Sloan and wife, James McCormick, William O. Stevenson, Thomas Blair and wife, Fergus Sloan, John Robinson, Elijah Baker, James Gibbons and wife, Robert Gibbons and wife, William Webb, Elizabeth Hewitt, Moses Scott and wife, John Hughes, Levi A. Sloan, Solomon Davis and wife, Lot Davis and wife, John Johnson and wife, Zack Goforth, William McCarty, George Ashbrook, John Anderson, Robert Alex- ander, Thomas Sloan, Hewett Bail and wife, A. T. Alexander and wife, Cynthia Alexander, William S. Sloan, John Sloan, James Sloan, Amos Sloan and William McLaughlin. The first meeting took place Wednesday, July 31, 1816, and another meeting on the following Friday. William Sloan, Robert Sloan, Joseph McCormack and Alexander Boyd were installed as elders, and Dr. Giddings says that "the sacrament was administered the Sabbath after," and he says that it "was a solemn and a delightful season to many," and that a very large audience attended and "behaved with decency." From Bellevue Dr. Giddings says he went to "the Cape" and from there to Ste. Genevieve .- Hempstead Letters in Missouri Historical Society Archives.




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