USA > Missouri > Centennial history of Missouri (the center state) one hundred years in the Union, 1820-1921, Volume I > Part 111
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Once in its history the St. Louis Provident Association faced a crisis which threatened to close its doors. Philanthropy knows what a panic means. The winter of 1893-4 drained the resources of the charity organizations. One day Mr. Scruggs and Mr. Cupples found themselves facing an empty treasury and the demands for relief almost without precedent. They sent for Adolphus Busch and on a Sunday afternoon the three men sat in the parlor of Mr. Cupples' home and discussed ways and means to keep the institution open. The next day Mr. Busch came back. He brought $10,000. Half of it was his individual gift. The remainder was from Mr. Lemp and other brewers. The Provident Association did not suspend.
More than one hundred philanthropic organizations occupy the St. Louis field. With very few exceptions they are conducted upon the cardinal principle of help- ing the unfortunate to help themselves. The heart of St. Louis is charitable but in the exercise of charity practical judgment goes with the humane sentiment. That, in large measure, explains why St. Louis has no slums, like the plague spots of the other large cities of the country. As he rode about St. Louis, Archbishop Farley of New York commented :
"In St. Louis the workingmen and poorer classes are much better taken care of in their homes than similar classes in New York. This results in contentment and prevents social troubles. I have seen no districts in St. Louis that I could call squalid. In fact, there seems to be no real squalor in the city."
A Layman's Lifework.
The quality of religious heroism came out strong and not infrequently among the laymen of the city. Thomas F. Webb opened a little Sunday school with twenty scholars in a small frame house at Sixth and Carr streets in 1840. After half a dozen years the owner of the land wanted it. The frame building was lifted on trucks and hauled to Fourteenth and Carr streets, where Judge Carr offered a temporary location. As the school grew the building was enlarged to accommodate 350. In 1848 Thomas Morrison became the superintendent. For sixty years thereafter this man carried on a work peculiarly his own with a degree of devotion which made his personality of more than local interest. To get addi-
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THE RELIGIOUS LIFE
tional room he moved the school to a hall in the Biddle market, and the Biddle market mission was cited a model for mission work in other cities. The number of scholars increased to over 1,000. A church, "the First Independent church of St. Louis," was started in 1864. Mr. Morrison sold his home and added to it all of the money he could spare to build on Sixteenth and Carr streets. After $37,000 had been spent the place was sold under a mortgage. Carlos S. Greeley took the property, completed the church and presented it to the trustees of the mission. At that time, in 1880, the Memorial Tabernacle, for that was the name Rev. Dr. Niccolls bestowed upon it, was pronounced the largest and finest build- ing in the United States for Sunday school purposes.
When Thomas Morrison died, in 1908, the scenes and the testimonies at his bier, told eloquently what a place he had occupied in the life of the city. Bare- footed boys and bankers, men with dinner buckets and men who manage great industries came. A laboring man said :
"I went to school to him in 1863. It was in the old mission over the Biddle Market. I haven't made such a great success as the world goes, but I've lived a Christian life and reared my children Christians, all on account of him."
James W. Bell, the banker, told of the esteem in which Thomas Morrison was held : "In 1898, upon the fiftieth anniversary of the organization of this mission, Mr. Mor- rison gave away 3,000 bibles, each with his autograph and a small American flag of silk pasted inside. I have one of those bibles now at home upon my center table and prize it highly. There will never be another Thomas Morrison in St. Louis. He was unique. He was the means of saving thousands of men and women. I was a steady contributor to his mission for fifty years. We all loved to help him. When we saw him come in we threw up our hands and said: 'How much, Tom?'"
In the newspaper accounts of the funeral of Thomas Morrison were described these scenes :
In the procession of mourners were three generations of one family, a grandmother, her daughter and little grandson. The grandmother was a pupil in the Biddle Mission Sunday School sixty years ago. Her daughter was a pupil there thirty years ago, and her little boy is a member of the same Sunday School now, all reared in the love of God through the influence of this one man. The three generations went into the mission together and stopped at the coffin. The mother lifted her little boy up so he could see the face they all loved so much. As they went out the grandmother said :
"I wanted the child to carry in his memory the face of the man who did so much for us. He was the means of our salvation."
In the crowd was an old Irish woman, a devout member of the Catholic church. After she had looked at the face in the coffin, she said :
"He was a great and good man. I knew of his good works for forty years in this district, and though he didn't die in the church I'd like to have seen him die in, he must surely be in heaven."
A woman in a magnificent motor car rode up to the mission door at one o'clock and alone climbed the dingy stairway to the mission room. Her tears fell upon the glass plate covering the face and without speaking to anyone she walked out, got into her car and went away.
"Some woman he saved. There are many of them," said a mourner.
Temperance Reform in the Forties.
The Washingtonian movement, as the great temperance cause of the early forties was called, swept over Missouri. Among those who espoused the cause
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CENTENNIAL HISTORY OF MISSOURI
with enthusiasm was Thomas L. Anderson of Palmyra. Colonel Anderson ar- ranged for a mass meeting in his town and secured as a drawing card, Edwin G. Pratt, a fellow citizen. Mr. Pratt was the best dresser in the legal profession of Northeast Missouri. He usually appeared at the beginning of the regular terms of court with a new plug hat and a new suit of clothes. The weakness in Pratt's professional practice was his keen sense of humor. He couldn't let an oppor- tunity for funmaking pass. Pratt had not been known as a temperance man, but he accepted Colonel Anderson's invitation with a readiness that would have aroused the suspicion of the colonel if the latter had not been so much in earnest for temperance reform. When Pratt got up to speak, he produced some old newspapers in which he said he had found obituary notices bearing upon the reform. One man had died at the age of eighty and the other had lived to be eighty-two. The newspapers said both were men of fine character, good hus- bands and fathers, honest in their relations with their fellow men. The only thing which could be said against them was that they sometimes took a little whis- key. Pratt, after reading the eulogies as he claimed they appeared in the papers which he held, laid down the papers and with a solemn face and tones of deep regret and warning said: "What a loss the world has sustained in the deaths of these men! Cut off in the very prime and vigor of their manhood and sent to untimely graves. If they had not been drinking men, the probability is they would have lived to be 100 years old. All these years of usefulness and labor have been lost to the world simply by the habit of drinking ardent spirits." The crowd laughed loud and long, while Colonel Anderson commented: "Confound Pratt ! He never had any common sense in his life."
Liquor Selling on Sunday.
Mayor O. D. Filley was elected by the free soil party shortly before the war. In August, '1859, the people of St. Louis voted, 7,544 to 5,543, against the sale of intoxicating liquors on Sunday. The Missouri Republican, commenting on the result, said :
The triumphant vote by which the people of St. Louis declared their opposition to the sale of intoxicating liquors on Sunday is a matter of sincere congratulation to all our best citizens. It was not a party vote; it had nothing to do with party, but was the free declaration of mind of all parties and nationalities against the excesses which have been superinduced by a special law of the legislature passed two years ago in effect giving unlimited license in the absence of a proper police to these houses being kept open on Sunday. * * * * Not only the beer gardens in the suburbs, to which men retire as a place of pleasure and relaxation-on Sunday, but all the beer saloons and dancehouses. and five or six theaters have been opened on Sunday night on every prominent street in the city. This is the evil that is mainly complained of by our citizens.
In defiance of the vote against the sale of intoxicating liquors on Sunday, the common council passed an ordinance legalizing the keeping open of saloons on Sunday until 9 o'clock in the morning and after 3 o'clock in the afternoon. This action was severely condemned by the newspapers. It was rebuked in a ringing message by Mayor Filley.
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Narrow Escape from a Religious Riot.
The nearest approach to a religious riot in St. Louis occurred in 1844, at Ninth street and Washington avenue. The Native American movement had reached large proportions. It had in some parts of the country taken the forin of mob violence against Catholic institutions. It gained considerable strength in St. Louis, but did not assume the phase of religious intolerance, being directed against for- eign immigration on political grounds mainly. Philadelphia was disgraced by the sacking of churches and by bloodshed. Several other American cities passed through periods of serious disturbance. What occurred in this city is given upon high Catholic authority, the language being that of a member of the clergy who was in St. Louis at the time :
It so happened that the Jesuits had already built a fine church of St. Xavier, and near it was their house of residence and a splendid college then chartered as a state university, to which a college of medicine had been annexed. To the latter was attached a dissecting house, and owing to some shameful neglect on the part of the professors or students of medicine, human remains were left exposed in the yard adjoining and seen through interstices of the wooden partition separating it from the public street. Soon a crowd collected, and then imaginations or passions became strongly excited. Wild rumors spread abroad that all the horrors of the Spanish Inquisition were being renewed in St. Louis by the Jesuits, that men and women had been tortured and put to death. Cries were raised in the streets and the mob began to arm for an onslaught on the college. At this moment the brave Judge Bryan Mullanphy, and another brave Irishman named John Conran collected a posse of Catholics and friendly Protestant citizens armed with rifles. The American, Irish and German Catholics assembled in great force around the Jesuits' college, prepared to defend it if necessary, even to the last extremity. The oppos- ing bands met and determined upon a desperate struggle. However, Judge Mullanphy went boldly forward and asked to be heard by the opposing mob, then sending forth wild yells and imprecations. Having obtained a hearing with great difficulty, and speaking with the coolness and deliberation his true courage and sense of duty inspired, the judge gave a correct and brief explanation of the case, and he declared that every effort should be made to detect and punish the delinquents, who had offered such an outrage to public decency and to common humanity. The mob finally dispersed, and with them the party of defenders. Terrible rumors prevailed all that day in St. Louis, that our Catholic churches and houses would be burned or wrecked. Some faithful and brave Irishmen had armed for defense of our seminary, and contrived to let us know through the chinks of our planked enclosure that we were in some danger of attack. It was only on the day following, we learned all of the particulars of excitement that had taken place in the city. When the daily papers had published the details, popular indignation was quelled. Only the natural expression of wounded feeling found vent in the various journals.
Moral Standards in Missouri.
Nearing the close of half a century in his St. Louis pastorate, Rev. Dr. Samuel J. Niccolls said :
"I can only speak of the morals of the days in which I have lived; and of those I can say that I never knew moral standards, in private or in public, to be as high as they are today. I know that such facts as the growth of divorce are cited to prove the con- trary, but those unfavorable signs do not overcome my conviction as to the enlightenment and virtue of the present at its best. Evil does not become good. So far as it continues to exist, it becomes more evil. But as a whole I believe men's faith is stronger and their deeds are better than they have been. One of the most hopeful things about the present time, as compared with the days when my ministry began, is the harmony between the
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CENTENNIAL HISTORY OF MISSOURI
sects. One might well say as he compares the present with the past that we are all one great church now. In every great effort for the spread of religion and the good of the city. the churches of various denominations act together as one body."
Sabbath breaking is abhorred in the heart of the Ozarks. Something more than suspension of work characterizes the Lord's day. The wild turkey trots through the woods, uttering the "tweet," "tweet." Fox squirrels go upon long visits. The quails whir away. There is no answering shot. For one day of the week, the fowling pieces hang from the hooks in the wide galleries of the houses and are not taken down whatever the temptation. It is even an offense to do unnecessary traveling. And the man of haste, journeying through this Sabbath keeping country without regard to the day of the week, is likely to encounter looks of disapproval if nothing more serious. He will have the road to himself for miles at a time. The rumble and clatter of the wheels of his own vehicle will be the only sound disturbing a quietude profound. On the wall of the dining room of an Ozark hotel appeared in illuminated text above the window through which the waiter girls repeated the orders to the kitchen, the selection: "Christ is the head of this household."
When the chiefs of police in the United States and Canada were organizing their international association at Washington about 1893 they voted that their officers should include a chaplain and that the convention should be opened with prayer. One of them who was emphatic in this was Lawrence Harrigan, the St. Louis chief. He declared : "A man who doesn't believe in God ought not to be on the police force."
VISIONS OF MISSOURI
"Missouri possesses the resources and capacities of a nation within the boun- daries of a state."-Horace Greeley, Founder of the New York Tribune.
"I have said for years that everybody in Missouri comes nearer having three square meals a day and a bed to sleep on than the people in any other state in the Union. We haven't very many rich people and scarcely any poor ones. It is a rare thing in the country districts of Missouri to hear of anybody needing financial assistance."-C. M. Shartel, Former Congressman from Missouri.
"Missouri is proud of her immeasurable physical resources, which will one day make her facile princeps among her sisters; but there is something else of which she is prouder still, and that is her splendid citizenship, consisting at this day of nearly 4,000,000 industrious, intelligent, patriotic, progressive, law-abid- ing, God-fearing people."-Champ Clark, Former Speaker of the House of Representatives.
"The spirit of Missouri is the spirit of progress, tempered by conservatism. It rejects not the old because of its age, nor refuses the new because it is not old. It is the spirit of a community, conscious of its own secure position, some- what too careless at times of the world's opinion, hospitable, generous, brave. The dream of the greatest statesman is a nation of useful citizens dwelling in happy homes. In Missouri the dream finds realization. The noble Latin motto of the state has ever expressed-and does-the spirit of the united citizenship: 'Let the welfare of the people be the supreme law.'"-Walter Williams, Dean of the College of Journalism, University of Missouri.
"The breadth of land from the Red River country of the far North, stretch- ing to the Gulf of Mexico, including Minnesota, Wisconsin, Illinois, Iowa, Mis- souri, Kansas, Texas, is one of the most wonderful agricultural spectacles of the globe! It is one of the few facts that are unthinkable! In this ocean of land, and at nearly its center, stands the imperial State of Missouri. Even a Kansas man admits that in natural qualifications it leads all the rest, and is the crown and glory of the Union! It has boundless treasures of coal, iron, lead and other minerals; lands richer there cannot be, nor finer streams; its forests are more Vol. I-64
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CENTENNIAL HISTORY OF MISSOURI L
equally distributed all over the state than in any other; its climate, wholesome , and delightful, blends the temperature of the northern lakes and the great south- ern gulf."-Henry Ward Beecher.
"I see here one state that is capable of assuming the great trust of being the middle main, the mediator, the common center between the Pacific and the Atlantic-a state of vast extent, of unsurpassed fertility, of commercial facili- ties that are given to no other railroad state on the continent, a state that grapples hold upon Mexico and Central America on the south and upon Russia and British America on the north; and through which. is the only thoroughfare to the Golden Gate of the Pacific. It is your interest to bind to Missouri the young states of the Pacific of this Continent, while they are yet green and tender, and hold them fast to you. When you have done this and secured the Pacific states firmly, you will have bound the Atlantic to the Pacific Coast, and have guar- anteed an empire such as Alexander failed to conquer, and Bonaparte tried in vain to reduce under one common scepter, as his predecessor, Charlemagne, had done. And it will be the glory of Missouri to see established firmly the empire of the Republican Government of America over the entire continent of North America. And in saying what I do, I do not exclude the region which lies between us and the North Pole. And I dare not say where I would draw the line on the south."-William H. Seward, Secretary of State, 1861-9, with Lin- coln and Johnson, in an Address at St. Louis.
"I have said that I am glad to be here in your great state, and I am not impolite when I say that you are unappreciative of your powers here at this place. I have considered your natural resources; with you nature has been more than lavish, she has been profligate. Dear precious dame! Take your southern line of counties ; there you grow as beautiful cotton as any section of this world; traverse your southeastern counties and you meet that prodigy in - the world of mineralogy-the Iron Mountain married to the Pilot Knob, about the base of which may be grown any cereal of the states of the great Northwest, or any one of our broad, outspread western territories. In your central coun- ties you produce hemp and tobacco with these same cereals. Along your eastern border traverses the great Father of Waters like a silver belt about a maiden's waist. From west to east through your northern half the great Missouri pushes her way. In every section of your state you have coal, iron, lead and various minerals of the finest quality. Indeed, fellow citizens, your resources are such that Missourians might arm a half million of men and wall themselves within the borders of their own state and withstand the siege of all the armies of this present world, in gradations of three years each between armistices, and never a Missouri soldier stretch his hand across that wall for a drink of water." -- Senator Stephen A. Douglas of Illinois, in an Address at St. Louis, sixty years ago.
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Index
THIS INDEX IS TOPICAL, NOT PERSONAL
A
Page
Abernathy, J. R., Defeat of Wright by ... 235
Able, Barton and Daniel .. 355
Abolitionists Sent to the Penitentiary. 665
Aboriginal Missourians, W. B. Douglas on. 457
Aboriginal Missourians, Broadhead on. 447
Absurd Solemn Act ... 57
Adair County, Dividing Ridge of. 86
Adams, John, Jefferson's Letter to.
39 943
Stage Driving Days of. 383
Ballad of the Missouri ... 335
Ball, Samuel, Shot by John Smith T. 120
Banquet at Franklin, 1819. 338
Baptist Church Building ... 972
Baptist Delegates Protest to Congress. 33
Baptists, First in Missouri .. 158
Barnum Stew, Famous Ragout. 126
Bar Association, History of. 252 Barclay, Shepard, on Early Conferences. 239
Bartlett Farm and School for Negroes 683
Barnett, G. W., on Admission to the Bar .. 259
181
Agricultural Pathfinder of the Plains.
Agricultural Society in 1822.
A La Carte on Boone's Lick Road. 119
Alexander, King of Missouri Voodoos. 564
393
Allen, Thomas, Sale of Iron Mountain R. R.
412
Allen, Rev. John W., Editor ...
974
Bates, Moses D., Letter of Muldrow to
89
Battle of Lexington, Stores Captured. 768
Battle of the Hemp Bales. 767
Battle of Wilson's Creek. 763
Battle of Carthage 759
Battle Won by 2,000 Unarmed Men 769
Battle of Boonville, Significance of.
755
American Colonization Society in Missouri. 665
Americanization of St. Louis. 433
140
Bees and Bears along Turpin's Branch 875
Beeswax Exports from Grand River .. 879
180 155
Bek, W. G., Story of Hermann by Translation of Duden ..
309 302
Benton, Thomas H., Visit to Kansas City. Guest at Whig Taverns ...
129 172
At Campmeeting
In Convention of 1849 On Internal Improvements 391 389 265
Relations to Dueling.
On Edward Hempstead.
222
In 1849 Campaign.
Whig Insult to ...
612
Armorial Achievement of Missouri.
Armour, P. D., Reminiscence of. 899
Army of Liberation, General Polk's.
763 78 146
Arrow Rock Tavern.
Arsenal Issue of 1861 .. 704
Artist of the Missouri, J. S. Ankeney 368
Ashby, Major Daniel, Indian Adventures of 495
Ashby, Major Daniel, Hunting Exploits of ... 871
Assessment Methods of Kansas City .. 903
Assessments of Sympathizers, Lincoln on .. S21
Assessment of Southern Sympathizers .. 791
Atchison, D. R., on Kansas Elections. 624
Beveridge, Comments on Marshall 198
Attorneys, Twenty-seven in St. Louis, 1821 .. 7 Biddle Market Sunday School, Influence of. . 1004 Big Bill Woods of the Ozarks ... 519
Audrain County's Esau ..... 867
Audrain County, Old Settlers' Association ... S6
Big Elk, Oration of, at Portage Council .... 493
Audrain, James H., Tavern of .. 116
Audubon on Cost of Living in Missouri .. 122
Aus Arcs, Ozarks of the French. 518
B
Bacon, Captain H. D., Sabbath Keeping of .. 355 Church Builder. . 975 Bald Knobs, Orchards on 345 Bald Knobs of Missouri 374 Ball, Hampton, Recollections of. 131
Adams, Wash., John F. Philips on .. Address of Seventy Radical Union Men.
825
Admission of States, National Policy of ...
31
Admission to Union, Monroe's Proclamation 29
Admission of Missouri Celebrated ... 5
Admission Declared "Complete" Aug. 10, 1821 51 259 Admission to the Bar, John F. Philips on .. Advice of Two Missouri Governors. 702
Advertisement of Tavern, 1821. 113
212
A Good Samaritan of 1820. 10 647
Agricultural Wheel in Missouri, 1888.
416 439
Barton, Joshua, on Lucas-Benton Duel. Barton-Hempstead Duel 270
Bates, Edward, John F. Philips' Tribute to. 944 Bates, Frederick and Edward, Careers of. 189 Bates, Governor Frederick, on Dueling .. 289
Allen, D. C., on Bonnet Show Sunday. 171 Alton, Riot over Lovejoy's Presses. 660
Amateur Scientists on Missouri Caves. 596
Amateur Surgery on the Trail. . 382
Amateur War Preparations in 1861.
758
America, Libels on the Town of .. 96
.
Baxter, First Campmeeting at ..
180 863
Bear Hunt by Small Boy.
Beecher, Henry Ward, on Imperial Missouri. 1009 Beckwith, Amos, 50,000 Indian Relics of. 448
Anderson, Bill, Death of .. 806
Anderson, Thomas L., on End Honey War .. 6-
368
Ansel, Thomas R., Actor in Politics. 615
Antiquities, Beckwith's Collection of. 560
Antiquities of Missouri, Peterson on. 456
Anti-Slavery Missourians of 1819. 5
Appeal to Richmond by State Government. . Archaeological Collections in Missouri. 448
815
Archdiocese of Missouri Created. 976
849 31 591
Arkansas Traveler, The Original. 616
"Armed Neutrality," Missouri Slogan in 1861 701 195
Not Constitution Maker.
On Republic of Missouri. Resolutions on Statehood.
190 5 4
Arrow Rock Traditions.
On Arid Plains of Missouri 05
On Missouri's Admission. 29
621
Benton's Tavern Experience at Auburn.
Benton's Change of Mind on Statehood
125 50 32
Benson, Dr. J. H., on Missouri's Degradation Berger, Rev. J. S., Story of.
155
Bethel Baptist Church Organized 1806. Bethel Colony in Shelby County. 323
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