Centennial history of Missouri (the center state) one hundred years in the Union, 1820-1921, Volume I, Part 19

Author: Stevens, Walter Barlow, 1848-1939
Publication date: 1921
Publisher: St. Louis, Chicago, The S. J. Clarke publishing company
Number of Pages: 1074

USA > Missouri > Centennial history of Missouri (the center state) one hundred years in the Union, 1820-1921, Volume I > Part 19

Note: The text from this book was generated using artificial intelligence so there may be some errors. The full pages can be found on Archive.org (link on the Part 1 page).

Preachers in those days wore copperas and black trousers, shirts of copperas and white, suspenders of the same and in summer no coat while conducting service. The distinguishing thing for preachers, in the way of apparel, was the tall hat, called the "bee-gum."

Old Antioch.

Old Antioch church of the Cumberland Presbyterians was the camp meeting center for three or four Northeast Missouri counties, and Rev. James W. Campbell was the chief attraction. The grounds were on the west side of a creek which emptied into the Cuivre. The old log church was at one end. The other end and the two sides were bounded by the cabins of the principal campers. Beyond the cabins were the tents. In the space surrounded by the church and cabins was a large arbor to supplement the shade of the forest trees. A gentle slope led down to the pulpit and the mourners' bench. Across the creek and over a hill was "the Devil's camp ground," where watermelons and other things were on sale, and where those who came for other purposes than for worship congregated. Describing the Devil's camp ground, Judge Fagg said :

"There was one object which I always looked for and never failed to find. That was a two-horse wagon with a white cover. It was a prominent object, conspicuously located, easy of access and recognized as belonging to Joe Hagood. Joe seemed to have an inexhaustible supply of good things concealed in that wagon bed. There was any quantity of sliced ham, roast pig, broiled chicken, hard boiled eggs, bread and butter without limit, a great variety of pies and cakes, and, if desired, a delicious mug of cider. As old Major Pearce, of Boonville, said to me on one occasion when he helped me to one of his famous beefsteaks, 'What more could heart wish?'

"Joe's face, black as it was, was always an interesting study. - When the · question was put to him squarely, as it frequently was, 'Joe, have you got anything stronger than cider?' his face was as destitute of expression as that of the Sphinx gazing into the . desert. Looking straight in the direction of a tall tree that towered far above the pinoaks and underbrush, Joe would answer that he'd 'heard a man say that some could be had out in that direction, but he didn't know anything about it himself.' Just what the busi- ness relation was between Joe and the man in the brush I never knew, but I was always satisfied that it was a close and confidential one."

In the itinerant period of his career, Mr. Campbell preached 365 sermons in a year, an average of one daily. Judge Fagg said: "He performed more mar-

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SIGNERS OF THE AGREEMENT TO BUILD THE FIRST CHURCH IN ST. LOUIS, 1770, SIX YEARS AFTER THE FOUNDING

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riage ceremonies and preached a larger number of funeral sermons than all the rest of the ministers in the county put together. He was a man of exceptionally good business talents and by diligent attention to his business and labor on his farm, he supported his family in comfortable circumstances, notwithstanding his meagre salary as a minister."

Sni Grove and Old Freedom.

The Sni Grove campmeeting drew annual gatherings of 10,000. It occupied a tract of 160 acres, a quarter section, about five miles southwest of Lexington. It had a tabernacle of permanent construction in the midst of twenty-two com- modious cabins of hewed logs. Around about these central buildings, the wor- shippers dwelt in tents and arbors. Nicholas Houx, a Missouri pioneer coming from Lexington, Kentucky, in 1818, was one of the principal organizers of the first Cumberland Presbyterian church, under the auspices of which the Sni Grove campmeeting was held. In 1827 the congregation built a brick church, re- taining the name of Sni Grove, one of the earliest brick churches of Western Missouri. When Johnson county was organized the first session of court was held in his house.

Of later date a campmeeting which became famous was established by Rev. Greenville Spencer in Jasper county. This campmeeting drew people from forty miles around. It was conducted in connection with Old Freedom Baptist church on Jones creek in Union township.

The Day's Programme.

Some of these Missouri campmeetings followed a well established routine. At sunrise a horn was blown as notice to all to rise and prepare for the day. But few minutes were given for dressing and face washing. Family prayer in each tent or cabin came next. This consisted of scripture reading and singing as well as prayer. There might be forty or fifty groups in as many tents or cabins, each singing a different tune at one time. Breakfast followed and at nine o'clock the horn sounded for another prayer meeting. Preaching in the arbor or enclosure filled in the time from ten o'clock until noon. Two hours were allowed for dinner and rest. At two o'clock the horn called together the entire congregation for another sermon, to be followed by exhortations to those repentant to come forward to the mourners' benches in the altar enclosure. As those convicted came forward and knelt, older members of the congrega- tion joined them and prayed with them. Meantime the congregation sang hymn after hymn; at frequent intervals the leader standing on a bench and urging others to come forward. The class leaders and preachers and lay exhorters moved about in the congregation, approaching those known to be unconverted to come forward. This work with the mourners went on until it was time for supper. An hour later, at what was commonly called "early candle light." the services in the auditorium were resumed and these led up to the most impressive · and emotional scenes of the day.

Campmeeting Hymns.

The singing was a strong feature of these campmeetings to sway the un- repentant. When the hymn book was used the leader "lined out" two lines

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CENTENNIAL HISTORY OF MISSOURI

and the congregation sang them, stopping for the calling of the next two lines. But when some one started what were known as the regular campmeeting hymns, the singing went on from stanza to stanza with tremendous volume. An almost endless favorite was :

" The old time religion, The old time religion, The old time religion, Is good enough for me.

" It was good for our fathers, It was good for our fathers, It was good for our fathers, It is good enough for me."

A strong favorite with Missouri campmeetings was "I am a soldier of the Cross." Another favorite rang the changes on various Biblical characters :

"Where now is good old Daniel? Where now is good old Daniel, Who was cast in the den of lions ? Safely in the Promised Land.

"Where now is good Elijah ? Where now is good Elijah, Who went up in a fiery chariot ? Safely in the Promised Land."

The Eloquence of Marvin.

John F. Jordin, who wrote a story of early times in Daviess county, placed the first campmeeting in the Grand river country at some time in the thirties. The campers built log cabins so as to enclose three sides of a square piece of ground of an acre or more in extent. The south side was left open. In the center a sort of arbor, covered with brush, was constructed. The seats were hewed timbers called puncheons and elevated on logs. The meetings were held yearly in August until about the Civil war time. Several prominent citizens resisted all attempts to convert them until Miller, in 1843, predicted the coming end of the world. Then they joined. It is said to have been at this campmeet- ing that Dr. Caples first met Marvin and received the impression which led him to write:

"It was a gloomy morning and a drizzling rain was falling, but the people insisted on having services at the regular hour. In this dilemma I suddenly recalled the fact that a young man had been introduced to me the evening before as a preaching brother, and I at once sent for him and told him I would expect him to conduct the morning services. He offered no objection and at the appointed time I had the satisfaction of seeing the young man mount the rostrum in that dripping arbor while I viewed the scene from the inside of a comfortable cabin near by. Marvin gave out the hymn, which the people sang with considerable spirit, offered up a short prayer and soon was preaching. I could hear him fairly well from where I sat, but soon I was seized with a desire to get nearer and presently I found myself standing out there in the rain, oblivious to physical discomforts, completely charmed by the matchless eloquence of this unknown youth."

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A story which the Rev. John S. Barger did not outlive related to his second year in the pulpit. Mr. Barger had become very much interested in a young Methodist lady, Miss Sarah L. Baker. He arose to preach one Sunday and had just started to announce his subject when the young lady came into the church. Instead of giving out Matt. XVIII, 3, Mr. Barger said: "My text is the eight- eenth chapter and third verse of Sally Baker."

Immersion Incidents.

Methodist preachers in Missouri did not hesitate to administer immersion if converts felt it was necessary. Of Rev. Henry W. Webster, who preached at Pleasant Grove in Clay county and other places in the state, this was told : "Once he was in the act of immersing a man in a sluggish stream of muddy water. As he put his subject under the water, in order to obtain purchase to lift him out again he moved one of his feet farther out in the stream, but, un- aware of it, he was standing on a bank, and when he threw his weight on his moved foot, it found no bottom, and he, with his subject, went under the 'yield- ing wave.' As they both arose and 'pulled for the shore' he completed the scene by quoting, 'And they both came up out of the water.'"

Another Missouri preacher, Rev. W. S. Woodard had this experience :

"In 1856, a very large fleshy woman, advanced in years, wished me to immerse her. but she was afraid I would not be able to lift her out of the water and would let her drown. She worried over it a month or more, when she proposed the following plan to me. It was her own invention. She had never seen anything like it, neither had I. She had a man take a chair into the water in which she seated herself, the water coming up to her arms. The man stood on the opposite side of the chair from myself with his hands on one post and mine on the other. All that remained to be done was, at the proper time, to tilt the chair backward and raise it up again. It is a capital way to immerse a person."

When Rev. Stephen R. Beggs was assigned to the Fishing River circuit he was confronted with the absolute necessity for some clothing. He had been sent out to Missouri by the bishop to get his early training in "Brush College," as the Methodists further east called this itinerating experience west of the Mississippi. The conference on the Illinois side had adopted a resolution that. "we, the members of the Illinois conference, do agree to wear hereafter plain, straight-breasted coats." But Mr. Beggs, who was afterward to become an his- toric figure in the Methodist church, and to build the first Methodist church in Peoria, besides doing many other notable things, did not have any kind of a coat with which to enter upon his travels in Fishing River circuit. Long after- ward he told how he replenished his wardrobe :

"Some of the sisters spun wool, and made me a coat of blue and white, a pair of white cotton pants, and one of mixed. One of the brothers gave me his old hat, which I got pressed, and then I was fitted out for conference. It was held on the fourth of August, 1825, at Bailey's meeting-house, Saline creek, Missouri. The weather was very warm and the roads dusty, and, by the time I had reached my journey's end, my new coat had changed from its original color to a dusty brown. There were, however, kind hands and willing hearts who soon set me to rights. Under the combined influence of soap and water my coat came out as good as new, and, thanks to the 'Marthas' of modern times, 'who care for many things,' I appeared in the conference room next morning, look- ing quite respectable."

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Physical Manifestations of the Convicted.

The earliest campmeetings in Missouri were attended with physical mani- festations which were called "jerks." Not many persons were susceptible to this nervous affection. but occasionally. when the excitement became intense some one in the audience would lose self control and begin to sway forward and backward and from side to side. The motions would increase in vigor until it seemed as if joints would be dislocated. While Jesse Walker, a Methodist preacher. and David Clark, a Baptist, were conducting a campmeeting at Peruque creek. a scoffer, Leonard Harrow, who had been laughing at some of the converts was taken suddenly with the jerks of such violence that he had to be held to save him from butting his head against a tree. At a Flint Hill camp- ' meeting a man began to jump up and down, snapping his fingers and shouting "Slick as a peeled onion ! Slick as a peeled onion !" After a short time he be- came rational and said he had been converted so easily that he could liken the experience only to the slickness of a peeled onion. At a campmeeting in War- ren county a young girl fell to the ground and was crawling like a worm until her friends lifted her and carried her to a tent. Rev. James E. Welch told of having witnessed the performance of four women who were taken with the jerks after they had done up their hair and apparently made all arrangements to be affected. He said they danced forward and backward across a space of about ten feet giving short and peculiar jerks with the head. The hair of one woman came down, whereupon she stopped long enough to put it up and then went on with the jerks. Mr. Welch observed that when the horn blew for dinner the four women suspended the jerking, went to the table and ate as heartily as anybody. This same minister, Mr. Welch, was holding religious serv- ices at a place on the St. Francois river when a young girl in his audience, sit- ting immediately in front of the pulpit, began to jerk. Mr. Welch stopped preaching and the jerks subsided. Three times this occurred before the sermon was ended. The girl bent forward and backward so far that it seemed as if her head would strike the bench in front and the bench behind. She moved so swiftly that Mr. Welch could hear her hair, which had become loose, swish. It seemed to the minister as if her back would be broken but the girl came out of it unhurt. Persons affected with the jerks acquired unnatural strength, so much so that they could be held only by the exercise of much force.

The Variety of "Bodily Agitations."

These "bodily agitations." as they were sometimes called, took on a variety of forms. They were described as "the falling exercise, the jerks, the dancing exercise, the laughing exercise, and so on." Rev. Barton W. Stone, a Presby- terian minister, of Kentucky, wrote of them:

"When the head alone was affected, it would be jerked backward and forward, or from side to side, so quickly that the features of the face could not be distinguished. When the whole system was affected, I have seen the person stand in one place and jerk backward and forward in quick succession, the head nearly touching the floor behind and before. All classes-saints and sinners, the strong as well as the weak-were thus affected. I have inquired of those thus affected if they could not account for it, but some have told me that those were among the happiest seasons of their lives. I have.

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seen some wicked persons thus affected, and all the time cursing the jerks, while they were thrown to the earth with violence. Though so awful to behold, I do not remember that any one of the thousands I have seen thus affected ever sustained any injury in body. This was as strange as the exercise itself.

"The laughing exercise was frequent, confined solely to the religious. It was a loud, hearty laughter, but it excited laughter in none that saw it. The subject appeared rapturously solemn, and his laughter excited solemnity in saints and sinners. It was truly indescribable.

"The running exercise was nothing more than that persons, feeling something of these bodily agitations, through fear attempted to run away, and thus escape from them ; but it commonly happened that they ran not far before they fell, where they became so agitated that they could not proceed any farther.

"I knew a young physician, of a celebrated family, who came some distance to a big meeting to see the strange things he had heard of. He and a young lady had sportively agreed to watch over and take care of each other if either should fall. At length the physician felt something very uncommon, and started from the congregation to run into the woods. He was discovered running as for life, but did not proceed far before he fell down, and there lay until he submitted to the Lord, and afterward became a zealous member of the church. Such cases were common.

"That there were many eccentricities and much fanaticism in this excitement was acknowledged by its warmest advocates; indeed it would have been a wonder if such things had not appeared in the circumstances of that time. Yet the good effects were seen and acknowledged in every neighborhood and among different sects."

Good Order at Chalybeate Spring.

Seven miles southwest of Warrensburg was the Chalybeate Spring camp- ground. The annual meetings were continued long after most of the other campmeetings in Missouri had been abandoned. The religious people of not only Johnson county but of surrounding counties were accustomed to go there. Rev. Dr. J. B. Morrow, preaching from such Scripture as the Prodigal Son, de- livered impassioned appeals that brought hundreds to the altar. Gradually these campmeetings at the Spring drew such large numbers of the evil minded. that liquor was sold on the outskirts. Dr. Morrow hit upon an expedient which checked this evil. He appointed a resolute brother and made him responsible for the morals of the camp. This brother was an organizer. He selected twenty . young fellows who were not church members and made them a posse. These young men patrolled the roads leading to the camp and from their wide ac- quaintance were able to confiscate the liquor being brought to camp. They went around the camp, visiting places under suspicion and carried away the jugs. A knowledge of the ways of the world in Johnson county enabled the posse to clean up the blind tigers effectually and the campmeeting was con- ducted without any disturbance that year. The old saying came to nought :

Wherever God erects a house of prayer, The Devil always builds a chapel there.

Mormon preachers met with scant courtesy among Missouri pioneers. One of them went out to Sni creek to make converts. Among his hearers was Joseph Hopper from over near Basin Knob. The Mormon became warmed up and be- gan to make startling statements. He told of a new revelation that the saints would receive. He warned his hearers that "after awhile a fly would come and the person on whom it would light would die." Whereupon James Hopper arose

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and closed the meeting with, "Preacher, that's a lie. Take my chair and sit down."

Church Discipline One Hundred Years Ago.

The first Baptists to settle in Missouri are said to have been Thomas Bull and his wife and mother-in-law, Mrs. Lee, who settled near what is now Jack- son, in 1796. Two or three years later Rev. Thomas Johnson, a Baptist preacher, came to the Cape Girardeau district on a visit. He baptized Mrs. Agnes Ballew in Randol's creek. This was said to have been the first Protestant baptism west of the Mississippi. Bethel Baptist church was organized in Cape Girardeau dis- trict, July 10, 1806, at the home of Thomas Bull by Rev. David Green, who had moved from Virginia. In 1807 William Matthews was chosen "singing clerk." The next year Thomas Wright and two members of his family were excluded for holding "Armenian views." In 1811 John Reynolds was excluded for joining a Masonic lodge. In 1818 it was resolved by the church that Hannah Edwards be allowed to wear gold earrings for the benefit of her health. An entry in the church minutes in 1818 read :

"Church in conference. Query: If a member is constrained to shout shall the church bear with it? Answer: Yes."

A noted Methodist preacher in Southeast Missouri about 1817 was Rucker Tanner. He was a man of very dark complexion and when young was wild. The story was told of him that when a boy he went with an older brother to New Orleans. The two spent all of their money. The older one persuaded the other to let him sell him as a negro slave, got the money and disappeared. After some time the boy convinced his master that he was white and was freed. He started to walk home to Missouri, made the acquaintance of a local preacher and hired out to him. In the course of time he was converted and decided to become a preacher. His employer encouraged him. Years after he had been given up for dead, Rucker Tanner came back to the New Madrid district and made himself known to relatives. He accepted an appointment to preach. The congregation that assembled to hear him was the largest that had assembled in that part of Missouri.

Boone County's First Church Covenant.

The first church organized in Boone county came into existence in 1817 under this church covenant :

"We, the Baptist church called Bethel, was constituted by William Thorp and . David McClain on the Scriptures of the Old and New Testament, believing them to be the infallible word of God and only rule of practice. Believing that salva- tion is of God alone, also that Jesus Christ is the eternal Son of God; the Father-three persons in one God-head-the Father the Son and the Holy Ghost ; these three are one. We believe in particular and unconditional election by grace, baptism by immersion, believers to be the only subjects; and the final preservation of the saints."

E. W. Stephens says, in his admirable historical sketches of Boone county, that David Doyle "preached the Gospel and labored in ministerial duties in Boone

WORSHIP IN THE WOODS A pioneer family on their way to Sunday services

OLD FREEDOM BAPTIST CHURCH

Located on Jones Creek, Union Township, Jasper County. One of the famous camp meeting centers of Missouri. Worshipers came from forty miles around

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county for a period of forty years for which, it is said, he never received one penny of remuneration."

The Rev. Timothy Flint preached in Jackson in 1819. He had trouble with the people and went away under a cloud. Later, in a manifest effort to get even, he wrote: "Among these people I sojourned and preached more than a year, and my time passed more devoid of interest or attachment or comfort or utility than in any other part of the country. The people are extremely rough. Their country is a fine range for all species of sectarianism, furnishing the sort of people in abundance who are ignorant, bigoted and think by devotion to some favored preacher or sect to atone for the want of morals and decency, and everything that pertains to the spirit of Christianity."

Itinerating in Missouri.

It is told of Rev. Robert R. Witten that he traversed the swamps of South- east Missouri in the pioneer period, "itinerating" for the Methodist church on a salary of $150 a year. This stipend was cut to $50 one year when the funds of the missionary society ran low. The preacher fed not only himself but his horse on a dollar a week and what "support" came from the struggling churches. This support during twenty years, Mr. Witten said, never reached $100 a year. But he kept on, subsisting at times, according to his own account, mainly on imagination.

· When Rev. James V. Watson, afterwards editor of the Northwestern Chris- tian Advocate, "itinerated" in Southeast Missouri, he lost his way and after a heavy rain wandered around until dark came on, Then he perched on a log. holding his horse with one hand and fighting mosquitoes with the other until dawn. When the morning, star told of approaching sunrise, the marooned missionary raised the hymn, "The Morning Light is Breaking."

A pamphlet called "Pioneer Methodism in Missouri" tells the experience of Rev. R. R. Witten on a circuit in 1856. There were twenty-seven appointments to make. They required a journey of 300 miles.

"The field was one vast spiritual wilderness-not a church, not a parsonage, and no part of the Methodist machinery was at work except the preacher, his horse, and a few scattered members; but at this date we have in that same territory three thousand mem- bers, and $50,000 worth of church property. If I did the planting, others did the watering, and great is the increase.

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Centennial history of Missouri (the center state) one hundred years in the Union, 1820-1921, Volume I, Part 19

Author: Stevens, Walter Barlow, 1848-1939 Publication date: 1921 Publisher: St. Louis, Chicago, The S. J. Clarke publishing company Number of Pages: 1074

Author: Stevens, Walter Barlow, 1848-1939
Publication date: 1921
Publisher: St. Louis, Chicago, The S. J. Clarke publishing company
Number of Pages: 1074