USA > Missouri > Presbyterianism in the Ozarks : a history of the work of the various branches of the Presbyterian Church in Southwest Missouri, 1834-1907 > Part 18
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GEORGE ALEXANDER MILTON RENSHAW.
Back in the third decade of the nineteenth century a poor widow with a large family in East Tennessee received this mes- sage: "The Lord hath need of him." The him referred to was George Alexander Milton Renshaw and the sender of the message was none other than Dr. Isaae Anderson. President of Maryville college. Aeeepting this as a eall from God through his servant the next morning young Renshaw, clad in garments prodneed from his mother's spindle, set out for Maryville college. He was accompanied by the one who brought the message and they alternately walked and rode the messenger's mule. Through the considerate kindness of the trustees and friends of the college and with a little aid from the educational society Mr. Renshaw
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completed with honor his collegiate and theological course and was ordained by the Presbytery of Kingston October 1841. Not long after this he came to Missouri and took charge of the Mt. Zion church-the church that a little over two years before had been organized in his mother's house. There he remained until the day of his death, April 25th, 1857. For length of service in one church in Southwest Missouri this term has been exceeded only by the services of Rev. W. S. Knight, D. D. in Carthage and W. R. Fulton in the Ebenezer church.
Dr. Hill's history of K. C. Presbytery p. 46 says that Mr. Renshaw "supplied Mt. Zion, Weaubleau, Bolivar and George- town."
The Assembly minutes represent him as in continuous charge of Mt. Zion and in addition to this S. S. or Harmony 1846, Springfield1851-53, Walnut Grove 1854. As to Dr. Hill's groupe. Waubleau disappeared from the roll some time between 1843-46. ยท In 1861 Rev. Levi Morrison's list of churches gave this account of Bolivar, "Never existed, I think." The probability is that Mr. Renshaw peached at these points frequently, but not regu- larly, for it is said: "He went out into the highways and hedges and compelled them to come in." Mr. Renshaw assisted by Rev. A. G. Taylor organized the Walnut Grove church and he assisted Dr. Artemus Bullard in the organization of the Springfield church. But his monumental work was at Cave Springs. There he built up one of the two strongest churches in the presbytery in spite the sending out of colony after colony and then he erected the house of worship whose claims to bring "the first west of St. Louis" are discussed in the proper place. Mr. Renshaw bequeathed to the Presbytery of Ozark a son who after its organi- zation in 1870 became its second candidate for the ministry.
Rev. Levi Morrison whose hand was laid on G. A. M Renshaw at ordination, and who wrote his obituary said: "Though his humility never dared to speak the bold language of the Apostle, yet day by day he lived the sentiments, none of these things move me, neither count I life dear unto myself, so that I might finish my course with joy, and the ministry which I have received from the Lord Jesus, to testify the gospel of the grace of God." To meet his Presbytery or Synod was often a journey of four hundred miles, forth and back, facing the heavy, piercing prairie wind by day, and lodging at night in such shanties as he might find; and returning home but to prolong the endurance of the same hard- ships the year round. Bronchitis neuralgia, rheumatism announce their presence and we find in his diary "I must take more care of my health with a view to longer usefulness. I pray God this may not degenerate into inactivity."
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Thus Brother Renshaw lived, labored, suffered on-losing, it would seem, the sense of pain in the joys of his Master's work-wearing a smile that told of a fountain of inward kindness and comforts, of which his modesty seldom dared to speak-seldom daring to speak of his successes, though he was seldom many months without having new seals to his min- istry.
In his successes there were sore trials. Twice was his church sadly reduced by emigration to Oregon and California. The latter occurred but a year before his death. The homes in his immediate vicinity, where he had counseled and cheered and fed his former flock, are inhabited by strangers. That beautiful garden of the Lord, where he had toiled so patiently and hopefully, is swept by the wild spirit of adventure-that sirocco of the west-and presents to his eye but a few scattered, drooping stalks. And it is just as he begins to see signs of success in rallying his broken ranks that his kind Master bids him cease from his toils and go home to his rest.
He was in his place at the last meeting of the Presbytery of Osage, where he became seriously indisposed. Rallying a little, he returned to his home, and after a few days of hopeful health he was severely attacked with a complication of diseases-inflammatory rheumatism prominent-and after two weeks of intense suffering he fell asleep on the 25th of April, 1857, suffused with such smiles as only become such a servant of Christ, and become him only in the gate. He died aged forty-one years. In all his relations as a man and a minister Brother R. was a model man. And after all we have said of him we feel as he would often express himself on the higher themes of the Saviour's loveliness, "what we have said seems almost slander."
As a preacher he was always pertinent, concise and simple. More anxious to be understood than admired, I doubt whether he ever attempted to frame an eloquent sentence in his life. Yet he was often eloquent- never contemptible. Excessive distrust of his own abilities put him upon constant application to sacred writers and the more evangelical poets for forms of idea and expression, and yet you would feel that neither indolence nor pedantry is there, but that the speaker has such a reverence for his holy theme he dares trust its utterance to no language but such as the Holy Ghost teacheth.
* His faults, if faults they were, were such as few men are in danger of imitating. They seem to us but the shadows which a bashful temperament cast over his Christian humility.
ISAAC B. RICKETTS.
Educated Maryville, Tenn., rec. Pby. Hor. '43 fr. Pby. Union : Sup. Osceola and Waubleau, '43-49; Georgetown '44: Wright Co. '52 ff; went to Texas, '59, undismissed." (Hill's Pres. of Kansas City p. 46.)
Wablean found a peace in the assembly ministers but one year, 1843; deponent sayeth not what his labors were in Wright county. They were doubtless abundant and effective. The seeds planted and the young plants started. watered and cultivated by the early missionaries were many of them uprooted by the devast- ing horror of Civil war.
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CHRISTOPHER BRADSHAW.
Like the subject of the sketch above, Mr. Bradshaw was edu- cated at Maryville college the alma mater of Renshaw, Morrison, Taylor, Emerson, Noel, McMillan and possibly others of whom sketches are given herein. Like the subject of the previous sketch also his labors were largely in that part of the Osage Presbytery that subsequently fell to the jurisdiction of the Presbytery of Kansas City. For a time, however, he supplied Little Osage and Marmiton churches, which fell to the Presbytery of Ozark at the reunion. Mr. Bradshaw was ordained by the Presbytery of Union in 1844 and was a missionary of the A. H. M. S. in Osage Presbytery '46-60. When past sixty he wrote to The Home Missionary (Sept. 1846) "Our Presbytery held its spring sessions, including the third Sabbath of March, on the Little Osage, Bates county (which then included Vernon county), in Brother Dodge's church. We had an interesting meeting, and some evidence of the presence of the Spirit of God, attending a preached Word. On my return home I received a letter from a commission merchant at Boonville saying that they had a box subject to my order. It contained some articles of clothing for my family sent from St. Louis, and six Sabbath School libraries, sent as a donation from the Massachusetts Sabbath School Society to the far west. Since the reception of these libraries I have organized six Sabbath Schools, in places where there had never been any school's before. In organizing these schools I rode more than 2000 miles. My last two months have been a busy season. I preached seventeen times in the month. But I esteem it a great privilege to finish the evening of my life in my Master's vineyard, especially in feeding the lambs."-(Hill's K. C. Pres.)
ISAAC WILLIAM KER HANDY.
Born Dec. 14, 1815, in Washinton, D. C., a graduate of Jeffer- sou college and a student of Princeton Seminary. He supplied North Prairie church sometime between "45 and '48.
BEDFORD RYLAND.
"Educated Maryville, Tenn., Lic. Oct. 3, '32, Pby. Union ; Memb. Osage Pby. Sup. Bolivar, Wableau, Hermon, North Prairie, Georgetown ; d. Oet. 16, '45, Bolivar, Mo.
WM. H. SMITH.
William H. Smith ordained by the Presbytery of Osage in
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1849 appears to have been the first man ordained by a Missouri Presbytery who labored in Southwest Missouri. Indeed minis- terial ordinations were very rare in the first Osage Presbytery. A native of New York, he graduated at Union College in 1841 and at Columbia Theological Seminary S. C. in 1844. "He began work in Hickory and Polk counties in 1849. In one of his letters from that field he gives a graphic picture of conditions then pre- vailing in this part of the country. * He says :
* "The gospel has to contend against Antinomianism, Two- Sedism, Campbellism, etc. And a serious hindrance to the progress of pure and undefiled religion is an uneducated ministry. Ephemeral preach- ers are numerous. They have come up over the land like frogs upon Egypt and seriously injure the influence of an educated ministry. Many of them are great lovers of whisky and dogegdly oppose all benevolent operations.
* * * Such preachers will have their day and pass away. *
* * My two churches are thirty-five miles apart. At one I preach twice a month, at the other once. One of the congregations has resolved to build a church this year, notwithstanding their feebleness. Most of the places of worship are wretched log cabins."
Mr. Smith seems to have supplied North Prairie Her- mitage and Mt. Pleasant from '47 to '51 and Little Osage for a time in '60. He deeply regretted the disintegration of Osage Presbytery and the withdrawal of the New School Work. To the Secy. of the Home Mission Society he wrote June, 1857: "I cannot be sustained without aid from abroad, and unless that comes I must either leave the state or resort to some secular oc- cupation." His tenacity is suggested in a letter written by another which also gives a good view of the times:
"Osage Presbytery cut loose from Synod last fall, as you probably know .* The spring meeting has just closed, but as I was unable to attend I am not informed what action was taken. Still I can give you the status of most of the members. Harlan, Jones, Requa and myself are Old School- bound. Shall all of us unite next fall with our churches. Morrison (L. R.), Ricketts, Taylor and MeMillan are going with the name of Osage Presby- tery to the United Synod .* Morrison of Arkansas-I am not posted as to his driftings. Smith stands 'neck and heels' for Cleveland, i. e., the N. S. Assembly. But I am told he is going to leave the State."
ALBERT GALLATIN TAYLOR.
The first of the New School ministers whose labors in Southwest Missouri had their origin before the Civil war and their termination in the same region after the war was A. G. Taylor. Born in Tennessee (Oet. 3, 1810) and educated at Maryville col-
*Written March 25, 1859.
** Morrison took the minutes,, too, and they cannot be found to this day. The Presbytery did not become extinet until 1861.
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lege is a description that applies to him as well as to so many others of his Co-Presbyters. Most of these men it happens were of his Co-Presbyters. Most of these men it happens were educated during the Presidency of Anderson and their Missionary proclivities speak volumes for the school and its President. About 1850 Mr. Taylor entered Osage Presbytery. He resided at Bolivar for a number of years and supplied the Hermon church. With this was grouped for a time Gasconade, and later Red Hill. In 1855 his address is given as Walnut Grove-Churches Red Hill and Walnut Grove. This group appears opposite his name as long as Osage Presbytery reported to the Assembly. He is included in a group of ministers described in these words : "They preached a great deal, traveled widely, scattered Bibles, organ- ized churches, held camp meetings and usually farmed a little. Their type is nearly extinct but was well defined and highly serviceable in its day. At the disintegration of Osage Presbytery Taylor went with the United Synod. Rev. L. R. Morrison's list of ministers in 1861 includes this notice :
"A. G. Taylor, W. C. Col., (Portem) Walnut Grove, U. S."
However he was a strong union man and served the Spring- field church at intervals during the war. Before the reorganiza- tion of the Osage Presbytery he and John M. Brown formed a kind of provisional Presbytery, received Enos M. Halbert as candidate and arranged to license him next Spring. When the Presbytery was reorganized Mr. Taylor was elected modera- tor and was its first chairman on home missions. For a time he served as Presbyterial Missionary and later as colporteur but the infirmities of age crept upon him and he was not per- mitted to do much active work after the organization of Ozark Presbytery. He remained a member of this Presbytery until his death, November 5th, 1895, aged 85 years one month and two days. His last residence was in Phenix, Greene County.
DANIEL EMERSON
The names of A. G. Taylor and Daniel Emerson appear in the Assembly record of Osage Presbytery the same year 1850. By the next year that of the latter had disappeared. He was the first regular stated supply of the Springfield church. His term of service only lasted from August 1849 to May 1850. A provisional committee, assembled to determine as to whether or not it was best for him to remain longer ; exhonorated him from the charge of being an abolitionist, but decided that his useful- ness in that church was at an end. He was included in that class of ministers described in the preceding sketch. As far back as 1861 Rev. Levi R. Morrison said his residence and ecclesiastical
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connection was unknown. The subsequent record of this brother indicates that his stay in Springfield was an unfortunate episode in an otherwise fruitful ministry. For some years he taught school in West Ely and Hannibal, Mo., and then held a compara- tively long pastorate in an important church in Delaware.
LEVI R. MORRISON.
The man who probably did more than any other one man to check the stampede of the New School churches of this section into the Old School fold was Levi Morrison. He was the last Stated Clerk of the first Presbytery of Osage, and assisted in transferring the remnants of that Presbytery to the United Synod of the South. Perchance his activities render possible the re- organization of the Presbytery after the war. From 1851 to 1861, or later, Mr. Morrison had charge of the North Prairie Church. grouped for a couple of years with Osceola, and from '58 on with Mount Zion and Springfield. The efforts of Mr. Morrison and the session to keep the Springfield Church from going to the Old School body resulted in the split of the church and the formation of Calvary Church. With Mr. Morrison in charge of one party and Mr. Quarles of the other the two parties worshipped alter- nately and amicably in the same building for some time. Denied the privileges of a college education, Mr. Morrison was a worthy type of what I conceive to have been the intention of the framers of our standards when they provided for exceptional cases. By indefatigable application he became a minister of no mean in- tellectual attainments. The records of his labors and the memory of those who knew him bear testimony to his piety. zeal, ability and strong convictions-especially on the national issues of the day. A grandson of one of his right hand elders in the Spring- field Church remembers how piteously and tauntingly the sol- diers made the old man walk over rough roads and through swollen streams to Springfield from his home in Hickory County, a distance of sixty miles-a march that no doubt shortened his life and tortured his declining days with pain. Rev. George W. Harlan, a son-in-law of Mr. Morrison, under date of November 19, 1900, wrote for Dr. Hill's History of Kansas City Presbytery a letter from which I quote :
* Of these brethren Rev. Joseph V. Barks and Levi R. Mor- rison were very efficient. * * * Rev. L. R. Morrison had charge of the North Prairie church, Hickory County, during his entire connection with this Presbytery some ten or fifteen years. * * *
He remained at home faithfully, ministering to the flock under his care until by mili- tary authority he was arrested as a Southern sympathizer, taken from his family and held as a prisoner. He was above the average as a
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preacher, being fluent, clever, and forcible and at times quite eloquent. Strong in his convictions and very decided in his adherence to the doc- trines of the Presbyterian church, he preached and defended the same with great ability. * Abundant and diligent in labors at home and abroad, he was instrumental in building up a strong church at North Prairie, and in starting an academy at which young men were prepared for college. In response to frequent calls, he preached at vacant churches ard mission points, and, as opportunity was given, held evange- listic services which were greatly blessed in winning souls to Christ and strengthening feeble churches. His labors were interrupted by the Civil war, and he himself, from exposture and ill-treatment as a prisoner, was attacked with rheumatism in so severe a form that he was a cripple for life, and could not walk or stand erect; so that when he preached, which he continued to do as long as he lived, he was seated in a chair Thus fearless and faithful, he toiled on, meckly enduring the trials and afflic- tions alloted to him, until the end eame, and on December 29th, 1867, in the 63rd of his age being released from his labors and sufferings by death, he was called to his reward."
A letter written by Mr. Morrison to Dr. Timothy Hill is so interesting that I must quote it in part :
"CROSS TIMBERS, Jan. 21st, 1861.
* * * * "I am in my fifty-sixth year; was born in 1805 in Meeklen- burg County, N. C. My father was of Seotch descent. * * My mother of English extraction. Both my parents were pious from their early youth. My father was for many years an older in the church in Bedford County, Tennessee, whither he removed when I was ten years of age. In my fif- teenth year it pleased the God of my fathers to turn me from darkness 10 light, and from the power of Satan unto God. My views of the beanties of Christ and the glories of redemption gleaming from every part of the Bible and catechism, in which I had been diligently taught, soon settled into the form of a prevailing desire to preach Christ to my fellow sinners. But
I was quite illiterate, and my father * was unable to educate me * * or cven to spare me from the farm. So leaving the case in the hand of God, believing that if he intended me to preach he would open a way for an erineation in due time, I toiled on at the plow, trying at all times to acquire scriptural information by snatching a few moments to read some- thing as material for thought while at my labor. Then, in my twenty-sec- oza year. * with one dollar in my pocket and the blessing of the best of parents as a fountain of courage in my heart, I set forth on the cherished objeet of my life, with Murry's Grammar and all beyond a terra incognita. *
* * I went into the study of my elder brother, Rev. Silas H. Morrison, long since deceased, who had worked his way through aa education into the ministry some years before. Upon his removing to *
* I went to the Study of Rev. Amzi Bradshaw * * Alabama. *
in Wilson County, Tenn., with whom I finished my Greek, science and theology, having studied Latin with my brother (I never studied Hebrew) *
* * Being blessed with uncommon good health and constitution, I was able to endure more study and physical toil than most students. I have now answered your question with regard to the place of my theologi cal education as nearly as the obscurity of the case permits-first at my father's hearthstone and plowtail, with the Bible for a text book, the Con. fession of Faith, Scott's Family Bible, Burder's and Witherspoon's Ser- mons for Expositors, and father and mother for professors; lectures every Sabbath evening and as much oftener as business permitted; second, in the
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study of Rev. Mr. B-, a log cabin 10x14 feet, which has long since shared the fate of Goldsmith's village school house, where a vigorous, earnest man made great, strong, pungent sermons, directed my reading, and did his best to show me how to convince men of sin and persuade them to Christ. * *
* Then, unincumbered with debt and the same amount of money (one dollar) on hand with which I commenced my curriculum, I was, after much examination, sent forth a probationer by the Presbytery of Shiloh, by whom I was ordained one year afterward, April 20, 1832.
"As you ask for incidents, and I have spoken of two memorable dol- lars, let me tell you of another, of which you may tell the boys as an in- stance of providential faithfulness and bounty. The first dollar I ever could call my own I gave to the American Bible Society, and lest I should regret it I bound myself that the next dollar I might have should go the same way, and it did. Now I begin to be an old man, have never been rich; but to this day I have not had absolute need of a dollar but it has been at hand in some honorable way."
For two years Mr. Morrison served Spring Creek, Smyrna and Ephesus churches in as many counties in Tennessee where he says, "The Divine blessing descended to the conversion of about seventy sonls in that time." After two years in Sparta and Me- Minville which he regarded as his least satisfactory work, he then removed to Athens, Tennessee, for an eleven years minis- try. Of this he says :
"Here, I think, was the best schooling I ever had. On taking charge at A. I found myself surrounded with brethren of superior advantages, many of them with large, active minds and noble hearts. Besides, Athens happened to be the residence of quite a number of professional men of the first order of talents, few of whom were connected with the church person- ally, but all of them through their families. Now, to maintain a standing compatible with usefulness among such brethren, and to save my pulpit and my Master's cause from disrespect before such a community, didn't I have to work and study?"
For a description of his work in Missouri see the sketch of the North Prairie Church, to which I add another quotation : "During my first two years in Missouri I preached half the time to the church at Osceola (distant about thirty miles), which has now gone O. S., and is served by Brother Barks, of Warsaw. It has never grown much. For the last three years much of my time has been devoted to the churches of Mount Zion and Springfield. in Greene County, sixty miles distant from my home. At the de- cease of Bro. Renshaw, nearly four years ago, these churches were discouraged, especially the former, where he resided. which had recently been much diminished by emigrants to California and Oregon. My monthly labors in Mount Zion have been little more than sufficient to maintain the church in statu quo. * It had nearly doubled its strength, by conversions and immigrations,
*This evidently refers to the Springfield Church, not Mount Zion, as it would appear.
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when within the last year a respectable minority bolted for the O. S. and divided the church.'
JOHN MeMILLAN.
Rev. John MeMillan appears in the Assembly minutes as a member of Osage Presbytery for the first time in 1856. At that time he was in charge of the New Hope Church, in Arkansas, postoffice Crooked Creek. Later he was principal of North Prai- rie Institute, in Hickory County, and had under his tutelage Enos M. Halbert and one other young man as candidates for the min-
# istry. December 8, 1857, Rev. Joseph V. Barks wrote: # "And first, Those who depend on H. M. aid in this Presbytery ? To answer this question I refer you to our minutes of the As- sembly, all our ministers with the following exceptions, viz: A. Jones, W. C. Requa, J. McMillan and your humble servant. Brotli- ers Jones and Requa sell pills for support. Bro. McMillan teaches the young idea to shout for his 'hog and hominy.' As for myself, I have been supported by my own people since the A. II. M. Soc. gave us Paddy's hint. All the rest receive aid."
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