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History of
THE FIRST METHODIST CHURCH
1856 - 1956
270.9 Ax
Published in our Centennial year
FIRST METHODIST CHURCH LORAIN, OHIO
CENTENNIAL HISTORICAL PAGEANT
WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 7, 1956 8:00 P. M. IN SANCTUARY
1 856 -- 1956
REV. RALPH GRAY, Minister
Program
1893 Dedication of Church At Reid and Bank Street Miss Emily Heinrick - Director
SCENE I SATURDAY NIGHT, DEC. 7, 1893
Bishop
Mr. Lewis Goodell
District Superintendent Mr. Frank Ayres Pastor Mr. Alfred Benson
Board Members
Mr. Edward Peters
Mr. Norman Anderson
Mr. John Stone
Mr. Warren Robinson
Mr. John Wells
Mr. Gordon Garber
Bob Wickens
SCENE II SUNDAY MORNING, DEC. 8, 1893
Above Board Members and
Mrs. Michael Fogo
Mrs. Edward Peters
Mrs. Arthur Chapman
Mrs. John Stone
Miss Thelma Pits
Mrs. John Wells
Mrs. Alfred Benson
Mr. Gordon Smith
Program
1896 The Ladies Reminesce Mrs. Chas. Crehore - Narrator and Director
Mrs. Robert Howley
Mrs. Russell Reynolds
Mrs. Wilbur Tipton
Mrs. Louis Keller
Mrs. Robert Stilgenbauer
Miss Lynn Radabaugh
Mrs. Jay Coleman
1910 Typical Choir Rehearsal Mrs. Winton Koepke - Director Members of Choir
1926 Marching to Zion People of the Church
Today Scroll for Tomorrows Miss Kamille Reiss - Director Boys and Girls of the Junior Department Finale Benediction
Historical Pageant
Written by Mrs. Alfred Askew and Mrs. Maurice Newman
Director Mrs. Alfred Askew
Mrs. Joseph Calta Assistant Director
Properties
Mrs. Marion Horn Mr. John Stone Mr. John Wells 1 Mr. Albert Duane
Lighting ......
Programs Mr. and Mrs. Malcolm Hartley
Costumes
Mrs. Wm. Wickens Mrs. Lewis Goodell Mrs. Karl Emmons
Narrator
Mr. Wm. Wickens
Acknowledgements
Black River Lumber Co.
Staging and Screens
Ryan and Caywood Palms
Mr. Charles Swartwood Backdrop Frame
Mr. Lewis Caywood Painting on Backdrop
Lorain Journal Pictures
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To the early villagers of Black River and Charleston who builder on a sure Methodist foundation
To the city Dwellers of Horain who, at the end of this one hundred years, are keeping the faith - we respectfully Dedicate this History.
Co- authors and rompilers, Fona Whitehouse Avres Catherine Gregg
270.9 Ay
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Table of Contents
Dedication
1
Index
3
The Early Pioneer Church
5
The Religious Life of the Early Church
7
Pastors and Pastorates
9
They Also Served
15
The Lake Captains
15
Church Buildings
18
Church Dedication
20
Parsonages
21
The Church Becomes Cosmopolitan
23
Baptism
25
Picture Section
26 through 30
Communion
31
Womens Foreign Missionary Society
31
Women's Home Missionary Society
32
Young Peoples Organizations
33
The "Mite" Society
35
The Brotherhood
37
Sabbath School
38
The Church is Destroyed and Rebuilt
41
Relaying First Cornerstone
42
Onward and Upward in Choir Loft
43
Church Music
44
Dodge Chapel
46
Burning of Mortgage
47
The Chimes and Amplification System
47
Old Church Bell
47
Candle-Light Service
48
Ladies Aid Minstrels
48
Lyceum
48
Circuit Riders
49
The Official Board
50
John J. Nichols
51
Black River
51
Custodians
52
The Reeve Sisters
53
How I Became a Deaconess
53
Praying Christians
54
The Historical Committee
55
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Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2015
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The Early Pioneer Church
IF A CHURCH be as John Wesley defined it. "a congregation of faithful men. .. . ." our church in its centennial year is in reality a hundred and seventeen years old. Many people have known, of course, that our present church grew out of an earlier Presbyterian church which became Methodist in 1856, but that early pioneer church was a part of that period of local history about which information is very hard to find and document, and it has been realized only very recently how continuous the Presbyterian-Methodist organizations were.
The first church of any sort in Black River was organized in May 1839, the minister was a Mr. Cochran, and the services were held in the school- house. Almost nothing has been learned of Cochran but he must have been a fairly young and vigorous man for he assisted personally in the moving of the frame structure that became our first church building in 1842. He was succeeded in the ministry in the Black River church by Father Betts. Dr. Alfred Betts was a physician who practiced in the western part of Western Reserve in the early days and found himself doctoring souls as well as bodies and and leading so many religious services that he re- turned east to study theology and was ordained in the Presbyterian church. In his last years he made his home in Brownhelm and served churches in both Huron and Black River. When he came to the church in Black River he usually stayed at the home of W. S. Lyons, the shipbuilder. Lyons, one of the sons of the Ralph Lyons who came to Black River with his wife and two children in 1810, had the first brick home on the lake front west of the river which stood where the American Legion now stands on West Erie Ave. Mrs. T. R. Bowen was born in it in 1850, and one of her earliest memories was hear- ing her older brother, Frank Lyons, complain bitterly about having to pitch hay to a "darned old Presby- terian horse!" Whether or not Frank took more kindly to pitching hay when the horse changed to Methodist or not is lost from the record, but he did later join the Methodist church.
The only members of the early congregation whom we know much about were the descendants of the earliest settlers who came to Black River and Sheffield around 1810-1820. William H. Root, grand- father of Harriet Root and Mrs. Hibbard, was a charter member of the church as a young man and served it as clerk. The church record in his hand- writing was extant in 1887 but has since disappeared. The only other known charter members were Daniel T. Baldwin and his wife Sophia Reid Baldwin. Baldwin, who came to Ohio from Massachusetts, was a community leader: he had served a term in the State Legislature in 1834 and was an Associate Judge in Lorain County. His wife was the eldest daughter of the John S. Reid who first came to Black River in the spring of 1810.
In 1842 a house belonging to Daniel Baldwin and his wife was moved over to Lot 108 on the original village plat and made over into a church building. The house was said to have been originally the house and shoe shop of Jacob Vedder, but more interesting
than who owned or used that building would be the name of the person who actually built it, for that first move was the beginning of a long odyssey that only an exceedingly well-built structure could have survived. The first move was accomplished by the help of Ed Porter's ox team and the brain and muscle of Cochran, Baldwin, Willian H. Root, and A. R. Fitzgerald. The lot on which it was placed was on the west side of North Washington between West Erie and Second St .; it was a part of the inheritance of Sophia Reid Baldwin from her father who pur- chased it originally from the Connecticut Land Co. After the building was set down on the lot the con- gregation took out some of the partitions, added a small belfry, and made it over into a church.
Other known members of that early church, some of them possibly charter members, were Mrs. W. S Lyons, Mrs. William C. Jones, and Elizabeth Breck who later married James Chapman. Mrs. Lyons was a daughter of Sophia Baldwin's sister Elizabeth. Elizabeth Reid was the daughter who came with her father to Black River in 1810 as a young girl, and Mrs. Lyons was the grandmother of Mrs. Katherine Wire, Mrs. Rusha Fauver, James L. Bowen, Mrs. A. S. Gregg, and Mrs. Mary Lyons Brandt.
Mrs. William C. Jones, born Catherine Lyons, was a twin sister of W. S. Lyons. Her interest in the little church lay chiefly in the Sunday School which she organized and kept going. Her husband, "Captain Billy" Jones, was the oldest son of the Augustus Jones of the team of Jones and Murdock, the two "shipwrights from Connecticut" who came to Black River in 1818 and established the first shipyard. He was one of the earliest of a long line of people, mostly men, who have attended and supported the church generously all their lives but who for reasons of their own never joined it. Although Jones was never a member of any church he served as a trustee of ours in 1870. No descendants of that family are left in Lorain; the line died out here with the Vader and Macomber families.
Elizabeth Breck was born in Germany, came to America at the age of eleven, and lived with her family on the Ebeneezer Gregg farm just over the river. At sixteen or seventeen she came to live with the Baldwins, joined the church at that time, and later married James Chapman who ran a furniture store on North Broadway. She was the grandmother of George Wickens, Jr., and Treva Chapman, and has descendants living in Ohio but none in Lorain.
Probable members includes Ebeneezer Gregg and Elizabeth Reid Gillmore. Gregg was a farmer of Presbyterian stock who bought a farm on the east side of the river in 1842. He moved to Elyria in 1857 but later returned to Lorain. Elizabeth Reid Gillmore had an interesting life that should have been more completely documented while the infor- mation was still available. She was married the first time to William Smith at the age of sixteen in Black River, probably sometime in 1814. Smith was a charter member of the Sheffield Congregational Church, but no mention is made there of Elizabeth. He left her a widow after four years of marriage,
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and she then married Captain Harry Brooks. This was a very short marriage lasting only a few months when Brooks was drowned when his ship went down in a storm in Lake Erie off Huron. Also lost on the same ill-fated voyage was Elizabeth's older brother, Cornelius Reid, who was mate in charge of cargo on Brooks' ship. At twenty-six Elizabeth married Quart- us Gillmore who had come to Black River from Massachusetts on foot in 1812. The couple lived together over forty years and raised Elizabeth's eleven children, only eight of which were also Gill- more's. Gillmore joined the church in 1857, but again independently of his wife. Elizabeth became a mem- ber. of our church at sometime in her life, but exactly when is still unknown.
Apparently the pioneer church was never quite sure itself whether it was really Presbyterian or Congregationalist. It was officially Presbyterian in 1856 because it took the official label and organi- zation of the minister, but it may have been Congregationalist earlier. The people who attended it were of various religious backgrounds, and many more attended than joined for until after 1850 it was the only church in Black River. Later attempts to fasten much sectarianism on it apparently have arisen from a lack of understanding of the realities of pioneer life.
Beginning about 1850 many more people came to the mouth of Black River. There were enough German farmers to found the Emanuel Evangelical Church in 1851, but the English-speaking newcomers did not help the Presbyterian church very much for many of them sailed the lakes and were away in the summer, while others who were willing to attend the church did not actually join. This may have been for denominational reasons, and it may have been because, as Mrs. Chapman later expressed it, "They was old fashioned Presbyterians" and were rather severe. In any case, when Charles Felch, a young farmer newcomer in Sheffield, attended it in 1856 at the invitation of Mrs. Catharine Jones, he found the little pioneer church in desperate straits organi- zationally speaking. As he told it later, "The deacons had all run out and Mrs. Jones kept the Sunday School going!" Why the little church ran out of deacons is not difficult to ascertain. Daniel Baldwin died in 1847, and of the four Baldwin boys only Charles lived to be old enough to marry. William Root transferred to the Sheffield Congregational church as soon as his business affairs took him back to Sheffield, and the husbands of many of the church women were of the William Jones variety and not qualified as deacons.
In the summer of 1856 a Methodist minister from Elyria, Brother Moses K. Hard, assisted by Brother Griffin, began holding a series of revival services in the schoolhouse in Black River. The remaining Presbyterians attended them and after some consul- tation among themselves invited Hard to continue his meetings in the Presbyterian church. At the same time Father Betts retired from the ministry and requested Hard to "take over" his work in Black River. The Presbyterian membership all acquiesced, and in September 1856 Hard met with a group in the Presbyterian church building and organized a Methodist class, whereupon the Presbyterian society
officially disbanded and the church became Meth- odist.
There were eight or nine people present when that class was organized, all either Presbyterians or attendants of the Presbyterian church, and these persons constitute the charter members of our present church. Unfortunately all the early records of the church were lost when the home of the church secretary, Mr. Johnson, burned sometime in the early 1860's. Assembling their names a century later is a most difficult task, and at this late date only three are known with certainty. These three are Charles Felch, Mrs. Catharine Jones, and Mrs. Eliza- beth Breck Chapman. Felch was the only man present besides the minister, so he was appointed class leader. The biggest reason for the shortage of men is probably that the navigation season had not yet closed. Of the remaining five or six women, it has proved easier to find out which were not than which were! Sophia Baldwin was not; following the death of her husband she had moved to Oberlin and married again. Mrs. W. S. Lyons was for some reason unable to attend the organization meeting, although she later joined the first class. Ebeneezer Gregg was also not present but joined the class later. One of those present may have been a Mrs. Mallery; Rev. Hard mentions a woman of that name in 1887 but he was a very old man then, his memory was failing, he had organized a great many Methodist classes hereabouts, and she may have belonged to another one. Elizabeth Reid Gillmore may have been one, although she was no longer living in 1887 and no one happened to mention her. And the trail, so far as we have been able to follow it, ends there. It is to Charles Felch, who later moved to Oberlin and whose memory was still clear in 1887, that we are indebted for most of our information about that first organizational meeting.
The change from Presbyterian to Methodist ap- parently occasioned very little surprise or fuss in the community. Alex McPhail was a young man sailing the lakes that summer of 1856 who had attended but not joined the Presbyterian church. As he expressed it later, "When I left in the spring the church was Presbyterian and when I came back in the fall they was Methodist." So Alex joined the Methodists along with the rest. Sophia Baldwin dragged her arthritic joints back from Oberlin on a visit to her sisters, attended a few of Hard's meet- ings, and was in no way disturbed at the change. If the Methodists occupied the land and the little frame church she said she didn't care so long as it was put to religious use.
Unfortunately Sophia Baldwin neglected to leave the church a clear title to the property before her death and that oversight led to an ugly lawsuit in 1887. As a result the church had to pay the daughter of one of its early class leaders and stewards almost as much for that as her dead father and his partner, also dead, had paid Sophia for her entire holdings in Black River-roughly most of the land between Washington and Hamilton Avenues from the lake about to the Nickel Plate railroad. To complete the irony, the bulk of the money paid in settlement in 1887 was contributed by Thomas Gawn who was never a member of the church but served it as
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trustee. Someone asked him why he did it when he was not a member to which he replied, "Oh just call me a brother-in-law of the church." The church has had many brothers-in-law, but few as devoted as Gawn. Unpleasant as the whole proceeding was, the testimony in that suit seemed designed to reveal much of the missing early history of the church, and if the lawyers had only asked the right questions and fewer objections had been sustained by the Court, we might have found a great deal more in that record!
Hard's revival services continued until the spring of 1857 and by their conclusion over ninety persons had been "converted" and joined the little church. Among these were McPhail, Quartus Gillmore, Captain Armstead Lumm and his wife, Roland Os- good and his wife who had just arrived in Black River, Captain Henry Wallace, Caleb and Mrs. Peachey, Ebeneezer Gregg, and Mr. and Mrs. H. D. Root. Many of these people have descendants living in or near Lorain. The Roots were the grandparents of Lewis Goodell and Mrs. Heeley, and the Osgoods were the grandparents of Mrs. Clyde Grubbs. Mar- jorie Born, in the Cleveland Public Library, is a granddaughter of the Peacheys.
As new members were added new classes for them had to be organized, so a number of organization
meetings, often held in the homes, had become confused with the original one by 1887. By the spring of 1857 the church was fully organized into five classes with the class leaders and stewards con- stituting the first Official Board of the church. These five class leaders were Captain Lumm, Roland Osgood, Quartus Gillmore, Elijah Hayden, and Ebeneezer Gregg. When Hard left in 1857 the church was attached to the Amherst circuit.
What kind of people were all these early pioneers? We knew that they were hearty folk, and loved to sing, talkative and sometimes contentious, sociable, jolly and laughter-loving, sturdy, and altogether quite human. Much of their life revolved around the lake. Many of them were baptized in it, the women carried soft water from it up the lake bank to do their wash- ing, the men built wooden sailing ships for it and many of them sailed the vessels. When bad storms arose the womenfolk met in the homes to pray for their safety. Many of the men died young from dis- ease and drowning, and most of their widows married again not to mention a few second marriages of widowers, thus introducing a bewildering con- fusion of names and identities which helps to make the history of that early period both exasperating and fascinating.
Catherine Gregg, 1956
The Religious Life of the Early Church
HISTORIANS OF THE 20th century have tended to emphasize the role of the dramatic revivals and the great interant evangelists in the religious and cultural life of the 19th century frontier. While the revival idea did influence the early church in Lorain greatly, it is easy to form a false conception of the actual role of revivals in the religious life of the church. Brother Hard's services a hundred years ago "converted" a total of 108 persons, indeed a large number for the little settlement at Black River, but most of them were already Christians by belief and background, and they were not the type of person to be attracted by exaggerated dramatic displays. Any undignified excess would have repelled rather than attracted men like Quartus Gillmore, Sr. and Captain Lumm,born and bred in the New England tradition, or "old-fashioned" Presbyterians like Father Betts and the daughters of John S. Reid. Rev. Hard's services were simple, warm meetings with eloquent preaching, prayer, song, and quiet testimony conducted with dignity. They were meant to be only the beginning for the real religious work of the church which was carried on continuously through the classes.
It is strange to think that these "classes", once the distinction hall-mark of the denomination, have al- most completely disappeared from modern Method- ism. They are found today instead in Alcoholics Anonymous an association organized on the original Wesleyan class principle, and the great source of strength of that association is the same as the source of strength of the early Methodist church.
The classes first began in England when John Wesley discovered a distressing tendency on the part of his converts, drawn from the gin-soaked
laboring classes of the early English industrial revo- lution, to "backslide". He used them as a means of helping his people to help one another to follow the narrow road leading to Salvation and to the gentility his Oxford training helped him to couple with it. The Methodists on the American frontier were not the same sort of personalities as Wesley's first British converts. The frontiersmen were individuals of strong character and the sins which they "from time to time most grievously committed" were of the sort that spring from strength-aggression, unscrupulous am- bition, avarice, vindictiveness, and harsh judgment- rather than the sort originating from weakness requiring a buttress. Such strong personalities were in need of the "curiously warm feeling" of a Meth- odist conversion, and that newly kindled flame needed careful tending lest it flicker out before the concept of loving kindness could be translated into a way of life and the convert relapse into a cold selfishness. This the "class" did, following the con- version, as the people met in small, informal, intimate groups in each other's homes to discuss their spiritual life and problems with each other.
On the American frontier the classes served as a good organizational device to keep circuit churches with itinerant pastors active, and they also provided a convenient tool for church expansion. According to the Methodist Discipline, the class of that time consisted of not less than three and not more than twenty persons under the general guidance of an ordained itinerant preacher who appointed a class leader from among the members and to whom the class leader reported regularly on the meetings and spiritual state of the class. A class thus organized was
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sufficient to constitute an official Methodist Episco- pal church organization. Our church began with just such a class in 1856 composed of the remaining local Presbyterians and others who had attended but not joined the earlier Presbyterian church. In the 19th century form of church organization, the class leaders and stewards constituted the Official Board of the church. Church trustees were a later phenomenon.
The 20th St. church in Lorain was thus organized in 1893 when a class established by George Wickens, Sr. and T. R. Bowen met in the old Simpson Chapel on Sunday afternoons with Wickens as class leader. The 20th St. people in turn organized the Vincent Methodist church as a class.
This about marked the end of Methodist class organization in the Middle West. Delaware Ave. church, founded in 1899, was organized when a member of our church, Mrs. F. D. Ward, the wife of the school superintendent, assisted by Mrs. N. B. Hurst, established not a "class" but a Sunday School on the East Side while "the bridge was out." At that time while the new bridge was being built the river crossing was made on a pontoon bridge at water level. This plus the two railroad tracks and the steps up the river bank made it difficult for people to cross and rather dangerous for children. The East Side Sunday School and later the church was com- posed mostly of Manxmen, the Gawns and the Far- raghers. Thomas Gawn gave the lot at the corner of Delaware Ave., and for a long time the Delaware Ave. Methodist church was known to many local people as "The Manx Church."
Grace Methodist Church in South Lorain also began as a Sunday School in 1900, but our church played no part in establishing that one. We only reaped the benefits.
The adult Sunday School classes have taken over so much of the work of the old "classess" and the church organization has changed so greatly that the sporadic attempts to revive them have proved un- successful and they seem to have become a historic anachronism. Yet they played a very vital role in early Methodism and should not be forgotten.
Camp Meeting at Lakeside
Following the Civil War the Methodists from northwestern Ohio began gathering on the beauti- fully wooded Marblehead peninsula at what is now Lakeside for outdoor camp meetings. These were in a sense revival meetings held in a big tent with straw on the ground where the people knelt to pray, and the people attending them camped out making it a sort of vacation. Groups from our church in Lorain used to charter a sailing vessel each summer and go up to Lakeside for these meetings.
In 1879 a group of ten families from our church decided to build a permanent camp building there. The group included John R. Nichols, T. R. Bowen, Mrs. Swartwood, T. H. Jones, T. R. King, and Perry Cousins among others. The summer they built it the men remained behind after the meeting to do the work while the women went home. Later when the women saw Captain Cowley's scow "Mona" lying in the harbor waiting for a load they suggested that all the families go up there for a picnic and bring the men home with them. It would have been un- eventful except that a big storm arose on the way.
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