USA > Ohio > Lorain County > Lorain > History of the First Methodist Church, 1856-1956 > Part 5
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And then came the church leader's plea for funds for "the church of a bleeding heart," which was re- sponded to so generously by those in attendance.
In addition to Bishop Henderson, John Taylor Alton, Norwalk, district Methodist Episcopal superintendent was on hand for the dedication. The church choir, under the direction of W. H. Tipton, and accompanied by Mrs. A. S. Gregg, organist, and several vocalists, furnished the delightful music of the occasion which won open praise of the visiting bishop.
Pastors of all Methodist Episcopal churches of Lorain sat alongside Rev. Hess during the dedicatory services and Bishop Henderson's cvening address. Visiting pastors filled their pulpits during their absence.
"Religious Education Day" is being observed Mon- day and will be featured by a speech by Professor Frank Whitehouse, head of the department of experi- mental education at Michigan state normal college."
Parsonages
Parsonage Number One
CONSIDER THE KIND of house we have pro- vided for our pastors and their families. Were we willing to and did we make it our concern for them to have as nice a home as we could maintain for them? Are any of us frequent visitors to the par- sonage now so that we may know about our church property? Were the P.K.'s as comfortable as your youngsters?
Our first parsonage is pictured for you right along side of the little brick church. It was built when the church was built and cost $1,000. It stood on the Northwest corner of Washington and W. Main St. (W. Erie) on lot No. 110 of the original town plat. That lot was high-ground, sloping down sharply to a depression which ran along west of Washington Ave. and became deeper as it neared the lake. A natural drainage that started at Oberlin Ave. and (now) 6th St.
The parsonage was a good house for those days but when Rev. J. P. Mills came in 1883 we find in the record-"The Parsonage underwent repairs, an addition was built, the grounds were graded, a beauti- ful lawn started and shade trees planted which are now grown to such size that they are both useful and beautiful," from the "Green Book." The "Southwest
Corner" addition plus the other improvements and the J. P. Mills family, are shown on the photograph.
The manse was sold when the old church was torn down. Mr. A. E. Robinson, a young real estate dealer of that day, bought the property for $1650. There had been eight pastors who had lived in it. I find that Mr. A. E. Robinson subscribed $30.00 toward the new church. Capt. A. R. Robinson lived in the former manse after it was sold and he was interested enough to subscribe $50.00 toward the new church. For many years Miss Kate Baumgart owned that corner property but quite a few feet of land were taken off when W. Erie was widened. One of the oil companies bought the corner when it be- came eligible for business and the house was moved, north on Washington and west on Fox St. (2nd). If you go down that way you will see it about half- way down the block on the north side, this time resting its sills in the partly filled up depression, the natural drainage line mentioned earlier.
For a house that is getting on for 80 years old, it looks pretty good. The trimming under the caves, fancy wooden braces, still help hold up the style and incidentally the roof.
The quarter back side of the 1883 addition is now full back, to fit properly on a small lot.
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Parsonage Number Two
Parsonage Number 2 was a very ordinary looking structure. The lonesome parlor type. Some modern youngster will probably ask "What is a parlor?" The parlor was the "best room", and in it you put your best furniture and the family portraits. It was placed in the position it was, so that it could easily be closed off to conserve heat when necessary. If the minister's family could preserve their best things after moving them from place to place, they were lucky.
You can get a glimpse of this parsonage No. 2 by looking at the picture taken when the new brick church cornerstone was laid, on the corner of Bank (6th) and Reid St. 1892.
In the Green Book, Rev. J'. Frank Smith writes that this house was on the property that he bought for a church site and that it was moved east, $35.00, raised and a foundation put under it, $85.00, also an addition put on, $211.00. He also states that with funds derived from sale of old church property on Washington St: "we paid for the new (to us) par- sonage and church site and had $187.00 left to apply on the new church." Read the Green Book for com- plete details, if you like details.
The house had been the property of Admiral Ernest J. King's father, James King and had its share of sunshine until the church was built so close to it. It lost its glamor, if it ever had any, and I fear be- came a sort of step-child. Probably it kept warm, though, with so much protection. Therefore, less coal for heating and you know how some of the brothers would look at that situation. The pastor's families couldn't have been too happy in it. No outlook but a cold brick wall on one side and the neighbor's house too close on the other side. I wonder if the rain on that steep church roof didn't spatter the parsonage windows? From 1892 to 1906, seven dif- ferent pastors and their families resided there. Finally the Official Board decided that we must have some thing better. There had been much sickness in the old house because of lack of sunshine and the presence of much dampness.
The house was sold and moved off the lot. Mrs. Margaret King Hurst, a cousin of Admiral King's, says that the house was moved to "Hoganville", (the long ago name for that portion of Lorain west of Oberlin Ave.) and was placed on the Northeast corner of Brownell and Chestnut (now 7th) St .. Some time later it was enlarged and modernized and is now serving time as a two-family house. What long ago interesting stories some old houses could tell. This one doesn't show its age much.
Parsonage Number Three
The third parsonage was on the N. W. corner of Reid Ave. and 7th St., a block away from the church. The same house, no longer a parsonage, is still there.
It had been built by Mr. Frank Floding as a home . for his family. Mr. Floding was a member of our church, a druggist with a taste for real estate. He went on to build a better home for himself and persuaded the official brethren to buy the corner house.
So on March 30, 1906, Rev. E. D. Barnett and family knew that they could leave the dark and
gloomy house next to the church and come out into the light.
The "Domine", as he was affectionately called, moved down into the soul savin'est section of Reid Ave.
The Church of the Redeemer, Episcopalian, plus its parsonage,
The Seventh St. Colored Methodist and its par- sonage,
The Evangelical and Reformed Church, St. Johns, plus two bells and a parsonage,
The Romanan Catholic, St. Mary's, with school, parish house and convent, opened their ever lovin' arms and took in the Methodists. That is quite a stretch of the imagination on a creedal basis, but humanly possible.
I never heard of the five leaders of those flocks sitting down together to talk over each other's salva- tion, but it would have been precious in the sight of the Lord.
In 1924 it took a tornado to accomplish quite a bit of inter mingling, this time of wood and stone and brick and sad hearts, but after helping each other repair damages and console each other on their losses, the respective religionists went along their own roads again, probably none of them any nearer finding or following the whole Truth.
This parsonage No. 3: Bought March 30, 1906; Shaken up June 28, 1924; Sold March 30, 1941.
The house had been repaired, of course, after the tornado, but the natural wear and tear of 35 years was showing.
Rev. Alva Cox's family of seven didn't seem to fit into the house very well and it really was time for us to find a better home for our pastor. Ten pastors and their families had occupied the house. Our circuit rider habits burst forth and we moved on, leaving the other parsonages of that area to carry on.
Parsonage Number Four
On April 17, 1941, the Official Board bought the home of Mr. Archie Peyton, superintendent of Lorain Shipyards. It was situated at 1134 6th St., opposite the old town cemetery, no longer in use. It is now a City Park. Perhaps some of our very earliest members are buried there, but few stones remain to tell the story and there is no one to say whether the spirits have risen to greet the newest parsonage.
This house is one of which we can be proud. The W.S.C.S. and the Official Board see to it that it is kept in good condition and, as if for more progress in the way of forthrightness, we are always willing to listen to the parsonage families' suggestions as to what can be done to make the house a pleasant home. Things do wear out there, even as in our own homes. Maybe the basement is flooded, maybe the plumbing is old, but we'll do our best to maintain a place of which we can be proud. One of the things this writer hopes will stay "in style" is the crystal chan- delier in the dining room. It was the pride and joy of the former owner.
It has always intrigued my interest to try to find out what influence a pastoral residence has on its neighborhood, and also the pastor's family on the neighbors.
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The Church Becomes Cosmopolitan
IT IS IRONIC to note that the lowest point in our hundred years of church history came about two years after the completion of the little brick building erected on North Washington Ave. with such pride and at such cost in money and effort. There were several contributing causes, but the most important of these was the organization of the Con- gregational church in 1872. Most of the Methodists of New England stock reverted and joined the new Congregational church, and a most unhappy church quarrel at that time expedited their exodus. The result was to split the membership of our church almost in two with many of the more influential members, especially the Gillmore and Osgood families, moving over the fence to the Congrega- tional pasture. Death also played a part. Among the influential members who had departed this world were such old standbys as Quartus Gillmore, Sr., Ebeneezer Gregg, and Caleb Peachey. Shipping was still the big local industry which kept many of the men away six months of the year and masculine in- fluence was at its lowest ebb since the original organizational meeting. It was during this period that two non members, William C. Jones and Thomas Gawn, served as church trustces. For a time the church became a reflection of John Nichols and the minister;
The role of Nichols during this period has been strikingly characterized by one of his few enemics. The occasion was the lawsuit of 1887 where the Judge, in an effort to restrain the defamation of a man no longer here to defend himself, insisted that only Nichols' official acts as trustee be introduced in evidence. This brought the following exclamation from Atty. C. W. Johnston. "Nichols was the chief mogul down there among them as I understand it, the bell weather of this church, and took the whole load of everything. Everything he did was official from the time he got up in the morning till he retired at night!" The substance, if not the expression of it, was true; Nichols, like Atlas, carried the church on his shoulders.
The quarrel between the Congregationalists and Methodists was soon resolved, as Mrs. Lumm-Fitz- gerald explained during the lawsuit, "after a real kind of warm fellowship meeting in the Methodist church -the two churches were together. Everybody shook hands with everybody and forgave them." Mrs. Fitzgerald further stated that she was not present at this meeting, but despite her one-woman holdout relations between the two churches have continued to be friendly ever since.
Meanwhile the town was growing fast. New faces came to both churches, many of them forerunners of what has since become almost a First Methodist church type. They were people who did not grow up in the town but who joined the church as families when they came, played an influential role in the Sunday School or the church organizations or the Official Board leaving their names on the record, then left town with their families and after a time the church people lost all track of them. There have been so many whose names at the centennial are
almost meaningless to the bulk of the present congre- gation: only a few of the oldsters recall them, and wonder where they are now. .
The English Imigration
Part of the loss in membership was quickly made up by more permanent families arriving directly from England about that time. Capt. Wilford, Thomas R. Bowen, and George Wickens, Sr. all married Lorain girls from old families-indeed George Wickens married two Lorain girls from old families with an English wife between ;- but the others, the Watkins', the Whitehouses, the Pistells, the Goodells, the Dun- stans, the Reeves, and the Heeley's all came as families with children. They were by no means all Methodists back in England but all became so after arriving in Lorain. Although the men helped to restore more masculine leadership with their vigor and youth they were definitely British in speech and thought and did not change overnight. The White- house family who came in '80 and '81 were the largest group: that family included the Butlers, the Edward Smiths, and the Hayneses. The Hayneses lived in the South End and went to Simpson Chapel but the others all came to our church and being exceedingly musical quickly became prominent in church musical affairs. Indeed, Miss Jennie Smith was the first organist in the new brick church on Reid Ave. in 1893. In fact, the English newcomers helped to fill the shoes of the departed Congregation- alists so ably that by 1887 three of them had become trustees of the church and were defendants in the lawsuit, namely Samuel Butler, T. R. Bowen, and George Wickens, Sr.
The rapid rise to prominence of the English new- comers gave rise to some bit of grumbling on the part of some of the older members who resented it. When Mrs. Whitehouse was elected treasurer of the Ladies Aid Society shortly after her arrival one old- timer exclaimed indignantly. "That foreign woman will never be able to understand our money!" The grumbling finally came to a head at an Official Board Meeting when one elderly member rose to his feet and voiced a complaint about "the English running the church!" He was answered by T. R. Bowen who told the complainer and the others that they were born here and couldn't help themselves but the English came here because they wanted to, and added that if the local people would take a little more interest in church affairs they wouldn't be left to the English to run. It is good to know that the com- plainer took the answer in good part, and it was well indeed he did for both his daughter and his grand daughter married into the English. families and one hesitates to think what his home-life would have been like if he hadn't! Following the verbal exchange at the Official Board Meeting the grumbling died away, the English were accepted, and the church history since that time has been filled with the record of their devoted service. It is hard to imagine our church without them now.
German Stock Contributes to Our Membership
In contrast to the English immigrants who joined us as families directly on arrival, most of our
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members of German stock "married into" the church and transferred from German language churches. They thus avoided much of the grumbling faced by the British in the early days by delaying their coming to us until they were American in speech and atti- tude. And they have been coming gradually for a long time. One of our charter members, Mrs. Chap- man, was German born and by marriage and young people's groups we have acquired Brauns, Krantzes, Horns, Schneiders, and Hagemans, all of whom have contributed heavily to our growth and welfare. Charles Vorwerk, the father of the six Vorwerk sisters, was one of the earlier Germans to "marry in" and one of the most devoted. His mother was a distant cousin of the poet Goethe and sent all four of her sons away to America to avoid military service in the Prussian army. Vorwerk retained his pacifist views all his life and they were not always popular in Lorain. To the best of our knowledge, he was the only Prussian among our church Germans. Except for the very early Pennsylvania German set- tlers, most of our German stock goes back to the Hessian revolutions of '30 and '48, and the descend- ants have been strongly anti-Prussian in sentiment. Many of our church people can remember the blistering remarks of Elizabeth Krantz Purcell about Hitler back in 1933 when he first won power in Germany.
One of our most faithful German associates came to us on loan from the Emmanuel Evangelical church across the street. This was Rose Klaholtz DeVeny, and her father had been the Evangelical minister there. Since her husband did not understand any German the family came to our church. Mrs. DeVeny was a devoted and faithful contributor to our church music and when they returned to the Evangelical church after English language services began in 1913 the choir certainly did miss her.
In the 1950 survey of the ethnic composition of the Official Board made as a part of the writer's doctoral study, approximately half of the members were found to have a strain of German in their ancestry. An informed guess as to the percentage of people having some German ancestry in the congre- gation as a whole would set the figure as high as about seventy percent.
Negro Contribution
Until the Seventh Street African Methodist Church was organized in 1897 the Negro families in Lorain attended the Methodist and Congregational churches. There were not many of them but they were very active members and their contribution ex- ceeded their numbers. In our church these families included the Thompsons, the Chandlers, and the Holts. T. R. King was possibly the most mixed member we have ever had, racially speaking. He was more Indian than either Negro or white, and he married one of the Holt girls. Mrs. H. D. Root mentioned his long prayers in her paper "Praying Christians" and recalled that they invaribly started, "This blessed evenin' as it were. . no matter what the time of day. The Negro women in par- ticular left their names on the Ladies Aid record, and two little Negro girls were among those who helped to donate the first silver communion service.
When the Seventh Street church was organized
many white people urged these Negro families to remain with us, but they said then that "now there were more of" them, they "wanted to be with their own people." Much may have lain behind their simple statement and one wonders what the full story or stories really were, but the fact remains that although our church has grown increasingly cosmo- politan with the years we have never had any Negro members since.
Twentieth Century Immigration
The tremendous immigration of the early twentieth century in Lorain was predominately of Catholic origin although by no means exclusively, and not much absorption into our church could be expected very soon. Never-the-less there has been some and more continues. Many people have forgotten that the Rader family were Hungarian, largely because the boys became so fluent in English and grew up with us. When Albert Rader led Epworth League they used to accuse him of looking in the dictionary to pick out the longest words. Charles had a good tenor voice and sang in the choir for many years. It was he who, one bitter cold winter night at choir practice, politely gave up the seat he had been sitting in three time to late-coming tenors. When the fourth tenor appeared Charlie announced he had "warmed up" enough seats for people, and from that point on they could "warm their own!"
In the 1950 survey previously mentioned it was found that less than ten percent of the church fam- ilies had been drawn from the later immigration, with the Italian at that time contributing the most. Some church people, including several ministers, have attempted to speed up this absorption by de- veloping an interest in certain families from among the recent immigrations. Almost invariably the pattern has been the same: the people are interested and come for awhile but in the long run "don't feel at home" and drift away. Apparently such ab- sorption cannot be forced, but it is coming gradually and showing central European origin are slowly "marrying in" to stay, and as intermarriage increases there will be more. The ethnic composition of the Official Board families in 1950 was rather interest- ing: it is included among the miscellanea with this history. Most recently of all, we have sponsored the Michaelides family who came to us in our centennial year direct from Greece and are now learning English in our midst. We hope they will stay long enough to "feel comfortable" among us.
Grace Church Contribution
The long, gradual process of turning our little family pioneer church into a big city church, begun through internal and external immigration, was ac- celerated by the first church merger in 1929. Of all the Methodist churches in Lorain the one that joined us in 1929, Grace Methodist Episcopal church, was the only one which our church had no share in starting. Grace church began with a Sunday School organized in South Lorain in July 1900 which met in the Macabee Hall on E. 29th St., near Pearl Ave. When the Sheffield Land Co. laid out South Lorain, land was set aside for church use. On Sunday afternoon, Nov. 24, 1901 the cornerstone for Grace Church building was laid on East 31st St. next to
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Lowell School. The building was dedicated on Feb. 23, 1902.
The Grace congregation was composed mostly of Methodists from Johnston and Mckeesport, Pennsyl- vania, who were connected with the steel industry. It was a very active and live church but as the steel people began to move downtown many of them transferred to the First Methodist or Congregational churches, and the membership of Grace began to dwindle. By 1929 less than fifty members were left and it was decided to close the church and unite with ours. The decision was made "regretfully" on their part but has proved a joy on ours.
They brought with them a bank account, and when their church building was ultimately sold to the "Assemblies of God" (it is now become the "Lorain Gospel Tabernacle" and holds some Spanish language services) the proceeds went into our build- ing fund. Best of all, it brought into our church on one Sunday in a body forty one of the finest Christians the church has ever received, everyone without exception a devoted and capable church worker. Their names are in the record and one can hardly name one or two without mentioning the other thirty nine or forty. A few, D. W. Lawrence
and Frank Procter among them, have gone on to their reward, but most of them are still present and active.
How We have Grown
In general, the growth in membership in our church has followed the population growth of the town. When we became a station church in 1875, the membership was 85. That was a drop from the original 108, but is still good considering that the membership had been almost halved only two or three years previously. In 1890 it had grown to 280. The membership has not always been counted the same way over the years; in comparing figures one must first find how the relatively inactive members are being tallied. An interesting little project for somebody might be to see whether our membership has grown proportionately with the town, but the results would hardly be valid without considering the growth in the number of churches as well. If someone wishes to go to the trouble of assembling all the data necessary for a complete picture it could easily be made into a study for an advanced degree of some sort, and the project is free for anyone wishing to use it!
Catherine Gregg, 1956
Baptism
IN EARLY LORAIN, what was more natural and convenient than to use the facilities of nature for baptism, as in Bible times?
Records show that immersion in Lake Erie was a common procedure. The service would be held some Sunday afternoon in summer. Church members on the shore sang hymns, the pastor led the person to be immersed into the lake, walking out to a reason- able depth, and then a quick, complete covering by water.
There was no curiosity manifested by those on the shore. It was the usual custom.
The Methodist Discipline reads:
"Let every adult person, and the parents of every child to be baptized, have the choice of sprinkling, pouring or immersion. It is proper and desirable that this Sacrament should not only be accompanied by prayer, admonition and the reading of Scriptures, as herein provided, but that it should be administered in the presence of people and most suitably in the house of God."
Are there many of us learned enough to be able to discuss the subject of immersion with those who be- lieve it is the only approved way?
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