USA > Virginia > Virginia Baptist ministers. 4th series, 1885-1902 > Part 15
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In the summer of 1894 Dr. Long was seeking rest and health in Charlottesville, where happy and useful years had been spent. And here, on the 6th of August, death
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overtook him, and so it came to pass that his funeral took place in the church where he had once been pastor, and he was laid to rest among the Amherst hills, amidst familiar and beloved spots, and not far from the place where he had first seen the light of day. Not long before the end he said to Dr. N. K. Davis, who sat by his bed- side: "Do you remember the last sermon I preached here? The text was: 'That life which I now live in the flesh I live in faith?' I have been trying hard, very hard, to live up to that."
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CHARLES GORSUCH MERRYMAN
"This is my twenty-eighth birthday. I thank God that He has spared my life so long. Oh, that I had done more for Christ in these years! What failures, what lost privileges, what wasted opportunities fill the past! I spend these last moments of the old year 1888 on my knees imploring God's help and strength that I may be more holy, more devout, more consecrated during the next year. I know He will help me in every hour of it." This is an extract from the diary of Charles Gor- such Merryman, who was for more than six years a Virginia pastor. He was born December 31, 1860, at "Alberton," the family homestead, Baltimore County, Maryland. He studied at the Towson public school, the Baltimore City College, the Johns Hopkins Univer- sity, and then entered the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, Louisville, Ky. During his student days in Baltimore he accepted Christ and was baptized into the fellowship of the Eutaw Place Baptist Church by Dr. F. H. Kerfoot. After his graduation in Louisville, he became pastor of the Greenville Baptist Church, Augusta County. On this difficult field he did good work, completing the meeting-house, paying off some church debts, organizing a mission at Vesuvius, and in many ways strengthened the cause. On April 30, 1890, at the church of St. Michael and All Angels, Baltimore, he was married to Mrs. Charlotte Carter Parsons. In January, 1890, he accepted a call to the Riverside Baptist Church, Baltimore. Here he labored faithfully until his death, July 3, 1894.
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JOHN CHURCHILL WILLIS
In the lower end of Orange County, Virginia, is a place called Indiantown, from the fact that here were found many relics of the aborigines. Near this place, John Churchill Willis was born, lived, died, and was buried. His parents were Larkin Willis and Mary Gor- don, the daughter of Rev. John Churchill Gordon, a Baptist preacher. The only child of Mr. Larkin Willis by his first wife was Edward J. Willis, who was a Bap- tist minister, but Mary Gordon, who was a bride at six- teen, was the mother of twenty children, seventeen grow- ing up to be Christian men and women. When the Civil War called for Virginia's sons to go to the front, at one time no less than ten sons from this home were in the ranks of the Confederate Army. One of these was shot on the battlefield and one died in a Federal prison. At the marriage of the youngest child, fifteen brothers and sisters were present. The subject of this sketch, the old- est of this score of children, was born May 21, 1824. At the age of seventeen he was baptized by Elder Charles A. Lewis into the fellowship of the Flat Run Baptist Church, at that time an arm of the Zoar Church, but in 1848 organized into an independent body. Shortly after this time there came into the home of Mr. Larkin Willis, as the teacher for the younger children, Miss Mary Catesby Woodford, from Kentucky. She was a great- granddaughter of General William Woodford, of Revo- lutionary fame, a member of the family that had given its name to Woodford County, Kentucky, and a young woman of rare beauty, singular gentleness, and excellent education. Was it any wonder that the oldest son of the
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home to which she went to teach should fall in love with her? Upon June 26, 1845, soon after he had attained his majority, they were married and forthwith went to live at "Woodlawn" (which was to be their home for almost fifty years), on the banks of the Rapidan River. The bride was a strong Episcopalian, while the husband was no less ardent a Baptist. They decided not to dis- cuss denominational differences, but to read the Bible carefully and to follow its leadings. In a few years she became convinced of the scripturalness of the Baptist position and was buried with Christ in baptism. The
custom thus formed of studying the Bible together was continued to the end of life. It would be hard to find a more beautiful picture of wedded love than that seen at "Woodlawn." The perfect union of husband and wife was "cemented by common joys as they prospered in the world and saw three sons and a daughter grow up to lives of usefulness, and even more by common sorrows as they laid beneath the sod six other children dying in infancy or early youth." He was a man of command- ing presence, being six feet four inches tall and weighing three hundred pounds, of strong mind and versatile in talent. "He was a successful farmer and mill-owner, a good mechanic, a man of all-round common sense, and withal an earnest student and deep thinker." His fellow- citizens often called on him to fill such public offices as those of county surveyor, commissioner, and supervisor, but he was always unwilling to accept any work that kept him long from home, for, like Wordsworth's "Happy Warrior," his bias was "to homefelt pleasures." He kept in full sympathy, to the very end of his life, with young men, who eagerly sought his advice on all subjects. In his wife, who, though charming in society, was a modest "keeper at home," the "distressed found ever a soothing friend and the poor a willing helper." Upon one occa-
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sion Mr. Willis had a painful fall from a buggy, in which his great weight made matters more serious. He longed to get home. Unfortunately, on this occasion, his tender wife, who usually was ready to minister so lov- ingly in case of accident or distress, was herself ill, so she lay in one bed and he in another, while together they sang the songs of Zion from "The Windows of Heaven," accompanied by the voices of their little ones.
On the first Sunday in April, 1858, he was ordained at Flat Run Church to the gospel ministry, the presby- tery consisting of Elders William R. Powell and Joseph A. Billingsley. He immediately became pastor of this church, and this union lasted until his death, a period of thirty-six years. After that day in the spring of 1858, along the country road, where the old church stood, great armies tramped, and in the same neighborhood hundreds fell in battle, but for thirty-six years "he stood fixed and stable, like a towering tree that makes a landmark for a neighborhood." While his regular ministrations through the years were at Flat Run, other churches in Spottsyl- vania, Culpeper, and Orange Counties heard his voice, and at the time of his death, Zoar, along with his mother church, called him pastor. He delighted to work for feeble churches and poor people, and the general section in which he lived offered large opportunity in these direc- tions. He seemed, by reason of his indifference to finan- cial compensation for his services, to belong to a former generation, when a paid ministry was less known among Baptists. "He coveted no salary, sought no place, made no display, seemed absolutely free from jealousy or sore- headedness, much preferred to listen rather than to speak in meetings, studied his Bible day and night and loved to talk about its precious truths. He took no notes into the pulpit, yet had thought out his subject so logically that it was easy for a hearer to make clear analyses of
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his sermons. He was at his best in discussing what are sometimes called the Pauline doctrines of sovereign grace and applying them to the duties of daily life. His man- ner was more didactic than emotional, but was enlivened by an undercurrent of genial, cordial humor and by tropes and figures drawn from agricultural pursuits." Not only was he remarkable for his goodness and his high per- sonal character, but as a thinker, writer, debater, and the- ologian he was independent, strong, able, forceful. Men- tion should be made here of the temperance movement in which Elder William R. Powell was the leading figure, but in which Mr. Willis did efficient work. This episode in the history of the Goshen Association is more fully described in a sketch (in the "Third Series") of Elder W. R. Powell. He was first assisted, and then suc- ceeded, in the editorship of the Virginia Baptist by Mr. Willis.
While the record of his pastorate of one church for thirty-six years is most inspiring, perhaps the picture of his long and happy wedded life is even more beautiful. Some two years before his death he wrote thus about his wife: "My wife! The partner of my joys and sorrows, of my successes and defeats, of my ups and downs, of my elations and mortifications. I am what I am through her influence. Had I adhered more closely to her advice I would have been a better and more successful man.
The midnight lamp finds her in meditation and prayer and in pouring over the pages of the Divine Guide. A wife, a mother, a mentor ! " It had always been the hope and wish of this loving couple that they might not be separated long by death, and it was even as they wished. They "were lovely and pleasant in their lives and in their death they were not divided." Their mar- ried life and its end recall the beautiful lines of Burns' song :
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"John Anderson my jo, John, We clamb the hill thegither, And many a canty day, John, We've had wi' ane anither. Now we maun totter down, John, But hand in hand we'll go, And sleep thegither at the foot, John Anderson my jo, John."
Mr. Willis passed away August 2, 1894; the next day his wife followed him, and they were buried in one grave. On Sunday, September 16, 1894, at Flat Run Baptist Church, an all-day service in memory of this pas- tor and his wife was held. A beautifully printed pro- gramme gave the order of exercises. Professor H. H. Harris, of Richmond College, presided, and explained the meaning of the service. Mr. Edward J. Woodville, a member of the church, paid a tribute to his "faithful and loving pastor." Rev. Dr. T. S. Dunaway, the next speaker, described his friend of many years as the "un- selfish co-worker for Christ." After a recess, the serv- ices were resumed. Mr. R. Lindsay Gordon, of Louisa, and Mr. B. D. Gray, of Culpeper, spoke of Mr. Willis as a "firm friend and safe adviser." Mr. Andrew Jack- son Montague was to have spoken of "the charms of a Christian home" as illustrated by the Willis home, but, he being absent on account of official duties, Professor Harris spoke on this theme. The last speaker was Rev. Dr. E. W. Winfrey, whose subject was: "A Sinner Saved by Grace." This remarkable service was attended by a large concourse of people, many coming long dis- tances, and a goodly number of negroes attested their interest by their presence.
ROBERT N. REAMY
The birthplace of Robert N. Reamy was in the upper part of Richmond County, where he sprang from godly Baptist parentage on February 4, 1817. His birth did not usher him into affluence or the enervating luxuries of life, but he was forced to learn from childhood the necessity of honest toil. He grew to manhood in the stern and exacting school of farm labor, where his physi- cal nature was finely disciplined, and his splendid nat- ural powers became developed into a hardy and resolute spirit and a robust frame of singular muscular strength and endurance. His commanding stature, his long and sinewy limbs, and his independent and ardent nature must have distinguished him in any group in which he was thrown.
Ere he had reached his majority he married Miss Jane Owens, of King George County, Virginia, and so felt the restraining and helpful effects of a happy union which he was destined to enjoy throughout his long life. The educational advantages of his boyhood were of necessity limited, and after his marriage neither his resources nor the burdens and cares of a growing family admitted of his undertaking much in behalf of his mental training and culture. Happily, two years after his marriage, in August, 1839, he was brought under conviction of sin and found peace in surrendering himself to Christ. A movement was on foot at that time to organize the Rap- pahannock Baptist Church, and he became one of its constituent members.
Prayer-meetings in private homes, conducted by both ministers and lay members, were much in vogue at this
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period, and it is quite likely he found occasion, with the encouragement of older brethren, to exercise his gifts from time to time in exhortation and prayer, yet he was forty years of age before he was formally licensed to preach. This was done by Pope's Creek Church on March 2, 1857. The General Association was beginning at this time to lay much stress on the work of Sunday schools and colportage, and Brother Reamy was em- ployed as a colporteur. In this capacity he traversed the Northern Neck, preaching the gospel from house to house and scattering among the people many valuable tracts and choice volumes of religious literature. This work proved to him the opening of a door to the minis- try, and he was ordained at the call of Gibson Church on April 8, 1860.
After his ordination, he entered into pastoral relations with Gibson, in Northumberland, and Round Hill, in King George, the two churches being about fifty miles apart. He was not many years pastor in King George, but, besides his services at Round Hill, he gathered the nucleus from which Oakland Church was subsequently formed. For a few years he was pastor at Pope's Creek, where for most of his life he held his membership.
Gibson Church was the principal field of his minis- terial usefulness. Here, for more than thirty years, he performed a self-denying and arduous ministry crowned with many tokens of the divine blessing and marked by the unfailing confidence and esteem of his brethren. His home was distant from this church about twenty-five miles, and during the long years of his service he was wont to go to his appointments on horseback. Dwellers along the route of his travel grew familiar with both the steed and its stately rider, and could not fail to be im- pressed with the example of his zeal and constancy in heat and cold, in sunshine and cloud, as he pursued with regularity and patience his lonely journeyings.
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Besides the labors which he performed in his own fields, he rendered much helpful assistance to other pas- tors in evangelistic meetings, his heart always being so enlisted in such efforts that he would attend them even at the serious sacrifice of his own private interests. He was wont to tell how at times he would toil in the field under the moon far into the night that he might take the daytime to attend revival meetings.
As has been intimated, Brother Reamy labored throughout his ministry under grave embarrassments. His family was large, eighteen children having been born to him; his farm was limited in extent and fertility, his remuneration by the churches was meager, and during much of his life a rheumatic ailment impaired his ac- tivity. It seems almost marvelous under these difficul- ties that he should have achieved the measure of success that marked his life.
Our brother may fairly be said to have been a dia- mond in the rough. Beneath a rugged exterior, which never owed anything to meretricious style or ornament, he carried a warm and honest heart, an humbly pious spirit, and an ardent yearning for souls. He was loyal to his convictions, fearless in their defense, independent in his opinions, imbued with a nice sense of justice and honor, and true as steel to his friends.
His preaching was as marked as his own individuality and was the expression of his own feelings, a reflection of his deep religious experiences, the fruitage of his quiet meditations, the lessons of his daily observations, and the flashes of inspiration which came to him at times. In manner he was not in the faintest degree artificial or affected, but was simple, natural, and as spontaneous as a mountain streamlet borne onward all impetuous and untrammeled in the flow of its current.
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He possessed a strong and penetrating voice, and when addressing an audience the wide sweep of his long arms seemed to give weight to his words. A muscular pecu- liarity gave a singular power of expansion and contrac- tion to his forehead, so that his thick, dark hair over his brow would rise and fall as if in harmony with the feel- ings that rose and fell in his breast. Thus impressive and unique in his personality, he was probably never dis- turbed by a sleepy hearer.
He was well schooled in the discipline of sorrow. Two manly sons who fell in battle in '64 and '65 cast a pall on his home, and the loss of other children multiplied his grief.
The evening of his life was greatly cheered and com- forted by his son, A. Judson Reamy, whom he was privi- leged to see enter the ministry with many signs of a highly successful and useful career. The cup of his pa- rental joy would have probably overflowed had he lived to see Luther, the son of his old age, also assuming the ministerial mantle.
Brother Reamy peacefully died at his home in his na- tive county, in the seventy-eighth year of his age, on August 27, 1894, and was interred in the family ceme- tery on the farm of his son Luther, where his grave is suitably marked by a monument erected by the Gibson Baptist Church. With almost his dying breath he was heard to exclaim: "Father, open the gates and let me through." The gates were opened, and the toil-worn warrior was admitted to his rest and crown.
George W. Beale.
JOHN A. BROADUS
The Broadus (or Broaddus*) family has been well known in Virginia for the best part of a century. It is of Welsh origin, and the name was once spelled Broad- hurst. Many are its members who have risen above medi- ocrity, for gifts and goodness, and of these, several have been Baptist ministers. The elder Andrew Broaddus was a distinguished pulpit orator, between whom and the subject of this sketch a strong likeness, despite marked difference, is discernible. Major Edmund Broadus, the father of John A. Broadus, was a man of mark and in- fluence, due to his robust common sense and sturdy prob- ity, as well as a decided Christian and stanch Baptist, who, though no politician and refusing the politician's arts, was for years elected to represent Culpeper County in the Legislature of Virginia, and, indeed, was never defeated in any contest before the people. John A. Broadus was blessed also in his mother, whose maiden name was Simms. His two maternal uncles, after whom he seems to have been named, were intellectual men, John Simms being a physician and Albert Simms a teacher, whose able, faithful teaching the nephew en- joyed.
John Albert Broadus was born in the county of Culpeper, Virginia, on the 24th of January, 1827, and died March 16, 1895. Once, while he was a student at the State University, several students were talking together of the places of their birth.
*Most of the family spell the name with the double "d"; once when I asked Dr. J. A. Broadus why he differed, he replied: "My father preferred to use only one 'd,' and I have just followed him."
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One after another had mentioned some city or estate bearing a historic name. Presently it was asked: "And you, Broadus, where were you born?" With that pecu- liar manner which we all remember, but which none of us can describe, came the reply : "I was born at the Poor House." It was even so, for when he first saw the light, his father had charge of the county home for the poor. A home it was, and not to be confounded with those refuges for paupers of which every one has read with mingled disgust and horror. Indeed, I, having spent a night there during the War, remember it as a pleasant place, though it still had its old use.
John A. Broadus adds another to the long list of boys born in the country and reared amid "plain living and high thinking" who have won success and honor. We have hints in his own writing which show his to have been a boyhood brightened with love and the opportuni- ties of satisfying his thirst for knowledge. Books were, indeed, scarcer than afterwards, but they were eagerly pored over and their contents mastered. The weekly paper, too, was a boon, and when ministers and others were entertained in his father's home, he was keen to observe them and to listen to their conversation, mak- ing his own reflections on both. There were several brothers and sisters, and he has given us a pleasant pic- ture of the family, with their books, gathered around the fireside during the long winter evenings, and of his going, just before bedtime, without a light, to the loft for apples, bumping his head, perhaps, but able, by feeling, to choose the mellowest apples. Those of us who knew James Madison Broadus understand with what a good and noble brother and playmate John's boyhood was blessed. The moral and religious influence of that home was the best possible, all of the children being early converted, and one of the girls becoming the wife of a minister. One
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of his schoolmates was the afterwards celebrated A. P. Hill, a general in the Confederate Army and a martyr to the "Lost Cause." Dr. Broadus once said to me: "It took a very smart boy to get ahead of A. P. Hill in the class."
While still a youth, and with modest acquirements, but thorough as far as he had gone, John became a country school-master, that stepping-stone, with so many, to higher things. His school was in Clarke County, at the home of Mr. Kerfoot. He once said in my presence : "I was a hard rider, and so they gave me a mule."
It was at this period that the question of his life work, after long and solemn weighing, was, once for all, de- cided. He was ambitious, and no doubt the thought of statesmanship was very attractive. He had also a love of knowledge for its sake and may well have thought of a cloistered existence where all the wealth of the world's learning would be spread before him. He must have known, too, something of the peculiar trials of the Christian ministry. But, on the other hand, he had taken duty for his watch-word and felt the constraining power of the love of Christ. He himself tells us how, after one of the fervid appeals of Poindexter, who had portrayed as only he could the heroic sacrifice of the first Mrs. Judson and her glorious crown, a young man said, with deep but suppressed emotion : "Brother Poindexter, it is decided; I must preach." That young man was no other than himself, and from that moment he looked not back, but pressed forward with his characteristic force of character, first to gain the needed preparation and then to fulfil his high calling.
He must have been in his twentieth year when his father, in 1846, partly perhaps to secure in a very desir -. able community the means of support, but chiefly, no doubt, to give him the best facilities for acquiring wide
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and thorough scholarship, removed to the University of Virginia and took charge of the State students' boarding- house on Monroe Hill. Here the family remained four years, the father's death coinciding with the graduation of the son, who carried away that degree of M. A. so highly esteemed by all who have any just idea of the thorough teaching and searching examinations of that institution whose diploma represents nothing less than the actual attainments of the student. When John A. Broadus entered the University the number of students was not much over one hundred and fifty, but from that time till 1856-7 the number rose rapidly, nearly doubling before he left, and reaching in his tutorial years nearly seven hundred. Many of the students at that time were irreligious and wild, but there were not wanting men both earnestly pious and hard and successful students ; among these he was easily first. He never failed to an- swer a question in the class and to answer it correctly. Two of the professors were remarkable men and exerted a beneficent influence upon him. Dr. McGuffey, the Pro- fessor of Philosophy, had a peculiar power to awaken enthusiasm in his students. This writer often found him- self overcome with feeling in that classroom so power- fully was all his mental machinery set into operation. The professor relied much on the Socratic method. He was not satisfied with a student's telling what was in the text-book or in the lecture, but insisted on the stu- dent's own thoughts on the subject and the reasons for them; and if a student undertook to defend an erroneous view, he would be forced by his own answers to see that it led to a palpably false conclusion. One day, Broadus was asked: "What do you think of the author's state- ment?" "I have never thought about it." "Think about it now and give your idea." Dr. Broadus once told me that that moment was a turning point in his life, and that
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