USA > Virginia > Virginia Baptist ministers. 5th series, 1902-1914, with supplement > Part 12
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ried to Miss Mattie A. Laine, who, with four daughters, survived him. "In the guidance and comfort of his household he was the embodiment of Scriptural faithful- ness, of thoughtful attention, of delicate tact, of prac- tical help and service. To visitors beneath his roof, and to his brethren of the ministry notably, his overflowing kindness, his social warmth of feeling, and his grace of hospitality ever bespoke his generous and tender heart." On February 10, 1907, in the forty-eighth year of his age, he passed away, after only a week's illness of pneumonia. The beautiful obituary, from the pen of Rev. G. W. Beale, is the basis of this sketch.
WILLIAM SYDNOR PENICK 1836-1907
At "Oak Plain," Halifax County, Virginia, the planta- tion of his parents, William and Elizabeth Armistead Penick, on May 12, 1836, William Sydnor Penick, the third child of the home, was born. Until he was fifteen years old "he lived in the glad freedom of plantation life before-the-War," and shared, with his three brothers and two sisters, the careful training of Mr. Berryman Green and Mr. Rufus Murrell, cultured gentlemen who were tutors in this home. According to the custom of the day the tutor roomed in the "office," in the yard, with the boys, and instructed all the children in Latin, Greek, Mathematics, and the English branches. Doubtless "manners" and dancing were not omitted from the cur- riculum of this school. Mr. Penick was an ardent lover of the chase, and his son, Sydnor, at an early age, having a hunter of his own, imbibed a love for horses, dogs, and hunting, especially following the hounds, that went with him through life. Since the father and the tutor united in desiring that young Sydnor should become a lawyer, and since it was Mr. Penick's opinion that a business training was fundamental to that profession, the youth, at the age of fifteen, was "bound" for three years to a Mr. Marshall, a successful merchant in Charlotte County. During these years the young man met all sorts and con- ditions of men, from the backwoods people to the aristocrats of the great neighboring tobacco plantations, and so had full opportunity to learn human nature. Nor was this period without trying experiences that taught hard lessons in self-denial and self-control. From his
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very childhood the youth won friends by his charm and courtesy of manner, his quick wit, and his handsome face, that might almost have been called beautiful.
Since Mr. Penick was an ardent Episcopalian (he was also a Whig), it was a distinct disappointment to him when Sydnor, at the age of seventeen, was baptized, probably by Rev. James Longanacre, into the fellowship of the Catawba Baptist Church, his mother's church. Again the father was doomed to disappointment in his plans as to this son's education. When his engagement with Mr. Marshall was over, the young man set out in the stage for Charlottesville and the University of Vir- ginia. On passing through Richmond he was persuaded by friends to enter Richmond College, and he took this step before consulting his father, his plan being to follow his course at the college by further study at the Uni- versity, but alas, this plan was never carried out. During his years at the college, among his friends were Charles H. Ryland, William E. Hatcher, James B. Taylor, Jr., and C. C. Chaplin, and when he graduated, in 1858, besides him the other members of the class were William E. Hatcher, Harvey Hatcher, Samuel H. Pulliam, John W. Ryland, and Joseph A. Turner. While at college he organized the Philologian Literary Society, being its first president, and in the hall of this society there hangs his portrait, which the society had painted in 1875. After he left the college he kept up an interesting correspondence for many years with his professors, George E. Dabney and Robert Ryland, and, in 1866, when the question arose in the General Association as to the reopening of the col- lege after the ravages of the War, the third speaker in the discussion which resulted in the recommencement of the college was Mr. Penick. In 1871 his alma mater con- ferred on him the degree of Master of Arts, and some years later the honorary degree of Doctor of Divinity.
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Once again his father was disappointed when, at the close of his college course, he decided to be a minister of the gospel and not a lawyer. The fact that his father had suffered financial reverses and was not able to send him to the University of Virginia may have had something to do with this decision, but there was another event that helped to bring about this step. His mother, a woman of strong will and deep consecration, had felt that her son Sydnor, being the most restless and self-willed of her children, needed more earnest and continuous prayer than any of the others. One day the boy, in mad search for some fishing tackle, rushed up into the attic. There he overheard his mother telling the Lord that although Sydnor was the most unruly of her boys and most bent on the pleasures of this life, still she implored that he might be converted and become a Baptist preacher. He never forgot this prayer. His ordination to the ministry took place at the church of his childhood, Catawba, in Halifax County, the presbytery being composed of these ministers : A. M. Poindexter, A. B. Brown, and John H. Lacy.
With his ordination began a ministry of almost half a century. Before his work as a regular pastor was broken in upon by the War he served successfully a weak church at Chatham, the county-seat of Pittsylvania County, and, by building up a Sunday school of over two hundred scholars, laid the foundations for a strong church. On November 2, 1859, he was married, at Chatham, to Miss Betty Tarpley Martin, a daughter of Dr. Chesley Martin and Rebecca White, and the granddaughter of Dr. Rawley White, of Pittsylvania. In August, 1861, he went into the Confederate Army as Captain of the David Logan Guards, a militia company equipped by his friend and cousin, Mr. David Logan, of Halifax County. In 1868, sharing, with the vast majority of the Southern
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people, the deep poverty that was part of the heritage of the War, with his young wife and three children, he went as a missionary of the State Mission Board to Charles Town, W. Va. The meeting-house was in ruins, so a semi-monthly service Sunday morning was held in the courthouse, while for the afternoons of these days he preached at old Zoah, the first house of worship built in Jefferson County. The other Sundays of the month were given to Mt. Zion, a large country church in Berkeley County, and to the cause at Martinsburg, where there was no Baptist Church. At this place, in the parlor of Mrs. Henry Kratz, he organized, with some five women, a Baptist Church. The outlook here was soon so promising that the Board had him give his whole time to Martinsburg. In his report, in 1871, to the State Mis- sion Board, he said: " Since I have been in the Valley, three years, I have paid about $2,000 worth of debt for the Charles Town Church. In Mar- tinsburg we have built a fine brick church which has cost us about $6,000. The Mt. Zion Church has been refitted and repainted; the old Zoar Church refitted and painted on the inside." After leaving Martinsburg he was pastor for seven years of the First Church of Alexandria, and then for four years of the High Street Church, Balti- more. While in Baltimore he supplied, during the sum- mer, for churches in New York and Yonkers. About this time he had calls from churches in New York State and Brooklyn that were declined, while one from the First Church of Shreveport, La., was accepted. Subse- quent events show that his decision in this matter was of God, for it is probable that the best work of his life was done in this city of the near Southwest. Not only was he for thirteen years the beloved pastor of his church, but the denomination felt his helpful influence all through the State, nor was this service of his bound in
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by State lines. He came to be also one of the first citizens of his city, loved and respected, not only by Gentiles, but by the Jews as well. His literary culture and fine address led to his being much in demand for college commencements and other similar occasions, while his record during the Civil War gave him high rank among the Confederate Veteran organizations. In 1887 he established in Shreveport the Genevieve Orphanage, which has grown into an institution which is of service and blessing to north Louisiana. It is interesting, in this connection, to know that as early as 1866 he offered, in the General Association of Virginia, a resolution calling for a committee to look into the matter of caring for and educating the children of deceased Baptist ministers of Virginia. While no practical results came from this motion, it is worthy of note that the care of orphan children was already a matter that concerned him. In 1898 he resigned at Shreveport and became pastor at Elizabeth City, N. C., but after three years he returned to the First Church at Shreveport and continued his work there until forced by failing strength to give up the active work of so large a church. After this he minis- tered for two years to the Ardis Memorial, an offspring of the First Church. He had hoped that he might labor to the very end, but this was not to be. For two years he was called on to wait and watch, with his labor done. Finally the messenger came, and on Sunday, June 30, 1907, just at the hour when for almost half a century, week after week, he had pronounced the benediction at the close of the morning service, he passed to the service of the heavenly congregation that shall never break up. The funeral was conducted by Dr. H. A. Sumrell, pastor of the First Baptist Church, and Dr. Jasper K. Smith, pastor of the First Presbyterian Church, all of the pastors of the city taking part in the service. Along the
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streets to the Oakland Cemetery, where the body was laid to rest, the crowds stood silent and tearful as the proces- sion passed, and the Confederate Veterans covered the grave with their flag.
Dr. Penick was a man of unusually fine appearance and bearing. In the days of his prime, straight as an Indian and of portly build, he would have attracted attention in any crowd. "He was an industrious stu- dent, a clear thinker, a sound theologian." He prepared his sermons with great care, usually writing out fully what he expected to say, although he did not always keep closely to his manuscript in the pulpit. His sense of humor was keen and he was gifted as a raconteur. He was devoted to his home, and often refused invitations for engagements that would have meant protracted absence from his family. He was hospitable in a high degree and in great demand as a guest. Possibly his chief characteristic was his spirit of forgiveness, one of his favorite maxims being: "As my Father forgives me, a miserable sinner, should not I forgive my brother ?"
His widow is now living in New Orleans, and there are six surviving children, namely: Chesley, now Mrs. James Burrows Johnson, Charlottesville, Va .; William Sydnor Penick, New Orleans (whose wife was Miss Otelia Jacobs) ; Dr. Raleigh Martin Penick, Shreveport, La. (whose wife was Miss Eugenia Elizabeth Carnal) ; Mary Louise, now Mrs. James Polk Ford, New Orleans ; Nathan Treadway Penick, New Orleans (whose wife was Miss Anne Stephenson) ; Martha Brantley, now Mrs. Burr. D. Ilgenfritz.
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GEORGE BOARDMAN TAYLOR 1832-1907
George Boardman Taylor was born December 27, 1832, in the pleasant and homelike city of Richmond, Va. Its gardens in spring are wreathed with roses and bridal spiræa, and pretty Southern girls, in white, flit from porch to porch with easy neighborliness. Little squirrels skip across the dappled grass under the venerable trees of the old Capitol Square, and life is sweet; but Rich- mond has its cold winters, too, and in those days of unheated houses the inhabitants often waked to find their breath forming a blue mist on the frosty air and their pitchers and basins masked with ice. George came like a belated Christmas gift, on the 27th of December, to the modest home of a Baptist minister, who was later to be the first secretary of the Foreign Mission Board.
His mother was of what Holmes calls the Brahmin caste of New England, with a pious and learned ancestry of ministers and college professors. In the annals of her family linger memories of a kinswoman, Eunice, carried off by the Indians in childhood and held until, as a woman, she no longer cared to return to her white kin; bleak days in New England when such a family as the Williams' often possessed little beside learning and piety. One ancestor saw the light first on one of those "cribbed, confin'd" vessels in which men and women then faced the elements for conscience' sake, carrying ever after his certificate of birth in the unique name: Seaborn Cotton. Another forebear was a chaplain of General Washington, and his descendants like to seek his face in the prow of the boat in which, with his chief, he crossed the Delaware
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River. One ancestor, Rev. Elisha Williams, was the fourth president of Yale. All this, not for vainglory, but to account for an almost morbid conscientiousness and love of books which the subject of this sketch absorbed with his mother's milk. It is the fashion of our day to satirize the stern theology and simple, un- æsthetic lives of that New England theocracy, but they put iron into the blood which our commonwealth could ill spare.
The father's family was also of purely English stock, but more recently come from the old country. It is said that the race was near being extinguished in the green waves of the Atlantic Ocean. Those were days of that dreaded pressgang which Mrs. Gaskell has so vividly portrayed in "Sylvia's Lovers." The vessel on which George Taylor and his wife had embarked for America was overtaken by one of the ships out ranging to seize inen for enlistment, and he would have been carried back to serve, but his wife clung to him as the limpet to the rock. The king's men discovered that to take the man they would have to have the woman too, a double bargain not worth while. The story goes that in the hand-to- hand struggle the baby, James B. Taylor, fell into the water, and by the time he was rescued (who knows how?) the pressmen were glad to be rid of so trouble- some a family. However this may be, that baby, James Taylor, proved one of nature's gentlemen, and when nature and Christianity combine to make a gentleman they make the best one possible. He brought to the moral making of his son remarkable justice and sweet- ness of disposition. Even the irreligious outsider recog- nized his gracious saintliness with none of the antagonism which more self-conscious virtue is apt to rouse.
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It was a deeply pious home, but the piety was genuine, and so tempered by love, common sense and proportion, that none of the six children bred in it were driven by the strict religious training to the opposite extreme. The Bible was read and studied, and numberless hymns were committed to memory, but the shelves were filled with other excellently selected books, and there was a big yard where the children could play. It was not unnatural that in it the two oldest children should enthusiastically build with broomsedge and sticks a "George and Jane College." George had yellow curls and was a lovable little boy. If he did contrive to stick his aunt's scissors down a crack in the porch he helped her get them out again, and disarmed criticism by hugs and kisses.
At first he went to school with his sisters, where the "dame," when disobeyed, used to slip a whalebone out of her stays and administer chastisement, or, failing that, made use of her slipper. He must have been quite a little fellow still when sent to a sanctimonious but very stingy boarding school of the Oliver Twist order. George tried to supplement the meager diet by a large consumption of blackberries, and when these produced a succession of boils he was too cannie to complain in his letters home. He tied his most necessary clothes up in a small bundle, and knowing that his father, on his way to a protracted meeting, was to pass, on the train, a crossroad a few miles off, he slung his small pack over his shoulder, trudged to the spot, signaled the train, and was able comfortably to pour forth his just grievances and return no more to the place of penance. This childish episode illustrates the cool deliberation and spirit of adventure combined in his character. When he was seven his father became for a year chaplain of the University of Virginia, and this period was always remembered with pleasure by the family, who, being rather overgiven to
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introspection and self-communings, needed to be thrown among those who were their equals in breeding and cul- ture, a luxury not always accessible to a Baptist minis- ter's family. From the University the family returned to Richmond, and, as an old man, he used to tell with gusto of swimming and diving with other boys in the pictur- esque James River, and of the jolly fights and feuds between the "hill cats" and the "river cats."
George joined the church when a boy and never regretted it. Combined with his keen sense of life and mischievous love of fun was a deep fund of character and an acute mind leavened by a conscientious, strong sense of duty. His imaginative gifts were not, perhaps, remarkable, but he had rare gifts of reasoning, good judgment, mental grasp, and breadth of spirit. He studied because he loved study, and read widely with exquisite appreciation. He had what might be called real hunger for ideas and trains of thought.
After graduating at Richmond College he taught for a year an "old-field school" in Fluvanna, reading and studying meanwhile on his own account. He began to read law by himself, but could not withstand the "weight of evidence" which was to make him a preacher and pastor.
Nearly three years were spent at the University of Virginia, which at that time rejoiced in the inspiration of such professors as Gessner Harrison and Wm. H. McGuffey. While devoted to his studies, he was active in the Washington Literary Society, taught a Sunday school in the Ragged Mountains, and preached in neigh- boring Baptist churches. He found pleasure and profit in the companionship of John A. Broadus, his lifelong friend, who was then pastor in Charlottesville. Then, as always, he took delight in the discussion and ventilation of ideas in morals and ethics with fellow-students and
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professors. The subject of his own able alumni address at Richmond College, on "The Thinker," shows the favorite bias of his mind. On the other hand, he had strong social instinct which had been little cultivated in his quiet, staid home. He loved the society of intelligent women, and while susceptible to beauty, his many friends were rather remarkable for mental vivacity and sym- pathetic responsiveness than for mere pink-and-white comeliness. In his third session at the University he had a physical breakdown which prevented his taking the Master's degree.
Soon after leaving the University he was called to the pastorate of the infant Franklin Square Baptist Church, Baltimore, where he remained for several years as an inmate of his kinsman Dr. Wilson's home, editing, with Dr. Wilson, The Christian Review, and fighting out for himself many of the theological problems which confront a young preacher.
On May 13, 1858, his life was enriched and broadened by his marriage, at "Hazel Hill," near Fredericksburg, Va., to Susan Spotswood Braxton, one of four sisters distinguished for beauty, charm, and intellectual gifts united to deep, personal piety. A no less ardent Baptist than himself, Sue Braxton's warm, generous heart and gracious personality made her an exceptional pastor's wife. Wit, sunny unselfishness, and unusual conversa- tional gifts combined to make her no less beloved by the poorest negro than by the polished and traveled citizen of the world.
At his marriage George Taylor became pastor of the struggling, nascent church in Staunton, where Baptists were few and little esteemed. The pastor's intellect and his wife's birth and social gifts entitled them to associate with the best people in the beautifully situated mountain town, but they gave themselves with unremitting devo-
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tion to the poor and needy of their own congregation. The husband's days were shared between strenuous sermon-making and pastoral calls and cares. He was ably seconded by his wife, who never grudged a gracious hospitality. In the sixteen years which followed she gave birth to eight children and buried four. Besides his duties to his church the pastor preached frequently for the colored people, for the State Insane Asylum, and for the Deaf, Dumb, and Blind Institution located in Staunton. He supplemented his scant exchequer by writing series of children's books called: "The Oakland Stories"; two boys' books, "Roger Bernard" and "Coster Grew," and a historical novel about the early Baptists of Virginia, "Walter Ennis," all of which have maintained their place in Sunday-school literature. Besides these books he wrote several able tracts on baptism, Baptist history, and religious liberty, and held revivals to which he traveled over the country by buggy, horseback, and railroad. In the hard years which followed the War he taught a boys' academy and several classes in a girls' college. He collected funds South and North for Alle- ghany College and Richmond College. On these agency trips, as later in conducting the Italian Mission, he used the most rigid personal economy. He would eat cheap meals, put up at modest inns, and during winter weather in New York and Boston, though unusually susceptible to cold, he allowed himself no fire in his bedroom, thaw- ing out his rigid fingers to hold a pen by lighting news- papers in his wash-basin. Though late in life he doubted the wisdom of such strains on a delicate physique, and never exacted them from others, it is bracing for a more lax generation to know of such scrupulousness in the use of public money.
As the early and the latter rains, frost, wind and sleet are needed to sweeten and swell the kernel of wheat, so
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trials and cares chastened and developed the character of this man of God. The loss of his children struck him as it could not have done a man less sensitive and tender, and he always maintained that nothing in life had been so terrible as the loss of his firstborn, Bessie, who died sud- denly while he was away from home preaching to a large crowd in Charlottesville. His own health was always so broken and frail that it was a miracle to his doctors and friends how he survived to the ripe age of seventy- five years. In Staunton, as later in Rome, church anxieties gave him sleepless nights and thorny days, and the Italian Mission always had on hand some distressing problem or trying disappointment to vex the responsible head.
Three years after his coming to Staunton the Civil War broke out. Though attached by ties of kindred and friendship to the North, he was an ardent Virginian, and threw himself whole-heartedly into the Southern cause. He was elected captain of a home guard, but very soon after obtained a chaplaincy in Stonewall Jackson's command. He took a full share in visiting the hospitals and in the remarkable revival which swept over the Army of Northern Virginia. Only those who endured it knew what the War and the years following it meant in privations and hardships. The pastor saw his small supply of provisions mutilated and destroyed by an invading army, was paid in Confederate notes or not at all-in short, had his nose to the grind- stone. After occupying several rented houses and boarding a while he had bought a house near the church for a dwelling and paid for it with Confederate money. When the War closed he felt compelled to surrender the property, as he could not otherwise make good the loss to the original owner. When Lee surrendered at Appo- mattox, this man, who had never owned a slave and had
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dearly loved the old family servants hired by his father, lay down on his face and said he did not want to live any longer; but with the buoyancy of a healthy nature he soon took a saner view and wrote to his brother: "In times like these we need to be actively engaged to keep from being unhappy. For my part, I accept the facts as indicating God's will, and acquiesce with a peace of mind I had not thought possible. Perhaps it is a fulfilment of the promise: 'As thy days so shall thy strength be.' Still I confess that ever and anon the sad facts come over me with fresh power and almost crush and paralyze me. But it is all right, and we must remember that we are chiefly connected with a kingdom which is 'not of this world.' I am not without fears for the future. The North is now as clamorous for negro suffrage as they were for emancipation. Then I fear for the negro himself lest he be crushed between the upper and nether millstone. But I have faith that God will overrule all things for the best interests of His cause and people. I feel a deep solicitude for our late President, and bear very hardly the dismemberment of our old Mother State. But because a Christian, I hope to be a good citizen."
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