USA > Virginia > Virginia Baptist ministers. 5th series, 1902-1914, with supplement > Part 30
Note: The text from this book was generated using artificial intelligence so there may be some errors. The full pages can be found on Archive.org (link on the Part 1 page).
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10 | Part 11 | Part 12 | Part 13 | Part 14 | Part 15 | Part 16 | Part 17 | Part 18 | Part 19 | Part 20 | Part 21 | Part 22 | Part 23 | Part 24 | Part 25 | Part 26 | Part 27 | Part 28 | Part 29 | Part 30 | Part 31 | Part 32 | Part 33
462
463
ROBERT JOSIAH WILLINGHAM
large, comfortable, old-fashioned house, with big porches, big attic, and high chimneys. The meeting-house of Concord Church, where the family worshiped, was a substantial but plain frame building, with the entrance on the side, and was about three miles from "Gravel Hill." The Sunday school knew nothing of "lesson helps" and "graded lessons," but catechisms were so used that the children learned from them the real gist of the gospel, and along with the catechisms went learning by heart many verses from the Bible; hymns were also committed to memory. One day the superintendent announced that the scholars must all learn by heart all of the hymn "From Greenland's Icy Mountains." There was one little boy there that day who thought that he was so small he would not be expected to learn this hymn, but in this he was mistaken. It was his mother's custom, on the way home from church on Sunday, to talk to the children about the sermon and the lessons of the day, and at this time she also taught them hymns. So Sabbath after Sabbath the hymn was worked at until the little boy was able to stand up before the whole school and recite it. Especially did these lines
"Shall we whose souls are lighted With wisdom from on high, Shall we to men benighted The lamp of life deny?"
rivet themselves upon the heart of the boy. As the years came and went they rang in his memory, and no doubt had much to do with making him at last a great mission secretary. The two brothers, Calder and Robert, were nearly the same age, and as boys they ate, slept, studied, played, and prayed together, and on the fourth Sunday in August, 1867, both were baptized by Rev. Joseph A. Lawton.
In the fall of 1868 Robert entered the University of Georgia, Athens. In 1873, after four years in the Uni-
464
VIRGINIA BAPTIST MINISTERS
versity, and one year in the middle of his college course spent in business, he was graduated. The next four years were given to teaching and to business. His father was now a resident of Macon, Ga., and Robert became first assistant and then Principal of the Macon High School. In June, 1877, he entered his father's cotton warehouse and commenced to study law at night. On September 8, 1877, he was married to Miss Sarah Corneille Bacon, the beautiful and accomplished daughter of Robert and Belle Walton Bacon, of Albany, Ga. Now a crisis came in the young man's life. He heard a call. One day, as he was sitting on a street car waiting for it to start, Deacon Walker, his head white and his form bowed, came in, Presently the old man said : "My young brother, has it ever occurred to you that God wants you in some other business than that in which you are now engaged?" The young man looked up and answered : "Why do you ask such a question?" "Because," said the deacon, "I have an idea that God wants you to preach." The young man, thinking that some of his kin people had been talking to the old gentleman, said : "Who has been talking to you about this?" "No one," replied the deacon: "I have simply been impressed this way, and thought I would mention it to you." The same impression had already come to the young man, and not long after this conversation, in front of his father's counting house, he said to his father: "I believe, after all, I will have to preach. I can not get around it. The conviction is on me by day and by night. I want to do what God wants me to do, and I am impressed that to preach is His will." At these words great tears ran down his father's cheeks as he said : "Why, my boy, the evening you were born I prayed for that. I went aside into the little shed room of our home and prayed God, if it was His will, to make you a preacher of the gospel; but my
ROBERT JOSIAH WILLINGHAM 465
faith had grown very weak." So weak had the father's faith grown that, as his sons grew up and as he saw Robert's turn for business, he was wont to say: "R. J. will be one day the richest of my boys." On December 19, 1877, the young man was licensed to preach by the First Baptist Church, Macon, and the first day of the fol- lowing January, having left his family in Macon, he reached Louisville to enter the Southern Baptist Theo- logical Seminary. He preached his first sermon January 28, 1878, and on June 2, 1878, was ordained, at the First Baptist Church, Macon, the presbytery being composed of these ministers : Drs. T. E. Skinner, S. Boykin, A. J. Battle, J. J. Brantley, and T. C. Teasdale. His second year at the Seminary, Mr. Willingham had his family with him. Before this session was out, however, he accepted a call to the Talbotton (Georgia) Church. For part of his time at Talbotton he served also Geneva, Valley Grove, and Thomaston Churches. To reach his Thomaston appointment he had to drive twenty miles. Barnesville was his next pastorate. Here he found the Baptists weak and discouraged, but before his pastorate came to an end a spendid meeting-house costing $9,000 had been built and paid for, and the membership largely increased. In 1887 he received two calls, one to the First Church, Houston, Texas, and the other to the First Church, Chattanooga, Tenn. He accepted the call to Chattanooga, and during the four years of his pastorate there led his people in the erection of a handsome stone meeting-house that cost some $50,000, and received into the church 496 members. During this pastorate he was given the degree of Doctor of Divinity from Mossy Creek (now Carson-Newman) College, and took a trip to Europe, Egypt, and Palestine. Towards the close of 1891 he became pastor of the First Church, Memphis, Tenn. This charge continued a year and nine months,
30
466
VIRGINIA BAPTIST MINISTERS
and from Memphis he moved to Richmond to assume the secretaryship of the Foreign Mission Board, a work to which he was to give some twenty-one years of his life, and render the greatest service of his ministry. It is interesting to remember that all through his fifteen years as pastor and preacher, up to the time when he took charge of the arduous duties in Richmond, he was always the zealous champion of Foreign Missions. An examina- tion of numerous associational minutes shows that at almost every session of the district and State gatherings of which he was a member he made the report or spoke on missions. Long before the Laymen's Movement he called special attention to the obligation of laymen in the matter of education and giving. At the Tennessee Con- vention, in 1889, in his report on Foreign Missions, he said : "Our pastors should preach and teach that the people should know. Our leading laymen should empha- size by word and deed the truth taught, while every Christian should seek and use the many sources of in- formation now so easily obtained. . Besides this, we need system. Not sporadic, spasmotic, high-pressure effort for giving, but regular, faithful worship of God in this grace also. Every church should have a committee of one or more whose special duty it should be to see that Foreign Missions is faithfully presented to the people, and that they are urged to give of their means to its prosecution."
In becoming Corresponding Secretary of the Foreign Mission Board of the Southern Baptist Convention, Dr. Willingham was the third to hold this office, his prede- cessors being James B. Taylor and H. A. Tupper. For his work he had a remarkable combination of physical and spiritual power, with an inherited gift for business affairs. Upon coming to Richmond he was in the full tide of a vigorous manhood. He was a man of com-
467
ROBERT JOSIAH WILLINGHAM
manding appearance. He was six feet one inch tall and weighed some 250 pounds. He would have attracted attention in any crowd. A few years later, when he was setting out to go around the world and visit the various mission stations of his Board, he was on the Minnesota, the ship that carried Mr. Taft, who was then Secretary of War, and was going on business of the United States to the Philippines. A picture of the two men was taken under which was written: "Secretary of War and Secretary of Peace." And there was little to choose between the two men as to nobility of appearance and carriage. Dr. Willingham was a fine business man. One of a group of brothers all of them remarkable for their business ability, his brother Broadus said of him: "Bob is the best business man of us all. If he had turned his attention to money-making he would have been the richest." Before entering the ministry he had put away a goodly sum for when men have to depend on their sav- ings to live. Dr. T. P. Bell says that while Dr. Willing- ham was Secretary he laid all this on the Master's altar. He resisted efforts to increase his salary, and always kept his salary $500 behind any other secretary of any Board of the Convention. Under his leadership the gifts of Southern Baptists to Foreign Missions rose in these twenty-one years from $106,332, in 1893, to $587,458, in 1914. Dr. Willingham brought to his task in Rich- mond the enthusiasm of a great heart, a genuine and absorbing piety, and a commanding and resolute will. The work of a world-wide evangelization became the passion of his soul. In the secret chambers of his life, and in the presence of great multitudes, he believed in the power of prayer and the need of the Holy Spirit. His public addresses for missions were powerful chiefly, perhaps, because those who heard him believed so fully in the sincerity and earnestness of the man. It was not
468
VIRGINIA BAPTIST MINISTERS
an uncommon thing to see him and his audience with tears flowing down their faces, as they planned and pledged for greater things for God and His kingdom. His faith was simple and strong. "He believed sincerely that men everywhere are hopelessly lost without a saving knowledge of Jesus as Saviour. To the making of Christ known, in the remotist regions of the world, Dr. Willing- ham devoted every atom of strength at his command. . Hardly ever did he make an address without portraying the divine origin of missions." Dr. Landrum, in his address at Dr. Willingham's funeral, called atten- tion to how often he began his public prayer with the exclamation, "Holy, holy, holy," and then said: "Will- ingham was a subject, a loyal subject, of the King eternal, immortal, invisible. At the same time through grace he was a son of God, and held daily intercourse with Jesus Christ, his elder brother and Saviour. When he knelt in prayer with a small group of his brethren he literally talked to the Lord Jesus, calling Him 'blessed Master' with a tone of intense affection I have never heard coming from any other human lips." Dr. Bell says that once after a speech of Dr. Willingham had greatly moved the Convention a brother said to him: "What is there in Willingham's speaking that produces such effect ?" Dr. Bell replied: "He is the incarnation of a great cause, and that cause speaks out through him, with- out let or hindrance. It is not Willingham, it is Foreign Missions." At another time a keen observer compared him with another speaker, regarded as quite an orator, - speak, you feel that and said: "When you hear
his was a great speech, and you go away thinking of -'s great speaking power. But when you hear Bob Willingham you go away thinking Foreign Missions is the greatest thing in the world."
469
ROBERT JOSIAH WILLINGHAM
Whether in the office at Richmond, or going through the length and breadth of the South, or on the platform as a speaker for the cause he loved so well, he was a tireless worker. With pen and voice and purse and thought he labored for the success of missions. No one could come near him and not feel the earnestness and zeal of the man. Everything seemed secondary with him to the great purpose of his life. He brought things to pass. With him business sense and deep consecration and love to God were wedded in a blessed union. At all times resourceful, when the crisis of a debt threatened he redoubled efforts and devised new plans for victory. The figures give inadequately the story of what was done for missions in the twenty years of his leadership. The report of the Foreign Board to the Convention, after Dr. Willingham's death, contrasting the beginning and close of his service with the Board, said: "Then there were only a few day schools; now there are schools ranging from the kindergarten to the college and the theological seminary. Then there were no hospitals or printing plants; now there are eight hospital buildings, where eleven medical missionaries treated 74,839 patients last year, and a number of printing plants, which send out millions of pages of literature. One of the greatest achievements of Dr. Willingham's administration was the remarkable increase of interest and growth in con- tributions from the churches. In 1893 there was hardly a church in the whole Convention that had any adequate conception of its duty to Foreign Missions, if we are to judge the interest of the church by its con- tributions. Then Virginia led all the States with a total contribution of $22,803 ; in 1914, Virginia again led with $80,655. It would be a remarkable story if we could tell it; how the great Secretary went from church to church, and with burning appeals aroused the people to
470
VIRGINIA BAPTIST MINISTERS
do far greater things. Often with a single supreme effort he increased the contributions of a church many- fold for world-wide missions."
Upon moving to Richmond, Dr. Willingham pur- chased, as his predecessor, Dr. Tupper, had done upon coming to Richmond, a spacious home. The residence Dr. Willingham bought was on the northeast corner of Fifth and Cary Streets, and was built by Mr. Wm. Barrett. Here Dr. Willingham maintained his home, with his many children, in generous and comfortable, but not lavish or extravagant, style, and received in gracious hospitality hundreds not to say thousands of his brethren, and scores of missionaries. Towards the end of his life, when some of his children had gone to homes of their own, he sold this large house and moved to a smaller one. Dr. Willingham was a faithful church member, not allowing his official duties to keep him from interest and loyalty to his pastor and church. He was in the habit of going to prayer-meeting, and often preached in the Richmond churches of his own and other denominations. After his death one of the secular papers in an editorial said: "He found time in the midst of nerve-consuming labors to perform that personal Christian service dear to his heart. Sometimes he staggered under the burden of his work, and sometimes he seemed ready to fall in his tracks, but he was scarcely less frequent in visitation than was the pastor of the church to which he belonged, and scarcely less constant in his devotion to the suffering. Many an humble mis- sion, many a struggling colored congregation, many a heart-wrung man, torn with temptation, was blessed by his endeavors. He never forgot, and often after months of separation, he would take up, precisely where he left it, some argument he had used in persuading a friend to nobler service."
471
ROBERT JOSIAH WILLINGHAM
Dr. Willingham was devoted to his family, and strove to make them happy. Since he came from a large house- hold he knew how to adapt himself to children. "From their babyhood he romped and played with them, tossing them up in the air and riding them on his feet. As they grew older he would sing to them and with them, enter- taining them with his college songs as well as with Sunday-school hymns. When the children had company he put himself out to help entertain them; was very fond of young people; enjoyed teasing them. He played chess, checkers, and backgammon with his children dur- ing their vacation, and in the late afternoons he and his older boys had games of quoits. As his children grew older he enjoyed walking with them, strolling, chatting, and getting acquainted. He would take them fishing and often went swimming in the river with the boys. He looked forward to the little family picnics in the late afternoons; with a basket of good things all would take the car for Forest Hill or Westhampton Park for a pleasant time. . He seemed to feel it a privilege to show attention to the sons and daughters of his Baptist brethren at school in Richmond. So, many stu- dents from Richmond College and the Woman's College came under his roof. The last week of his life he thoroughly enjoyed having several College boys to tea. He was especially fond of music, and always delighted to have a crowd of young people gathered around the piano singing the old songs, and often he joined in."
After having been urged for years by his brethren to take a trip to the far-away mission stations, on Septem- ber 2, 1907, he set out on such a trip with his wife, her expenses being provided privately by the generosity of one or two churches, friends, and relatives. They crossed the continent and visited the mission stations of the Southern Baptist Convention in Japan, China, and
472
VIRGINIA BAPTIST MINISTERS
Italy, and also those of the Northern Baptists in Burmah, and of the English Baptists in India. On April 8, 1908, he returned to his native land. What shall be said of his zeal for missions now, since it burned as a flame before he had seen with his own eyes the needs of the harvest fields? He would not pause to rest after his long journey, but began immediately, by speeches at the Seminary and before the Convention, to lay afresh on the hearts of his brethren the great work.
In the fall of 1913 his health began to fail. Upon his return that year from the Maryland Convention, where he had delivered an address on the life of Dr. R. H. Graves, of Canton, he was taken sick. When he came to realize how ill he was he said one day to the doctor : "Doctor, my work is almost over." After nine weeks in his room he went South seeking renewed strength. He was anxious to be back at his work, and returned the middle of March. Every morning he would go down to the Foreign Board office. An unknown gentleman in Richmond was much impressed by this earnestness of Dr. Willingham, and told Dr. Willingham's son, whom he met on the way to the High School, that what his father was doing day by day in going thus to the office was one of the bravest sights he ever saw. Sunday morning, December 20, 1914, on his way to Sunday school, Dr. Willingham felt badly, and stopped at the Jefferson Hotel, that was just one square from his church. All was done that friends and physicians could do, but he had come to the end of his journey, and in two hours he breathed his last.
The funeral, which took place at the Second Baptist Church, was conducted by the pastor, Rev. Dr. T. Clagett Skinner, who was assisted in the services by Rev. Dr. J. B. Hutson, President of the Foreign Mission Board ; Rev. Dr. B. D. Gray, Corresponding Secretary of the
473
ROBERT JOSIAH WILLINGHAM
Home Mission Board ; Rev. Dr. C. S. Gardner, Professor in the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary; Rev. Dr. R. H. Pitt, Editor of the Religious Herald; Rev. Dr. Emory W. Hunt, of the Foreign Mission Society of the Northern Baptist Convention; Rev. Dr. W. H. Smith, Rev. Dr. T. B. Ray, and Rev. Dr. J. F. Love, Secretaries of the Foreign Mission Board; and Rev. Dr. W. W. Landrum, Pastor of the Broadway Baptist Church, Louisville, Ky. The body was laid to rest in Hollywood Cemetery, near the graves of Curry, Hawthorne, Hatcher, and Whitsitt.
Dr. Willingham was survived by his wife and these children: Robert J., Jr .; Corneille (Mrs. James W. Downer), Calder Trueheart, Benjamin Joseph, Belle (Mrs. Ralph H. Ferrell), Elizabeth Walton Willingham, Carrie Irvin (Mrs. T. Justin Moore), Harris E., Edward Bacon.
HENRY W. DODGE
1815-
On March 28, 1859, Dr. William F. Broaddus wrote from Fredericksburg to his friend, Wm. H. Cabaniss, of Lynchburg, suggesting that the church in Lynchburg call Rev. H. W. Dodge, then pastor in Berryville. In the letter Dr. Broaddus said of Dr. Dodge: "He is a very excellent preacher, of fine education, and of lovely character. He has an amiable wife and three children. I think (I am not sure), he could be moved. He has been years in his present field, universally loved and honored. Should you think of him, correspond with him speedily. He will be much in demand." (The Berryville Church Minutes show that he became pastor in September, 1853, and that he resigned August 20, 1859.) The Lynchburg church called Dr. Dodge, he accepted the call, and in July, 1859, began his work in Lynchburg. The very day that his family passed Harper's Ferry, on their way to Lynchburg, John Brown was hiding in the neighboring mountains. Dr. Dodge continued as pastor in Lynchburg until 1867. During this pastorate many, who are now members of the First Church, were brought into the kingdom of God. One of the oldest members of the church tells of a glorious revival in the church, during the War, that went on for three or four months, Dr. Dodge conducting the meeting, the singing being led by Mr. Cabaniss.
At the annual session of the General Association, in 1854, at which session J. G. Oncken, of Germany, was present and spoke, Dr. Dodge was appointed to preach the next year the introductory sermon. The next session
474
475
HENRY W. DODGE
was held in Charlottesville, commencing on Thursday, May 31st. The minutes record that "On motion the Association adjourned to hear the introductory sermon, which was preached by Brother H. W. Dodge, from Jeremiah 23 : 6, 'The Lord our righteousness'." This year the Berryville church, which was then in the Salem Union Association, reported 78 baptisms. The follow- ing year the minutes show that Dr. Dodge had baptized into the fellowship of his church Rev. John T. Tabler, a Lutheran minister, who became a missionary of the State Mission Board in Highland County. In 1860 Dr. Dodge was appointed on several important committees of the General Association, and as a delegate to the Western Association that was to meet that year in Fin- castle. He was chairman of a committee to report the following year "on the best system of religious in- struction for our colored people." The following year the committee having no report it was continued, and it was several years before any report on this subject was made, and then there seems to have been a different committee.
From Lynchburg Dr. Dodge moved to the Potomac Association, some time in 1865 or 1866, and took charge of these churches: Pleasant Vale, Upperville, and Ebenezer. About 1870 he resigned Pleasant Vale to accept a call to Ketockton. He resigned the pastorate of these churches in January, 1872, and then went to Texas, where the rest of his life was spent. He was married twice; his first wife was Miss Abbie Brown, of Wash- ington, D. C., the daughter of Rev. Dr. O. B. Brown. The only child of this marriage (Mrs. William Kerfoot) is still living. His second wife was Mrs. Ida Latham; with her Dr. Dodge conducted a school in Lynchburg after the War. The two children of this marriage were William R. and Clarence.
476
VIRGINIA BAPTIST MINISTERS
Dr. Dodge was a man of scholarship and literary tastes. He was fond of books, and in his old age, when he did not have large means for the purchase of books, he wrote to a friend that he must needs content himself with reading the titles. He was of the opinion that every one should read with ease some other language than his own; his choice would have been, "Greek- modern Greek," for he agreed with a French author in regarding the Greek as the most beautiful language in the world. One who knew Dr. Dodge well calls him "one of our greatest preachers, poetical, scholarly, pro- found, magnetic." He was born November 16, 1815, in Rappahannock County.
VINCENT THOMAS SETTLE 1823-1892
Rather the larger part of the ministry of Rev. Vincent Thomas Settle was spent in Missouri. He was, however, a native of Virginia, and some seventeen years he labored in the Old Dominion. He was born May 28, 1823, at "Mountain View" farm, Warren County (then Frederick County), Virginia, his parents being Vincent and Catherine Shull Settle. He was one of thirteen children, seven boys and six girls, and, of this number, nine lived to mature age. "Mountain View," his birthplace, was originally granted to Lord Fairfax by the Crown. After having studied at the Lisbon and Front Royal Academies, Professors Latham and J. Worthington Smith being among his teachers, he himself was an assistant in the latter institution for several years. Upon his conversion he was baptized, by Rev. John Ogilvie, into the fellow- ship of the Goose Creek (now Pleasant Vale) Baptist Church, Fauquier County, Virginia. In October, 1853, at Front Royal, he was licensed to preach, and, in August of the following year, he and his brother, Josiah J. Settle, were ordained at St. Stephen's Church, Nelson County. His first pastorate, in 1856 and 1857, was at Lexington, Va., and his next at Mount Crawford, Rockingham County, Virginia. At this latter place he remained from 1858 to 1861, and here he was married, April 30, 1859, to Miss Caroline L. Turley, youngest daughter of Cyrus and Elizabeth Turley. Of the five sons and three daughters born of this union, one son and one daughter died in infancy. About 1863, under the employ of the Old (Goshen) Board, he preached for the Mount Moriah Church, Amherst County. Before leaving Virginia to
Need help finding more records? Try our genealogical records directory which has more than 1 million sources to help you more easily locate the available records.