Hi ■'■■■' mt fflSm MWk iwrai nfiraRi IS d LIBRARY OF THE University of California. GIFT OF THE FAMILY OF REV. DR. GEORGE MOOAR Class 1 — • ASA TURNER A HOME MISSIONARY PATRIARCH AND HIS TIMES BY GEORGE F. MAGOUN, D.D. First President of loiva College. INTRODUCTION BY A. H. CLAPP, D.D. IICAGO Congregational SunDag=5crjaol ano ihtbltsrjing Sorictg Copyright, 1889, by Congregational Sunday-School and Publishing Society. Electrotyped and Printed by Samuel Usher, ill Devonshire Street, Boston, Mass. TO THE Cljurrfjes of loixia, WHOSE NOBLE FRUITAGE IS LARGELY DUE TO THE SEED-SOWING HERE RECORDED, THIS VOLUME IS DEDICATED. 123132 INTRODUCTION. Death is not a rare visitor. He comes often, and takes our greatest and best, as well as the unknown, unloved, and unmissed. But not often does he bear away a man like Asa Turner. This world of the dying has few such men to lose. When such a man is taken, the Christian brotherhood is left vastly the poorer. It is therefore a sacred duty to keep fragrant and influential, so long as it may be kept, a memory so precious. Only those who have tried it can know how hard a task it is — not simply to record the outward events of a long and busy life, but — to reproduce, for those who never saw him, the man, his personality, his work, his spirit, his influence on the churches, the ministers, the denomina- tion that he loved, and on the great states into whose early mate- rial and spiritual development he put so strong a hand, so wise and wide a mind, and so warm a heart. But the friends of Father Turner have in this been greatly favored. The task of painting his picture for the instruction and cheer of those who come after has fallen to friends and brethren with whom it is a labor of love. Few men knew Father Turner longer or more intimately than did he who has borne the chief responsibility of this memoir; and fewer still wield pens that could so deftly outline his strong, marked, forceful, well-nigh unique character. But other friends, well fitted for the work, have lovingly brought in their lights and shadows, till here in bold relief stand out — as vividly as the engraved portrait gives the lineaments of his face— the intellectual and spiritual features of the man as they knew him well, at home, in the pulpit, the parish, the multifarious fields of humane, educa- tional, reformatory, moral, and Christian effort, filling to the brim a life of more than fourscore years. 6 INTBODUCTION. There can come only good from sending forth and from reading this volume. Students of the history of our Western states may see here what manner of men they were who laid in self-denial, faith, and prayer the deep and sure foundations of those wonder- ful empires. Aspiring teachers, eager to hand down their names in honorable connection with some permanent institution of learning, may see the cost at which that distinction is to be hon- estly won. Young ministers and candidates for that sacred call- ing may learn reverence for the men to whose patient toil, sancti- fied common-sense, far-seeing wisdom, and faith, are due, under God, the existence and glorious history of the more than twenty- three hundred Congregational churches now blessing, and in coming years to bless more and more, those wide realms that in Father Turner's youth were only known as a waste, howling wilderness. And every one who loves to see an honest, single- minded, earnest, sincere man, a hater of shams, one who values life for its opportunities to work for Christ and his fellow-men ; who consecrates to that end all his time, native gifts, acquisitions, personal, social, and official influence ; who sees no other use for strength, learning, wit, friendship, or deepest sacred experience — may look into this book and find just that man. And having found him, he will not wonder that all who knew Asa Turner intimately — and even we who knew him only from too infrequent but unforgotten meetings — loved him so well, and count it as one of the bright attractions of heaven that we trust to meet him there with the Saviour whom he here served with unstinted devotion. A. H. CLAPP. Bible House, New York, April 16, 1889. PREFACE. A first object in this piece of biography has been to set forth the subject of it as "himself and not another." If his Christian individuality had not been deemed by many worthy of a memo- rial, it would not have been prepared. Another purpose has been to sketch the story in connection with two imperial states of the Interior in so far as he early bore in them a noble part. At least the materials of this record, now fast passing out of remembrance, it was thought should be preserved. That a patriarchal home missionary of a simple but unique character forms here the central figure is not altogether due to an observance of Macaulay's suggestion to write history biographi- cally. It came to be so by the necessity of the case. Christian men who give their lives from youth on to the development of such marvelous American commonwealths as have emerged from the wilderness in the past fifty years, and are now emerging, can not help becoming historical persons, if they would. When the book was first undertaken the materials for even a personal sketch seemed to be scanty. Like the patriarchs of old, "Father Turner" kept no diary, nor copies of his own letters, nor, generally, those received from his friends. Much time and inquiry brought little return. But when the surrounding facts began to be gathered about his life an opposite embarrass- ment arose. A great deal more has been left than is embraced in these pages. And the drawing of sharp lines — local, chrono- logical, ecclesiastical, and other— has continually been needful. The usual information given in this place, that the subject of the biography speaks for himself, wherever this has been possible, is quite superfluous. Readers will soon discover it for them- selves. The book is most of all indebted for what it contains to his family friends, and next after them — among too many to name — to Rev. Julius A. Reed, of Davenport (from 1855 to 1860 the writer's "parishioner" there), whose unusual fulness of infor- 8 PREFACE. mation and accuracy as to the past need no certificate in Iowa. Some of the best materials here used, and a good part of the stimulus to weave them into one fabric, have been derived from his printed reminiscences, private letters, and personal conversa- tion — an open and generous store. The life that has occasioned these pages was that of one who became a good man under the predominance, early in this century, of a denomination whose polity he accepted, but whose creed he did not. He became an apostolic laborer in a wide region under the predominance of another with whose evangelical faith he sympathized, but with whose church government he did not. A magnanimous Christian liberality, joined with very clear and dis- tinctive convictions, was one result; large reverence and love from good men was another. The pleasant labor concluding with these lines has given a new revelation of a marked personal character and caused propor- tionate delight in it. The writer dearly loved the patriarch when he began, and counted the confidence and affection received from him for forty years one of his most precious possessions. But he lays down the pen with his filial feeling and veneration so increased that he seems to have had little before. To live with him again, as it were, for many months has been a cherished privilege. How much greater will be the privilege of meeting such a servant of Christ at the Master's feet ! CONTENTS. PAGE I. A New England Birthplace 11 II. A New England Boy 19 III. A Christian Convert 26 IV. Unitarian and Orthodox Seventy Years Since . 34 V. A Teacher and a Student ......... 40 VI. At Yale College. — Rebellion. — Revivals . . 45 VII. Preparing for the Ministry 55 VIII. Foreshadowings of Domestic Life 64 IX. Early Illinois and Early Qutncy 71 N. The People and their Preachers 77 XL Home Missionary Beginnings 82 XII. A Pioneer Pastorate 91 XIII. Other Pioneers. — Illinois College 98 XIV. The Pioneers and their College. — Continued . 107 XV. Work other than Pastoral 114 XVI. The Planting of Congregationalism in Illinois . 123 XVII. Frontier Sabbaths. — Temperance. — Missions . 134 XVIII. General Evangelizing Labors 143 XIX. Two Anti-Slavery Episodes .152 XX. Fresh Fields. —Early Iowa 166 XXI. The Gospel West of the Father of Rivers . . 178 XXII. Early Denmark 184 XXIII. A New Home and Work 191 XXIV. First Fellow-Pioneers in Iowa 198 CONTENTS. PAGE XXV. Fellow-Pioneers. — Continued 207 XXVI. Second Pioneer Pastorate 218 XXVII. A Notable Accession 223 XXVIII. The Younger Contingent 231 XXIX. The First Academy and the First College . 241 XXX. More Work and Work for More 252 XXXI. Steady Progress in Iowa 260 XXXII. The Higher Christian Education 268 XXXIII. Reform and Reform Politics 279 XXXIV. A Long Pastorate Ended 293 XXXV. The Decline of Life 301 XXXVI. The End 313 XXXVII. Characteristics 319 XXXVIII. Some Heartfelt Tributes 332 Appendix. Denominations and Christian Unity .... 336 ASA TURNER, A HOME MISSIONARY PATRIARCH, AND HIS TIMES. I. A NEW ENGLAND BIRTHPLACE. Templeton, Massachusetts, is one of the rocky and hilly towns in the north-west of Worcester County. It t is twenty-six miles from the city of Worcester at the south- east, and a little shorter distance west of Fitchburg. It is just west of a line drawn through the highlands from Mount Wachusett in the town of Princeton to Mount Monadnock in the town of Jaffrey, New Hampshire. On a fair day the summits of these mountains are clearly seen at the north and the south-east from the country roads. Templeton is picturesque and olden ; abounding in evergreen forests and heavy stone fences of the primi- tive New England sort, in square old houses, built for large families, with a single stout chimney in the center, and in great and aged elms along the roadways. The soil is variable in quality, much of it being valuable only for the trees it bears ; there are blueberries and blackberries in the woods ; the climate is such that " plants that are hardy only a few miles distant fail to survive the winter " ; hay and potatoes are the chief crops, though apples also 12 ASA TUB NEB. are raised. The people are not altogether farmers. It is impossible on their rough acres to make a living without some outside labor. A visitor will notice the wives and daughters weaving cane backs and seats of chairs for the factories at Gardner, the next town east. Two genera- tions or more ago a family which bought a farm of two hundred acres, including rocks, was forty years paying for it, meeting the interest on the purchase and the taxes b}^ boarding successive teachers of the district school. It boasted eleven children, who, at six years of age, " as soon as they could sit on the bench," began seating chairs. The town is now about a hundred and fifty years old, though incorporated as " Templetown," July 22, 1761, in the second calendar year of the reign of King George III. It had been known for some years as " Narraganset, No. 6," one of the seven townships granted by u the Great and General Court of Massachusetts Bay " to soldiers of the Narraganset War and their descendants. In 1727 two townships of six miles square had been given them; and in 1733 five more added, as eight hundred and fifty names had been entered — "each propriety or township to be held and enjoyed by one hundred and twenty of the grantees." Of these seven "Narraganset" town- ships, 1 " No. 1 " and " No. 7 " became Buxton and Gor- ham, Maine ; two others were in that part of New Hamp- shire then claimed by Massachusetts, namely, u No. 3 " and " No. 5," now Amherst and Bedford, N. H. ; " No. 2 " became Westminster, Mass. ; and " No. 4 " was near Hat- field. The proprietors of " No. 6," Templetown, or Templeton, were mostly, says Rev. E. G. Adams in his 1 An earlier grant had been made in 1685 of eight miles square " in the Nipmug country" for services "in the late Indian Warr" to men of Lynn, Reading, Beverly, and Hingham. — Hist. Wore. Co. 2: 389. A NEW ENGLAND BIBTHPLACE. 13 Centennial Discourse, "from Concord, Groton, Lancaster, Bolton, Littleton, Westford, Chelmsford, Stowe, Marlboro', Billerica, and Woburn." The Massachusetts and Maine Historical Collections add Lexington, Farmington, Shel- burne, Stoneham, and Southboro'. On Boston Common, June, 1732, the Narraganset claimants all drew lots for townships. A hundred and twenty of them drew land " west of Penacook and Sun- cook." This was afterwards judicially found to fall within " Captain Mason's grant," * and exchanged for a township " on the back of Rutland," Worcester County. From not knowing of this exchange a writer in the Maine Historical Collections is perplexed. This Templeton township "back of Rutland " comprised, according to the History of Worcester County, 23,440 acres ; " 23,040 for the six miles square, 300 for the Mine Farm [so called], and 100 for a pond." From this and Athol, Gerry was taken, 1774, and incorporated as Phillipston, 1786. 2 From its eastern side 3 something was taken in 1785 for the town of Gardner. It was required by the General Court of those who secured one of these townships that they should " pass such rules and orders as shall effectually oblige them to settle sixty families at least within said township, with a learned Orthodox minister, within seven years from date of grant." It is said of the Templeton proprietors 4 that the four great "things they were determined to have, whatever else they might go without, were roads, mills, schools, and church institutions." At Concord, in 1733, they first met as incorporated 1 Now Concord and Pembroke, N. H. 2 " West Parish " or " Second Precinct." 3 The land taken was a tract of twelve or fifteen hundred acres. The whole region is now Ailed with prosperous towns and villages. 4 Centennial Discourse. 14 ASA TURNER. proprietors, and sent men " into the woods " to explore and survey. But for fifteen years French and Indian hostilities prevented a settlement upon their lands. There was great deliberation, also, after the original fashion of the New England fathers, as to those allowed to come in. In 1734-5 " the best of the upland " was divided into house-lots, forty acres each, a hundred and twenty-three in all. Lots for the future school, meeting- house, and minister were also set apart. It was not till 1751 that the first house was erected. The next year fifteen or eighteen families had come together in the wilderness. The proprietors that year " granted a tax of four shillings on each right of land " to provide preaching for the ensuing winter. This opera- tion they repeated the next year, and there being now twenty families, they determined to build a meeting-house, fifty feet by forty. 1 The chestnut timbers of the frame were cut upon the common, at one side of which it stood. On this common, even after the first minister was settled, a child straying on Sabbath from meeting was lost in the woods, and "the whole congregation turned out to search for it." Two years after this building was erected, the first church was organized, 1755, though for half a dozen years there was no town incorporation. This was, and still is, the First Church of Christ in Templeton. A minister was then ordained, the Rev. David Pond. In 1762, when the town was incorporated, a second minister 2 had been settled three months, and the people numbered about three hundred souls. 1 The building was Town House as well as place of worship. 2 Coming from Rutland on horseback to his " parish," this minister lost the road, then indicated in a western fashion " by marked trees." Night coming on, he fast- ened his horse to a tree and trod a circle about him all night. One born in the town a generation later was to be wonted to similar clerical experiences in Illinois and Iowa. A NEW ENGLAND BIRTHPLACE. 15 In this primitive town, so fashioned a century after the Pilgrims, and half a century before the Revolution, be- tween Wasett Ridge and the Connecticut Valley, Edward Turner, of Walpole, Norfolk County, Mass., bought land in 1768, and made a home. At that time " the frontier towns of the white man were Brookfield, Lancaster, and Lunenburg; then [came] the wilderness unsettled to Northfield, Deerfield, and Hadley." He was the second son of Joseph Turner, of Walpole, one of fourteen children, of whom the first, Joseph, removed to South Dedham and Keene, N. H., and the seventh, Reuben, to Farmington, Maine. The fifth son, Ebenezer, born in the new home, Templeton, 1772, lived at Dedham and Farmington in his youth with relatives, and at the age of fifty-nine emigrated to Adams County, Illinois, where his nephew, the subject of this volume, had been a home missionary a year or more. This Ebenezer Turner, in 1849, at the age of seventy-seven, drew up a genealogy in which he records : — "My father . . . cleared a small farm, and, we sup- pose, lived prosperously till the commencement of the war of the Revolution, when he engaged in the army. 1 Was at Bunker Hill ; 2 thence to Saratoga ; and in December, 1777, died at Halfmoon, near Albany, of the small-pox, having never been wounded. 3 My mother was left with seven children, Adam, Lewis, Asa, Ellis, Ebenezer (the writer), Polly, and Amasa." The little town was thoroughly patriotic. It sustained by corporate action in 1772 Boston's defence of charter rights against the king ; sent two years later its only representa- tive to a General Court called by royal order ; obliged the 1 " An officer of some sort." — Letter of Prof. J. B. Turner. 2 " Commanded his company in the battle." — Ibid. 3 His age at death was thirty -eight. 16 ASA TUENEB. same year a Tory to recant ; voted not to use tea or aity goods subject to duty ; and provided pay for its soldiers. Throughout the Revolution it had committees of corre- spondence. In 1779 it raised prices twentyfold and paid them : meat, 4s. a pound (Continental currency) ; and judged "too low in proportion to salt and rum" (!); good common dinner, 14s. ; New England flip or toddy, 15s. per mug or " bowl " ; carpenter's or mason's work, X3 to <£3, 6s. per day ; shirts, <£4, 16s. apiece ("good tow cloth") ; wheat, c£8 per bushel; oats, X2 per bushel. This revolutionary soldier's widow is said to have relied upon pea soup for her family of eight. "I can readily believe," writes a descendant, "that she lived on vege- tables, as you have heard, or on nothing ; utterly destitute of every thing except their cabin and their little clearing in the forests, [left] to struggle alternately with poverty, the wild beasts, and the Indians, none of which did she fear. I never heard her utter a word of complaint about personal hardships or struggles in life." Among her seven children of those revolutionary days, Asa, perhaps born at Walpole, remained upon the home- stead at Templeton, was four years — from 1802 on — elected one of the selectmen of the town, a civil office of more honor then than now, and was called " Captain Asa." His son Asa, one of eight children, and known West and East, till his father's death in 1856, as Rev. Asa Turner, Jr., is the subject of this volume. In an autobiography written for his children in his eightieth year, he says : — " I was born June 11, 1799, in Templeton, Worcester County, Mass. My father's name was Asa. My mother's name was Abigail Baldwin. 1 My grandfather's name was 1 His mother's name also had strong patriotic associations. Jonathan Baldwin was the last town representative to a General Court convoked by Gage, royal A NEW ENGLAND BIRTHPLACE. 17 Edward. My grandmother's name was Hannah Fisher ["daughter of William Fisher of Walpole," genealogy quoted above]. They were natives of Walpole. My great-grandfather was Joseph Turner, of Walpole. He was son of Eben Turner, of Medfield, about twenty miles from Boston. My grandfather was a soldier in the Revo- lutionary War and participated in the battle of Bunker Hill. He was also present at the surrender of Burgoyne. He died from small-pox while the Federal army was encamped in winter quarters near Albany. This is as far as I can trace my ancestry." The line of descent then is this : — 1, Ebenezer Turner of Medfield ; 2, Joseph of Walpole ; 3, Edward of Walpole and Templeton ; 4, Asa of Templeton ; 5, Asa, Jr., of Templeton. The descendants of the fifth generation were born on the homestead farm, some two miles southward from the center of the old town of Templeton, which has now three villages or post-office stations : the Center, East Templeton, Otter River village, and Baldwins ville (at the crossing of the Fitchburg and Ware River railroads). At the Center, on the west side of the old common, stands the primitive-looking two-story sanctuary of the First Church, with a large brick school-house and a lecture- room. At the east, near the corner of the common, stand the Orthodox Church and the Boynton Library. Pleasant roadways run among the hills and woods to the governor, to meet, 1774, at Salem (which adjourned to Concord as a " Provincial Congress "), was sent to the two Congresses of 1775 at Cambridge and Watertown, and to the General Court of that year at Watertown after Governor Gage and other royal machinery had disappeared. Mrs. Asa Turner named her sixth son, Jona- than Baldwin. That was the name of one of her brothers, probably older in the family; "a family" (writes this son) "of much more wealth and inherited social position than fell to my father's lot. Of grandfather Baldwin I do not recall even the given name. My father was familiarly called ' the old Captain,' earlier than I can remember. Where he got the title, whether in Shays' Rebellion [1786-87, Worcester, Springfield, Petersham J, or from the militia, I can not tell." 18 ASA TUBNEB. other villages and the surrounding towns. A hotel facing the common on the south makes a quiet summer resort. In 1854 Dr. George Shattuck gave the town five shares in the Boston Athenaeum. In 1858 an agricultural society was incorporated, and the late David Whitcomb, of Worcester, founded the Boynton Library, named for his old partner in business at Templeton. At one time they had sixty peddlers traveling for them. The handsome fire-proof building dates from 1885. Mr. Whitcomb gave $9,000, to which the town added 12,000. Mr. Boynton gave $100,000 to the Institute of Technology at Worces- ter. When "Asa Turner, Jr.," was born, there were at the Center simply a rough, wooden school-house and the first meeting-house of 1753, nearly square, and then recently painted for the first time. In this a town committee " dignified the seats ' below from time to time, 1 the three galleries being filled with free seats. As this continued till 1797 perhaps he witnessed like archaic formalities, and received impressions of a certain plain and unaffected dignity of the old New England style, which he never lost. The edifice had doors on three sides, was without spire or bell, and was never warmed in any way in the coldest winter. The Turner farm contained about a hundred and sixty acres. It is still a good Worcester County farm, though there are dense woods where was a field in former years. The dwelling looks off eastward to the hills and homes of Gardner, a good farm-house still, though shortened fifteen feet by a later occupant who found it too large. A tall evergreen at the south end was planted by the sixth son of " old Captain" Asa in his youth. 1 " The seats of most dignity, or those considered most eligible, were assigned to the largest tax-payers, and so on graduated throughout." — Cent. Disc. By order in town meeting, 1765, the whole congregation waited till the minister had not only left the pulpit, but the house, and then moved out " according to the dignity of the seats, one seat at a time." This continued through all the ministry of the second pastor till the early years of this century. Turner Place, Templeton, Mass. See page 18. II. A NEW ENGLAND BOY. In his autobiography, Asa Turner, Jr., wrote : " My father was a hard-working man, supporting his family of eight children on a little rock-bound farm." He had long been familiar, when he wrote, with much larger and more fertile Western farms, and had, as a village pastor, owned one of three hundred acres. The " eight " children were : — (1) Sylvia, who became Mrs. Marshall Alden ; (2) Dulcinah, Mrs. William Whit- ney ; (3) Avery ; (4) Asa ; (5) Nabby (named for her mother), Mrs. Benjamin Day ; (6) Jonathan Baldwin ; (Betsey, who died in infancy) ; (7) Hannah Fisher (named for her grandmother), Mrs. Luke Manning ; (8) Edward L. The last died at Lacon, 111. ; Avery, at Quincy ; Mrs. Manning died in 1887, at the East ; and Mrs. Whitney, in 1884 ; Mrs. Alden and Mrs. Day, years before. Jonathan Baldwin, of Jacksonville, 111., is now the sole survivor, in his eighty-fourth year. On the rock-bound farm they were all taught habits of industry, prudence, respect for right and rights, the keep- ing of the Sabbath, integrity, kindness, conscientiousness, and devotion. It is said of the town planters : " They expected to work hard; they and their families." 1 Of two of these eight children it was said to the writer in 1886 by their surviving sister: "Asa was stronger than Avery; a good worker on the farm, and enjoyed work. 1 Cent. Disc. p. 9. 20 ASA TURNER. I have heard him say that after working all day he had driven an ox-team loaded with lumber to Shrewsbury, twenty miles or more, by night, and reached there by the opening of business in the morning. Probably he had aided in cutting and hauling to mill the logs from which the lumber was sawed. This training gave him a strong constitution which enabled him to survive his neglect of the laws of health while in college." l His frame was comparatively large and strong. Activity was constitu- tional, and through life down to advanced age to be doing nothing was among the severest of trials. One of the two younger brothers was more vigorous still. He writes me of their father, that he was " a man of great strength and untiring industry. " Having, as he thought, somewhat more of his natural strength and endurance than his other boys, he early planned to keep me at home with him, by giving a deed and title to all his property on certain conditions before I was of age, and let Asa go from home to school, simply because he was never so robust as I was, and the younger son, Edward, was comparatively feebler still. " Asa always liked to drive horses at the top of their speed ; I always liked to see them walk and enjoy them- selves. That was our difference in temperament. In every game of mere physical strength and endurance he was aware, though the older, that he was but a child in my hands, while I was then equally convinced of his intellectual and moral superiority and longed to participate in it, but saw no way to do it. " I do not remember to have seen my father strike or in any way punish a child, scarcely an ox or a horse ; though I have seen him throw an offensive man over the fence and into the street in utter silence, as though he IMS. Sketch, by Rev. Julius A. Reed. A NEW ENGLAND BOY. 21 had done nothing. He had almost no schooling, but a splendid education ; for I never knew a man that doubted either his word or his honesty." 1 There will be some readers who will think of u heredity " here, and say, u In our Father Turner ' old Captain Asa ' re-appeared." At the risk of anticipating what is to come concerning their spiritual relations let us hear the younger son again as to the father : — " I never heard my father make any appeal to us on the personal ground that he was our father, ' Moses-fashion ' ; it was always on the higher ground, ' Christ-fashion ' : ' Jonathan, do you think that is right ? ' That was a most terrible reproof or appeal from one I so dearly loved, and therefore so deeply feared to offend ; for the tone and manner lodged the appeal far above all earthly fathers, Christ-wise, before the Father of all in heaven." 2 The second Asa was ethically the son of his father, though in Christian experience the first Asa was the son of the second, as we shall see. " Asa was always telling," said Mrs. Manning, " what was right or not." It became "a habit among the children" to defer to his moral judg- ment in cases they could not decide. " What Asa said, was right : they rather went by him." He was affectionate and persuasive among them, as he was docile and obedi- ent to his parents, and diligent in all things. Any one can credit this who knew the winning patriarchal grace that came to him in after years. He led naturally without effort or apparent consciousness of it. " No domineering ; always the same ; no wild tricks ; no trouble with him for any body." He went with the rest to the district school, over Mine Hill about a mile (the " Old Red School-house " is gone), to East Templeton about two miles. At eighteen 1 MS. Letter of Prof. J. B. Turner. 2 Ibid. 22 ASA TUBNEB. he began to do military duty under state law, whether eagerly from inherited patriotism or reluctantly from constitutional love of peace, we are not told. This sister did her part by " rubbing the buttons ' of her brothers. Some other traits that descended to him may be traced in what is said of his paternal grandmother : — " She was the strongest, the most resolute, prompt, and fearless woman I ever saw, and I do not believe she ever knew what fear was. After my mother came [to the home farm as a bride], some Indians began to talk saucily to my mother, supposing she was alone. Grandmother, overhearing this, rushed into the room, seized the great iron fire-shovel, and drove them out-of-doors in a hurry." Indians always were good judges of some traits of charac- ter. " If she thought any one was scheming to wrong any one of us, she would soon be ' the lioness in front of all the whelps,' and I have thought that she did more to give a sort of natural tone and character to our family than any other one in it. Perhaps she exhibited in this way a spirit of unselfishness and mutual self-sacrifice for all within the charmed circle and of justice to all outside. . . . Among seven or eight children my father was her pet. She could not conceive that he could do any thing wrong or unwise, and ever held herself ready to sacrifice ease or pleasure, or life itself, in defence of him and his. He, as well as all the rest of us, intensely reciprocated such whole-souled self-devotion. She lived, I think, to her ninety-sixth year, in almost uninterrupted health ; and then, as our most beloved family physician. Dr. Osgood, told me, • She did not die, but simply expired,' laid down quietly and breathed her last, without a pain or struggle, or any apparent disease." * " Mrs. , one of our bright women, remembers Hannah T. sitting near 1 MS. Letter of Prof. J. B. Turner. A NEW ENGLAND BOY. 23 the pulpit of the old Unitarian church, straight and perfectly still, with a bonnet at least two feet long." l Was not her grandson worthy of this woman of the Revolution ? Did his intrepid bearing at New Haven and at Quincy in after years do her any discredit ? We know little of his mother or his grandfather, who could not have been alien in character, but can we not trace to his father and his grandmother most of what, by nature, he was? His brother adds : " He inherited more the temperament of my mother, who was quick, social, impulsive ; but persistent, affectionate, conscientious. My father was slower in perception and motion ; less social, less impul- sive ; but notoriously wholly immovable in all his con- victions of right and duty except by processes of reason." " Though most of his life in a Unitarian church, I never heard him make a prayer or a religious remark without implying that all our knowledge of God comes through Christ." Here, certainly, the influence flowed not from father to son, but the other way. Who does not remember after the latter became " Father Turner of Iowa," his expressions in beginning to pray, " Divine Redeemer," " Merciful Redeemer," " Infinite Redeemer " ? We learn to exalt what we deeply feel has been wrongfully depressed. Of their unique grandmother his brother writes further : — u In her later years of failing strength she read her Bible incessantly, particularly the prophets and Revela- tion. I doubt whether she ever read any other book in her life. I never saw any other in her hand. She caught the news of the day from conversation ; she never seemed to take time to read it. She cared not a copper for any commentary or any interpretation of the Bible ; she caught 1 Letter of Rev. R. Foster. 24 ASA TUBNEB. its leading spirit, and had and made her own commentary as she went along, and was continually applying it to the ordinary events of the household and the neighborhood. Whether it was the fall of an empire or a child or a tea-kettle, if the passage would hit it, in a moral sense, she fired it off, and made the event illustrate the passage. Sometimes her hits would be first-rate ; always character- istic and interesting ; but she would hardly have made a first-class professor of modern divinity." With better education and a more-disciplined judgment her grandson Asa carried through life much of this ingenuous reverence for the sufficiency of the Bible, both in spiritual and temporal things. The aptness of his simple-hearted and simple-fashioned quotations often had the effect of wit, though jocular handling of Scripture offended him. The testimony of his younger brother to the family spirit in the atmosphere of which they grew up is interesting : — " As we scattered abroad in the world, widening our view and our circles of moral responsibility, under what- ever divergence of speculative opinion, that same home spirit and one hope went with us all, more or less, and widened with our widened responsibilities. But it was more perfectly developed, fostered, and manifested by Asa, I think, than by any of the rest of us, and surely by him visibly diffused over a wider field. And now these dear friends, young and old, have all passed s over the river into the land of the true light and life,' and ■ I alone am left to tell thee.' I thank God that to this day I have no knowledge of any family quarrel or discord among those that have come out of the i old home ' down to the latest generations. We were, and are all, one with the old earthly father, with one hope in the eternal heavenly Father." 1 1 Letter of Jonathan B. Turner. A NEW ENGLAND BOY. 25 Before we leave the boyhood of Asa Turner, one early fault of which he makes record, disclosing his father's ways and his own, should be mentioned. His sister, Mrs. Manning, once gave a family anecdote that should go with it. He came home from school one day, when quite a lad, with a pack of bright and new playing cards. A school-mate had persuaded him to buy them. At evening he was showing them to the other children around the great hearth, and his father asked : " How much did you pay for them, Asa?" " Twenty-five cents." " Will you take the same for them?" After a moment's pause : "Well, they don't look to me as they did when I bought them : I think I will." The father paid over the quarter of a dollar, made his way through the children to the fire-place, opened with the long, iron-handled fire-shovel a place among the coals down to the hot hearth-stones, dropped the pack of cards carefully into the opening, and covered them with blazing embers. Again that Yankee fire-shovel did good service, though in a moral conflict instead of a physical one. No remarks were made, but the shrewd and filial bov never owned another pack. It was after this that he boarded as a school-teacher with the grandparents of a now revered foreign mis- sionary (then probably at Dartmouth College), and one evening, as he was going out, the grandfather gave him a tract on playing cards, " The lot is cast into the lap." u The writer made it," he says, u a rash appeal to God. Not a word was said. I never played cards again." 1 1 Letter to Professor Edson III. A CHRISTIAN CONVERT. The autobiography from which we have quoted goes on to say : " The church in my native place was early an Arminian church, but became Unitarian." When this happened, it is not easy to determine. The first minister was Rev. David Pond (1755-59), a classmate at Harvard of Governor James Bowdoin, "born 1724, probably in Wrentham, Mass." In that town was born, 1791, the late Professor Enoch Pond, d.d., of Bangor Seminary, who studied theology with Dr. Nathaniel Emmons, of Frank- lin (1773-1840), both well-known Hopkinsian theolo- gians. But Rev. David Pond seems to have been an old Calvinist, for in West Medway, where he lived as a teacher after 1761, " he was very strongly opposed to what were called the Hopkinsian views ; and upon the settle- ment of a minister in West Medway who advocated these views, he withdrew from that church to another, and, by the action he took, became the leader in a dissension in that town which lasted many years." 1 The second pastor was Rev. Ebenezer Sparhawk (1761- 1805), also a Harvard graduate. Rev. Joseph Buckminster, of Rutland, grandfather of Rev. Joseph S. Buckminster, of Boston, 2 preached his ordination sermon: the "half- way covenant " was in practice from 1758 to 1791 ; and Dr. Watts' Psalms and Hymns were exclusively used till 1827, — Dr. Greenwood's (Unitarian) Collection being 1 Cent. Disc. p. 22. * Died 1812. Dr. Channing's famous sermon at Baltimore, a landmark of Unitarian beginnings, was preached in 1819. A CHBISTIAN CONVEBT. 27 adopted in 1839 ; but none of these are decisive indications. For more than half a century, that is, till a third minister was settled, Rev. Charles Wellington (1807), and Asa Turner was a child of half a dozen years or more, the church was in fellowship with Orthodox churches. The Covenant was not revised till 1822. After the early fashion, it embodied a statement of belief as a basis of fellowship, without separate articles, and contained these doctrinal points : " Our insufficiency and inability to do that which is good and acceptable to God on account of our sinfulness and proneness to offend," etc. ; " Repentance ; ' u the free and rich grace of God which calls us ; " " the Lord Jesus Christ God- man and only Mediator of the Covenant, . . . Prophet, Priest, and King " ; " the Holy Spirit our Sanetifler, Comforter, and Guide, in and by the blessed Word of God, written by His inspiration." The Westminster Catechism was used by the pastors for many years. Asa Turner and his brothers and sisters were catechised by Mr. Wellington at the school-house Saturday afternoons, notice being given the previous Sunday, and school exer- cises being suspended. After awhile, old residents say, "it used to seem to the children that there were some things in the Catechism there were not in the sermons." One aged man remembers a discourse in which the pastor " tried to satisfy the congregation that Christ was the Son of God, but not that he was God." The autobiography says : — "The preaching might be characterized by — the beauties of virtue and the deformities of vice. The great facts of the gospel — sin, the atonement, repentance, faith, and the new birth — were ignored, so far as the instructions of the pulpit were concerned. Of these I had no conception." In the opposite quarter of the town, in a small dwelling 28 ASA TUBNEB. on a small farm (smaller, one judges, and less productive than Captain Turner's), 1 William Goodell was born, seven years and four months before his townsman, Asa Turner, Jr. Of their after lives, Dr. E. K. Alden, of the American Board, said at its meeting at Des Moines, October, 1886, referring to the Apostles' Commission from Christ : — "In the fulfillment of this commission, William Goodell and Asa Turner, born in the same town in central Massa- chusetts, went forth, the one toward the great East beyond the sea, the other toward the great West beyond the Lakes, and lived their long and useful, their self-denying and joyous lives : the one to be forever remembered in the cities and towns of Turkey as a foreign missionary pioneer, the other to be forever remembered over these prairies and along these rivers as a home missionary pioneer, — both now rejoicing in fellowship in that land to which they come from the East and the West and sit down together in the kingdom of God." But in the days we are describing the religious soil of Templeton did not clearly promise to produce two such bright, consummate flowers of missionary love and zeal. Goodell's father also served in the army of the Revolution, but was a more devout man than Turner's. " The little farm he once possessed, if it were not all plowed over, was, I am confident, almost every foot of it prayed over;" so wrote his son. 2 When Turner, at the age of seventy- six, received a copy of Goodell's Life, as a Christmas present, he wrote : " I had an aunt living not far from 1 " A hundred acres," says his son ( Fort y Years in the Turkish Empire, p. 22). " Nothing now remains but an old cellar-hole " (p. 7). The house had " two small rooms and a garret, floored with loose and rough boards" (p. 6). Two miles west, in Phillipston, once a part of Templeton, a little later (1805) was born Rev. Philander O. Powers, — converted in the pastorate of Rev. Joseph Chiekering, — a graduate of Amherst and Andover, and missionary of the A. B. C. F. M. at Broosa, Trebizond, and Antioch. 2 Tract, The Missionary's Father. A CHRISTIAN CONVERT. 29 that house, 1 a great favorite and quite wealthy as people were estimated then. She said to me, ' Old Mr. Goodell would rather pray than work.' She meant it for a reproach ; but it was an honor. I can but think how God has honored that name. . . . What is the estate of the Rothschilds' millions, compared with such an estate as old Mr. Goodell left his family?" 2 Dr. William Goodell wrote of his father : " Intercourse with heaven, in his later years we can hardly suppose, was ever inter- rupted in his waking hours for fifteen minutes at a time." 3 "In the church, there was never, to the best of my remembrance, more than one individual, and not always even one, who could fully sympathize with him in his religious views and feelings. Those great evangelical doctrines of the gospel, which his own minister never preached, and his own church never adopted into her creed, were his meat and drink. * The raven, though an unclean bird, brought food to Elijah^ was a common expression of his on returning from church where he had been able to pick out of much chaff a few crumbs of the bread of life. Prayer-meetings were unknown. . . . Not one of the deacons, although all of them were exemplary men, ever opened his lips in public to offer prayer or give a word of exhortation ! . . . After Mr. Sparhawk's death it seemed much easier for the people to slide down into Unitarianism than to rise up to what was considered more evangelical and orthodox. His successor, Rev. Charles Wellington (afterward d.d.), was equally exemplary in life, but still more lax in doctrine." 4 In his autobiography Mr. Turner says : " I had an aunt Sawyer whom I loved very much. Coming from the school 1 Forty Years, p. 7. > Tract. 2 Letter to Prof. H. K. Edson. * Forty Years, pp. 6, 16. 30 ASA TUBNEB. I was teaching in the north-west part of the town, the district William Goodell lived in (this was before 1 knew any thing about religion), I stopped at her house. She was about to die, and in distress about her soul. I went up to town [the Center] about a mile, and got the minister to come down. She told him what a sinner she was. He told her what a respectable woman she always had been ; but it only aggravated her distress, and she would groan on account of her sins. She died in a day or two, but I never knew if she found comfort before she died. The scene deeply impressed my mind, but I was then blinded." " My father, mother, and grandmother were members of the church, but they had no saving knowledge of Christ." The two former were admitted to the church May 18, 1813, and the same day the mother and six children were baptized, two of their sons, Asa and Jonathan B., among them. Writing of the old Goodell place the former says: " The first school, or one of the first, I kept was in that district. I have passed the old one-story house many times. His (Dr. W. Goodell's) grandmother, Mrs. J. Sawyer, — I boarded there, — was then very old. I wanted to know how one so old felt in view of the change that must so soon come. I inquired of her her hopes and her prospects. She answered me, i Christ is the way, the truth, and the life.' I knew nothing of religion, had no conception of the meaning of these words, but I never forgot. No words have dwelt more on my mind." Is there an index here to after experience and character ? In his autobiography he records : — " There was scarcely a family in Templeton that observed family worship. Early in life it troubled me that my father did not have family prayers. My mother A CHRISTIAN CONVERT. 31 taught me in my childhood to pray. I always observed the form, but felt that it was lip-service. I was naturally religious. The tolling of a bell for a death 1 filled me with awe, and to hear the clods fall on a coffin in the grave made me shudder. I was in bondage through fear of death. As I grew older the subject engrossed my mind. Finally this thought fastened on me — * I ought to love the God who made me and gives me every thing I have.' I used to pray that God would manifest himself to me in visible form, or work a miracle to make me feel that he existed. I used to go to meeting hoping that something would be said to awaken me to my spiritual condition ; wondered why my father did n't seem to think more about religion, and that professors of religion did not act as if religion were true. " I finally concluded that either the Bible was not true, or those around me were not Christians. Still the claim to love God pressed. I felt that nothing short of this would satisfy my conscience. How to do it, or what love was, I had no idea. To such an extent did my obligations to love God press on me, and the consciousness that I did not, that I wished I could change places with any animal, a table, or a chair, or any thing my eye rested on, that I might get rid of my obligations. I continued to pray, and sought means to impress my mind. What I feared was not the future, but my cold, dead heart. 2 One night as I retired I engaged in prayer as usual. Why or how I can not tell, but my heart went up in love to 1 A primitive New England fashion afterward carried by New England settlers to the Iowa village in which he preached, and to this in which a memoir of him is written. 2 "He once told me that the reading of Doddridge's Rise and Progress of Religion in the Soul brought him finally to the light." — Sketch, by Rev. Julius A. Reed. There had been a revival in the town in 1811, when he was twelve years old, which brought out Goodell as a Christian, but does not seem to have affected him. 32 ASA TURNER. God. I felt a joy I never felt before or conceived of. I got up in the morning feeling that I was a new creature, but not knowing what it meant. It was a dark night, but when my heart went up to God the room seemed light as day. I can see now how the room looked at that time some sixty years since. Could I then have had some instruction from Christian friends, what a blessing it would have been to me ! " A little while after I read in Corinthians that Satan 'transformed himself into an angel of light.' I thought that was exactly my case. A cloud came over me, and I wandered in darkness many months; I don't remember how long. Still I did not lose my interest in religion. It was my chief concern. "The young people in our town were divided into three classes — according to age — to attend balls, and the minister would go to see them dance. It was thought as proper as to attend school. But from that time I had no desire to join in any of their amusements, nor did I feel the need of it. I did not suppose I was a Christian, but I wished to act in all things so as not to dishonor religion. I felt that I was and must be identified with it. Mv ideas of religion were very crude, I may say in a large degree instinctive, but I wished to be numbered with religious people. This has been my desire all my life. " When about nineteen (I do not remember the exact date), I united with the church in my native place. I went to the minister, Mr. Wellington, and tried to tell him how I felt, the exercises of my mind. But he did n't seem disposed to hear. Did n't seem in the least disposed to doubt my fitness to join the church." Dr. Goodell says of their pastor : " Though not at first an avowed Unitarian, he was at length known to be such. Like his predecessor he was greatly and deservedly A CHRISTIAN CONVERT. 33 respected in the town, and much beloved by all who knew hini." Such a pastor would be pretty certain to judge such a young man, who came to him with new and unwonted " exercises of mind," by his moral qualities — in this case of the best— and leave Christian experience as a remote matter to be settled, as the saying is, " between him and God." The young man adds : — " I recollect it was a happy day to me. I was teaching school in the center of the town, and boarded with a Unitarian lawyer, who put into my hands Unitarian pamphlets that then began to be published. I read them, but they gave me no satisfaction, and filled my mind with doubts about the character of Christ." IV. UNITARIAN AND ORTHODOX SEVENTY YEARS SINCE. It is quite impossible now, though it may not always be so, to realize the obstacles through which young persons in Mr. Turner's environment struggled up to evangelical experience. Possibly when attained it was on this account the more sharply denned. The influence of the ministers of that day over the faith of the churches was more powerful than any thing known to us. Of the Templeton church it is said that it " at first disclaimed Unitarianism, but contended for liberty of opinion, making the liberty of more importance than the opinion." In a time of protest against Popish error, and in a time of protest against Protestant truth, this state of things would have very different effects. Of his predecessor, Mr. Sparhawk, settled nearly forty years before Mr. Turner's birth, and dying when he was six years old, Dr. Wellington said in 1857 : 1 " Though he accepted the doctrine of the Trinity as it had been held by the majority of Christians, he dwelt more on the mediatorial character and offices of Christ, as a Prophet, Priest, and King, than on his metaphysical nature and supreme, undenied divinity. That he was a Calvinist would be an inference illegitimate and groundless." For himself, reviewing the loss of confidence in his teaching which led to a Trinitarian organization, he appealed to his hearers to testify whether he had " ever ceased to preach concerning Christ that he is the only 1 Half -Century Sermon. SEVENTY YEABS SINCE. 35 Mediator between God and man, the Saviour of sinners." He claimed to have maintained without change " faith in his divine mission, reliance on him, and obedience to his authority as the essential, the only qualification of a Christian." 1 A practice recently revived in respect to the Lord's Supper seems to have been an issue between those of the u departure " of that day, and the " Orthodox." He adds : " And concerning those who have wished to eat at the table of my Master ' (he does not say on confession of Christ), "my inquiries have related to their Christian qualifications, their disposition to take the cross, to follow, imitate, and obey him, and not to the peculiarities of their doctrinal belief." Mr. Turner does not say when the spiritual crisis which preceded his confessing Christ after the Orthodox manner in a Unitarian church occurred. The church records (1821) say that he was connected with it only from April 1 to December 2, eight months. He was nineteen years of age in June, 1818. The winter before he was teaching in the next town, Winchendon. The publica- tions put into his hands were the fruit of anxiety on the part of Dr. William E. Channing, Rev. Noah Worcester, Rev. S. C. Thacher, and others, to counteract (1813-15) The Panoplist, which was urging the drawing of lines between those who stood upon the old paths and those leaving them. The pamphlets read by Mr. Turner did not undermine his faith. Years afterwards in Iowa, when the use of the Westminster Catechism in academy teach- ing was opposed, he took the ground that, though imper- 1 " The word Unitarianism, as denoting opposition to Trinitarianism, undoubtedly expresses the character of a considerable part of the ministers ... of the Com- monwealth."— Dr. W. E. Channing. He describes the majority of Unitarians as believing that " Jesus Christ is more than man." This included Mr. Sparhawk, Dr. Wellington, and himself. 36 ASA TURNER. feet, as all human outlines of truth are, it was not to be rejected for what it teaches. "If you can not tolerate that," he said, "you can not have me for your minister." But his spirit in respect to the great theological cleavage in New England in his youth would not by this be fully exhibited. He well knew the strong dissent of " old Mr. Goodell ' from Dr. Wellington's doctrines. Perhaps to him also the Baptist church prayer-meetings were "like oases in the desert," as the revered foreign missionary records they were to his father's family. But dissension was far from him, ever. He joined the people of God under a Unitarian ministry, after hesitation, it would seem. In January, 1858, he sent a communication to The Congregational Herald of Chicago, which is here added to exhibit more of his habit of mind. ORTHODOXY — CALVINISM. Brother Hammond, — The discussion of the present time reminds me of an incident that took place some twenty-five years ago. I called on a man of notoriously intemperate habits, who neglected and abused his family for the sake of gratifying his appetite for strong drink. He had recently buried a child. I in- quired why he had carried his child off to the grave without any religious service. He said the people in Quincy were so wicked, that having any religious service would be like " casting pearls before swine." It was of no avail I urged on him to set them an example of duty to God. I then invited him to attend worship with us on the Sabbath. He said he had not time to examine me and see whether I was orthodox. The poor man never found time. He could find time enough to test the orthodoxy of groceries, but could not find time to satisfy himself of my soundness in the faith. The nearest he ever came to it, I saw him one day from the outside looking into the window while I was preaching. He was a member of the Seceder church ; his orthodoxy beyond dispute in the minds of those who received that faith. But what does the orthodoxy of any class of men avail while they are strangers to vital godliness? Calvinism is a very good SEVENTY YEARS SIXCE. 37 thing, provided it be Calvinism of the heart, and not of the head alone. I have seen a great many Calvinistic heads with worse than Arminian hearts, and a great many Arminian heads with Calvinistic hearts. I must believe the hearts of all true Christians, so far as they are Christians, are essentially alike. So far as I have knowledge, renewed hearts are all of the Calvin- istic mould. Those who preach against Calvinism, always pray it, if their hearts are under the influence of the Spirit. But, Mr. Editor, I have a difficulty in making so much ado about Calvin, or any other uninspired man, who has gone to his rest. What matter is it what they believed or what they taught? Call no man master. The question is not what good men have taught, but what God teaches in his holy Word, and I verily believe the disposition to make so much of the fathers is a kind of " Mariolatry," putting poor fallible man too much in the place of God. I am so much a believer in the depravity of man, I would not trust a living or dead one out of sight of the Bible in matters of faith. I am not able to present this subject in its true light. I write these lines in haste in hope some able pen will take it up. Yours, in affection, ASA TURNER. It is a leading object in this volume to let the persons and facts mentioned speak for themselves. And how distinct liberalism is from Christian liberality, and what impression it made in youth upon the author of the above letter, is to be seen in a few incidents. Two or three churches successively separated from the First Parish in Templeton, but members were reluctantly certified as in good standing, who purposed to join them. In 1820, recommendations to a Methodist church were refused ; in 1832, twenty-eight were dismissed to the Trinitarian Con- gregational church. As far back as 1782, seventeen had withdrawn to form a Baptist church, by consent with certificates. It is said that the Trinitarians departing " never felt they had occasion to complain of the spirit of 38 ASA TUB NEB. their former pastor," l but an aged citizen, then young, remembers that after the Orthodox organization, when his father and mother were dismissed to join it, one Sunday, the pastor added the Scripture warning : " Mark them which cause divisions among you ; ' and when the new society wished to hold services in the Town House, once the First Parish church building, " it was put into the warrant for town meeting, and the town voted No." The town was predominantly Unitarian, or at least " Liberal." To tell all the facts it should be added that the First Church by vote had " fully recognized liberty of conscience," and given " its free consent, as a permanent standing rule, to all such withdrawals for conscience' sake." The larger part of those organizing the Orthodox church, of which Dr. Lewis Sabin was long pastor, entered into covenant on profession. Among the seventeen dis- missed to do so were Captain Asa and his wife, but none of their children. The brave old grandmother, Hannah Fisher, at the age of ninety, joined at the second com- munion. Asa had no part in the organization, having two years before gone West, but some who did, had received Christian impulses from his student labors in the town, and a daughter of one remembers that " he was very influential with his father and other individuals who were reluctant to leave the old organization. It was quite difficult to get enough " for it. His father and one brother were leading subscribers to the new house of worship across the green. Here Mr. Turner preached several times, but it was not to be expected that he would officiate in the old church. Dr. William Goodell, before going as a foreign missionary, preached his last sermon there in 1822 ; but this was ten 1 Cent. Disc. SEVENTY YEABS SINCE. 39 years before the Evangelical society was born. With this, afterward, he said, " I always felt at home, for they have full sympathy with missions, with revivals, and those doc- trines denominated Evangelical." But when some of the people saw him in Dr. Wellington's pulpit, they said of his future hearers (in Palestine) : " They are cannibals, and they '11 eat him." It is to be suspected they knew no more of home mis- sions, eight years later. " I remember a good old man," says Goodell in those bright Reminiscences of his own boyhood, from which we have drawn, " who, like my own orthodox parents, believed in the Assembly's Catechism, together with the reasons annexed to the whole Ten Commandments, and who usually came once or twice a year to confer with them on the prophecies in general, and the millennium in particular; and to converse also about those devoted missionaries who had recently taken their lives in their hand, and gone to the desolate regions of Ohio to preach to those benighted people." His younger fellow-townsman was to go far beyond Ohio, to regions more " desolate " and people more " benighted " as to religion. He once said that when converted he felt that his field of labor was in his father's family. But the blessing he brought to that was typical of what he was to bring to many beyond the Lakes and the Great River. V. A TEACHER AND A STUDENT. It was in his teens that he began to teach district schools in the winter, while still living at home on the farm ; and there are aged people yet surviving who speak with affectionate respect of their early instructor, and remember him " for his energy and goodness of heart." He seems to have taught four winters, three of them in districts in his native town. His brother writes : — " Asa was every-where regarded as a first-class teacher. He went ahead and I followed him as well as I could. I do not remember whether I immediately succeeded him in each school or not. He first taught in Winchendon South, and I followed him there. I well remember that that year I was fifteen years old, for it was much talked about because I was so young ; but the trustees said I was the brother of Asa, and they would risk it. I kept that school two years, and then followed him in his other schools, for the sake of higher wages. This continued till the trustees of the rough factory village schools, which had formed the habit of carrying their teachers out of the school-house, took a notion to employ Gilman Day, a noted wrestler and boxer, and myself to ' break down * their rebellious schools, at extra wages ; and as either of us would have died ten times rather than to have been carried out of a school once, we uniformly succeeded. The trustees soon learned that where Day or I was, there was ' heaven's first law,' whether any of the rest of them were there or not. Asa neither led nor preceded us in A TEACHEB AND A STUDENT. 41 these rough-and-tumble games. All this was so foreign to his whole nature and habit, that I don't think he could have been hired to undertake it. I look upon it now, as I do upon our Civil War, as a thing necessitated by previous blunders, but not desired or desirable." When the elder brother got round to the Center, he had eighty-five scholars, and " controlled them by a look." "There never had been such order," though former teachers had flogged the boys severely. An aged citizen, now nearly eighty, Mr. T. B. Hawks, who was a pupil, remembers being trotted gently on his foot as a cure for disquietude. He says himself : " I opened my school with reading the Bible and prayer, which I always did after my change of mind, and never had any trouble with parents or pupils on this subject." An incident related by others agrees with this. A school meeting was called when it was found that he had religious exercises. A committee was sent to see him, the chairman of which said: " Mr. Turner, we hire a minister to do our praying, and hired you to teach our children." " Well, gentlemen," was the young man's quiet answer, u whether it be right in the sight of God to hearken unto you more than unto God, judge ye." He had no other answer, and they had no further objurgation. His moral power as a Christian convert was a blessing at home. The lack of family worship still troubled him. He says : " I went home one Saturday night while I was teaching in Winchendon. All of the family were abed except father and mother. I told him how I felt, and asked him to pray with me. I asked him if I might lead in prayer. I did. The next morning (Sabbath) he called the family together after breakfast, and read a portion of the Bible and offered prayer, which he continued to do as long as he could hear. The latter part of his life he was entirely deaf." His brother adds : — 42 ASA TUBNEB. "After Asa left to teach and to study, he soon fell under influences which brought Christ and His words and salvation more distinctly and urgently before him than they had been presented to any of us. And whenever he came home, he used to talk with us all, and hold neigh- borhood meetings at our house. As he had become far better informed on that subject than we were, and was evidently thoroughly sincere, honest, and earnest, we all of us, from the old grandmother (then about ninety years old) down to the youngest, came to sympathize more or less with him and his views." The autobiography relates : — " I remained with my father till I was twenty-two years old, when in the fall of 1821 my father consented to let me go to Amherst Academy to fit for college. As I came home from time to time, he opened his house, and I would talk to the people. They came in from that part of the town and filled the house. Curiosity, I suppose, led them at first; but they continued to do it whenever I was at home until I was through my college course." There were those in the town who called him " The Little Priest ; " partly, doubtless, because this was unusual then for a young New England layman ; partly because he urged upon them truths to which they were unaccustomed and which have always been unwelcome. In these years John Todd was waging his notable warfare in their behalf at Groton, and the poet Longfellow was noting in his journal a " tremendous sermon " of Mr. Todd's at Cam- bridge, like what he used to hear when a student at Brunswick. For such a conflict, Mr. Turner would have been as indisposed as for a round with the school-boys of the "rough factory village." All his life afterward supremely interested in a converting evangelism, he began now to sow seeds for the future at once. A TEACHEB AND A STUDENT. 43 " While I was in Amherst, my mother was taken sick. As she related the matter to me it was soul-sickness, and not of the body. The doctor could do her no good. She sent for the minister. He did not understand her case. There was an old Mr. Childs in town, who had been to see a daughter in Western [now Warren], about twenty miles south-west of Temple ton. There was a revival there, and he was converted. My mother sent for him. He under- stood her case, directed her to the Saviour, and she found peace of soul and health of body. . . . While at Amherst I united with Mr. Perkins's church on the East Street. [Dismissed from Templeton, December 2, 1821.] There was a fine band of religious students in the academy ; quite a revival during my attendance. No preaching then in town ; we used to go out to Pelham and attend meet- ings." Dr. Tyler says of the prayer-meeting in town (probably the only one), that at one time it " was a school as well as a place of devotion." When Daniel A. Clark was pastor, it must have been. This academy was the nearest classical school to which this young Christian could go with the new hunger for an education begotten by Christian experience. Either side of the Wachusett ridge was still a wilderness. Amherst is half-way from Worcester to Pittsfield, and about equi- distant from it are Cambridge, Providence, and New Haven. Williston Seminary as yet was not. Amherst College was opened the year Turner entered the academy. Phillips at Andover was depressed, and Amherst Academy drew students from all parts of New England. The town was retired. Not till three years later did mail stages from Boston to Albany pass through four times a week. Tuition was free to candidates for the ministry, and board a dollar a week. The people did much for students. Noah Webster was a trustee of both institutions ; Gerard 44 ASA TUBNEB. Hallock, David Greene, and E. S. Snell teachers in the academy, which was the mother of the college. It sent out one year about thirty senior students. Its influence was wide. Girls were admitted — ninety-two in the fall of 1821. " It was the Williston Seminary and the Mount Holyoke of that day united." The young man from Templeton acquired thus early a prejudice in favor of the joint education under Christian control which he long after favored earnestly at Denmark and at Grinnell. One of the little noticed lady students is thus described by her lady principal : " Then uncultivated in mind and manners, of large physique, twenty-three or twenty-four years of age, and receiving her first impulse in education." She was a year or more older than Mr. Turner, and re- mained but one term. It would be interesting to know if they recited together ; probably not, as she " commenced with grammar and geography, and advanced to rhetoric and logic," — studies which he was to take years after at Yale. This was Mary Lyon, the famous founder of Mount Holyoke Seminary. VI. AT YALE COLLEGE. — REBELLION. — REVIVALS. One at all acquainted with a young man of such New England antecedents and experience as have been described can pretty correctly foresee what a college career would be to him. It would be in good part labor for self-support; in good part conscience as to college ways ; in good part Christian effort for others. Mr. Turner's very peculiar experiences as a Yale student in arts and theology diversified this general outline. He continues in his autobiography : — "In the fall of 1823 I entered Yale College. I was an entire stranger and had never seen any one in college. My father carried me there in his buggy, gave me a bed and bedding and ten dollars. This was the amount of his contribution to my education. I had earned something winters teaching school before I commenced study, and after I was twenty-one. Before that I gave my earnings to my father. I was thrown on my own resources. The college woodyard opened the way to earn a little, by sawing wood. [He often did it with perspiration dripping from his elbows.] I boarded myself and ate at 4 the second table,' which cost from thirty-seven and a half to seventy-five cents a week. My fare was not extrava- gant. As I went to prayers at night I would put a little skillet in the fire with a pint of water and two table- spoonfuls of Indian meal, leaving it to boil while I attended devotions. After my return I salted it and broke in crackers, and this would make a meal. In my 46 ASA TUBNEB. second year I taught school in old Guilford and boarded with Colonel Chittenden, with whom I formed an intimate friendship which lasted through his life. He followed me to Quincy in the early part of my ministry, and was one of the original members of the church in Mendon. He was a good man." Let another here photograph this self-denying Christian student as a senior crossing the college grounds : u His appearance clearly showed the man. You could see that he was country-bred ; his tailor was not of the city his stockings of ' sheep's gray ' proved him a farmer's boy and that he had a mother or sister who was interested in his welfare. You could see that he was in earnest ; that he was in college for a purpose: resolute, self-reliant, economical, and hard-working." " My college course," says the autobiographer, " which I enjoyed in some respects, was a great trial in another. Accustomed to hard labor till twenty-two years old, I did not know how to take care of my health. Dyspeptic habits fastened upon me, and study a great part of the time was a burden and a task. By great effort I was able to maintain a tolerable standing as a scholar, in about the first third of the class, as near as I can remember. My religious privileges I enjoyed. The college kept Saturday night as Sabbath. I had been accustomed to keep Sunday night, and mj conscience would not allow me to study that night. This gave me two nights in the week for reli- gious privileges, which I always observed. " There was a revival in college almost every year. President Day and all the professors took a deep interest in the spiritual welfare of the students. This led me to associate with the most religious part of the students, and to labor with them for the conversion of others." He was " received to communion " by the college UNIVERSITY J AT TALE Qh'hLEOS^^ 47 church, April, 1824, and, being afterwards dismissed from Amherst, became a member in full, February, 1828, when a theological student, and served as a deacon, with his class-mates Hale and Baldwin. There is unbroken testimony from his fellow-students to " his faithful Christian character and the loving esteem in which he was held by all." His class-mate, Rev. Will- iam Whittlesey, notes the modesty that marked his religious character. Rev. Tryon Edwards, D.D., of the succeeding college class, says of the great revival of 1826-27, which brought, it is thought, more than half of the juniors into the college church : " No man was more earnest and wisely faithful in leading students to Christ. Few, if any, of the juniors were not more or less influenced by him. No man had more influence or did more good. In our class ('28) thirty out of eighty-one became ministers. As they were before the revival, I can not count up more than nine or ten who were professing Christians ; but now, as I look over the catalogue, I count forty-nine decided and faithful Christian men, a large part of whom were converted in that revival, in which no one was more active than Asa Turner. Some of the most influential of these were then converted. Quite a number in the classes of '27 and '29 were also led to the Saviour." Twenty-five out of eighty in the former class became min- isters. His brother says of Mr. Turner's college days : — " He was so miserably afflicted with dyspepsia much of the time that he could not fully profit by his course of study. But sick or well, I believe that he seldom, either there or at home, omitted any feasible opportunity of getting a few friends to meet together, and to talk to them about 'the Father,' and Christ and his life and words. We thought then that such persistence in these gratuitous meetings was a loss to him. But I have since 48 ASA TUBNEB. thought that these experiences were the best parts of his course, and did more than all else to make him what he was, more adroit at handling men than theories about men." A class-mate says of him : " He was a true man, a hard worker for the benefit of humanity, hand in hand with Albert Hale. They might well be ranked as not only the evangelists of Yale, but also of its surroundings for miles." 1 A member of the next class, much younger, and not then interested in religion, recollects him "as a devout, earnest Christian, commanding the respect and esteem of all by his gentle, judicious ways, his consistent Christian living, and steadfast earnestness." 2 Another class-mate writes of college days : 3 " Dear Asa Turner ! I remember him well. You ask me about his Christian character in college. He was eminently a godly man. No one questioned Turner's piety. Indeed, both he and his room-mate, Hale, were universally regarded as the two most consistent and devout Christians in college. Their memory is fragrant. They were godly men of no ordinary stamp. Turner has passed to his reward, and if his room-mate still lingers behind, the time can not be far distant when they will meet before the Lamb, and i walk in white,' for they are worthy." Mr. Reed, of the class two years later, supplies an example of what was going on at Yale in those days: " There was a student in the class below his [and above Mr. Reed's] who, I recollect, had the reputation of being a skeptic. He had a brilliant mind, a genial disposition, winning without effort the good-will of his associates, and 1 Prof. Forrest Shepherd, Letter. 2 Prof. H. N. Day. 3 Rev. J. H. Towne, d.d. AT YALE COLLEGE. 49 was an excellent scholar. He was fond of fun and jokes, and reports of some of his college pranks have come down to the present time. He intended to study law and make his mark as a politician. On the eve of his graduation, he said, to Mr. Turner, I think, that he had never con- sidered the claims of the Christian religion, and that it was too important to be passed by without thought. He was going to examine the subject, and if he found Chris- tianity true, he would be a Christian ; if he found it was not, he would lay the subject aside and trouble himself no more about it. He was not long in finding it true. Then the question was, Will I be a Christian? The answer was not so easy as he supposed. The struggle was severe, but he yielded to the claims of his Saviour. I recollect well his appearance when, alone, he made a public pro- fession in the college chapel. His countenance told of sweet submission and quiet determination. He died a few years later a missionary, on board ship in the harbor of Whampoa, China. Mr. Turner was one of his advisers in those critical days." The autobiography continues : " In my sophomore year the famous rebellion of the class in * Conic Sections ' occurred. The class had all signed their matriculation papers, promising to obey the laws of college. It was warm weather, and they thought the lessons too hard. They met together several times to discuss the question of 4 flunking ' (refusing to recite). Finally, they took a vote, pledging themselves to each other not to recite. The class numbered about one hundred, and all but six bound themselves by a rising vote. William Adams [then of Andover, Mass., afterwards so long of New York] was in the chair. After the rising vote, he called upon those opposed. The other five attempted to rise, but the rest of the class hissed and scraped so that they 50 ASA TUBNEB. could not stand up. I was in one of the highest seats, but I stood erect and calm during three successive hissings and scrapings. 1 When they got through, I told them that we came there not to make laws, but to obey them. Each of us had bound himself on his honor to obey the laws. The next day all of the class but six ' flunked.' Then was the time for missionary labor! The Faculty suspended recitations, and called on those in rebellion to return and confess their wrong. There were many pro- fessors of religion among them, but they would not hear any thing from any one but the minority. They would listen to them. About forty were rusticated. No act in my college life gave me so much influence. Most of them come back the next term and made confession and were restored." In the life and letters of Dr. Bushnell, who was active in the opposition, it is alleged that " the class had per- mission, in the regular course of study, to omit the corol- laries altogether," and, being called upon, notwithstanding, to recite them on examination or review, felt that " the Faculty, or certain members of it, had not kept faith with them." It is easy for any one much versed in college affairs to suspect a misunderstanding here between tutor and students in part, at least, the whole Faculty, as usual, sustaining the individual officers. It favors this view that one of the six referred to by Mr. Turner, on being 1 When this was read on his eightieth birthday to his children, grandchildren, and a few friends, one of these last, who was in college with him, asked: " How did you feel, Father Turner, toward those who hissed and scraped, as you stood there? " His eye brightened, and the forefinger with which he usually gestured came up. " I did n't care any more for them than for so mauy sheep." There was no contempt in his tones, nothing but indifference to any thing save what he deemed manly and dutiful. It does not appear that he was influenced from home ; he was in his twenty-sixth year; and after incidents show that he was himself throughout, as courageous as docile. " As they (his class) were leaving the hall, a class-mate, who afterwards became a doctor of divinity, said to him : • I do not like your sentiments, but I admire your courage.' Asa Turner feared the face of man as little as did John Knox." — Sketch, by Rev. Julius A. Reed. AT YALE COLLEGE. 51 praised years later for loyalty, replied (so one who heard him informed me), " I did not have the same excuse as the others, for I heard the tutor say plainly that we would omit the corollaries on going over it the first time." He there- fore went loyally to one recitation in his division alone. Mr. Turner felt that government was at stake. His matriculation pledge bound him to " faithfully avoid . . . disrespectful conduct to the Faculty, and all combinations to resist their authority." His truth of character is as clear as were his views. From other sources it is learned that he not only rose in manly standing at this crisis, but in the succeeding revivals was sought more than others for Christian advice by students inquiring on religious subjects. Prof. Forrest Shepherd supplies here a fact or two: "It proved finally that the health of Professor Dutton did not enable him to complete his explanations, which left the class to wander in the dark." Mr. Reed adds : "Another rebellion was near occurring in my class two years later. The work was unfinished ; its author died before a second edition could be published, and he was far gone with consumption when he prepared the first." Professor Shepherd had entered in 1826 as senior, and while a sophomore at Dartmouth prevented a similar rebellion by preparing cones and pasting diagrams in the text-books thrown away in former ones. That a student's Christian character should shine more brightly after so severe a test of principle was quite possible half a century ago, when the old-time reverence for legitimate authority had not been frayed out, and theological teaching and revival work alike rested on moral government A Yale professor who took his chair in 1825, Mr. Turner's junior year, wrote him nineteen years later, on occasion of his sending a son to Yale : — J 52 ASA TUBNEB. "You allude, my dear sir, with too much modesty to your standing in college. I remember you were afflicted with dyspepsia ; we were fellow-sufferers. But I beg you to tell your son from me that his father received the highest honor in his class, being on my first return to the institution pointed out to me as a man who dared to do right under the strongest temptations and bitter persecu- tions." 1 Indeed, the moral power of his later college life had this for its chief foundation. " He was most highly regarded by all, the wild as well as serious students, as one who was always consistent, and whose daily life was a constant manifestation of the true spirit of Christ, always cheerful, always serious, always a living example of what a Christian should be. He was as well known and esteemed for his kind and loving temper, his good common-sense, his humble spirit, and his practical wisdom, as for his spirituality. Many then in college will always and most gratefully regard him as perhaps the means, more than any other, of their conversion." 2 Among those who graduated with him in 1827 were the Reverend Doctors William Adams, Theron Baldwin, William H. Bidwell, Horace Bushnell, Robert A. Hallam, Robert McEwen, Joseph H. Towne, and Cortlandt Van Rensslaer, with Presidents Henry Durant and William W. Hudson ; Professors Sidney L. Johnson, Ephraim Symonds, and Forrest Shepherd; Judges Henry P. Edwards, George Gould, Henry Hogeboom, and William H. Welch, and the poet Willis. Of twenty-five who became ministers, five were with him afterwards at the West, Dr. Baldwin, the Reverends Mason Grosvenor, Albert Hale, William Kirby, and William Whittlesey. 1 Prof. Denison Olmsted, July 10, 1854. 2 Rev. F. Edwards, d.d. AT YALE COLLEGE. 53 Ministers who came West from later classes were Romu- lus Barnes, Flavel Bascom, William Carter, and Lemuel Foster ('28), William P. Apthorp and Julius A. Reed ('29), Enoch Mead ('30), and Milo W. Miles ('31). Pres. Edward Beecher was of the class of '22, and Pres. J. M. Sturtevant of the class of '26. During his college life he kept in communication with his Templeton fellow-townsman, of like mother-wit and Christian excellence, who had gone to Turkey. Dr. Goodell wrote him in his senior year of the Jews and ancient Christian sects in that land. The letter is dated May 28, 1827, and reached him the twelfth of the follow- ing December. More than two months after writing, Goodell had been shut up at Beyroot on account of the plague, and added a postscript June 27. He had received letters from New Haven and Templeton by hand of Rev. Josiah Brewer, missionary to Smyrna. He wrote to Mr. Turner : — "Your letter and those that accompanied it were the first I had received from Templeton since I left America. I thank you for all the information of my native place and early friends and yourself. Remember me affection- ately to your father's family, and to any in Templeton or elsewhere who may inquire after me. Always tell me every thing of Templeton and all the news for many miles round, remembering that I am at the foot of Mount Lebanon, and that all the news I get from home comes over the wide waters. It will ever give me pleasure to hear especially that you are engaged in preaching the gospel of salvation, and are successful in bringing men to holiness and heaven. Let the Bible and your own heart be the books you study most. [That advice was followed to the letter.] " Let your object in every thing be to honor, exalt, and 54 ASA TUBNEB. glorify Him who has been so much dishonored and despised in this world which he came to redeem and save. As to what respects salvation, be determined to know nothing but Jesus Christ and him crucified, and 4 glory in nothing save the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ.' "Remember me kindly to the Rev. Mr. Wellington and family ; also, to Madam Sparhawk and many others. The Lord have you in his holy keeping ! The Lord lift up his countenance upon you and give you peace ! " Thus prays, yours affectionately, "W. GOODELL." VII. PREPARING FOR THE MINISTRY. It may be said with truth that Mr. Turner's whole course of life, after his change of heart, was a preparation to preach the gospel. His peculiar experience not only impelled him to persuade others to " taste and see that the Lord is good," but to urge those great evangelical truths, his ignorance of which in boyhood had, as he felt, kept him out of the kingdom of heaven. He continually tested their power over himself and over those about him. " He naturally approached all subjects in the line of their practical, emotional, and devotional results. His habits of mind required only obvious present usefulness. He could believe and act simply on testimony and authority." Save the heart-searchings and reasonings on practical grounds which have been given in his own words, he seems never to have had any religious doubts before conversion, and he certainly never had any afterwards. There was no time to indulge them in a life of such active Christian usefulness, and therefore of such constant growth. College studies and recreations had no such influence on him as they often have, alas ! on many. Scholarly and literary ambition did not tempt him. There is no evidence of spiritual decline and renewal either from external dis- tractions, or from what one of the most distinguished of his class-mates called, in his own case, " over-thinking." Knowledge and mental discipline were valuable to him as means of promoting righteousness and the kingdom of God. He enjoyed leading fellow-students and fellow- 56 ASA TUBNEB. townsmen to Christ better than any intellectual luxury. His view of the subjects that passed before his thoughts was always as strong as ill-health allowed, and always serious and looking towards important uses ; study as well as religion was with him a practical matter. There is no trace of his lines of reading, but it would be easy for any of his educated friends to say what classes of books he would not draw from the college and society libraries. All through life he was " so intently absorbed in the work of the present that he had no time for diaries or records for the future." He instinctively chose, out of what offered itself, what would best enable him to serve Christ. Graduating from college in his twenty-fifth year, he went right on with the study of theology. He longed to be in his life-work. " I graduated in the class of 1827, and entered the theological seminary [Yale] the same fall. I was very much interested in my theological studies, and especially in Dr. Taylor's lectures." This remarkable instructor had occupied the chair of didactic theology five years, and was in the full flush of his enthusiasm and power. To a student who wanted " a theology that can be preached," he was as magnetic as to one who delighted in metaphysical distinctions, vigorous reasoning, and opulent exemplification from the New England fathers. Whether he had then carried out the moral philosophy of his own instructor, President Dwight (as he had when the writer was his pupil, fifteen years later), or not, could hardly be discovered from the preaching or conversation of the " theologue " of 1828-29. No trace of it appears in his autobiography. It was characteristic of this young man's concern for the improvement of all about him that he persuaded his father to abandon his cherished plan about another son, PBEPABING FOB THE MINISTBY. 57 and allow him also to obtain a college education, entering Yale in 1830. He walked from New Haven to Temple ton for this purpose and back (240 miles) with sixty cents in his pocket. His persuasions were seconded by those of his mother. The father yielded " from a pure conviction of duty, but costing him, at his age, as he told me on his death-bed," says the son destined for the farm in his thought, "the most painful struggle of his life." We are indebted to the younger student for this picture of his brother's life in the theological department of Yale : — " When I was with him in New Haven, our father had all he could do to take care of himself and family, and more than he ought to have done ; and we were necessitated to provide for ourselves. But Asa had already found many kind friends, who took a deep interest in our welfare, and helped us along in every way they could ; among whom I particularly remember Deacon Salter, then a merchant there, afterward a farmer at Waverly, 111. He did the work in his garden among other things, and I taught in Dwight's Gymnasium, and sawed wood in the college woodyard ; wherever chance presented we ' rowed ' with the spade and ' played ball ' with the buck-saw, for our amusement, at no cost and some little profit. Asa did all the planning and providing, and always more of the work than he was able to do. But to me the work was the very best of fun. We spent no time whatever in making calls about the city, or in idle amusement. Asa at that time drank in and lived on Dr. Taylor's new theology, and did much toward impressing it on my mind. But I could not quite see through it. " All my friends, except Asa, had marked me out for a lawyer and politician, and I heard and read every thing relating to religion with the same unsparing scrutiny that I would apply to Blackstone or the Constitution of the 58 ASA TUBNEB. United States. This troubled Asa, but though, as I thought, I could always beat him in the argument, I always knew that he had something in his soul that I had not ; and if it was not the strongest thing in the universe, it was the strongest thing I knew any thing about, and if he could not remove my logical difficulties, he contrived so adroitly to waive them for the time being, that I determined to find out for myself what that some- thing was that appeared every-where in his life and spirit, but — as it seemed to me — was nowhere justified by his arguments. The result was that I gave up my law projects^ united with their then i creedless ' college church, and in due time followed my much-beloved brother to the West, the dearest brother I ever had." 1 A little glimpse of personal Christian labor and love in college is given us just here, from the recollections of the elder brother. One Saturday, just before leaving New Haven for a Sabbath appointment, he had a faithful talk with the younger on the question of personal religion. As he entered their room upon his return on Monday, he asked: "Well, Jonathan, what is the conclusion of the whole matter?' "To fear God and keep his command- ments," was the prompt reply. It disclosed the style of appeal and motive employed. The young " theologue ' heard one of the Andover professors say not long after that Dr. Taylor, of New Haven, had thought more on moral government than any man within his knowledge. It was a submission to the just and holy government of the Most High which his students learned from him to urge upon men with all their power. It was made the basis of what is now called " accepting Christ." 1 " An entire change in the views and sympathies of my father's family, including the fact that I am not on that farm [at Templeton] to-day, whether for good or evil, was wholly owing to Asa." — Prof. J. B. T. PBEPABWG FOB THE MINISTBY. 59 Dr. Taylor was in those years, and long after, a revival preacher of great power and success. Leaving his phi- losophy of ethics in the lecture-room, he wielded the great truths of moral government and redemption alike so as to "shut men up to the faith." This gave his lectures, to Mr. Turner's mind, still greater impressiveness. His own experience had ripened on these two lines, Christ and conscience ; the ethical element never obscuring or being obscured by the evangelical, and on the other hand, the evangelical being ever fortified and steadied by the ethical. He loved plain, pungent phraseology, clear, incisive state- ments with edge and push to them, and that steady march in public address towards closing the alienation between man and his Maker, which characterized his instructor's preaching. This was, besides, set home in the pulpit with a sonorous voice, passing back and forth between mellow and ringing tones, and a countenance intellectual and handsome, of which the expressive and beautiful eyes, kindling with fervor and benevolence, were the most striking features. Few of his students derived spiritual impulse from him in more thoroughly practical ways than did Mr. Turner. His brother says again : — " I remember the zeal and earnestness and success with which he exhorted his little meetings of gathered neigh- bors in our old town to indoctrinate them into the then new and more stirring orthodoxy of Yale. I remember how he used to preach and exhort round about Yale during his theological course. I remember how intensely earnest he was in all religious and revival efforts during the few months I was with him at Yale, just before he came West. Though half-dead with dyspepsia, and unable to study or to eat or drink in any natural way, he was always wide-awake and on hand whenever Christ and his cause were in need of either means or help. Perhaps these 60 ASA TUENEB. years of depression and apparent loss and sadness tended to throw him more exclusively into his destined future life-work as a preacher and organizer on our pioneer frontier, than otherwise would have been. It was alwavs easy for him to talk of Christ and the Father." At first neither of the brothers had a thought of " going West." The mother on her sick-bed, however, had " impressions and visions and dreams," which led her to think they would go far from home and never return to live there ; and these she told to her sons from time to time. She died in 1832, about three months after uniting in the organization of the Trinitarian Church in Temple- ton. Meantime, in the providence of God, a movement had taken place in the theological department at Yale which brought to pass the fulfillment of her imaginings. The autobiographer says : — " One event occurred that decided my future life. A band of students was formed for the purpose of going to Illinois and planting the institutions of learning and the gospel. I was invited to join them. I did so. The individuals who first gave in their names were Mason Grosvenor, Theron Baldwin, J. M. Sturtevant, Elisha Jenny, William Kirby, John F. Brooks, and Asa Turner. J. M. Ellis, who had been sent out by the A. H. M. S., was trying to plant an institution in Jacksonville. Correspondence with him led us to unite our efforts with his. The result was Illinois College. This shaped the course of my whole life after. I have never regretted for a moment that I came West. I rejoice that God permitted me to have a part in the work. The last year in the seminary was taken up in this effort, and especially in raising means to plant the college." The young men named above, with five others, Albert Hale, Romulus Barnes, Flavel Bascom, William Carter, PREPARING FOR THE MINIS TRY. 61 and Lucien Farnham, formed the " Illinois Association." Of these five the first four entered the seminary from the classes of 1827 and 1828, and the last from the class of 1827 at Amherst. Elisha Jenny, of the original seven, entered Yale Seminary from Dartmouth in 1828, and John F. Brooks the same year from Hamilton College. The Association was " started by Mason Grosvenor," the only survivor of the original seven writes me, " in 1829 ; though all of us had previously contemplated going West in some capacity. We immediately opened correspondence with Rev. John M. Ellis and others in Illinois, — who were laboring to start a college, and had already erected a small building, — and pledged ourselves, to raise $10,000 for the undertaking, which we did. Brothers T. Baldwin and J. M. Sturtevant came to the state in the fall of 1829. Mr. Sturtevant opened a school — the beginning of Illinois College — in the building provided, in January, 1830. The whole population of the state by the United States census of that year was about one fourth of what the population of Chicago is now." J In a paper read at the Semi-Centennial of the Divinity School of Yale College (May, 1872), Dr. Sturtevant adds to the names already given those of Lemuel Foster and Edward Beecher. Mr. Foster graduated from Yale Col- lege in 1828, was a home missionary at Bloomington in 1833-36, his nearest ministerial neighbors " on the west, thirty miles ; south, forty ; north, sixty ; and east, eighty," — aloof from the sphere of Mr. Turner, — and, after the latter left the state (1840-42), was preaching and teach- ing a classical school at Bethel, Bond County. Dr. Beecher had graduated in 1822, studied theology at New Haven and Andover, been college tutor in 1825, pastor in Boston, 1826, and until he went to Illinois 1 Letter of John F. Brooks, May, 1886. 62 ASA TUBNEB. College as president in 1831 (while Mr. Turner was a home missionary). At Jacksonville he remained till 1844. The other twelve are commonly regarded as the " Association," or Illinois Band, as they have come to be called since the Iowa Band was formed at Andover. Four such bands had previously gone out from Andover, and the beginnings of a national home missionary organ- ization is connected with one of these in 1825. But Dr. Leonard Woods says, in his history of the seminary, that " the education of men for foreign missions was from the first a prominent object. For ten years all who were sent out by the American Board, except one, were educated here." Though one of these two leading schools of the prophets, Andover and Yale, did more relatively for one branch of missions, and the other for another, they responded to the claims of both. The ideas and spirit of one of the Association who chose home missionary life are thus disclosed : " That the end of being is ' blessedness,' — ' goodness ' rather than ' happiness,' — I do not think either of us ever doubted, at least in our manhood years ; though he often expressed his ideas in the terminology of Dr. Taylor, who used the two terms with indiscriminative- ness, and, to my mind, confusion, but not to his [brother's] mind. " So you see how it was that we both believed in Christ, without possibility of doubt or question, and therein we agreed ; but on wholly different grounds, and therein we disagreed, but without wrangle or discord. Sometimes, when I pushed strongly my doubts against his wholly orthodox theologies, he evidently feared that in the end I would be compelled to give up Christ and all revealed truth ; for he could see no other clear result. But I never had the slightest fear on his account." We venture to add that no one else ever had. PBEPABING FOB THE MINISTBY. 63 An example of the practical Christian bent which he carried into the new home missionary work is furnished by an aged minister, who has also been a teacher and a college professor. He lived in a town near Templeton where Mr. Turner did some of his first student-preaching, and where a revival occurred. To New Haven he followed the young preacher, who there aided him to enter Yale. " He could not find any thing else for me to do, and spoke a good word for me to the steward and treasurer. I roomed in the recitation-room, and waited on the tables, and so saved something. All I am I owe, under God, to Father Turner." VIII. FORESHADOWINGS OF DOMESTIC LIFE. Writing to Dr. Absalom Peters, in November, 1829, Mr. Turner said : " Should be willing to leave [for Illi- nois] any time after the first of April, 1830, unless some- thing unforeseen takes place." The " unforeseen r was about to take place. It was part of his preparation or outfit for the ministry, and was thus recorded half a century later : — " In the spring of 1830, through the invitation of George Beecher, I went to Boston to study with his father, and there likewise occurred an event which has affected my whole life. I found one who was willing to cast in her lot with me in going to the ' unknown land ; ' for indeed it was less known than India at that time. And now after fifty years I see that the hand of God was in it. She was in Boston teaching. I hardly knew why I went there ; but results revealed why. Her name was Martha Bull." Two years before he thus wrote, he had said in a letter to an intimate friend, most of whose life-work as a teacher was done by his side, and whose wife had become enfeebled by care : " You have lived with her now twenty-six years, and ought to be able to begin to appreciate her ; but I don't suppose you do. We are now in our forty-eighth year of our married life, and I begin to appreciate the value of my wife to me. You will need to be laid on the shelf, and become rather an encumbrance to the world, before you will, in fact, realize her value." The parents of Miss Martha Bull were Dr. Isaac Dick- FOBE SHADOWING S OF DOMESTIC LIFE. 65 erman Bull and Mary Watson, his wife, of Hartford, Conn. She was of the seventh generation from Thomas Bull, born in Great Britian, 1610, who came to America September, 1635, in the ship Hopewell. He landed at Boston, and the next spring was second in command of a volunteer company sent to aid Connecticut in the Pequot War, Captain John Mason commanding. In the Center Church burying-ground in Hartford, his tombstone bears this inscription : " Here lieth the body of Capt. Thomas Bull, who died October, 1684. He was one of the first settlers in Hartford, a lieutenant in the great and decisive battle with the Pequots at Mystic, May 26, 1637, 1 and commander of the Fort at Say brook, 2 in July, 1675, when its surrender was demanded by Major Andross." His wife, buried near by, had died in 1680. His descendant of the sixth generation, Isaac D., a prominent druggist of Hartford, married Mary Watson, daughter of Ebenezer Watson, the first publisher of The Hartford Courant, a 1 " Among the Hartford citizens particularly distinguished in the expedition were Rev. Mr. Hooker, Rev. Mr. Stone, Thomas Stanton, and Lieutenant Bull. Lieutenant Bull, after Mason's troops had given that volley in upon the Pequot Fort, — which Captain Underhill admired as so ' complete ' that ' the finger of God seemed to have touched both match and flint,' — and when the fort was in flames, at the imminent risk of his own life, rescued the wounded soldier, Arthur Smith, from the devouring element. Brave and efficient soldier that Bull was, providence seems to have taken special care of him, for a hard piece of cheese which he carried in his pocket diverted an Indian arrow from his groin and saved his life, the Lieutenant, says Major Mason, having no other defence." — Hartford in the Olden Time, pp. 118, 120. 2 "Andross attempted jurisdiction in Connecticut and elsewhere, under authority from the Duke of York, as his lieutenant. Bull, with a hundred men, reached the Fort at Sayhrook a few hours before Andross with two small vessels appeared at the mouth of the river. Rev. Joseph Haynes and Mr. Gershom Bulkely were with Captain Bull, perhaps as chaplain and surgeon." — Palfrey's Hist. N. Eng., iii, 129. The latter drew up a report, from which the tactics and spirit that defeated Andross and the Duke appear. We are indebted to " local traditions," Palfrey thinks, for Captain Bull's answer to the reading of York's commission. " Con- necticut has her own charter, signed by His Gracious Majesty King Charles II. Leave off your reading or take the consequences." — Ridpath's Hist. U. S. p. 191. Andross reembarked under an escort of Bull's soldiers. The Captain's services against the Pequots and Andross were recognized by a grant from the colony of four hundred acres of land. 66 ASA TURNEB. man of mark in Hartford, who died in 1777, and is buried in the old church-yard. His second wife was Hannah Bunce, of Lebanon, and they had four children, of whom Mary (Mrs. I. D. Bull) was the second. 1 In 1779 she married Mr. Barzillai Hudson, who, it is thought, bought the Watson interest in the Courant. They had four chil- dren, and as her husbands already had children, there were several sets of children in the family eventually. She died in 1828, at the age of eighty-three. The name Bull had earlier been Bullen in England, and once, it is thought, Boleyn. Dr. Isaac D. Bull was born 1774, and died 1849; his wife, Mary Watson, was born 1798, and died 1854, aged eighty-three, at the home of her son in Gales- burg, 111., having lived in Denmark, Iowa, with her daughter, Mrs. Turner, in 1852. They had six children, of whom the fourth, Albert Henry, was the projector of "Fern Park," at Old Orchard Beach, Maine; the fifth, Elizabeth Cotton, married Rev. Bennett F. Northrop, twenty-two years pastor at Manchester, Conn., and eighteen at Griswold, and the youngest was Martha. It is altogether probable from his brother's account of their tasks and occupations in the struggle for an educa- tion at New Haven, with entire seclusion from the excellent society of the city, that in his seven years' residence there Mr. Turner had come to know no one of such education, refinement, and personal attractions as was now brought near to him in the home of Dr. Beecher. The college revival, in which he and George Beecher shared will account for the latter's agency, if it were unintentional, in what occurred. Miss Bull had been sent to the school at 1 After his death, Mrs. Watson conducted the paper herself, "perhaps the first woman editor in America." Three of Mr. Watson's brothers were captains in the army of the Revolution, and another graduated at Yale, 1776, and was early naval officer of the city of New York, member of the state assembly, speaker, state senator, and United States senator. iS Miss Martha Bull (See page 04.) FOBESHADOWIXGS OF DOMESTIC LIFE. 67 Litchfield, Conn., taught by Miss Catharine E. Beecher, with the aid of Mrs. Stowe ; had been converted there at the same time with the latter ; boarded part of the time in Dr. Beecher's family at Litchfield ; and remembered, with some amusement in after years, teaching the famous author of Uncle Tom's Cabin her first hymn. As a teacher in Boston, she naturally re-appeared in the same family, which had removed thither about 1826. She was now in her twenty-first year ; Mr. Turner in his thirty- first. There is a tradition that Dr. Beecher advised the intend- ing home missionary that he would need a wife, but that this particular young lady among those he met was not to be chosen. It may be a slight and not unpleasant rehabilitation of a social past to set down here, " without note or comment," a letter of his, which exemplifies, among other things, his conscientiousness and grave humor. He seems to have gone up the Merrimack a little distance for a short preaching engagement. Bradford, July 19 [1830], Monday morn. Miss Bull, — As to my chirography [It never improved ma- terially!], my paper is not very good; my table, a small drawer inverted on my knee. My object in writing this a.m. is, if possi- ble, to hand the letter to the first stage, and save you the mortifica- tion of a Bradford postmark. Yesterday preached three times, attended a funeral, and an enquiry meeting after the third exercise. The Lord seems to bless my feeble efforts. A dozen or more were willing to have personal conversation on the subject of religion — some of them consid- erably impressed. Have a meeting this evening, Wednesday, and Friday. Shall probably return to-day week. I presume by this time you will have no doubt that I feel an interest in you. This has been constantly increased by our ac- quaintance, and I think we ought to take every opportunity to render our acquaintance more intimate. 68 ASA TUBNEB. i What God designs by this providence we know not now. I was glad to hear you say that you could submit to His will. This, no doubt, is the right state of feeling. I think Christians ought never to have their affections so set upon any object but that they can surrender it without essential injury. I long ago made up my mind that I never would give up the reins to my feelings till it was safe. This I think a good resolution, and I mean to keep it. [Then follows some sage advice to his correspondent as a young lady, disclaiming any thought of attraction in himself, addressing her as he would a sister, not from " coldness, but affection," etc., 1 ' in view of her learning the decision of her parents at Hartford on Wednesday, of which he asks to be informed immediately, expressing the hope that she will put her own thoughts and feelings freely on paper, whatever may be the result of their intercourse.] There are many things which ought to be the subject of discus- sion between us. What are the qualities requisite to a happy union? Affection, you will answer. But on what must this affection rest, in order to be permanent? A suitable knowledge of character and mutual esteem arising from this knowledge. And of what is this the result? I wish you would give me your opinion in full. Is similarity of taste, feeling, and mental culture essential? Is similarity of views on religious subjects necessary ? I gave you an abstract of my history. I told you I was a farmer, and the son of a farmer. And in consequence of this there was a neglect of my early education, a want of that refinement and ease of manners which would make me acceptable to most young ladies of your advantages. But I have so long been admitted to refined society that the change in my feelings is greater than in my person. My advantages in this respect have been very great, if I had been susceptible of improvement. I have some ideal notion of what a gentleman ought to be, to be worthy of the affection of such a lady as I wish for a companion. Now I want my wife to take me just as I am, and make me what I ought to be. Do not shrink from the task! I will be as tractable as possible. Another thing I wish her to do is to criticize the matter and the manner of my sermons. Here there will be a wide field for labor, and she will be obliged to prune off excrescences with an unsparing hand. So much for style. I have quite a taste for metaphysics, but my powers are growing somewhat rusty for want of use, and I FOBEiSHADOWmaS OF DOMESTIC LIFE. 69 want my wife should bring them into exercise. I want she should be able to detect sophistry in every form — at least all I use ! and agree to differ with me on some subjects. So, if perchance she should not be a theologian in the outset, I would do all I could to make her one, so that I might have the pleasure of disputation with my beloved wife. I should wish to have her form her own opinions on every subject, and never submit to me, except through the dire necessity of argument founded on truth. You may wonder, M , at the course I have marked out; but if not a good one, and the best one, you must correct me. I will have my mind open to conviction. You will ask how are domestic duties to be performed? Indeed, Ido7i't know. Perhaps it will be best not to have any domestic duties. But at any rate, I could clear off the table as well as Mr. B , and perhaps set it better. For while I was in college I had a party at my room, and was both cook and master of the assem- bly. The company praised my johnnycake and other articles of refreshment. So you perceive I could change with you some- times. Another thing : if I am ever rich, my wife must keep the purse- strings. Now, although I shall wish her to obey me in all things, according to Scripture, yet I shall wish to have her do as she pleases in a great many. One thing, she must be given to hospitality. I have been into so many ministers' families that sometimes I have been sick of their wives. . . . But in some this picture is reversed, and the good lady renders every body happy who calls. And I wish every body to leave my house feeling that I have the best wife in the world. Again, after all I have said, I am very much afraid that I shall be too selfish. Therefore I shall wish my wife to keep an eye on me, and if I will not give accord- ing to my ability to benevolent objects, to ward off the reproach by her own liberality: that she may have an opportunity to do this, she may have every thing at her own disposal. Don't be dis- couraged at the task before you. I will not require " bricks without straw " — or stubble ; and if I am not susceptible of improvement, I will not require it at your hand. Yours sincerely, a. t. Tuesday morn. I failed of the stage yesterday; hoped to send this a.m., but there is no stage. Therefore I shall not send till to-morrow, as I then shall have an opportunity without V 70 ASA TUBNEB. exciting any suspicions. I hope you will write me as soon as consistent, whether you have heard from your parents or not. In the meantime, let us look to God for wisdom and direction. Never did I feel more sensibly than for a few days past the fleeting nature of all below. I was called to attend the funeral of an only son. The father had no refuge but his own disconsolate heart. He was in agony of spirit. Every joy hath its sorrows surely, thought I, and can it be good to bind our hearts so to earth when the ties must so soon be broken? I could but feel that the perfec- tion of earthly bliss has woes almost too great to endure. We gather that the expected answer from the parents of the young lady at Hartford was favorable to the writer, as they were married on the thirty-first of the next month (August), in that city, Rev. William W. Turner, so long principal of the asylum for the insane, officiating. 1 So happily closed this part of his preparation for the ministry, and so happily began a helpful and blessed wedded life of more than half a century. The same day they started for New Haven, and on arriving, the young bride was taken to the College Campus to see the place of her husband's education. At the entrance they met Flavel Bascom, of the class of '28, now senior in theology, who the next year became a college tutor. Observing his friend's glance from his rugged frame to the slight and gentle figure by his side, the husband of a few hours said, with a charac- teristic smile : " You see, Brother B , she is a pocket edition ! " 1 Principal Turner, "Deacon Turner," in later years, graduated at Yale, 1819, and long survived them, dying June 11, 1887, at the age of eighty-seven. IX. EARLY ILLINOIS AND EARLY QTJINCY. Mr. Turner had been licensed to preach by the South Association of Litchfield County, Conn., at Woodbury, August 25, 1829, and unanimously recommended " to the improvement of the churches wherever God in his provi- dence shall call him." The license was for four years. Whether the young preacher was to be improved by the churches, or the churches by him, may admit of a ques- tion. Whether providence called him is clearer. He was ordained at New Haven, September 6, 1830, by the New Haven West Association, Rev. George C. Beckwith, of Cincinnati, long Secretary of the American Peace Society, Boston, preaching the sermon. September 14, he started for New York, Cincinnati, and Illinois, buying a horse and carriage at Cincinnati. They were two months, less nine days, on the journey. In 1819 Enoch Long, Esq., was two months and three days from Hopkin- ton, N. H., to Alton, 111. When Mr. Turner's class-mate, Rev. Albert Hale, made the journey, his friends told him that the railroad ride from Albany to Schenectady "would probably be the only opportunity he would ever have of seeing a railway-train." He has now lived nearly half a century in a great Illinois railroad center. The writer was five weeks, in 1844, reaching Dubuque, Iowa, from New York City. Mr. Turner, on his way West, preached at Schenectady, passed a Sabbath at Buffalo, preached at Dover, Ohio, at Hanover, Ind., and Lawrenceville, 111., "the first Presby- 72 ASA TURNEB. terian " preacher at the latter place. The Ohio River was often so low as to arrest autumn travel. "Quincy, Adams County, 111., we reached November 5, in what now seems peril by land and water, as we were entire strangers to the country. We forded every stream, with one exception ; ' that is, between Cincinnati and Quincy. " The streams were very low. The day previous to the night we reached Quincy, we had passed over a large prairie which was on fire on each side of the road. On our approach to Quincy, we were to go through a strip of timber which was also on fire, making it dangerous to pass, as trees on fire were falling on each side. We did not know how far we were from a habitation, but we succeeded in getting through safely." Another pioneer observes that " the risks of such a journey by a couple who knew nothing of pioneering, in a country fearfully new, in parts of which they were out of sight of timber and of every trace of human existence, except the immigrant trail, were not small." " We stopped at Mr. Rufus Brown's (in Quincy) the first few days. His house was a small one at the side of the Log Tavern. Saturday there was a horse-race among those who came into town from the country. The next day I preached in the log court-house." Preparing the mind of an Iowa missionary, a dozen years later, for a scanty hearing, he said : " Fourteen condescended to be my hearers. It was a beautiful Sabbath. If you find congregations of thirty, forty, or perhaps fifty, you may consider yourself honored." J Such was the entrance of the Yale graduate and his refined — I can not add shrinking or dispirited — young bride into their home and work. What was Quincy then, in the fall of 1830, and what was Illinois ? Though its first county, St. Clair, was organized in EARLY ILLINOIS AND EABLY QUINCY. 73 1794, the territory did not become a state till 1818 — with fifteen counties ; and within two }^ears after, nine new counties had been organized. By 1824 a good many more had been established; yet Sangamon County embraced almost all " Northern Illinois," and its settle- ments ceased twenty miles above Springfield. In 1800 there were about two thousand souls in what is now the state ; in 1809 it had been carved out of the Indiana portion of the old North-west Territory ; the next year it had 12,382 inhabitants, and ten years later, 55,211. In ten years more the population had increased to 157,447. A few sparse settlements were scattered over the southern part of the " Military Tract," and to the north were little groups of settlers, " sometimes a hundred miles apart, along the Mississippi." Substan- tially, till our young missionaries reached the territory of twelve years of age, the Illinois, the Rock River, and the Fox still coursed through an unbroken wilderness. There were trackless solitudes between the Kaskaskia, the Ohio, and the Wabash. A year or two later a young New England scholar returning to "lone Michi- gan, with the blazed trees, the trail of the savage, the sun and stars, or the resin-weed and mosses for a guide," saw " verdant and flowering immensities, presenting from St. Louis to Chicago a magnificent panorama of prairie, belted with wood-fringed streams, and embosomed with groves broidered and perfumed with the haw, the red-bud, the wild apple and wild rose. We seemed," he said, w as if wandering through Paradise after the expulsion. Its profound and boundless silence and solitude awed and oppressed us so much that — as in the rhyme of The Ancient Mariner — we almost felt We were the first that ever burst Into that silent sea. 74 ASA TUBNEB. Between us and the Pacific Seas were only these awful spaces, vacant by repulsion between two races, and the virgin mold for new worlds." 1 The Winnebago War on the Wisconsin River had repressed immigration in that direction. It was not till after the Black Hawk War (1831-32) and the treaty with the Pottawatomies at Fort Dearborn (1833) that the lands north of the Illinois and in Southern Wisconsin were open to settlement. The whole region below still went to New Orleans to market. St. Louis, with some ten thousand people, was still in such relations to a near rival in Illinois of lesser destiny that letters were directed to " St. Louis, near Alton." A few towns had started. " Peoria," says Governor Reynolds in " My Own Times," " is the most ancient settlement west of the Alleghanies." La Salle's trading- post and fort (Creve-Cceur) of 1680, and its successor of 1781 (La Ville de Maillet), had been succeeded by Fort Clark. Small steamers occasionally ventured so far up the Illinois River. Cahokia in the previous century and Kaskaskia (1707) had not yet lost their ancient precedence. " There were but few settlements on the eastern side of the state." Cairo's dream of rivaling New Orleans had begun ; for " La Belle Riviere ' there enters the Father of Waters. As to a greater city where the Indian stream " Checagou " entered the lake, this was not even a dream. The first commissioners for the Illinois and Michigan Canal organized to lay out towns along its route and at its termini in 1829, and about the time our missionaries left Connecti- cut the first map for a city on the lake was made. A year later there were but a dozen families about Fort Dearborn. In 1833 twenty-eight voters organized Chicago, and the first charter was not till 1837. The people depended 1 Rev. F. M. Post, d.d., Oration at Iowa College, July, 1856. EABLY ILLINOIS AND EABLY QUINCY. 75 upon Ohio for flour. Far away southward near the old French towns was yet the capital. Springfield " in 1824," says Mr. Cartwright, had "a few smoky, hastily built cabins, and one or two very little shanties called stores. I could have carried all they had for sale on my back." In 1828 the log dwellings numbered twenty-six. Spring- field is now the fourth city of an empire state, but it was seven years after Mr. Turner came to Quincy before it became the capital, and eleven before it was incorporated. The village of Quincy, then eight years old, had attained to a library association. But between these incipient cities of Illinois there were hardly roads, bridges, or ferries. At La Pointe on the River Le Fdvre lead- mining had forced Galena — a hundred houses — into being ; but it was reached by occasional steamers. On the Iowa bank there were no signs of the occupancy of civilized man. On the tenth of February, 1820, two young men — Mr. Willard Keyes, who had reached the Mississippi at Prairie Du Chien in 1817, and Mr. John Wood, afterward lieutenant-governor of Illinois — " concluded to locate temporarily about fifty miles north of civilization," on what became known as Keyes' Creek. In 1821 they had bought for sixty dollars a claim of one Flynn, an Irishman, to the site of Quincy — Mr. Wood walking to Alton, a hundred and twenty miles, to make the bargain. The first house was built without nails or sawed lumber ; the first white woman and child came in 1822 ; in Mr. Keyes' cabin the first courts met, with the portico for a jury-room. The first elections were held with an old tea-pot for a ballot-box ; in 1826 the first store was opened and a log court-house built, where our home missionary preached his first sermon, four years after ; in 1829 the first frame- building was erected ; and, meantime, as the county seat 76 ASA TURNER. of Morgan County had been named Jacksonville, for one candidate for the Presidency of the United States, the new county was named Adams, and its shire town, Quincy, for the other. 1 1 Rev. E. Anderson, Historical Sermon, March, 1879. X. THE PEOPLE AND THEIB PREACHERS. What was the intellectual and religious condition of those to whom New England had sent these young servants of Christ? The make-up of the people could hardly have been more heterogeneous. Hon. E. B. Washburne says in his valuable Sketch of Governor Edward Coles : " The earliest inhabitants were French Canadians and emigrants from Kentucky, Tennessee, and North Carolina." The contribution from Kentucky he pronounces " by far the best," while "the North Carolina emigration was mostly 4 poor whites.' There was much ignorance and shiftless- ness, combined with an intense prejudice against all people from Free States, whom they called 'Yankees.'" Between 1804 and 1822 there had been, according to Governor Reynolds, arrivals of Irish, English, German, and Swiss colonies. Some "Pennsylvania Dutch" also came early. The first towns at the south and east and on the American bottom were French. Lands were held there by French tenure, cultivated in common fields of thousands of acres. In 1818 the French were reckoned at one fourth of the population. They were the river flat-boat men, and the first steamboat hands when flat- boats disappeared. In 1870 the southern born people had fallen to nine per cent. ; in Illinois to ten. In 1830 the percentage was very much greater in a much smaller total. Into the northern counties came enterprising persons 78 ASA TUBNEB. from New England, New York, and Ohio, — commonly- young, — and every-where these were mingled with sturdy settlers from the Middle States and the South. In Fulton County, above the Illinois River, in 1828, it was estimated by Rev. J. M. Ellis that " half the people were from New England and New York." This was doubtless, if true, an exception. Fulton and Adams were organized the same year. Down to 1835 a large part of the male settlers every- where — even in towns — were hunters. They had no farm machinery. Wild game and even elks and buffaloes were then numerous, " and bees in all the forests." As game decreased, the usual seeking of new frontiers went on. Improvements and land-titles were uncertain. The unsettled character of private and public affairs told upon morals. There were no common schools, of necessity. Not till the influence of the North-eastern States became stronger far was a system even attempted, and then with much opposition from immigrants whose origin was Southern or European. In 1888 the commonwealth enrolled 738,737 common-school pupils. But as late as 1844, the writer, on arriving in the state, was informed by the chairman of the committee of the Legislature on education that the school laws could not be executed on account of self- contradictory provisions. Eleven years later, Reynolds' History notes the extreme difficulty of devising any system, and the inauguration of lectures to inform the people and render one feasible. The various immigrants had such discord of opinion on the subject that " laws could not be enacted to please the masses." From the first there had been a few private schools, " kept up solely by sub- scription and only in the winter season." This was one ground of objection to school taxes. " Many parents THE PEOPLE AXD THE IB PBEACHEBS. 79 were unwilling that their children should study arithmetic as quite unnecessary for farmers. And what was the use of grammar to a person who could talk so as to be understood by every body? ' Lessons were studied aloud simultaneously. Each scholar recited alone. The only persons of respectable education in the villages were professional men. Lawyers and even judges made gross blunders often in public. Physicians did no better. When a lieutenant-governor was married his wife taught him to read and write. He was a Baptist preacher before his election. " Manv anti-mission ministers could not speak three sentences together without violating the most familiar rules of grammar." The preachers often made gross blunders in reading the Bible in public. One in a southern county " preached for months from a few leaves of an old Bible. Some person afterward gave him a whole one. Another preached on one occasion from the text in Revelation respecting the man who had a pair of balances in his hand, and read it, 4 who had a pair of belloivses in his hand,' with which, he said, 4 the wicked would finally be blown into perdition.' " The name of the capital, Vandalia, was suggested by a wag in the Legislature at Kaskaskia, who asserted that the Vandals were an extinct tribe of Indians. 1 Governor Ford and others relate that the Illinois and Lake Michigan Canal was at first opposed for two grave reasons : — (1) It would flood the state with Yankees ; (2) the channel would enlarge and sweep away the soil of the common- wealth. Hon. W. H. Brown, an early resident of Vandalia, describes the " poor whites ' from the South as "credulous, ignorant, and prejudiced. The father had lived and died without the knowledge of letters, and why should not the son ? And as to the daughter, — the 1 Dr. R. W. Patterson, Early Society in Southern Illinois. 80 ASA TUBNEB. mother reproduced, — her accomplishments commenced with dropping corn in the spring, and ended in wearing linsey-woolsey in the fall, the article of dress for both sexes." The resistance of uneducated preachers among such people to the coming in of educated ones, sixty or seventy years ago, is mournfully manifest from the facts stated in such books as Governor Ford's Historv, and the invectives of Rev. Peter Cartwright's Autobiography. The former says that the jealousy and bad-feeling rose to real persecution at times. Of this the new men, however, took little notice, " and rapidly succeeded in forming con- gregations, organizing churches, and building places of worship, and now at this day it is apparent that both sorts of preachers were needed." Cartwright never tires of inveighing against colleges and Biblical institutes : he predicts that if these multiply among Methodists there will be " a plunge right into Congregationalism, farewell to itinerancy," etc. ; and declares that " the illiterate Methodist preachers actually set the world on fire while [others] were lighting their matches. New School preachers " he stigmatized as mere readers of manu- scripts. " They were generally tolerably well furnished with old manuscript sermons that had been preached or written perhaps a hundred years before [ ! ]. Some of these sermons they had memorized," etc. As the fiery Methodist pioneer and Mr. Turner were fellow-townsmen at Quincy, this was leveled largely at him, but as he never memorized, and was ready without notes, it did not dis- compose him. Of the first Presbyterian sent to Springfield Cartwright records : " He was a very well-educated man, and had regularly studied theology in the Eastern States, where they manufacture young preachers like they do lettuce in hot-houses." The Methodists had in the West THE PEOPLE AND THEIR PREACHERS. 81 " two hundred and eighty traveling preachers, and not a single literary man among them." According to Peck's Illinois Gazetteer, in 1835 one seventh or one eighth of the new settlers in Illinois were members of churches, — of all sorts, — yet a preacher in Bond County, anticipating the Rev. John Jasper of to-day, contended, against school-bred people from the East, that if the earth actually revolved upon its axis, "We should all fall off and go nobody knows where." * Evidently the Illinois Association and College were among the necessaries of life to the state. But prejudices against them were inevitable. Mr. Turner wrote to New York, July, 1831 : " A large part of the sermons of a certain class of preachers is made up of railing against Presbyterianism and the benevolent enterprises of the day." A Boston layman at Jacksonville, J. G. Edwards, wrote that, in 1829 and for some time after, the prejudices of many against Sabbath-schools, temperance societies, colleges, mission- ary and benevolent enterprises generally, and Presby- terians in particular, were of the strongest kind." Dr. Patterson, a native of Southern Illinois, testifies that " the quiet manner of the educated preachers exposed them to the ridicule of many illiterate people who could not believe that a speaker was in earnest unless he declaimed in the most violent manner." 1 Dr. Patterson. XL HOME MISSIONARY BEGINNINGS. The first religious explorers west of the Lakes were, of course, Catholics. But Marquette, in 1673, and his successors hardly tarried at all. In 1850 there were in Illinois 29,000 persons of their faith. A good many Protestants, however, had by this time given society permanence and other desirable qualities. A Kentucky Baptist was the first (1787) Protestant preacher, Rev. James Smith, in St. Clair County, at New Design, the oldest town. Then in 1793 a Kentucky Metho- dist, Rev. Joseph Lillard, who formed in this old county the first " class." Then next year, Rev. Josiah Dodge, a Connecticut Baptist. The first Protestant church was organized 1796 at New Design by Rev. David Badgley, a Virginia Baptist. The same year came Rev. Hosea Riggs, Methodist ; the next year " Father " John Clark, Baptist, from South Carolina. The first Methodist circuit rider was Rev. Benjamin Young, 1804. Rev. Thomas Harrison, also a Methodist preacher, came the same year, and Dr. Joseph Oglesby — probably a physician and local preacher — the next year. Rev. William Jones, Baptist, and Rev. Jesse Walker, Methodist, came in 1806 ; Rev. Charles R. Matheny and Bishop McKendree in 1807 ; Rev. John Clingan in 1808. Some Cumberland Presbyterians appeared in 1816 ; a Covenanter, Rev. Samuel Wylie, and Rev. John Mathews, an Eastern Presbyterian, in 1817, with Dr. John M. Peck, Baptist, the first minister reputed to be learned. Ten HOME MISSIONARY BEGINNINGS. 83 years before five Baptist churches had formed themselves into an association. Twelve years before two Presbyterian preachers had found a small flock east of Kaskaskia, to which Mr. Wylie now ministered. His predecessors, of unknown names, went elsewhere, as indeed, in those roving and exploring days, did those of other denomina- tions ; Rev. Jesse Walker, for example, gathering the first Methodist congregation in St. Louis as well as Chicago. Some laymen became preachers : James Lemen, at New Design, 1786, and Joseph Chance, who preached till his death, in 1840. In 1818 Rev. Deacon Smith, Baptist, came from Maine. Congregationalists, meantime, had sent out explorers. They were all educated men. Five years before Mr. Mathews came, — who in 1822 was the only Presby- terian, and soon after left, — Rev. Samuel J. Mills, of Connecticut, "the father of foreign missions," a graduate of Williams and Andover, had formed a Bible society at Shawneetown, and three years before one at Kaskaskia. Mr. Mathews returned, and was stationed at Kaskaskia when Mr. Turner arrived at Quincy, the oldest Presby- terian minister. No Congregationalist, however, at that day settled in Illinois, and if he had would doubtless have become a Presbyterian. So did Rev. Solomon Giddings, of St. Louis, from Andover, who organized eight Presby- terian churches after 1816 ; Rev. Elbridge G. Howe, Rev. David Tenney, and Rev. John M. Ellis joining their labors to his on the Illinois side of the river. All four were Andover graduates. 1 Of some twenty men sent West by x Mr. Tenney had graduated in 1818 (at Harvard three years before). He was ordained Presbyterially at Newbury, Mass., that year. Born 1787 at Bradford, he died 1819 at Shoal Creek, 111., on the field. Mr. Howe graduated at Andover, 1824 (at Brown University three years before), and was born two years after Mr. Tenney, at Paxton, Mass., and ordained Congregationally at South Wilbraham, 1824. His other places of labor were Southwick, Halifax, and East Marshfield, Mass.; Will, Lake, and McHenry counties, 111.; Waukegan, 111., and Paxton, Mass. (1873). 84 ASA TUBNEB. various societies down to 1826, when the American Home Missionary Society was founded, most were employed for a short time only, three had had two States each for a field, and two were commissioned for " the United States west of the Alleghanies." 1 The new national society found but two men to be handed over to it, Messrs. Howe and Ellis, both sent originally to the ancient capital, Kaskaskia. The latter, then at Jacksonville, was the correspondent and counselor of the Illinois Association at Yale in 1829-30. John Brick and Stephen Bliss, "farmer-preachers," are also named as. in missionary work, for a time. There were also Christian men entirely in secular life who were invaluable helpers of home missionaries. Thomas Lippincott, a merchant, secretary of the state senate in 1822-23, in later years a useful minister, organized the first Sabbath-school in the infant state, 1819, at Milton, two miles east of Alton, with ten or twelve scholars. Enoch Long, an influential business man, started the second one the next year at Upper Alton, with forty scholars. The former school closed with Mr. Lippincott's removal. The latter is continued still. James G. Edwards came to Jacksonville ten years after Deacon Long came to Alton, in company with Rev. Messrs. Baldwin and Sturtevant (1829), and was, with his excellent wife, prominent in Sunday-school, temper- ance, church, and revival work. Another useful layman, Elder H. H. Snow, a helper of Deacon Long at Alton, and then of Mr. Turner at Quincy, wrote from the latter place, March 15, 1830, to Dr. Absalom Peters, New York : — Mr. Ellis graduated at Andover, 1825 fat Dartmouth three years before) , and was ordained Congregationally at Boston in September. Besides his agencies he preached at Jacksonville, 111., Grass Lake, Mich., and East Hanover, N. H. Born at Keene, N. H., four years after Mr. Howe, he died 1855 at Nashua, N. H. 1 Dr. J. E. Roy, in New Englander, 1876. HOME MISSIONARY BEGINNINGS. 85 " This village has been settled four years, and now contains a population of about four hundred souls. Till lately we have never seen a Presbyterian preacher in the place. More recently we have had preaching six times in the course of eighteen months. We are now destitute. Our people are new settlers, mostly from New England, and have little money ; but provisions of every kind are abundant and cheap. If we could get a preacher possess- ing a missionary spirit, with a small family, who would be willing to settle here and become one of us, we could give him a farm and cultivate it for him, and support him well, with a fair prospect of not leaving his family destitute. . . . The population of the county doubles every twelve months." That year, of six men commissioned at New York, one was appointed " to the Western Reserve or Illinois," and another was " Rev. Asa Turner, Jr., to go to Illinois." He had expressed a preference for Quincy, but his desti- nation was to be decided upon by consultation with Rev. Theron Baldwin and others on the ground. Mr. Ellis said that the new state needed fifteen or twenty more men. Dr. J. G. Bergen, then at Springfield, wrote of the " upper counties " : " Five years ago we had but one minister in the state ; now we have fifteen, and the number ought to be doubled." It is impossible to give any sketch of what other bodies of Christians were doing to keep step with advancing population. The Methodists were characteristically active. They had depended much upon camp-meetings for growth in all respects, from the holding of the first ones at Shiloh, near Edwardsville, in 1807 by Bishop McKendree. Cartwright, who came from Kentucky in 1824, and presided in 1826 over a district (Sangamon) four hundred miles long, and in 1828 over one six hundred miles long, namely, from the mouth of 86 ASA TUBNEB. the Ohio to Galena, made great use of them. He was at Quincy before Mr. Turner. In 1832 his (Quincy) district ran from the mouth of the Illinois River northward into Wisconsin. The first letter from Mrs. Turner at Quincy was dated December 9, 1830. My Dear Sister E., — A letter from you about two weeks since is all I have had since I left Hartford. I recollect that it takes four weeks for a letter from here and about Jive for an answer. I find matter enough to fill one of the large sheets weekly. Two weeks we have been keeping house, and I find little time for any thing else. I clamber up two flights of stairs from the kitchen to my room in the second story. I am " power- fully weak" after having " toted" pots, kettles, etc. etc. December 22. — Our goods arrived here on the tenth of this month. We had almost given them up as lost, as we heard that a steamboat lately sank in the Mississippi. I went with Mr. Turner to Rushville and had the pleasure of meeting J and M , Mr. O , and W . We found quite an Eastern circle. You may imagine that we are pretty closely packed in with our " things." We have but one room for sitting-room, bedroom, study, kitchen, and daily. We have in it our best bureau, two tables, three trunks, six chairs, two medicine-chests, two writing- desks, cupboard in one corner, and several other pieces of furni- ture, besides our bedstead. Husband says sometimes: "Oh, dear ! I wish I could get out of the kitchen." I find that he is so well acquainted with domestic affairs that I am constantly calling upon him to tell me how to do this and that thing. He has, I suspect, become rather wearied, and now he says to every thing : " Do just as you please, my dear." However, we hope to have a room which he can use for a study by spring. . . . There were but three or four articles of crockery broken ; our best bureau some- what injured; the top came off, but was immediately repaired. Your motive in filling our medicine-chest with rice was good, and we thank you for it, though we can not use it, as the grains collected round the bottles and we found several broken ! The vial of sweet oil spoiled the rice. I think I feel grateful for all the kindnesses you have all shown in your exertions to provide things not only for my comfort but for my pleasure. I feel HOME MISSIONARY BEGINNINGS. 87 assured that you will never want for the temporal comforts of life. I think it is my daily prayer that you may never want for spiritual comfort. . . . The thermometer yesterday stood at nine below zero. We can keep nothing from freezing. It is quite a comfort to think such weather continues but a short time. We have very short winters but very severe. I suppose that we have the most comfortable room in Quincy. The gentlemen find it so ; it really seems as if they could not get away. [Suggestions follow about Hartford young ladies coming to Quincy to do good in various occupations ; assurances that they] " will make no sacrifice as to society. We have as good as that to which they have been accustomed. Come directly to Q . At Jacksonville they try to persuade every one to stop there. They have persuaded Dr. R to stay there, though there are five physicians besides himself. [Twenty-five hundred people in Morgan County.] I have thought some of our good Lehigh stoves to-day. We have plenty of wood which costs nothing but the drawing of it from the woods* (as Mr. Turner cuts it himself) , but still it is not the comfortable heat of Lehigh. I have a cow which gives a fine quantity of rich milk, and should be very happy just to put down a few pounds of butter for you. You smile at the idea of my making butter, but such is the fact. It is consid- erable trouble to take care of milk, particularly when frozen, and I can not prevent this now. Perhaps you would like to know how I get along in housekeep- ing? Why, pretty much as you would expect one so little acquainted with domestic concerns. I do not intend to say much about myself: leave that to husband. We live mostly on wheat batter-cakes and corn-dodgers; now and then I bake a " pone," or loaf of bread. But this I do not much like ; you and mother will decide that it requires some skill to make good bread out of bad flour. Now and then I make milk toast, and we have very good coffee and tea. I live as well as I wish to. Now, Miss E , you need make no more sport of me in my " log cabin." I have seen many which appeared very comfortable, and many in which I think I could not live. Why I am not compelled to live in one I know not. Some are not shelter from wind or rain. I think to see them would excite gratitude to God that he has cast your lot in our highly favored New England. Were I obliged to live in one — and I may yet — I suppose I should be as 88 ASA TUBNER. contented as I am in my present dwelling. ... I hope, my dear sister, you do not forget us in your prayers. We need them much, and be assured that you are daily remembered. The Lord bless you! And now, my dear mother, what shall I say to gladden your heart? I think often, very often, of you, and that dear place with which are connected so many pleasant associations. Some- times I can not refrain from tears when I think of you, of all your kindness; and now it is out of my power to devote my time and attention to you in the decline of life. Though these reflections do make me sad when I indulge in them, yet I do assure you I have never regretted for a moment having left home and friends. I can not realize at all the distance which separates us. It seems no farther now than it did when I was at Boston. It would gratify you to hear of the prosperity of Zion. Oh, that I could tell you of a revival of religion ! I think you will soon see an account of the formation of a church, Sabbath-school, etc., in The Western Observer. It was for us a most solemn and precious occasion. There were fourteen, excluding husband and myself. The Sabbath-school is becoming more and more interesting. I have a class of six intelligent children. We very much need more female teachers. Do use all your influence to persuade young ladies to come out here as teachers. I wish S. B. and M. E. could be persuaded to come. Will they not? I wish you could only see how comfortably we are situated ; it would do you good. 1 So different from what we expected. Our log cabin has proved to be a frame-house, nicely (that is, comparatively) fitted up for us. But still very different from houses in which we have been used to live. You would doubtless like to know how " Patty " succeeds in housekeeping. Why, I manage to keep all day about it, and as to the rest, husband will give you a sketch. m. t. [The missionary's pen continues] : She makes very good batter- cakes, tea, coffee, and butter, and that is all we live on, except now and then a slice of bread. I can say this much in her praise — she is the best cook I have seen this side of the mountains, and I would not exchange my table with the " first livers " we have. She has made three and a half pounds of butter, a good " heap of pump- *A lady friend at Jacksonville is "pleased to learn" that " she knows how to accommodate herself to a residence in a new country, so as to be not only con- tented but happy under all the inconveniences." — December, 1S30, E. W. HOME MISSIONARY BEGINNINGS. 89 kin pies," and some u powerful good" cake. On the whole she is a very good wife, worth all her transjjortation, and I consider her a " right smart" woman. Our honeymoon still lasts, and I see no probability of failure — for we have " great chance" of bees here. We are blessed with most we need, a tolerable share of contentment, and, I hope, some small desires to do good. When I have time I will write in some other dialect. Till then be assured of my affection and gratitude. a. t. It may set off in an interesting light this spirit of Christian cheerfulness in toil to add that, in his applica^ tion to the American Home Missionary Society, the young husband had asked anxiously the year previous if the outfit allowed aught for a wife's expenses. Would " it be consistent to pay one quarter of my salary in advance, deducting interest? It will be very difficult for me to get to the ground without this favor, unless I can borrow. Shall be obliged to leave [New England] in debt, and have no resources of my own." His commission pledged " ninety dollars outfit and four hundred dollars for the year, including such sums as you may receive from the people to whom you may minister." Dr. Charles Hall, Secretary, added, with his wonted grace : " Our obligations, our cares, our toils are great ; so also will yours be ; but not greater than the faithfulness of our heavenly Father, to whom we may mutually commend each other and the interests of our common cause." Six months after the missionary wrote : " I owe more than half a year's salary. I have lived just as prudently as possible, but almost every thing purchased has been very high. I could live in New York in the same style cheaper than in Quincy." Two years later, u money was very scarce, and honey, beeswax, and coon-skins were next in value as currency. The country was not yet producing the bread and meat 90 ASA TUBNEB. required for the inhabitants. Flour and bacon were brought from Ohio and Kentucky; fruits, and even common vegetables, were only to be obtained in the same way, and generally dispensed with." The people of the town " lived mostly in log cabins scattered over a town plat half a mile square, densely covered by sumac and hazel bushes, with some native forest trees, some patches of prairie, and some open ground cleared by the settlers." 1 1 Letter of L. Bull, Es XII. A PIONEER PASTORATE. No one who has once passed through the experience himself can ever forget the cares, the toils, the solicitudes, the hopes, the joys attending the gathering of his first church in a new settlement. The diversity of Christian materials, perhaps the novel and perplexing questions that arise, deepen and intensify the pioneer's interest. He often wonders if missionary apostles met with any thing, when the Christian Church was new on the earth, just like what he meets with. It was not long before Mr. Turner was able to organize his converted hearers. He called to his aid a native of Illinois, licensed to preach two years before, and stationed at Rushville. The Quincy church records say that a Presbyterian church was formed Saturday, December 1, 1830 : u present by appointment the Rev. Cyrus L. Wat- son and the Rev. Asa Turner, ministers of the Presbyterian church." The latter may still have been a Congregational minister, as there is no trace of a meeting of Presbytery after November 5, and he reports attendance at Jackson- ville the next April, as if it were his first sight of Presby- terianism. Fourteen persons, giving satisfactory Christian evidence, were " declared to be a branch of Christ's visible Church, and dedicated to Him in prayer b}^ Rev. Asa Turner." Of these, one was elected by themselves ruling elder, and in the evening another was received — fifteen in all; and of these, says Mr. Turner, "three Baptists, three Congregationalists, four Presbyterians, and five from the world. 92 ASA TUBNEB. " And here I must say that I have cause for gratitude to God for my theological education. I was always taught to look at the substance, and not the shadow ; that the opinions of all men are fallible ; that all evangelical Christians are of one heart and one mind about every thing very important in religion. This has prepared me to have true fellowship with all who love the Lord Jesus. On this principle I formed the church. Three were Baptists — one more, Baptist in sentiment, I expect will unite with us next communion. Prejudices strong. I talked to them about heart-religion, and said nothing upon infant baptism. They requested to unite with us, if they could, and not have their children baptized. They did so." It was his sense of the value and indispensableness of evangelical convictions and experience which made him catholic. "We make probable evidence of Christian character the test of communion, with this sectarian feature only — all must come into the church through the door of total abstinence. The door is too narrow for a good old , so he stays out of the fold, but I hope the wolves will not catch him, although they howl sometimes most hideously. " I do think the ' isms ' of evangelical Christians among the greatest evils in this Western country. The wither- ing influence is seen in almost every church, stirring up jealousy and strife and suspicion, paralyzing action, and putting a damper on all the holy affections. But the evil is perhaps not much more visible here than at the East, and I do think it is time for the different denominations to turn off their eyes from the peculiarities of each to that great bond of charity which binds together all holy beings. Pardon this digression in justification of my course. Let me know your views. Had I not gone upon A PIONEER PASTORATE. 93 this liberal principle, I could not have formed a church among Presbyterians. I fear there may be disapprobation on the part of some." Later he wrote : " I have reason every day to be thank- ful that the Lord led me to this course. If I had put up the bars and shut out those Baptist applicants, it would have been very difficult to form a church. I do not waver on that point [infant baptism]. To me it is as clear as that there is a sun in the heavens. Still, many honest men, Christians, think differently. . . . And when a church is composed of members who differ in things not essential to salvation, a fine opportunity is offered for Christian forbearance and brotherly love. Members learn to value each other not so much for opinions as practical piety. " Our church is a little band, so situated as to health and distance that only eight can be in one place, though we are all of one accord in supplicating the blessing of God. A temperance society has been the means of saving some who were almost beyond the regions of hope. Young men who are not Christians take a deep interest in this society, the Sunday-school, the Bible society, etc. We have supplied Adams County with Bibles, and are making arrangements to supply Pike and Hancock. We observe the monthly concert of prayer : we give about seven dollars or eight dollars a month. It is interesting to see young men who have but little capital, and families dependent almost entirely on their exertions, subscribing from fifty cents to one dollar a month to missionary objects. I believe that those who have professed religion feel that they have given themselves, their time, their property, and all they have to the Lord. 1 Scarcely a man has a com- 1 " The young lady who died in my family I verily believe was worth all the rest. Sweet and lovely in disposition, easy in her mauuers, she gained the affections of 94 ASA TUBNER. fortable house, or any thing else to render his situation desirable. Providing food, clothing, and shelter absorbs almost every thought. We are now making efforts to build a house for worship and school. Our place in its infancy, — but little more than two years have elapsed since it began to settle, — almost all have invested all they have in real estate which is not now productive. If those who worship in cedar houses could visit our log cabin the past winter, sit on our slab seats, and feel the wind pouring over them with the thermometer far below zero, I think they would be willing to give of their abundance to supply our necessity. But few here have outside garments. Children met me at the Sunday-school one morning, when it was 14° below zero, more than half of them with nothing but their summer dresses. Little boys clad in tow-cloth. I once felt that ' calls ' were too urgent, but not now. The subject can not be felt save by those who have been on the ground." Occasionally we have a picture of epidemic diseases among the frontiersmen. Once he wrote of doing nothing for six weeks but visit the sick. Mr. Cartwright passed ten weeks in Quincy once, "when there was but one family where there was no affliction." "The great ma- jority just recovering from sickness," wrote his " Presby- terian ' neighbor at another time, " and many of them thrown into an ague fit if they exert themselves for the comforts of life. If the winter should be long, many will suffer for the want of food. Flour of very inferior quality $5 to 85.75 per barrel. Almost every other article from twenty to twenty-five per cent, higher than in New York all. She was always ready to act, and her uncommon degree of good sense ren- dered all her movements judicious. For many years past she had lived in Boston, and there acquired all experience desirable to render one in her situation useful. The great object for which she came to the West was to do good."— November 7, 1831. A PIONEER PASTORATE. 95 My rent $4.50 for one small room and a few logs to break the snow off my horse.'' Reduction of the scanty home missionary appropriation had a sore meaning in such circumstances ! When this came he observed : " If I had time to work on a farm, I could earn my provisions ; but with no brother minister short of eighty miles, and calls to preach from every quarter, I can not stop to farm ; have not had time to hoe my garden or do the least thing for myself. I can live as the rest, give me a plow, but as a minister, . " If I had said a word about salary it would in great degree have destroyed my usefulness. There are but few places in the state where two hundred dollars could be raised until a man had first cultivated the ground." " I have sold some of my clothes that I brought on with me, and if I can live through the year I shall do well. A great many bring letters to me, and I must entertain them one, two, three, four days, some a week, and in one instance five or six. You would not, you say. What would you do?" 1 Of his first vear's four hundred dollars, half had been paid for money borrowed (East) and due for freight on household goods. He had just lost a valuable horse — " a great loss, for it is not possible for me to buy another." Mrs. Turner wrote her mother : " Dolly died last night, and we are mourning her loss. Doubtless you will say how foolish to think so much of a dumb beast ! We have the sympathy of all who knew her. She was the favorite of the place ; there is not another such creature 1 Other generous acts of his are represented in a letter from one who in the earlier years reached Quincy with her mother and sister, her father having died on the way. " It was very difficult to find dwelling-places, and Mr. Turner kindly offered us a part of his house. Being the resident minister, he gave a cordial greeting and helping hand to the stranger, seeking out the suffering, carrying cooling draughts and nourishment." 96 ASA TUBNEB. this side of Cincinnati. We had set too much by her, and she is taken to show us how uncertain are creature dependencies. I drove her up and down some of the worst hills in Indiana, and when at the top of some very steep ones I felt sure that if it was in her power I should reach the bottom in safety. Mr. Turner says she was perfect ; had not a fault. We feel much poorer than last night." " For many months that deep attention and stillness have been apparent which characterize Eastern revivals. And I have been anxiously waiting to see the Spirit descend. I can not tell you of a revival, and fear my own unfaithfulness has been the cause ; and by the grace of God I will try to do my duty better for the future. But the Spirit has been with us; three recently hoped that they have found peace in believing, and a few more are anxious." Later, " Our prospects are brightening ; more interest." It was never this earnest worker's habit to magnify God's converting work in the public eye. Three months later the junior elder, himself a recent confessor of Christ, wrote of what followed the organization : — " Mr. Turner soon gathered as many as our house would hold, and in a very short time it was too small — more than full of serious, attentive hearers. Since the first of February more than usual seriousness has rested on the congregation. It became evident the Holy Spirit was here. Oh, how our hearts melted ! what precious seasons we had! The goodness of God was so overwhelming that he should answer our prayers so soon, and send his Holy Spirit into so wicked a place, that it completely prostrated us in the dust and slew our pride." " I expect four or five will unite with us at our next communion two weeks from next Sabbath," wrote Mr. A PIONEEB PASTOBATE. 97 Turner. " We intend to have a four days' meeting the second Sabbath in June : will you not remember us at that time, and ask Christians in New York to think of us?" His lay helper gives results : " A four days' meeting was held, commencing on the twelfth of June, and a five o'clock prayer-meeting well attended. It was such a time as I never expected to see in Quincy. On the last day nine were received into the church — two by letter and seven on profession (all of these have met with a change of heart quite lately). At the close fifty-seven persons arose and expressed a determination to seek salvation now. Of these, five or six hope they have since given themselves to the Lord; the others are still inquiring. These are glorious things for such a place as this was a year ago. We would not for the universe go back where we were. . . . Mr. Turner above all men in the world was the man to be sent here. . . . By his kindness, suavity of manner, and general deportment, while he ceased not to declare the whole counsel of God in much plainness of speech, while he held up the terrors of the law and pointed to a bleeding Saviour, and persuaded them to close with the offers of mercy now, he gained the respect, esteem, and confidence of all. He is so fixed in our affections that it would be death to our hopes and prospects if he should be removed to another place." Evidently the beginnings of all Christian institutions on this outpost of home missions and civilization upon the Mississippi were now made sure. XIII. OTHER PIONEERS. — ILLINOIS COLLEGE. The pastorship at Quincy, though never formalized by "installation," with the pastor himself held such rela- tions in those times and were such in themselves that others are naturally grouped about them. He was asso- ciated in his work with a number of devoted and notable men, worthy — his humility would have protested — of such a memorial as this volume rather than himself. At a certain point of time Dr. Roy thus places them : — " Following up our Illinois Band, we find all of them but one, by the year 1833, settled in Illinois under com- mission, — Brooks at Collinsville ; Jenney at Alton ; Kirby at Mendon ; Carter at Pittsfield ; Hale at Bethel, and then at Springfield for a life-work ; Barnes at Canton ; Farn- ham at Lewiston, and then at Princeton ; and Bascom in Tazewell County, leaving after six years eleven Presbyte- rian churches, then in a home missionary agency, and in pastorates at Chicago, Galesburg, Dover, Princeton, and Hinsdale. Mason Grosvenor, in whose brain was born the idea of the Illinois Association, true to his life-plan, has been many years a professor in Illinois College," and Sturtevant became its head. The names of six others are given, who came after these up to 1833, and it is added : " These men plant their own churches, travel, hold protracted meetings, organize other churches, set up tract and Bible societies and Sunday- schools, and pioneer the cause of temperance and that of education, after the sample given in that first Quincy OTHER PIONEERS. — ILLINOIS COLLEGE. 99 pastorate. Of the seven at least, who, with Mr. Turner, originally formed the Illinois Association at Yale, some- thing should here be said. They are among historic char- acters of the commonwealth." It was in 1828 that Theron Baldwin read to the Yale Society of Inquiry an essay on " Individual Effort in the Cause of Christ." " This so stirred Mason Grosvenor that he proposed an association to go to some new state or territory and promote religion and learning." " And this," says Mr. Turner, "shaped the course of my whole life after." Theron Baldwin was born at Goshen, Conn., 1801. He " attended such schools as rural Connecticut then afforded," while working daily on his father's farm. With severe economy of time, day and evening, for study, he walked, as his attainments advanced, four miles twice a week to recite to his pastor, Rev. Joseph Harvey. He finished prepara- tion for college by three months' attendance upon Goshen Academy. . His school-mate, Rev. Prof. William Thomp- son, d.d., observes that he was then " characterized by the same Christian qualities that in after years were so identi- fied with his eminent services." He entered Yale with Mr. Turner in 1823, graduating also in 1827. From his theological course he was on the point of going to Montreal for missionary work, when the failure of a letter to reach him in time led him to join the association which had grown out of his essay. The other members urged him to go to Illinois before completing theological study, which he did. Under home missionary commission for Indiana, Illinois, and Missouri, he went to Vandalia, the state capital, from 1820 to 1840, where those who followed him from New Haven found him " finishing his studies on horseback." In 1831 he was working for Illinois College in New Eng- 100 ASA TURNER. land and the Middle States. The lady — still surviving — whom he married that year, at Burlington, Vt., gives glimpses of a journey from Vandalia to Jacksonville the next January with an apt hand. " The snowfall was unusual ; the cold intense. A single sleigh, a fleet horse, and a buffalo-robe were procured. For some miles through heavily timbered land the snow was abundant ; then a broad expanse of prairie whereon there was scarcely enough visible to make a respectable snowball. The only alternative was to turn back to the last house passed. " It was a log cabin, the residence of Judge . Here was genuine Western hospitality ! ' Oh, yes, come in ! You can stop over night, and in the morning I will send a man with my Dearborn to take you to HillsboroV It was customary for those people of Southern Illinois to set before you such as they had, and never pester you with apologies. If your hostess should take your knife from your plate and stir your coffee with it, and then — after wiping it on her apron — return it to your plate, the trouble of concocting that little white lie to smooth things over might be spared. Nothing of the kind happened here. On going to the door next morning, an explorer who had made the circuit round the cabin reported the discovery of a spring in the ravine just back of the house. I followed his trail. There it was ! bubbling from the bank into a little natural basin, clear, bright, and just the right temperature. It did not take long to divine that this might be the family washbowl — perhaps the well also ; but for a time no duck could have been happier. Returning to the house with dripping face and hands, mine host, who was sitting near the door, looked up, and quietly remarked, ' I reckon you will have to dry you on your handkercher ; our folks have n't any towel.' After breakfast, our plunder having OTHER PIONEERS. — ILLINOIS COLLEGE. 101 been transferred to the Dearborn, we resumed our jour- ney. A creek lay across our path, its banks steep, its bed about half-filled with water. I doubt if a native had ever seen a bridge. Our driver did not appear to feel the need of one. The Dearborn went down with a thud into the water, the horse and driver went out on the opposite bank, leaving load and passengers in the creek. Woe to the woman who can not jump in an emergency ! The Dearborn was not broken ; its main parts had sepa- rated — that was all. A little time and patience, with some hard work, brought the parts together, and we had the pleasure of reaching H that day. " Our friend, Mr. S., was from New York. Every thing within and around the house was so nice and comfortable, it seemed a bit of New England dropped on the prairie. That night it thundered and lightened and rained — oh, how it did rain ! Towards morning every thing froze up. Mr. S. brought out a span of large, noble horses and a covered farm-wagon. Our goods were placed inside and we followed. The night's rain had flooded the creeks and lowlands, and the cold of the morning finished the work with a crust of ice above the water. The horses had to raise their feet and break the ice at every step. The prairie was like a sea of glass, while the heads of the tall grass covered with frozen sleet waved and glittered in the sun like diamonds. A single pole indicated the fording- place of Apple Creek. It was doubtful whether, if the horses were to go into the stream, they could get out. Mr. S. took one of the horses and the pole. A crash and a struggle — he was in the water. The horse brought him out on the side near us, and a suit of dry clothes, including bearskin moccasins, was thrown out to him. Judge whether a whole prairie on a windy mid-winter day would make a desirable dressing-room ! 102 ASA TUB NEB. " Ten good miles now between us and a fire. Following the creek up towards its source more shallow water and safer crossing were found, and it was nearly night when we reached Cook and Eastman's log cabin tavern [now Waverly]. Here Mr. S. sat all the evening with his back to a huge fire-place — the blaze of big logs did their best to ward off the chill. Next morning he was up and ready for business. Ice was every-where. Half-way down a steep hill, which was glare ice, something in the harness broke. Should the horses become restive our lives would not be worth much. But no — -they seemed to have a new sense of responsibility, and when their master said 1 Whoa ! ' planted their corks in the ice and braced them- selves to hold the entire load steady, while Mr. S., with Yankee dexterity, whipped out his jackknife and strings, repaired the harness, and was back in his seat in a twinkling. " There were some grateful hearts at the foot of that hill that day. [Mr. S. returned home, and when he related these adventures to his family, and was asked what Mrs. Baldwin said, he replied : " She never cheeped." Plenty of work and warm friends at Jacksonville, and our life- work began in earnest." That work, though quiet, was very diversified. It was for some time an itinerant missionary work in connection with Rev. Albert Hale ; one " of great but cheerful toil and self-denial," says President Sturtevant, "perhaps the most useful work of his life." While engaged in it, the founder of Monticello Female Seminary, Alton, advised with him, and in 1837 persuaded him to take charge of it. Seven years later he took part in forming The Society for the Promotion of Collegiate and Theological Education at the West, of which he was secretary till his death, April, 1870 — twenty-six years. He had been OTHER PIOXEERS.— ILLINOIS COLLEGE. 103 nearly forty years before agent of the (Connecticut) Protestant Evangelical Education Society. He started and for a time edited The Common School Advocate, and was first secretary of the Illinois State Sabbath-school Association. One year he traveled 3,600 miles collecting about $2,000 for benevolence; $700 of this for ouilding churches in destitute places. He was counselor, helper, and actuary for almost every thing that was Christian or useful. A list before me of a hundred and fifty letters, written in eleven months of 1836, shows an amaz- ing variety of practical interests promoted, beyond classification. A man of superior forecast, quiet industry, and tireless observation, of wisdom in council, caution, adherence to principle and plan, — almost taciturn, yet drawing out the confidence of children* and souls in trouble, — he had a gentle aggressiveness for good seldom outrun by the noisier push of others. Julian M. Sturtevant, who came West with him, was of the class before him at Yale. He was born at Warren, Conn., 1805 ; graduating in 1826 and leaving the seminary in 1829, he was ordained at Woodbury. After about two months' missionary service in Illinois, beginning in October, he opened, January, 1830, the school which grew into Illinois College, as the only teacher. His whole after life was given to this service — as professor in mathematics, 1831-44 ; president, 1844-76 ; professor in mental and political science till his death from old age, 1886. His mind was strong, analytical, and argumentative ; he was a vigorous preacher and debater, and a superior teacher; was specially earnest against sectarianism, and in fifty-six years of self-denying college toil built his own monument. He was the author of three volumes and sixteen published discourses and pamphlets. Both his predecessor in the presidency, Rev. Edward Beecher, d.d. (now in his eighty- 104 ASA TUBNEB. fifth year), and his successor, Rev. E. A. Turner, d.d., are living. Illinois College, however, was not the first in the state of its rank. Shurtleff College (Baptist) and McKendree (Methodist Episcopal) preceded it in 1827 and 1828. Rock Spring Theological Seminary and High School in St. Clair County, started by Dr. John M. Peck in 1827, was removed to Alton in 1831, and merged in Shurtleff College. At Hillsboro', Montgomery County, John Till- son, Esq., erected a seminary building where Dr. Edward Wyman, afterward of St. Louis, taught for some years. The Germans then bought the institution, turned it into a theological school, and removed it to Springfield. Public schools had been attempted at that time under the furtherance of Governor Joseph Duncan, but after two years' effort abandoned, the lands being mismanaged. In Mr. Baldwin's Vandalia Sunday-school, only thirty-seven could read out of a hundred and five ; in another county only twenty-five families out of fifty-two. Colleges were a simple necessity of Christian missions, and could wait neither for tardy school systems nor for state universi- ties, after the plans of Thomas Jefferson or Dr. Manasseh Cutler. The correspondence of the young Yalensians with Rev. J. M. Ellis followed his organizing a " college com- mittee " in Illinois in 1826, and the choice of trustees next year from subscribers to the enterprise in the state. Late in 1829 Rev. Solomon Hardy apprised the American Home Missionary Society that a building at Jacksonville would be in readiness in a few weeks. " The most delight- ful spot I have ever seen," wrote Mr. Ellis of the site, " about one mile north of the celebrated Diamond Grove." " The first log cabin was erected but nine years ago. What an enchanting prospect ! " 1 1 Illinois Intelligencer, Vandalia, January 2, 1830. OTHER PIONEERS. — ILLINOIS COLLEGE. 105 In session there December 18, 1829, the Illinois stock- holders, on motion of Hon. James Hall, "accepted the terms of union proposed by Messrs. Theron Baldwin, John F. Brooks, Mason Grosvenor, Elisha Jenney, William Kirby, Julian M. Sturtevant, and Asa Turner." These seven young home missionaries were elected trustees, the whole number being ten. About $3,000 had been raised in Illinois. It had been agreed that the Eastern brethren should raise 12,000 in the fall of 1829, and $ 10,000 within two years. One per cent, per acre on Illinois lands was pledged by those who held them. Some 113,000 seemed to be " in sight." Mr. Turner in 1830 was at New York, Boston, Andover, and elsewhere, urging on the enterprise, and enthusiastic enough to propose a total fund of $50,000. At New Haven (February) he reported a settlement with Mr. Ellis ; the $10,000 nearly all subscribed. From Quincy, he wrote, January, 1831 : " Our college excites a good deal of interest in the state. In regard to a charter this winter, it is impossible to tell ; one class violently opposed. Brother Sturtevant has gained the confidence and good- will of the inhabitants generally. All that is wanting is funds. When I was there, November 25, thirty students were on the ground, and seven more had applied." Governor Ford notes the zeal of the new class of minis- ters for learning. " But such was the prejudice against them, that they did not succeed in getting any charters for several years, and when they did, each charter con- tained a prohibition of a theological department." Mr. Baldwin, at the capital, working indefatigably and wisely for the charter, was sanguine of success. Most of Mr. Turner's second year as a missionary was passed at the East for the college endowment. At home again he filled the office of trustee with industry and care. 106 ASA TUBNEB. Years after he was asked to undertake Eastern work for it again, on permanent endowment, but he filled now a twofold position in Iowa. He attended commencements at Jacksonville, and served on important committees. His correspondence reveals protracted discussions as to the denominational relations of the college. 1 When he resigned as trustee, November, 1844, the board unani- mously adopted the following minute : — Our relations to Mr. Turner have ever been of the most pleasant and fraternal character ; we regard his efforts in raising funds for the institution as among the most efficient and successful ; we have found him ever a faithful and disinterested fellow-laborer for the cause to which he devoted himself with others in the ardor of youth ; and it is with regret that we see his place on this board vacated. 'Of this college and other enterprises of the time, Dr. Sturtevant said, in The Congregational Review, Chicago, July, 1870: "The sect question was not thought of. The aim was simply evangelization." But the opposition referred to was none the less on this account. XIV. THE PIONEERS AND THEIR COLLEGE. — CONTINUED. Rev. Elias Cornelius, d.d., of the American Board, "charged " Mr. Ellis, at his ordination in Boston, in 1825, to " build up an institution of learning which shall bless the West." He had been home missionary at Kaskaskia when the Yale Association wrote him, and was now pastor at Jacksonville. We shall hear of his obeying the charge later and farther west than Illinois. Mr. Turner and all his associates may not have been so charged, but they did as he did. The American Education Society, Dartmouth College, and the Western College Society had Mr. Ellis's services before his death in 1855. Mason Grosvenor, the Association Secretary at Yale, was born in Pomfret, Conn., 1800 ; graduated from college, 1827, and in theology, 1831 ; was ordained at Guilford ; and preached at Ashfield, Mass., Sharon, Conn., and Hudson, Ohio. He was principal of the Hudson Female Seminary, 1843-47 ; agent for the Western College Society, 1847-63 ; and for the Ohio Female College after- wards. Having retired for a time, he was instructor in mathematics in Illinois and Beloit colleges, one year in each. From 1870 to 1880, he was professor of moral philosophy in the former. He died at Englewood, N. J., in 1886, of old age. Elisha Jenney was born at Fairhaven, Mass., 1803 ; graduated at Dartmouth, 1827 ; at Yale Seminary, 1831 ; and was ordained by the Third Presbytery of New York. He preached at Alton, 111., Waverly, Monticello, Spring 108 ASA TURNEB. Creek, and Island Grove, and was then in general work for Illinois and Alton presbyteries, 1849-58. Until 1868 he was agent for the American Home Missionary Society (as he had once been, earlier, for the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions). He died in 1882, of heart disease, at Galesburg, 111. The first of the seven to die was William Kirby, born at Gnilford, Conn., 1805 ; graduated from Yale, 1827, and in theology, 1831. He began his Western work in 1831, as tutor in Illinois College. In a commemorative sermon, President Sturtevant said that "the two years he spent as an instructor were the most exhausting of his life." He found the hardships and difficulties of home missionary life less so. And yet, in one of the places where he preached he "had the privilege of buying corn, at a distance of eight miles from his residence, for a dollar and a half a bushel, provided he would shell it for him- self and carry it eight miles in another direction to mill. His nearest post-office was Chicago, twenty-eight miles.' , He preached at Union Grove, Blackstone's Grove, and Mendon, 1836-45. He was agent of the American Home Missionary Society till his death at Winchester, 1851, of pneumonia. The last to depart was John F. Brooks, born at West- moreland, N. Y., 1802 ; graduated at Hamilton College, 1828 ; at Yale Seminary, 1831 ; ordained by Oneida Pres- bytery. Five weeks on the journey from Utica, N. Y., to Collinsville, 111., he began to preach, 1831, in St. Clair County, 111. He taught a private school at Belleville next year, and then a teacher's seminary at Waverly, 1837 ; since 1840, at Springfield. In 1848-50, he planted Springfield Female Seminary, and taught Latin in the Bettie Stuart Seminary, St. Louis. In May, 1886, he wrote : " The Lord gives me fair health at the age of eighty-four, THE PIONEERS AND THEIR COLLEGE. 109 and ability to hear recitations six hours a day." He taught at Springfield till his death, July, 1888. The wide usefulness of Dr. Flavel Bascom, now retired at Princeton, has been adverted to. Four others joined the seven with him in its first two months. William Carter was born at New Canaan, Conn., 1803 ; graduated, 1828 ; was teacher at Hartford and college tutor, 1830 ; left the seminary, 1833 ; preached at Jacksonville four years, and at Pittsfield, Pike County, till his death, 1871. He was deeply interested in the Romish question. More than six hundred were received by him into the churches. Albert Hale, born at Glastonbuiy, Conn., 1799 ; a store clerk in Wethersfield at fourteen years; was converted six or eight years after. " Up to this time, very gay and worldly minded, and read his Bible only to make fun of it. As soon as converted he decided to study for the ministry." Graduating at Yale in 1827, and then studying theology there, his first home missionary engagement was in Georgia. Reaching Illinois in 1831, he labored at Bethel, Bond County, and " in the region around and through the state," with Mr. Baldwin, Mr. Turner, and others. In the fall of 1839 he became pastor of the Second Presbyterian Church, Springfield, and gave up the position at length for what he called his " uncanonical congregation." " The church could get a pastor," he said, but those " in the highways and hedges could not ; ' and he became city missionary. Suffering some decay, he is still residing with two daughters in Springfield, in good health and happy. His shrewd mother-wit in his prime was enjoy- able. Perhaps this led to that association in college with Mr. Turner which has been noted (chap. vi). Lucien Farnham, born in Windham County, Conn., 1799 ; gradu- ated at Amherst, 1827 ; at Andover, and ordained at Newburyport, 1830 ; preached at Jacksonville, Princeton, 110 ASA TUBNEB. Hadley, Batavia, Big Grove, Big Woods, Lockport, and Newark, 111., where he died on his seventy-fifth birthday, 1874. And Romulus Barnes, born at Bristol, Conn., 1800 ; graduated at Yale, 1828 ; Yale Seminary, and ordained, 1831 ; labored at Washington and other places in Illinois ; also died at Newark, in 1846. Two other names are inseparable from the history of the valuable institution Mr. Turner did so much to found. Journeying for it in Northern Vermont in 1832 he heard at Middlebury of a brilliant young graduate of the college — Truman M. Post, born at Middlebury 1810, and gradu- ated in 1829. He had taught in the academy and college and studied law, but had then just resorted to Andover, contemplating the ministry. At Andover Mr. Turner found he had gone South-west, turning again to the law. After a winter at Washington the advice of Governor Duncan (then member of Congress) led him to Illinois, in St. Louis, where he left his baggage and set out on foot for Jacksonville. The tradition is that on reporting to the trustees at Jacksonville about him, Mr. Turner was told : " He is here trying to start as a lawyer." His engagement for the department of lan- guages and history in the college followed, and continued till 1847. In 1834 the doctrinal difficulties that hindered him at Andover had so far cleared away that he joined the church at Jacksonville, Rev. William Carter, pastor, whom he succeeded in the pulpit for some six or seven years. He was ordained in 1840. His preaching then and ever was picturesque, magnetic, captivating, over- abounding in figures of speech and overloaded, at times, with weight of allusion and learning. He lived at Jack- sonville, he said, " with one sent from God through happy years." In 1848 the Third Presbyterian Church of St. Louis Prof. J. B. Turner. (Seo page 112.) ^ THE PIONEEBS AND THEIR COLLEGE. HI secured his services, though his Congregational principles forbade his installation. He protested from the first against slave-holding in the city and state. 1 In 1852, by a vote of 62 to 24, his people formed the First Congregational Church, twenty-five members ; funds for a new edifice being first secured, and the old property bought by the majority. The new church sustained, promptly, a city missionary. Installed pastor that year, he was in 1882 made "emeritus" on resigning; his connection with the church as "a burning and a shining light " continued for nearly thirty-seven years. He published one volume and twenty-six pamphlets. Shortly before his decease he said to the writer : " My office of late seems to be mostly elegiac; " but this volume is poorer for his not living to record his estimate of the western college trustee who fifty-five years ago followed him from Middlebury to Andover and Jacksonville. Dr. Post died at St. Louis, December 31, 1886. Readers of this book are already made aware how free and sharp a pen and how racy a style belong to that younger brother of its subject whom he drew from the farm at Templeton to Yale, while himself studying theology there. Jonathan Baldwin Turner, named for a maternal ancestor, was born December 7, 1805. At Dwight's Gymnasium, New Haven, founded by Pres- ident Dwight's sons, Sereno and Henry, he fitted for Yale, while his brother and himself were assisting in the school as teachers. He graduated in 1833, but he had already gone to Illinois with his brother, on his return with his family, having been recommended to the Illinois faculty by that of Yale as a teacher. " At first I taught," 1U He regarded the holding of human beings as property a violation of Christi- anity, demanding to be guaranteed liberty of speech on this subject at his own discretion ; otherwise, he did not think God called him to add to the number of slaves already in Missouri." 112 ASA TUBNEB. he says, " and did whatever came to hand, as we all did ; from helping run the farm and the mechanics' shops up to the highest studies there taught." Erelong he was assigned to rhetoric and belles-lettres, with some Greek, and remained in this department fifteen years. Meantime he had entered with energy into popular education, deliver- ing, in 1833, a series of lectures in favor of a permanent common-school system. While traveling widely in this behalf the problem of fencing prairie farms seized his attention and he experimented with various hedge-plants. One day Dr. Nelson called on him, and, conversing about hedges, " remarked that while itinerating in the South-west years before he remembered seeing a plant growing on the Osage River, called there the Osage-orange {Madura), which, from its tenacity of life and sharp thorns, he thought might answer the purpose. As the Doctor had failed to give the name ' Bois d'Arc,' by which it was known farther west, inquiries were pushed for years without satisfactory results." At length success came. " Failing health and what was then deemed over-zealous resistance to slavery and sectarianism " having caused his resignation, for ten years he was actively employed in introducing the new hedge-plant, " as an educational necessity while in college, and afterwards as a necessity of livelihood." His patrimony he had made over to an unfortunate sister on his father's death. Profoundly interested in industrial and agricultural education, he labored for this with great energy and influence for twelve years, till the congressional act for state agri- cultural and mechanical colleges was passed in 1862. He advocated earnestly a United States agricultural bureau and a state normal school. He has twice been nominated for Congress. Professor Turner's publications are very numerous, THE PI0NEEE8 AND THEIR COLLEGE. 113 though now mostly out of print. Besides three volumes, (1) Mormonism in all Ages, 1842; (2) Christ's Creed and Charter of the Kingdom of the Heavens, 1847; and (3) Christ's Words, many papers of his have been issued by Illinois historical, agricultural, and horticultural societies. The topics, practical and scientific, are very diversified. "Daniel Webster commended his essav on Currency." His home has always been at Jacksonville, where his life, in the enjoyment of a comfortable fortune, is still both active and studious. In a recent letter he describes himself as "ridiculously healthy" at the age of eighty- four. He has outlived not only his Templeton kindred, but his early associates. Rev. Albert Hale and Rev. Flavel Bascom, d.d., are now the only survivors of the Illinois Association of Yale. XV. WORK OTHER THAN PASTORAL. \J Mr. Turner's commission ran : " To publish the gos- pel in such place or places in Illinois as shall be fixed on with the advice of the Illinois Home Missionary Society." His own interest in Quincy was considered, and he was sent there. He found it a settlement of uncertain numbers, vari- ously estimated, but influencing much more population around about it. Methodist circuit riders preached there once in four weeks for years. " No minister on the Mili- tary Tract west of Rushville, or sixty miles east, or to Galena north two hundred and fifty. When I look on the desolations my heart bleeds. Places multiply in which I wish to preach till I find if I should gratify my feelings I must be divided into a great many parts. So far as I can judge, duty calls me to concentrate, to cast salt into the fountain of life before its waters become waters of death to all the surrounding country. Its [Quincy's] influence will be felt over a territory as large as Connecticut. "I have preached twice on the Sabbath (except every fourth, then once), and on Wednesday evenings ; held conferences Saturday evenings, prayer-meetings Thursday evenings, and for women Wednesday afternoons ; also, superintend the Sabbath-school. I can not preach in the country more than once a week." A year later he preached in the country twice a week — though beyond his commission — at three stations, from eight to fifteen WOBK OTHER THAN PASTOBAL. 115 miles distant. In town three times on the Sabbath. He was present at all appointments, and did not see how any of them could be given up. Every boat brought additions to the population of Quincy. In his second letter he wrote : u My field of labor is as boundless as the eye can see — a territory greater than that promised to Abraham, more abundant in its produc- tions, and, I fear, almost as destitute of the knowledge of the true God. I do need fellow-laborers in this part of the vineyard ; another man in this county ; it would be better than money earning a hundred per cent. Pike and Calhoun counties below have no Presbyterian minister (the former nearly three thousand inhabitants). Hancock County is fast settling ; now about six hundred. Also in Warren and McDonough a man is greatly needed. Much time, much money, and many souls are lost by letting a field go uncultivated a few years. After all that has been said and done, half of the story of our destitutions is not told. One hundred fold more must be done by Christians at the East, or the day will come when they will rue their sloth. Leaving Illinois now while she is' forming her character is like letting childhood and youth pass without moral instruction, in hope the native soil of a depraved heart will bring forth fruits of right- eousness. I do not complain. I bless the Lord that he has placed my feet on the rich soil of Illinois. But if ministers and Christians could have exchanged places with me the past winter so that they might see our necessities, they would contribute more liberally to the Home Mis- sionary Society. I went to the Presbytery in Jacksonville the last of March. On my way back got to Rushville, sixty miles from here, on Wednesday ; on Thursday it stormed ; on Friday, eleven a.m., left my wagon and wife so as to get home for the Sabbath ; the cold was excessive, 116 ASA TUBNEB. the storm very severe ; nine miles on my way, came to a creek ; so cold I dared not swim ; hired a man to build a raft and help me across ; swam my horse, and arrived in season; had been sick five weeks; took cold; was obliged to swim my horse three times, and swim with her twice, and thus, all drenched with water, ride fifteen miles be- fore I could dry. Brother Sturtevant promised to assist me next Sabbath. I accordingly appointed a two days' meeting. But a letter says he can not come. So I shall be obliged to fill my appointments myself. These are some of the difficulties; but these are very small, not worth mentioning. I seldom think of them as difficulties when compared with others — no place of worship — no school-house — thousands around perishing for lack of knowledge — children growing up in ignorance — no one / to care for their souls — infidels casting in poison — and prejudice and bigotry, in every form, among those who profess the name of the Lord, arraying themselves against the truth." His letters and reports argue fully, indeed elaborately, the question of permanent work in place of temporary agencies ; and the necessity of his continuous fostering of every thing Christian set on foot. Yet he writes — how many have done the same in this more than half a century since ! — as one who could not in Christian love resist the growing appeals from the broad destitutions about him, and the necessity for widely diffused labors. It is impos- sible to detail his untiring and diversified activity. His mind was fertile in plan, and work never paused. He had strong convictions before leaving New England as to the need of Christian laymen on the frontiers. At Andover, Boston, New Haven, and New York he pressed this on influential men, Dr. Lyman Beecher and others. He urged that groups of families should accompany home WORK OTHER THAN PASTORAL. 117 missionaries, helping in the church, Sabbath-school, com- mon school, fixing the character of towns, giving inactive Christians something to do, spreading the moral power of New England, and effectually aiding to save the West. It is impossible at this later day to see the emergency as it then rose before his eyes. From the field afterward he often repeated his arguments and persuasions. He interested individuals and families ; and their coming to the frontier multiplied centers of Christian influences. He thus developed agricultural enterprise and skill, busi- ness ability and integrity ; but his object was to promote the cause of Christ. Through others he will thus bless two great central commonwealths of the nation along a future whose limit can not be foreseen. A letter to him from Rev. William Kirby, then in Cook County, mentions several excellent people who left New England to join the Quincy pastor, but paused near Chicago. Mr. Turner's letters to Mr. Baldwin, early in 1830, are full of the plan of emigration which " progresses finely." " It is of vast importance to settle a minister in each county as soon as possible. Let us drive to this point. This is the object : to place one missionary in every county, and six or eight pious families, . . . without any loss to New England. Show them what a field there is to grow in grace by doing good. I mean to bring on a colony with me." Mr. Ellis, Mr. Kent, and other home missionaries had similar views of lay immigration. In 1833, on returning West, Mr. Turner brought about twenty with him. It is now (1888) proposed to revive the old Illinois plan elsewhere. He was equally industrious in serving those who came as immigrants. " Sick and poor, coming by long sea- voyage, then four weeks by canal-boats, and a deck- jmssige on steamboats, unable to perform the necessary iilihu i-ns, landed here to crowd into some uncomfortable 118 ASA TURNER. place, surely they needed the friendly hand, sympathy, and care. Mr. Turner searched them out, securing necessary supplies, and finding more comfortable situations. From these dark places where cleanliness was unknown, the delicate, refined pastor's wife shrank not, but exerted all her energies for the comfort and healing of these suffering people. She would take sick children in her arms and soothe their little weary frames, soon, we knew, to be laid to rest. Highly advanced in education, leaving luxury for privation, far away from loved friends, she never yielded to depression, but her lovely intellectual counte- nance was beaming with smiles. She was truly a help- meet, possessed a superior mind and a heart devoted to the good of all." From the first, Mr. Turner cared for the neighboring counties as well as his own — " a territory ninety miles by thirty. Some with tears in their eyes entreated me to send them a minister of the gospel. In one place, four persons were willing to pledge one hundred dollars per annum to support preaching." Incidents like this were not uncommon. "Attended meetings thirty-two miles east of Quincy, where two members of mv church reside. I found them like sheep without a shepherd. Two years ago I called to stay over night, and when the lady learned that I was a Presbyterian minister, she wept for joy. She had not heard a sermon for eighteen months from one of her own order. ... A Baptist church was organized during the summer, and on the first Sabbath of December, the Lord willing, I shall organize another church of ten or twelve members " (1833). He watched vigilantly the growth of population in all directions, and was instant, in season and out of season, in pointing out the dangers arising from moral and religious neglect. On all hands, the demands for his services were rapidly WOBK OTHEB THAX PAST OB AL. 119 increasing. His fidelity in meeting them and his energy as an explorer are shown in that, when his church num- bered forty " save one," his territory was thirty miles long by twenty wide. The second year he distributed forty thousand pages of tracts in town and country. Scarcely a tract was to be found when he came, nor a Bible to be bought in the county, and hardly a religious book. He felt keenly the loss suffered by delay in starting Christian influences. " Take, for instance, Green County ; it now numbers about nine thousand. If a faithful minister had been located there ten years ago, the whole county might have been under a healthful moral influence, but now, I tear, many of the rising generation are beyond hope." The results of his own labors in Quincy, within a few months, give emphasis to his words. One of his elders wrote to New York : — u In November last our dear minister came like an angel of mercy among us. Soon after, we organized a Sabbath-school with fifty or sixty scholars; a Bible so- ciety that has since supplied this county and half of an adjoining one ; male and female Bible-classes ; a tract society; and a temperance society which now contains between one and two hundred members." A visitor, Rev. John M. Ellis, wrote : " It is universally acknowledged that during the residence of Brother Turner [then nine months], a most clear and decided moral improvement has been witnessed." Early in 1832 he was cheered by converts and inquirers, " some few always found. Our little church has now increased to thirty-two — seventeen added on profession of their faith." The American Home Missionary Society's report in May summed up thus : " Revival ; twenty-four hopeful converts ; Sunday-school, eighty ; Bible-class, twenty-five ; seven Sunday-schools in county." In 1833, on returning with Mrs. Turner from a long 120 ASA TUBNEB. absence at the East, they were more than a month on their journey. From Baltimore to Frederick, Md., there were railroad cars, new, drawn each by two horses, driven tandem, sixty miles a day. At the latter place they buried an infant child. 4i It was hard," he wrote, " to have it torn from our arms while on a journey, without the probability of ever again seeing the spot where it lies. Still, we could give it up at the bidding of our heavenly Father. My dear wife bore this affliction with a good degree of Christian fortitude, and I trust it will make us both more alive to duty and more active in our Master's cause. Found our little church in a more active state than I Reared ; deprived almost entirely of ministra- tions for the past six months, many of them possessed an unusual spirit of prayer." The cholera prevented special meetings on both sides the river. 1 The Methodist minister was the first to die in Quincy. In January Mr. Turner reports one tenth of the whole population carried off. Nearly half left during the cholera. Sick himself and discouraged by this dire disease, he said: "The prospects of doing much at present are very unfavorable." The following November in some special services fifteen or twenty, it was thought, were converted. He was aided by Rev. Mr. Hardy, who had been at Quincy in his absence 2 the year before, and by Rev. David Nelson, m.d., of Missouri. *In Missouri it was even more severe. " Out of seven or eight hundred people at Palmyra, more than one hundred deaths." Camp-meetings began, it seems, that side the river. " After the first, in which there are sixty conversions, the campaign is arrested by the cholera. In a strain of heroic sadness Mr. Turner reports: 1 When these calamities are overpast, those of us who may survive will try again to gather in the lost sheep.' " — Dr. Roy. At Jacksonville the disease " swept off one quarter of the population." — Dr. M. K. Whittlesey. 2 Solomon Hardy was another of the early Andover gifts to home missions, like John M. Ellis and Elbridge G. Howe. He was born at Hollis, N. H., 1796; gradu- ated at Middlebury, 1824; graduated at Andover, and ordained at Boston, 1827; preached at Greenville, Shoal Creek, Quincy, and Mendon, 111., and South Wellfleet and Eastham, Mass., and was agent of the American Bible Society, 1831. He died at Eastham, 1842. WORK OTHER THAX PASTORAL. 121 He cared industriously for all the churches he founded. One of these was at Atlas, forty-five miles south of Quincy, the fruit of a thrilling revival under his preach- ing and that of Rev. William Carter. " He would ride on horseback to Atlas, preach at eight, visit the next day, preach again at night, and so on ; reach home Friday night or Saturday, and prepare for his own pulpit." Another was at Pittsfield, the fruit of another revival under his fervid preaching. He entered into other men's distant labors with ready and self-sacrificing zeal. In May, 1834, he was at a point " on the borders of the North-west Territory ; ' " whether it was just without the northern bound of Illinois or not' was undetermined. Rev. A. Kent had been sent thither in February, 1829, and formed a church of six members, October, 1832. The Methodists had had a "Galena Mission" in 182T; which in 1832 and afterwards was in Cartwright's " Quincy District ; ' but as late as 1856 he wrote: "By high waters, sickness of my horses, myself, and family, I was never able to reach a single appointment in Galena, and to this day I have never seen her hills." His Congregational neighbor out-traveled him. Mr. Kent reported at New York in April, 1834, a month before Mr. Turner arrived to help him : " It is now five years that I have been here, and in all that time have not had the pleasure of hearing a Presbyterian minister preach in Galena." There were some six or seven thousand people in the lead-mines near. Society, law, morals, property, and religion were what they have been since in Colorado, California, and the Mountain Territories. The busy and excited town was " three hundred and fifty miles from a book-store." Mr. Turner's labors on this remote outpost of civilization were abundant and appreciated highly. The next year he went to Galena again, taking Dr. Nelson with him for evangelizing work. 122 ASA TUB NEB. It is impossible to compute the " outside ' work this faithful pastor performed. One year, when over seventy- five members were received at Quincy, he was yet absent about twenty Sundays, preaching at " protracted meet- ings " and in places destitute of religious services. " Our church," he said, " are willing I should go when I deem it my duty, and I think the Lord blesses them more on this account." a 1 " He was accustomed to ride in all directions, preaching wherever a few could be gathered in a settler's cabin, unsparing of his own time and strength, and always ready to take a long and dreary ride and face swollen creeks without bridges to keep an appointment or to render a service." — Letter of Lorenzo Bull, Esq. r XVI. THE PLANTING OF CONGREGATIONALISM IN ILLINOIS. The polity of the Pilgrims was no more indigenous to prairie soil than was the Christian religion. Two adjoin- ing counties of the Old Bay State led in planting it: Worcester County, by contributing a home missionary organizer ; Hampshire, by furnishing an organized church outright. Four months after the former reached Quincy, the latter was constituted in an orderly way at Northampton, Mass., namely, March 23, 1831. Eighteen persons who were part of a Hampshire colony proposing to settle together beyond Lake Michigan, ten men and eight women, entered into covenant, and were duly recognized as a church. Six were from Belchertown, the rest from Putney (Vermont), South Hadley, Amherst, Springfield, Conway, Warwick, and Northampton. Churches in the first two places and the last were represented in the council. Rev. Mr. Pitman, of Putney, was moderator; Rev. Lyman Coleman, of Belchertown, scribe, and Rev. I. S. Spencer, of Northampton, preached a sermon from Luke 12 : 32 : " Fear not, little flock ; for it is your Father's good pleasure to give you the kingdom." At times this sermon is still read in the meetings of this church of Massachusetts birth in its adopted home in Illinois. It historically connects prairie Congregationalism with that of New England. "The council was followed by revival meetings in which many professed to commence a Christian life. The ]24 ASA TURNER. Saturday evening before the colony began their journey West, a hundred and thirty-two converts met at their pastor's house in a farewell meeting for two of their number [colonists]. Special services were also held in Conway " for four others. Some of the colonists had gone forward the year before. The main body left Albany, N. Y., on the Mohawk Canal, with Cotton Mather, of Hadley, for captain, May 7, 1831, and in five weeks and two days reached Bureau County, 111. At Greenfield, 111., thej^ all held their first church meeting, October 21. Thereafter, and till now, the church has been that of Princeton. 1 For " nearly two years it was the whole of organized Congregationalism in the state." 2 So far away as the Mississippi River it seems to have been unknown. Then, in 1833, February 20, a second church was organ- ized at Mendon, twelve miles north-east of Quincy, and in the same county. Eighteen Eastern people, members of Mr. Turner's church, composed it, though he seems to have hardly been aware of the movement till after his return from long absence East. These self-moved Con- gregationalists were chiefly from old Guilford, Conn., and their village was then known as Guilford, 111. Rev. Solomon Hardy, supplying Mr. Turner's pulpit in his absence, had preached there on week-days. " Our con- fession of faith, based upon orthodox principles," says a committee asking home missionary aid, "was received without a single remark. The members gave separately an account of the work of grace in their hearts." Rev. 1 Some of the history of this mother -church is in the succession of its ministers. They have been: L. Farnham, Owen Lovejoy, N. A. Keyes, S. D.Cochran, D.D., W. B. Christopher, S. Day, H. L. Hammond, D. H. Blake, Flavel Bascom, D.D., R. B. Howard, Richard Edwards, ll.d., and S. A. Norton. 2 Rev. F. Bascom, D.D., Semi-Centennial Sermon, 1881, and Address at State Association, 1885. CONGREGATIONALISM IN ILLINOIS. 125 S. Hardy preached on the kingdom of heaven as a grain of mustard seed (Matt. 13 : 31). The next Congregational movement in Illinois was on the other side of the state, east of Princeton. A few New England families on Du Page Creek, organized in July, 1833, and the church is now that of Naperville. That fall, the first case of return to New England polity occurred, making Quincy the fourth Congregational church in Illinois. Even here the pastor did not lead off, and was no sectarian theorist or partisan. He had been an orderly Presbyterian minister, though the form of government did not approve itself to his convictions. " It was said that Congregationalism would not do for the West, but after trying Presbyterianism for three years, it was thought best to change the polity." 1 In June of that year (1833), on returning from the East, Mr. Turner wrote to New York : " My church are all Congregational- ists in their feelings. One of our elders is gone; we can not find another who will be ordained. They claim the privilege of worshiping God according to the dictates of conscience. What shall be done ? Eight or ten Congre- gationalists are around [us] who refuse to unite with us as yet." Nearly twenty years after, in a speech upon the Plan of Union between Presbyterians and Congregationalists, at the General Convention of Congregational Ministers and Delegates in the United States, held at Albany, N. Y., October 5-8, 1852, he said : — " I was reared and educated in New England, and I was never ashamed of my mother ; but I am sorry that she did not teach me some things that I ought to have known. Twenty-two years ago I removed to the West. I had never in my life heard a sermon upon our church polity, 1 Autobiography. • 126 ASA TURNEB. and had never seen a line in print upon the subject. I went to the West under the impression that it was neces- sary that I should be a Presbyterian, and soon after arriving there I organized a church. Every thing went on harmo- niously for two years, but soon there began to be friction in the General Assembly, and our church members became restive ; and those who are acquainted with the history of the times at the West know the difficulties we had to pass through. Our religious meetings up to the time of the Synod [Illinois, 1833 ?] were like political meetings of the two parties. My church demanded of me that they should be Congregational. I hesitated some time about acceding to their wishes. My brethren in the ministry all opposed the idea. A good father in the Presbyterian church sent me word that if I organized a Congregational church he must come out against me ; and one of the Presbyterian fathers, whose name is revered in all the land, told me that if I organized one in Quincy he would come and preach me down. But I organized one, and when he came to Quincy I told him that after we got down through the soil in Quincy we came to the solid rock ; that the Mississippi had not washed away the soil, and I thought it probable it never would. According to the Plan of Union, when a church is to be organized, those who are to compose it are to have a choice as to its form. I was, however, reproved for giving my church its choice. The whole feeling was that Congregationalism must be frowned down. I knew of no Congregational church in the West at that time. 1 Afterwards I found one, but was told that the minister was a Unitarian. And I have been called a Unitarian because I taught principles which I received in New England. In 1837, after having organized thirteen churches in Northern Illinois, — com- 1 Mendon had not organized ; Princeton was farther off than Boston is now. CONGBEGATIONALISM IN ILLINOIS. 127 posed of those who had asked me to organize them thus, — on returning to New England, I tried to present myself before an association in Massachusetts, and they did not know me. They regarded it as a heresy that I should be a Congregationalist from the Valley of the Mississippi." This speech — which Dr. Leonard Bacon said afterwards made a powerful and profound impression — closed thus: — " It seems to me the brethren at the East should settle the question whether their polity is in accordance with the Word of God or not. If it is, then take it ; and if it is not, reject it. . . . But I ask these fathers from the East that they should be willing that their sons and daughters who go West should carry their own faith there." In the fall of 1831 five families had emigrated in com- pany from New Haven and vicinity to Illinois who had important relation's to the founding of these churches. They numbered about thirty persons, but did not effect their purpose of settling together, as did the " Hampshire Colony." They were Abraham Clark and family, New Haven (previously of Farmington) ; John B. Chittenden and family, Guilford ; Samuel Bradley and family, Guil- ford ; Mrs. Wilson and two sons, and Mr. and Mrs. Plant, who returned East. One pleasant September day their carriages and wagons for the long journey were all stand- ing in front of Mr. Clark's house in New Haven. On the doorstep Dr. Leonard Bacon, pastor of this family, — who, as a native of Detroit, sympathized profoundly with this movement of Christian laymen, then new and unique, — standing among the emigrants and many of his Center Church people, offered a fervent prayer and gave the out- going company an apostolic benediction. Any one who ever knew him can imagine the impressiveness and felici- tous aptness of his words ! Across the country in their own teams they journeyed, traversing Connecticut, New 128 ASA TUBNEB. York, and Pennsylvania, to Pittsburgh. Sabbath days they rested " according to the commandment " and wor- shiped as at home. At Pittsburgh the horses were all attached to one heavy wagon, the carriages shipped on a steamer, and after six weary weeks they landed at Alton. The next Sabbath they made a large and welcome addition to the little congregation and Deacon Long's Sabbath- school at Alton. Mr. Chittenden went to Quincy and Bear Creek (and Mendon) ; Mr. Bradley also to Quincy ; the Wilsons to Macoupin County, and Mr. Clark to Jacksonville, where his name stood second among the original thirty-four members, organized December 16, 1833. Jacksonville and Illinois College were household words among Dr. Bacon's people in New Haven while they lived there. The Congregational church of Jacksonville, unlike the four earlier ones, was planted by the side of a home missionary Presbyterian church. Its founders had strong ecclesiastical preferences, though willing to labor zealously under a polity they did not enjoy. Their new following of " the New England way " was not without excitement and censure. The Plan of Union, it was urged on one side, was designed to prevent new organizations like this. The Plan of Union, it was urged on the other side, has worked, or "been worked, one-sidedly; the New England framers of it never intended it should keep their polity out of the new states, as it has done and is doing. It is time for their children to resist this." The argument and the action on both sides were destined to go on till " The Plan " itself ceased to be. The proceedings at Quincy were a little different from those now related, and a little unique. We have seen that Mr. Turner was not the mover. Indeed, in all these earliest organizations Congregational laymen urged the ministers. CONGBEGATIONALISM IN ILLINOIS. 129 "On the tenth of October, 1833," says Dr. Edward Anderson, in his Historical Discourse (Quincy, March, 1879), " the subject of dissolving the relations of the church with the General Assembly was taken under consideration, Rev. Asa Turner being in the chair. It was voted unanimously that this church be re-organized according to the Congregational system." It then had forty-one members. Dr. Bascom's account is as follows : " Rev. Asa Turner was a very successful pastor. Although he and his church belonged to Presbytery, it is quite probable some Congre- gational methods mingled in the administration of their affairs, for in 1833 a Presbyterian minister, looking over their church records, remarked that they would not bear the inspection of Presbytery. So the church decided to keep their records in their own way, and not trouble Presbytery to review them." That Mr. Turner not only felt the pressure from his lay brethren, and believed in their rights, has been made clear. That he sympathized with the " New School " and anti-slavery elements in Presbytery, Synod, and Assembly, and strongly disrelished the dissensions in the denomina- tion, goes without saying. His manly and Christian character and New England antecedents settled this. President Sturtevant, at the Yale Seminary Centennial, observed: "Within four years from the arrival of the pioneers of the New Haven Association on their missionary field, the first three Congregational churches of the state were organized — no sister churches nearer than North-east Ohio, five hundred miles away. Of one of these churches, Quincy, Asa Turner was the father and the first pastor. Another member of the [Yale] Association, Julian M. Sturtevant, took the prominent part in organizing at Jacksonville, officiating at [the] public 130 ASA TURNEB. recognition, when it had been found impossible to obtain the services of any other ordained minister in all the region, and availing himself of the opportunity thus afforded to make a solemn declaration of his hearty acceptance of the principles of government and disci- pline upon which that church was organized." (Mr. Turner was to have performed the part he took, but was prevented by sickness.) "When the true history of Congregationalism in Illinois is written, it will appear that several members of the Association [Yale] sustained a relation to it truly parental. Among these, Asa Turner, William Kirby, and William Carter are certainly to be reckoned. It should also be mentioned in this connection that if we seek the true parentage of Congregationalism in Iowa we shall find it in Asa Turner. He is its true father." June, 1834, a council composed mostly of Presbyterians was held at Fountaindale (Du Page), to advise the churches about changing to Congregationalism. It was the first Congregational council ever held in Illinois, and its advice Congregational, namely, for every church to do as it pleased, which they did ! In August and November, churches were formed at Atlas and Griggsville, Pike County. That autumn these joined the Mendon and Quincy churches in forming the first District Association, "for mutual helpfulness and cooperation." "At their meeting in Quincy, the four were represented by delegates, but the only ministers present," says Dr. Bascom, " were Asa Turner and William Carter, both members of Presbytery. They, however, rendered important aid in preparing articles of faith, constitution, and rules." " This pioneer association was really more significant," says President Sturtevant, " than it seemed. It showed how practicable for the sons CONGBEGATIONALISM IN ILLINOIS. 131 of New England in their new prairie homes was the simple church order of their fathers." That year churches began at Plainfleld and Big Grove ; in 1835 came the Fox River Union, one of its four churches at Michigan City, Ind.; in 1838, a Rock River Association (though the present one was formed in May, 1851) ; in 1844, the State Asso- ciation. Mr. Turner was not led by any lack of Christian charity into Congregationalism, nor by any felt lack of it in his brethren of the other polity. He had written to New York, January 3, 1831 : " There is the most cordial union among all the Presbyterian brethren here. No polemic contention. All are of one heart, I might almost say of one belief. I might make one exception, 1 if all that is said is true." The next April, at what must have been the first ecclesiastical meeting he attended, at Jacksonville, he wrote : " There is the greatest harmony of feeling and sentiment in this Presbytery." I am not aware of any particular public events occurring in the Presbyterian body which influenced him, save the trial of Albert Barnes. He had become acquainted with Missouri Pres- byterianism and slavery, which no doubt had its effect upon him. One who had unusual opportunities to know says : u Mr. Turner joined the Presbytery on coming to Illinois, and was intent only on the spread of the gospel. But the warfare between the Old School and the New School, and the electioneering for Commissioners to the General Assembly, aroused his Congregationalism." This must have been in 1832 and 1833. Dr. Sturtevant says of the associates from Yale, that they " had, at the outset, no denominational aim whatever. Their only object was to aid in evangelizing the great 1 The minister referred to seems to have held extreme Old School views. This reference implies no distinct personal knowledge, however. 132 ASA TUB NEB. valley, and in filling it with the knowledge of the Lord, and doubtless they expected to do their life-work as Pres- byterians." But the controversy in the Presbyterian body "shook it as with a great earthquake from the Lakes to the Gulf of Mexico. Upon such minds as had gone into the mis- sionary work from New England, it produced a deep and abiding conviction that it was not the church of their fathers nor of their youth, and that in it they could not fight the battle of life either with freedom or efficiency." Yet there was not a little wonder in New England at the position which, under these convictions, these earnest young men assumed. Mr. Turner says : " Most of the New England brethren associated with me were opposed to the formation of Congregational churches ; but with one exception they all came over to the Congregational side, and that one looked on the form of government as of little importance." 1 Of those who were dead in 1872, " all had returned," says President Sturtevant " to the order of their fathers, most of them early in their ministry." Mr. Turner was sought on all sides for counsel and aid. He assisted in organizing Congregational churches at Payson, Griggsville, Plymouth, Round Prairie, Carthage, La Harpe, and Warsaw. How his own church pros- pered as Congregational is shown by its becoming self- supporting in eight months, and sending off two colonies in two years and a half. It had but fifty-five members when it notified the American Home Missionary Society that it could pay its own way, raised two hundred dollars for pastor's salary for six months, and thirty dollars to make him a life member of the American Home Mission- ary Society. In the first year under the new polity it The remark points to Mr. Hale. CONGBEGATIONALISM IN ILLINOIS. 133 gave three hundred and sixty dollars to benevolent objects, and received nearly eighty members. Of these forty-five were converts, and eighteen of them joined at one com- munion. It furnished Bibles besides for every house in the county, laid off ground for a camp-meeting, — expending five hundred dollars upon it, — and bought a church bell. Of the new members three were converted from zealous advocacy of universal salvation. The whole membership rose to a hundred and twenty — a large one for a frontier church. The pastor was too busy saving men to suffer much from censure for restoring the old paths, and so were his people. None of his fraternal relations were disturbed. The experiment of the New England order far west of " Byram River " was a success. XVII. EBONTIEB SABBATHS. — TEMPEBANCE. — MISSIONS. It is the testimony of an early governor of Illinois that where Sabbath observance was introduced new communities rapidly improved, and where it was not there came a standstill or a retrograde movement. "Such neighborhoods are pretty certain to breed up a rough, vicious, ill-mannered, and ill-natured race of men and women." All other testimony is to the same effect. Taking with him to the West his Puritan reverence for the Sabbath as a divine ordinance, Mr. Turner was tested on the way as to practical loyalty to it. Engaging a through passage on the canal, he expected to arrive at Cleveland by the end of the week. When he ordered his baggage taken off ninety-three miles distant, because it was nigh unto the Lord's day, the objection was made that no boat might pass for many days. At the risk of being thought strait-laced, unreasonable, and unmindful of his interests, he persisted. " The event showed that I should have gained nothing by violating the holy day. For we overtook them [those who had gone forward Sunday] next day about twenty miles from D , detained by a breakage in the canal." He once left an Upper Mississippi steamer Saturday afternoon, in Northern Missouri, where not a cabin was to be seen. In a walk of a few miles into the interior he reached a number of wilderness dwellings, held Sabbath worship to the great joy of all, where none had ever been held, and was set forward to advantage early Monday morning on another boat. FBONTIEB SABBATHS. 135 Later pioneers had experiences of the same kind. In 1844, the writer, with two ministerial brethren, Dr. J. C. Holbrook and Prof. Erastus Ripley, sought to land on the Ohio Saturday evening. The promise of the officers of the boat had been since Wednesday ■ — all the way down from Cincinnati — that we should reach St. Louis before Sunday. The holy day was passed by us at Hawesville, Ky., in no great comfort, but with one opportunity of preaching the gospel. Reaching St. Louis Wednesday morning, on another boat, we found our companions only an hour ahead of us — some of them elders, one a preacher, several Christian women. The next Sabbath we all three preached in the court-house at Fort Madison for Rev. J. A. Clark (morning, afternoon, and evening), to a people eager to hear, and Tuesday morning were overtaken at Burlington by the boat and the fellow-Christians that had been out two Sabbaths. Constant references to Sabbath-breaking in town and country in the Quincy minister's correspondence indicate how stubborn an obstacle to the saving power of the gos- pel he found this sin to be. One of his arguments for concentration of work was : " The habits of the people are wrong in many respects, especially in regard to the Sabbath. The great majority of the people and many of the preachers do not regard the Sabbath as * holy time.' It is not very usual to see men engaged in out-door labors, but where the gospel is not preached every Sabbath (and by many where it is) the Sabbath is spent in hunting, lounging, drinking, gambling, and perhaps more sin is committed than on any other day." How little some preachers did to check this is shown by what was reported and believed of one of them in Southern Illinois, that after preaching one Sunday he gave notice that he " would preach the next Sunday if it should not he a good bee-day." 136 ASA TURNER. " Occasional preaching never will correct this eviL Many will go to hear a sermon once in two or four weeks, if they can do their own pleasure the rest of the time. To change the habits of a village and produce any thing like a correct moral feeling in regard to the Sabbath, there must be line upon line, precept upon precept. The people read but little and think less. Therefore when any impression is made by the gospel at a given time, it is too often worn off before another sermon." A principled observance of the day, moreover, was looked upon with prejudice as " puritanical ' and " Yankee," neither Euro- pean nor Southern. Enemies of God's Word were proved then in early Illinois to be — as they ever have been on the frontier elsewhere — enemies of the Lord's day. A good example was not sufficient to rescue the day from desecra- tion. Instruction, defence, argument, anxious appeal, were constantly needed to keep even professing Chris- tians from falling into it. Without a sanctuary little progress could be made. It was two years nearly before this was secured. " It was unpainted, and had no cushion, carpet, or other piece of upholstering." It stood south of the square in Quincy r between Maine Street and Jersey, " separated only by a paling from Mr. Felt's garden." " The only structure- devoted to religious purposes, a long, low frame-building, an ugly, clap-boarded shed ; " but a place of glowing memories and sacred associations. It cost great labor and privation. " Very little money was used in its erection, for there was but little. In the rear of it, and perched on two poles, was the bell, the rope of which came into the church through a hole behind the pulpit." 1 *Dr. E. Anderson, Historical Discourse. An early resident says, "through an attic window." FRONTIER SABBATHS. 137 One member, with about two hundred dollars, gave to the church building fifty dollars, and to other objects thirty dollars more annually. " No one," wrote the minister, "is worth one thousand dollars. No one yet has any house to live in except a log cabin. We are determined to have a house to worship God in, if we continue to live in our cabins, and we have commenced one." Up to this time worship had been held in a room over a store, seventeen feet by twenty-one in size. The new sanctuary, says Lorenzo Bull, Esq., " was the cradle out of which have come most of the Protestant churches of Quincy." Says another early citizen, General John Tillson : " Almost every church in Quincy, every form of sectarian organization, is an offshoot, or, as one might say, a shingle from 'God's Barn.'" It was under this sobriquet the humble building became popular and historic ; few of early days west of the Lakes more so. It was made memorable "by the faithful fervor of the lamented Turner, by the learning of Nelson, and the originality of Foote." " Here Mr. Turner preached three times every Sunday, usually with Deacon Felt, a great snuff-taker and very deaf, facing the audience immediately under the pulpit, and Judge Snow, also an inveterate snuff-taker, near by, leading the singing with a bass-viol. "Mr. Turner was an emotional man, easily moved to tears either in or out of the pulpit. He rarely preached without more or less overflow, and at such times the thoughtless sometimes said : ' Deacon Felt is taking snuff and it gets into the parson's eyes.' "A trifling incident shows the freedom of the times and his occasional eccentric methods. He was preach- ing one hot summer afternoon, with an audience too sleepy to listen. A boy of fourteen, I was sitting directly 138 ASA TUBNEB. in front, and nodding with the rest. Suddenly he stopped in his sermon, and waiting an instant called out with a loud voice, ■ Lorenzo ! ' I started as if shot ; the whole congregation was awake in a moment; and without an- other word he went on with his sermon." 1 Home missionaries are of necessity temperance workers. The saloon will keep out the church, or kill it out if it can. With all his heart Mr. Turner entered into the temperance reform which the Illinois frontier so sorely needed. He was indefatigable in this line of labor. His neighbor, Rev. C. L. Watson, of Rushville, made the first temperance address on the Military Tract, and organized the first temperance society, 1829, soon after his own ordination. The day he and Mr. Turner organized the Quincy church, this body took its first church action as follows : — "Resolved, (1) That we deem it the duty of every Christian to abstain entirely from ardent spirits as a common beverage ; even if any one should esteem the use beneficial to himself." A second resolution pledged the church to total abstinence from it " except as a medicine." A third declared total abstinence " an indispensable term of admission" to the church. Those frontier Christians began at the beginning ! In view of the general habits of immigrants, Mr. Turner considered this step indispens- able. He deemed it eminently in keeping with the objects of the Head of the Church, as to current sins, to set up a special safeguard at just this point. In less than eighteen months from his arrival he could say : " Our village is almost as quiet on public days as on the Sabbath. The great majority of our citizens can now come to town and do their business without the aid of whiskey." When a few miles away another church 1 Letter, etc. FBONTIEB SABBATHS. 139 (Mendon) was organized, the members "unanimously pledged themselves to abstain from the common use of distilled spirits," after the Quincy precedent. This was largely due to the " one sectarian feature " of the Quincy church. A lay member ascribed it largely to the minister. "Intemperance is almost destroyed here. Mr. Turner has been the instrument of it. The story has gone abroad, ' Quincy is a reformed place.' ' Mr. Turner said of those who wished to profess Christ, provided "liberty" of drinking were allowed them: "Even if Paul should rise from the dead and offer himself on the same conditions, I should deny him." When the organization took place, two of those who were weak on the liquor question were providentially kept away. They had made him much difficulty. That night, however, one of them subscribed to the church " prohibition by constitution." "He appears like a real penitent," the grateful minister hastened to bear witness, " a meek and lowly follower of Jesus, and we have confidence that he will adorn his profession." How the good man from the outset must needs contend with the " environment " of his people, he saw at a county election held just after his arrival. " Whiskey was passed round the court-house " to influence votes. Another incident a little later was instructive to him. " There is a preacher here. He joined the temperance society when it was formed. A few days since he took whiskey in company with others at the invitation of one of our worst men. After he had drunk he said he did it on purpose to get his name off the list [of members]. The more pious and intelligent will not go with him." It is not the severest task in forming communities to disentangle "the truth as it is in Jesus" from doctrinal errors taught by professed preachers, but rather to show 140 ASA TURNER. that this truth allows no wrong practice accompanying such errors in the life. Now and then an amusing incident lights up the dim- ness of those early days, and reveals the "rough-and- ready " type of men he had to deal with. " He met on the streets one day a farmer who almost invariably got very drunk and noisy whenever he came to &own. Finding that he had just come in and was quite sober, he asked him to dinner. After dinner he opened a conversation, hoping to influence him to a more temperate life. The farmer was a man of fair intelligence, quite ready to argue either upon temperance or religious subjects, and seemed to be convinced by Mr. Turner's appeal : who, in turn, was much encouraged by the hope of his improvement. But during a pause in the conversation, the farmer drew a bottle of whiskey from his pocket, saying, ' Parson, talking is dry work, let 's take something.' ' " I believe," says the old settler who relates this, " Mr. Turner never made any further effort to reform Mike Dodd." Intemperance on the frontier is accompanied with many other barbaric and semi-barbaric customs. Mr. Turner took out with him from Massachusetts in May, 1833, two brothers, carpenters, who worked for him on an unfinished house he was building for himself. One day a carpenter of the village, who had done some work upon it, came in and charged one of the two " Yankees " with having made disparaging remarks upon his work. The reply was, that there was some of it the New Englander " did not think much of." A blow followed, and an attempt to seize a hatchet by the villager, which was prevented by the brother who was near the bench. It was then agreed to settle it at night-fall on the public square — "a ring formed, as was the custom," and after a fight of an hour or two, the " Sucker," " a powerful man and a practiced fighter, obtained an easy victory." FBOXTIEB SABBATHS. 141 Christian influences have to go far, in quiet and unde- monstrative ways, to tame native savagery, before such customs disappear from the frontier. Temperance and the suppression of liquor-selling do much to bring this about. Direct public opposition, such as Sabbath-breaking and drunkenness call for, is hardly the wisest agency. But what shall we say of centers of civilization like Boston and London, in the year of our Lord 1888, excited over prize-fighters ? Was the frontier ever more brutal ? Is it certain that refinement and all the improvements humanize men? One of the good things that went to Quincy in 1830 from New Haven and Hartford was a zeal for missions. Home missionary zeal started the monthly concert within the first few weeks. The contagion spread. Bible, tract, Sabbath-school work, etc., were carried on " entirely by ten individuals, mostly by seven." The flock was small, but self-denial was large. The people " thought they could collect fifty or sixty dollars." He was able to report seventy-five dollars given to the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Mis- sions ; the same amount to the American Home Missionary Society, and eighty dollars to the American Education Society, — a token of appreciation of ministerial training hardly shown in these wealthy days. Moreover, "the sisters wish to raise for the coming year fifty dollars for the American Home Missionary Society (additional). As a proof of our affection, we mean to contribute." An elder had written to New York earlier : " It was thought by some that we should manifest our feeling for the heathen by giving a part for their benefit, while most thought it should all be given to your society. Tell me how to dispose of it in a way that shall best satisfy our generous benefactors that we 4 are willing to do something to spread the gospel.' " 142 ASA TUBNEE. In 1835 this frontier people gave one hundred dollars at a monthly concert to the American Board of Commis- sioners for Foreign Missions, for China. The fact moved distant Christians. A deacon in Torringford, Conn., in a letter to Mr. Turner, called it "a cheering fact. The members of your church have a desire," he added, "to drive sin not only from their own hearts, but from the whole world. It appears that they believe that the people of China have souls capable of sinning and suffer- ing throughout eternity, and that the gospel is the only remedy." Barely eleven months before, the church had leaned on home missionary aid. XVIII. GENERAL EVANGELIZING LABORS. August, 1831: "Just returned from a tour to Green, Morgan, and Schuyler counties. Three four days' meet- ings in succession at Carrollton, at Jacksonville, and at Jersey Prairie. The blessing of the Lord seemed to accompany them all. At Carrollton we formed a church ; something like a dozen placed themselves among the anxious. At Jacksonville, much blessed; eight or ten hoping in the mercy of God ; one or two from college. Only one at Jersey Prairie, but we left many under deep conviction for sin. ... If I could gain the consent of the church at Quincy, I should almost feel it my duty to spend a year or two in laboring in this part of the field gener- ally." Another season : " I have been with , at five four days' meetings." He kept no record of these or any other labors. He was specially averse to giving any account of his successes, though ever ready to tell rejoicingly of those of others, and to magnify the wonder-working power of God's grace and truth. Every thing of this kind was not reported then by the press, as now. The following account of the transformation of a single community is therefore of rare interest and value. " Among the first settlers of A were four brothers from P , Mass., Captain R., Colonel R., Dr. R., and another (name forgotten). Captain R. was a graduate of West Point. The brothers urged me to make them a visit, and bring some of our people (forty miles). I said I 144 ASA TUBNEB. would if they would let me preach four days and attend the meetings. They promised to do it. I was a Yankee from Massachusetts, and they from the same state ; it made the relation very strong in their estimation. But the prejudice against Yankees was very strong. When I wished to go, I wrote stating the time. We had had an interesting time in our church at Quincy, and fifteen of us went down. " We found them very sour. Most of them had made up their minds not to attend. I called on Dr. R.; was very glad to see him, but he did not seem glad to see me. He went with me as far as the door of the school-house, politely bowed me in, and went home. Not a single indi- vidual in the village attended that meeting. We felt very small. " The next night a few attended. I asked an old friend of Captain R. to go and get him. He failed, but Captain R. promised to go the next night (Saturday). Sunday the house was full. At night I asked if there were any who would come forward. To my astonishment, Captain R. was the first to come. "Two weeks after I organized a church of fourteen. When I reached Captain R.'s, I found him in bed in con- sequence of leaving off his quart a day of spirits. He had told the hands on his farm that as he had hired them with the expectation of having spirits, he would supply them to the end of the time they were hired for, but would be glad if they would leave off with him. He formed a temperance society of seventy members. The grocery keeper said that 'that meeting took over five hundred dollars out of his pocket.' He (Captain R.) had been in the habit of playing cards and drinking on the boats. After this none that went dared play cards or drink. I attended him in his last sickness. The physician was an GENEBAL EVANGELIZIXG LABOBS. 145 infidel. All was submission and readiness to go. This physician left him and went to see Dr. R., who was also sick. He was swearing; 'would n't die.' But about eleven o'clock he died. (The Captain died at nine.) The physi- cian turned from the death-bed of these brothers, saying, 1 There is a reality in religion,' and became a Christian. The grocery keeper, going to St. Louis on horseback to buy goods, began to think how the Lord had prospered him. The question started : ' What have you done for Him ? ' — said to himself : ' I '11 give so much — so much,' increasing the amount ; could not be satisfied till he dismounted from his horse and gave himself on his knees to the Lord." From the first, Mr. Turner had a lively interest in other forms of evangelical labor that promised well and seemed suited to the necessities of young and forming communities. Of camp-meetings among Presbyterians (which began among them first in Kentucky at Cane Ridge, 1800-1801), he said : " The sacrifice of time and means is too great, when suitable houses of worship can be ob- tained." At Cincinnati in 1830, on his way West, Mr. Gallaher had told him that he must have camp-meetings. Of those which he began soon to attend, held by Presby- terians, he testified that " all was as orderly and quiet as in any country congregation in New England." u There is something so solemn, so inviting to thoughtfulness, away from all the bustle of the world, in the stillness of the forest. It is easy to pray, easy to preach. God seems to speak to men from the trees, and out of the skies, and the heart is often open to the gospel." He did not wonder that pioneers loved such gatherings, where " eternity lets its light down, and salvation becomes the engrossing thought." As late as October, 1836, he aided Rev. Albert Hale and Rev. Robert Stuart in a " Presbyterian camp- meeting " at Canton. 146 ASA TUBNEB. J. G. Edwards, Esq., wrote of such services : " I well remember the first I ever attended in 1834, at Bethel, Bond County, Brother Hale's station. Every thing was so orderly and well arranged, such a spirit of prayer pre- vailed in the different camps, that it seemed to possess all I had pictured as belonging to a holy convocation in a holy place.'" It was at such a camp-meeting in Missouri (1831) that the earnest and tireless Quincy pastor first met that phenomenal man and well-nigh peerless preacher, Dr. David Nelson, best known by " The Cause and Cure of Infidelity ' and a single sweet hymn. Dr. Nelson was born in East Tennessee (1793), of Virginia and Scotch parentage ; had graduated at Washington College, 1809, and had been an infidel physician. It was the falsifica- tion of history by infidels that had opened his eyes. He gave up a practice of three thousand dollars a year, entered the ministry, preached in Tennessee, and suc- ceeded his brother as pastor at Danville, Ky., whence he removed to Missouri. "He was six feet two inches high, with broad shoulders and chest, " says Mr. Turner ; u his mere bodily presence enough to inspire fear in lesser specimens of humanity. They only needed to see his face ; such meekness and benevolence shone through it." As he left the pulpit once of an Old School Presbyterian church in Kentucky, he was told by an infidel of the town i " You have been preaching lies." He surveyed his assail- ant from head to foot. " You are dressed like a gentleman," he said ; " if you will behave like one and come and hear me preach six evenings, I will show you that I have for gotten more infidelity than you ever knew. I can wind you round my little finger as easily as I could a tow- thread." In a few evenings this man and fifty of his companions were on " anxious seats." In Dr. Sprague's Rev. Daniel Nelson. (See page 146.) GENERAL EVANGELIZING LABORS. 147 " Annals of the American Pulpit," Dr. F. A. Ross gives a brilliant sketch of the genius, oratorical power, beauty of character, and oddities of Dr. Nelson. He studied theol- ogy probably in Franklin, Tenn., where in a dozen years' pastorate that able man, Dr. Gideon Blackburn, followed in some measure the example set at Franklin, Mass. A sermon by Dr. Elias Cornelius, of the American Board, as he passed through Tennessee, fired the heart of the con- verted infidel with love for the souls of men. The Summer Assembly of to-day differs so widely from the meetings in which such men as Nelson and Gallaher were instruments of the great power of God that Mr. Turner's recollections are worth quoting. There were no secular lectures then, no narratives of travel, no concerts, no scientific or picturesque entertainments with apparatus and magic-lantern : nothing but the simple, clear, incisive, passionate preaching of law and gospel, in dead earnest, aimed and shaped for the immediate salvation of men. Around a hollow square log shanties were built for temporary residences ; within was a large shed covered with split boards, a platform of the same, with a shelf in front, — " the stand," — and the people assembled by the blowing of a horn. Near Dr. Nelson's home, Marion County, Mo., twice a year the surrounding region filled his camp-ground. There was an early prayer-meeting and preaching three times a day. Dr. Nelson, anticipating the singing evangelists of to-day, used to urge " singing men into the kingdom." u He had a voice of great power and melody, and it was a treat to hear him and Gallaher 4 sing the congregation back to the stand,' after an interval in worship." Rev. James Gallaher, of coeval fame with Dr. Nelson, was a year older, born in Washington County, Tenn. (1792), of Scotch-Irish descent, and graduated at Wash- 148 ASA TUB NEB. ington College, 1813. He was about ten years under strong conviction of sin before he was converted — which (if less for his personal comfort) may, if Mr. Gladstone's judgment lately expressed in The Nine- teenth Century is correct, have made him a more thorough and successful physician in the cure and care of souls. 1 Gallaher taught at Knoxville ; preached four- teen years at Rogersville ; then five years at Cincinnati ; and became theological professor in Marion College, Missouri (Dr. Nelson's). He lived at St. Charles from 1839 to 1853, laboring widely as an evangelist, became chaplain in Congress, and soon after died. " As a preacher of the gospel," wrote Mr. Turner, years after, " I have always regarded Dr. Nelson as one of the best. I never met a man that regarded the preaching of the gospel such an honor, such a privilege. He used to say that when he felt the love of souls waning, he would spend a day in fasting and prayer, and God would give him all he could hold. I have heard him preach to infidels with tears rolling down his cheeks, exhorting them to study the evidences of the Christian faith. His preaching was more confined to a given class of subjects than that of most ministers." And herein, perhaps, was the hiding of its power. " His well-known book is but a synopsis of sermons. He could think as well sawing logs or shaving shingles," says Mr. Turner, "as in the best study in the world, and it was just as easy to arrange it on a log as in a rocking-chair. He would ponder over a chapter perhaps a day, or a week or two, and when he got ready sit down and write it off no matter where he was." *Of negative writers of our day who have " a feeble estimate of the enormous weight of sin as a factor in the condition of men," the statesman says : " They have not learned the principal peril of the patient's case and omit the main requisite for a cure." GENERAL EVAXGE^fZiyfTTABOBS. 149 " He might suggest some choice thought at a prayer- meeting," says another who knew him well, " then say a few words about it in some school-house, then preach about it on the Sabbath several times at different places, — thus brooding over it for weeks, — and finally surprise and thrill a Boston audience with his eloquence and pathos." Over a soul of such sincerity, truth, and consecration as Mr. Turner's, intensely eager to learn how to win souls better, these remarkable men had great stimulating and molding power. But they were eccentric in much, and not to be imitated. The first thing the writer learned of Mr. Gallaher in 1844, from those whom he had benefited to a rare degree, — along with marvelous incidents of pulpit power, — was that between preaching services he was wont to lie on his face upon a lounge or bed, deaf to every thing about him and apparently unconscious, medi- tating his next struggle with the consciences and hearts of sinners. The first time Mr. Turner saw Dr. Nelson " he sat in his tent," he says, " on a basket-bottomed chair, jean coat and pants, a thick, uncombed head of hair, the personification of indolence and stupidity. An infidel doctor came in and asked how God could raise the dead. His eye flashed, as he said: 'God who could make a diamond out of charcoal can make a body fit for glory and immortality.' He said no more." " I have seen Dr. Nelson," says another, " wearing a soiled collar, a seedy coat, with a sleeve torn half-way to the elbow, a black silk handkerchief in a string around his neck; and others have seen him wearing a shoe and a boot. A grand man, with a tender heart and a gentle disposition, but firm as a rock when principle was at stake." In the hour of bitter persecution from slave- holders, he preached delightfully from the words: 150 ASA TUBNEB. " Rejoice in the Lord always." " He had no financial ability, no conception of the requisites of household comfort in the free North." Some of his ways were like those of his New England contemporary, Dr. Nettleton. Once after preaching he stood at a high fence, leaning and looking into the deep woods. A convicted Universal- ist approached for advice, confident that Dr. Nelson's skill would place him at once within the kingdom of heaven. The great preacher heard him through, and simply said : " We must go to dinner." " I was thrown altogether upon Christ," said the inquirer, " and He saved me." It is evidence of strong sense and balanced Chris- tian experience that these wondrous masters of frontier revivals impressed no eccentricities or marks of imitation upon the Quincy pastor. But the graces of character that had made him the counselor of awakened students, and had given him success in Yale revivals, long after rendered him one of the wisest workers in religious awakenings in Illinois and Iowa. He readily and generously appreciated men whose evangelizing ways were very different from his own. He was widely sought as a helper by pastors unlike himself and unlike each other. There is entire unanimity among all who knew him in his most active days that his preaching was simple, unpretending, incisive, apt, growing in a certain benignant tone as he grew older, and always shapen directly and only to do good to the soul. His revival labors left no recoil, intellectual or moral, behind them. By them he was best known generally. A single judgment of his preaching qualities will suffice. " I came as a home missionary to Illinois fresh from the seminary and the ministry of a prince among preachers ; but there was something in Father Turner's sermons which compensated for the classic style, the beautiful GENERAL EVANGELIZING LABORS. 151 imagery, and the eloquent delivery of the university preacher. 1 In those early days he [Mr. Turner] was . . . probably our best [preacher] if judged by results. He was not a systematic student. He read and studied as he was able, never idle. He was not a finished theologian, but he understood the gospel system, and he could main- tain his views. The critic could point out defects in his sermons, his delivery, and his manner generally. But he always dwelt upon important subjects ; the explanation of the text was convincing, and he spoke as an ambassador for Christ. He never stooped to saying a smart thing ; he never thought of rounding a period. There was an -entire forgetfulness of self, and his sincerity and earnest- ness never failed to rivet the attention of his hearers." A lady who had the best of opportunities to judge of him, as the wife of a home missionary with whom he did early a good deal of " ranging," touches on a certain moral influence, " choice, subtle, inexpressible," that went every- where with his simple and kindly manner. " It was this, I suppose, that made the members of the Illinois Associa- tion feel, when he joined them, that • now they had Paul in the ship.' This that led to him anxious sinners and discouraged saints for counsel and comfort ; this that brought to him protection from an unexpected quarter when assailed by a pro-slavery mob." 1 Rev. E. T. Fitch, d.d. XIX. TWO ANTI-SLAVERY EPISODES. Christian pioneers from New England reached Illi- nois less than six years after the greatest struggle to conquer a state for slavery ever made in this country. The half-spent waves of that fierce contention were still striking angrily upon the shore. The story of it is thrill- ing to the lover of freedom, as it is told in the pages of Governors Reynolds and Ford, Judge Breese, and Hon. E. B. Washburne. In the succession of governors of Illinois, the noble Virginian who so grandly and wisely led the opponents of slavery rises preeminent. 1 The question — slave state or free ? — had entered, indeed, into the first movements to divide Illinois territory from Indiana. The soil was not originally dedicated to freedom in either. The Indiana Constitution of 1816 had prohibited slavery, as the Ohio Constitution of 1802 had done. They followed the immortal North-west Ordinance of 1787. But there had been, and continued to be, slaves in the earliest settlements. As late as 1840 there were actually three held in Indiana ; in 1830, thirty-two at Vincennes ; in 1820, a hundred and ninety in the state. Governor Coles reminded the Legislature of Illinois, in 1822, that many were still held in Illinois ; in 1820 they had numbered nine hundred and seventeen ; in 1810, one hundred and sixty-eight. The revenue laws when it was a territory had even levied a tax upon this species of (prohibited) property ! At Green Bay in Wisconsin, and 1 Washburne's Sketch of Governor Coles. TWO ANTI-SLAVEBY EPISODES. 153 at Detroit in Michigan, it was held, bought, and sold. "The North-west was slave territory all through the Virginia period, reaching from 1778 to 1784." 1 The original French colonists of the whole region and the Indians had been slave-holders. The Indians sold captives taken in war. In La Salle's time (1682), the French held slaves in the villages they founded, and carried on their common fields by slave-labor. Indian slaves were the more numerous at first. Being mostly Pawnees, such persons came to be called " pani ' all over the North-west. The first Illinois negroes were brought to Fort Chartres in 1720, from San Domingo, along with miners and soldiers, by Philip Francis Renault, director of the India Company's mines. Black and red slaves are mentioned together after this. Of course Virginia immi- grants — after the conquest by George Rogers Clark — brought more of the former ; and when the state ceded Illinois County to Congress, she stipulated that " citizens of Virginia, previous to the cession, should have their possessions and titles confirmed, and be protected in their rights." Before this, under Governor Patrick Henry's commandant of the "county," slave-holding had been allowed, and negro slaves hung and burned for witchcraft* The " patriarchal institution " had thus been Virginian, English, and French on the same soil. Most southern settlers approved of it, though the Scotch-Irish did not, nor those coming from Kentucky. It was contended that the second Illinois State Constitution — that of 1818 — v merely forbade its introduction after this date. The Free State men from New England, the Middle States, and the South were determined that the Constitution should be carried out in the spirit of the great Ordinance. As these increased, pro-slavery men felt less hope that they could depend upon interpretation and argument. 1 Dr. B. A. Hinsdale. 154 ASA TUBNER. Abundant materials in this state of things for severe and even bloody conflict ! It came in 1824 ; Governor Coles, who had left Virginia to free inherited slaves, lead- ing the Free State men. His opponents moved for a con- vention to amend the Constitution to permit slave-holding. They nearly succeeded. Cajolery, bribery, intimidation, u filibustering," were employed to carry the point. Poli- ticians went armed. Murderous collisions became common. Eighteen months of tremendous tempest ended in the defeat of the convention by a majority of 1,782 in a total vote of 11,772. The current of American history was turned. It is said that the first Protestant church in Illinois (New Design) had rules opposed to slavery. Many later ones had none. An anti-slavery political organization in St. Clair County (Rev. J. M. Peek), with fourteen branches elsewhere, helped defeat the convention. But \ no denomination identified itself with freedom. As late as 1836 the Methodist Book of Discipline was in danger of having Wesley's condemnation of "the sum of all villanies " expunged. Mr. Turner and others could easily make themselves obnoxious to pro-slavery men along the American Bottom. There were still seven hundred and forty-six slaves in that part of Illinois, when he came to Quincy. 1 He was originally most interested in temperance and Sabbath reform ; but his attention was called to slavery by his experience and observation in f 1 Judge Cooley's Michigan (American Commonwealths Series) makes three classes of slaves in the North-west: — (1) The French; (2) the English; (3) the American, brought in from Southern States. Judicial decisions as to each class were called for under the Ordinance, etc. About the time the United States Constitution (Art. I, Sect. 9) took effect against importing foreign slaves, the territorial chief justice of Michigan decided "that a right of property in the human species can not exist in this territory, except as to persons in the actual possession of British settlers June 1, 1796." Mr. Dunn's Indiana (American Commonwealths Series) has for its sub-title, " A Redemption from Slavery." So wide was the conflict that brought Illinois its highest honor. TWO ANTI-SLAVERY EPISODES. 155 Missouri at the camp-meetings of Mr. Gallaher and Dr. Nelson. From his reminiscences of the latter, published in 1857, 1 the influence of that extraordinary man upon him in respect to reform appears. They are here combined with his autobiography. Dr. Nelson opened a plantation in Missouri in true Southern style. But there came two great epochs in his moral life. The first was when he heard Jeremiah Evarts, of the American Board, en route to the Indian Missions, upon the conversion of the world. " His soul took fire, and the flame never for a moment waned while life lasted. His heart would melt over the degraded heathen who had never heard of the Saviour. I never met a man so per- fectly in sympathy with Jesus Christ on this subject." The second was early in 1831, when he heard Theodore D. Weld open the second table of the law. This led him to say that "he would live on roast potatoes and salt before he would hold slaves." A little later that year, two persons in Marion County, Mo., " were found to have in their possession papers, pamphlets, and periodicals [which] were seized and burned, and the parties ordered out of the state." 2 Mr. Turner says that at a camp- meeting at this time (May, 1831), two skeptical physi- cians were converted, and emancipated their slaves, and that this made Dr. Nelson's students at Marion anti- slavery. Their instructor "probably stood higher reli- giously than any man in the state. A member of his church (Mr. Muldhow) had conceived an immense coloni- zation plan, and asked him to read a notice of a meeting to discuss it at the close of the camp-meeting." Dr. Nelson thought it ill-timed and injudicious, though himself a colonizationist. General Tillson says that a Dr. Bosely 1 The Congregational Herald. 3 General John Tilleon. 156 ASA TUBNEB. rose and ordered him to stop the reading. Mr. Muldhow laid his open knife in the palm of his hand, so that all might see it. The cry of * Abolition ' was raised. Dr. Bosely was dangerously stabbed. " A body of armed men pursued Dr. Nelson to his home. After three days and nights of wandering he made known his condition to friends in Quincy." "During his flight he commenced his famous book, Cause and Cure of Infidelity." Hiding in the bushes, with the Mississippi at the foot of the bluff "gliding swiftly by," and " friends passing over " to and from a Free State, a safe landing in which he could " almost dis- cover," he also here wrote on the backs of letters the Christian psalm of life, " My days are gliding swiftly by." What " hours of toil and danger " find voice in some of our sweetest hymns! How the experience of Christ's dear servants often makes them live and throb ! The book and the hymn — of like memorable origin — express fairly the author's kindly and devout spirit. " He did not attack slavery publicly. He would say, Go home and read [perhaps Jeremiah 22 : 13] on your knees." " I do not remember the least crimination of any one for their persecution. On the first approach of the mob to his house, he caught his gun to defend his family. In an instant he bethought himself and put it up. ' Oh, I was so rejoiced,' he said, c that I was restrained from any self- defence.' " Times like these in early Illinois that tried men's souls had their humors nevertheless. Two Quincy church members, while Dr. Nelson was in hiding, at dusk paddled a " dug-out " across the river, and fished in the slough near the western shore. Learning by signs just where Dr. Nelson was "in the bush," they let their boat float down towards the Missouri " strand." With huge strides TWO ANTI-SLAVEBY EPISODES. 157 down came the fugitive evangelist and college founder from his concealment. The slave-holding scouts were foiled. Well out in the current Dr. Nelson asked if they had brought him any thing to eat ? His days of tramping, hiding, hymn-making, praying, reflecting, where it was unsafe to resort to a house, had well-nigh starved him. "Something in the bag," replied one of the brethren, rowing with all his might. Diving eagerly into tile bag at the stern, the brave but famished Tennessean brought up only dried codfish and crackers ! Laughing heartily he said : " Well, I 'm dependent on Yankees, and shall have to be a Yankee myself after this, and I may as well begin on crackers and codfish ! " It was in the spring of 1836, at Burlington, when returning with Mr. Kirby from Iowa, that Mr. Turner heard of this. 1 At Quincy he found vast excitement. ** The chivalry crossed the river and demanded that Dr. Nelson should be delivered up. They were told that he was under the laws of Illinois, and slave-holders could not have him." " Once he went back to see his son [at Marion] sick of a brain fever. They asked how long he would stay? Till his son died or recovered so that he could be removed, was the answer. You must leave the state to-night, they replied, or be in the hands of the police before morning. The Marion college students collected what guns they could, went to the sod-fence in front of the college, and told the mob to come within reach of bullets at their peril." A few days after he removed his son from the college to Quincy. As they passed through Palmyra, " the x The gentleman who told him thought Dr. Nelson had better let anti-slavery alone in Missouri. " If you were a minister," said Mr. Turner, if and wanted to join a church of Christ's disciples, wouldn't you require them to be substantially anti-slavery? " Said he : " My brothers in Virginia have been writing to me about religion; I replied to them, first to put away slavery, and then they might talk to me about religion." 158 ASA TUBNEB. people," he said, "fairly gnashed upon him with their teeth." All was not quiet at Quincy. There were citizens who wrought wickedness, whom Missourians stirred up. " I was then lecturing on Sabbath afternoons," says Mr. Turner, " on Acts in course. The mob at Ephesus was the subject for the Sabbath after. I felt that Dr. Nelson should not bear the wrath of the people alone. The house was full to hear what I would say. I told them what I thought of mobs and slavery, and repeated the declaration of Ethan Allen (of Vermont), that ' nothing but a bill of sale from Almighty God would convince him that one man could hold another as his property.' I told them that nothing short of that would satisfy me. At that a pro-slavery doctor cried out i Presumptuous ! ' " " Here the pro-slavery wrath seemed to turn from Dr. Nelson to me. But they concluded to take time and gather an organization strong enough to make victory sure. The next day this doctor went over to Missouri to enlist the men, as we suppose. There was a member of our church from Kentucky. They supposed he would be on their side, and made known their plans to him. They canvassed the county [Adams] to get up a mob. They had not decided what to do with me, but said I could not stay in Quincy. This member informed me of their plans from time to time. We were about to hold a two days' meeting Saturday and Sabbath. Dr. Nelson was to preach Saturday. That day was fixed upon for the deliverance of the town and county from two such dangerous men — the hour of public worship the time. I felt the thing must be met ; called the leading members of the church together and told them the situation. J. F. Holmes, one of our deacons, was a justice of the peace. He and several others, especially Lieutenant-Governor TWO ANTI- SLAVERY EPISODES. 159 Wood, made bullets, loaded a large number of guns, and put them under the pulpit platform, a temporary structure, without the knowledge of those they were designed to defend. When all was prepared he went to the leaders of the would-be mob and told them : ' A few rowdies can not get up a mob. They must have respectable men to back them, and we know who they are. If there is a mob, I shall read the riot act, and command them in the name of the state to disperse, and if you don't, bullets will follow. Now you may have a mob or not, just as you please. We shall aim at the leaders ; we know who they are.' " Dr. Willard relates an incident that seems to belong here. " Some of the mob learned where arms were stored, 1 liable to be captured by a sudden movement ; at the same time Mr. Holmes learned that they had such knowledge. He had no time to call assistance, but went at once to the spot. He had barely reached it when some of the mob arrived. Mr. Holmes was standing on the movable plank in the floor over the guns, with arms folded, and facing the door. Each successive mobite departed ; and one of them said of their failure : c Holmes was there, and looked as if he would as soon shoot a fellow as not.' " "The next day this doctor went over to Missouri, as we supposed, to tell his allies not to come. On Saturday people from all parts of the county flocked into Quincy. John Wood went round among them and said : * Don't touch Mr. Turner. If you do it will be over my dead body. I '11 kill as many as Davy Crockett did.' Captain Pease, a butcher from Massachusetts, who had the reputa- 1 Mr. Anderson says that M hoop-poles, cut at a convenient length for cudgels,'* were also under the platform, and that when the log court-house was burned, "court was held in the 'Lord's Barn ' for a time, and the arsenal discovered; but the weapons saved by free speech men." 160 ASA TUBNEB. tion of being the bully of the county, went round in a linen round-about, with two great horse-pistols in his bosom, and said : « Do any of you want to fight ? I '11 fight with you. But I '11 kill the first man that touches Mr. Turner.' " This was as trying to their chivalry and bravery as twenty degrees below zero is sometimes to house-plants. The public square was covered with men. About eleven o'clock [a.m.] they began to inquire what they came together for ! The movers all of a sudden became stanch law and order men. The doctor got up and begged them not to have a mob. They passed some resolutions versus Abolition — a word that has scared a great many wise men. since that day ; drank a little too much, fought a little too much among themselves, and went home. Saturday night was as quiet as Sunday. "In the fall of the same year [1837, General Tillson], they made an attack on the meeting-house with brickbats [and firebrands 2 ] during an anti-slavery lecture." " Many persons indifferent to, or favorable towards, slavery ; . . . gave out that there should be no more meetings held, and that the societies [anti-slavery] should be broken up," says General Tillson. " The better class of citizens united with the abolitionists to vindicate freedom of speech at all hazards. . . . Arms of all kinds were procured, from the musket and shot-gun to the hatchet and club. Watch by day and night was kept up by both parties. A committee from each passed a night on the river-bank to secure one influential and very effective man (N. Pease) who had been absent at Galena. Free speech men naturally got him. . . . Parties from Missouri came in." Mr. Turner continues the story : — " The same brother who led the defence before called on all the friends of law and order to go out and put 1 Anderson, Sermon. TWO ANTI-SLA VEB Y EPISODES. 161 down the mob. They went out [lecture suspended, and the brickbats returned] and applied brickbats a as fast and as hard to the mob as they had done to the meeting-house. They ran for dear life, and whether some of them have stopped yet is a matter of opinion. This was the finish- ing stroke, and settled the question of liberty in Quincy." "The leader of the mob," says Mr. Anderson, "is described as tearing down Mr. Felt's gate [the deacon lived next door] in his frantic efforts to get over it." " A not small and amusing number of notables," says General Tillson, "were found hiding in alleys and fence-corners, all of them next day hoping that nothing would be known of the affair. ■ God's Barn ' was freedom's fortress, where here 'freedom's battle first began' — a turning period in Quincy's history." " The prosperity of Quincy," says Mr. Turner, "was owing to the stand taken by Lieutenant- Governor Wood, J. F. Holmes, and those associated with them." Before Mr. Turner left Quincy he saw a Mission Institute erected by Dr. Nelson five miles east, on half of a tract of land bought by him and given to its use. There was to be no tuition, and teachers were to support their families by labor, the students working for them portions of their time. Dr. Nelson "would go to the timber with them, and when tired with work sit down on a log and write his * Cause and Cure.' " It was finished there, under the shade of four large oaks. He was com- missioned for Adams County by the American Home Missionary Society. He continued to make powerful and touching anti-slavery addresses. He remained for seven years, " unmolested, respected, and beloved," dying at the age of fifty-one in October, 1844. It was about a year later that another struggle occurred, * An unfinished hotel near by supplied mutual missiles. 162 ASA TUBNEB. nearer St. Louis, in which the central figure was also a Christian minister and a home missionary, and he was murdered by a mob. It was far more widely known through this catastrophe. Mr. Turner's part in it was less prominent. The Rev. Elijah P. Lovejoy, commis- sioned at New York for Missouri, had had his commission extended to Alton, Illinois. The details of his editorship of The St. Louis Observer, a Presbyterian weekly ; of his stand alike against abolition and outrages inflicted upon slaves ; of the partial destruction of one press at St. Louis, (completed at Alton), and the loss of three others by mob- violence at Alton ; of his calm Christian spirit, unruffled, spiritual, and devout, through it all, — hardly need to be repeated. He was a native of Maine, a graduate of Water- ville College and Princeton Theological Seminary, had been an acceptable preacher in New York City, Rhode Island, and Missouri, and was thirty-five years old when he was shot defending his printing-press. One of these had been given him by friends in Quincy and Alton. Mr. Turner sympathized intensely with him as a Christian preacher and a reformer. 1 After the loss of one press, he preached at Upper Alton from the words : " Thou wilt keep him in perfect peace, whose mind is stayed on thee." He wrote his mother : " I understood that text as never before." In danger of personal violence in both states, he wrote the editor of The New York Evangelist : " I have a constant sense of security. I read the promises (of the Psalms, especially) with a delight, a refreshing of soul, I 1 In the Commonwealths Series, " Missouri, a Bone of Contention," the author's unconcealed prejudice against Mr. Lovejoy and all anti-slavery men, and his defence of his persecutors, do not prevent his saying, " There was nothing new or objectionable in the doctrines he advocated ; and the tone and temper of his utter- ances, when contrasted with the fierce philippics of later times, were as gentle as the cooings of a dove." " He was a man of broader nature and better character than any who had become conspicuous in the anti-slavery cause." — Eliot's History U.S. TWO ANTI-SLAVEBY EPISODES. 163 never knew before." He purposed to remove the Ob- server to Quincy, but Alton people prevented. " About this time," says Mr. Turner, " the friends of a free press and free speech called a convention to meet in the Presbyterian Church (Mr. Lovejoy's), in Upper Alton. 1 The pro-slavery element came into it, took possession of it, and passed their own resolutions." Dr. Edward Beecher, Mr. Turner, and Attorney-General U. F. Linder, committee, had reported two sets ; General Linder's declaring that even " slave-holding states can not abolish slavery." "A part of the friends of freedom adjourned to a private house opposite the church (Rev. F. B. Hurlburd's) ; the mob followed, but the owner told them to touch the house at their peril." The police cleared the streets. "The first Anti-Slavery Society of Illinois was formed. I was chairman of the meeting. The next day when the delegates from Quincy went to take a boat, they followed us firing and hooting." For a day or two, the excitement grew in Alton, and ended in murder. Mr. Lovejoy was prayerful through it all, and so serene in spirit that an eye-witness says : " He is entitled to be ranked with the St. John of tradition, with the sweet St. Francis d'Assisi of the Catholic Church." It ought to go into history that the crisis was brought on by no act of his, but by a citizens' meeting in Alton, which voted it " indispensable that he should not be allowed to conduct The Alton Observer," and voted down resolutions in favor of the maintenance of law and the freedom of the press. His defence is worthy to rank with that of Thomas Addis Emmett. It has been pre- served by Dr. Beecher and Mr. Tanner. 1 A hundred and fifty gentlemen called the convention — fifty-six of Quincy, forty-two of Galesburg, thirty-two of Jacksonville, twenty -three of both Altons, twenty of Springfield, and seventy-two of other places. Dr. Gideon Blackburn, ex-president of Center College, Kentucky, presided first. 164 ASA TUB NEB. The mob pledged the defenders of the press, on their giving it up, that they should go out unharmed from the ware-house, but sent more than a hundred bullets after them and then destroyed the press. The fourth, Owen Lovejoy, afterwards a member of Congress, then on guard at his brother's house, received his dead body. A simple and quiet funeral service was held next da}^ by a home missionary, Rev. T. Lippincott. That day the Quincy delegation reached home. u On Saturday night," says Mr. Turner, " while I was pre- paring for the Sabbath, a boat brought the news of Love- joy's murder. As soon as I heard of it, on Sabbath morning, I laid aside my preparations, and took for my text, Luke 12 : 4, 5, ' Fear not them that kill the body,' etc. There was great excitement, and the house filled. I told them what anti-slavery was : ' Every man has a right to the avails of his own labor. Abolitionists want free speech, a free press, and all the freedom God has given every man. Our Declaration of Independence and Con- stitution have guaranteed it.' I gave an account of Mr. Lovejoy's life and death. " My own feelings were deeply impressed ; the audience as solemn as if it were a funeral. All the better people in Quincy condemned the act. Anti-slavery discussions had led many to adopt anti-slavery views. Previous to these events, Alton was much larger than Quincy, and had promise of great commercial importance ; 1 but after them it was for a time shunned, while Quincy took an imme- diate start upwards." " The ware-houses built in its youth of enterprise," says Dr. Willard, " were sold for a tenth or a twentieth of their cost." About 1850, the depression at Alton passed 1 Chicago was estimated at less than four thousand ; and Alton not far from the i-ame number. — Tanner's Martyrdom, etc. TWO ANTI-SLAVEBY EPISODES. 165 away, and the city furnished its full quota of men at the summons of the second Anti-slavery Martyr of Illinois. It is not too much to say that the episodes here recounted entered with other influences into the responses of the state at large, which put as many men into the Union army as the whole population of Illinois amounted to when Mr. Turner began his life at Quincy. An immediate effect of Lovejoy's murder was the making Illinois Congregationalists abolitionists "from that hour." Another was the serious consideration by the pastor at Quincy of the question of becoming the lec- turing agent of the new State Anti-Slavery Society. An admirable letter of Rev. Albert Hale dissuaded him on the excellent ground that his training, attainments, and experience fitted him to be more useful in the pastorship of a church. The only mention of these episodes in letters to New York was one of June 7, 1836 : " Dr. Nelson has been driven here by a mob. Excitement very great. Cause, holiness in the form of Presbyterianism and abolition. Mobs are threatened here. What will be the end I know not." XX. FRESH FIELDS. — EARLY IOWA. With a heart still hungry for the conversion of men the courageous Christian reformer was cultivating the Quincy field. In November, 1837, the Denmark brethren had written to Mr. Reed, who had visited their region (not missing the place, as we shall see that Mr. Turner did) asking that they would come together and assist in a church organization. " About thirty members here of our own denomination ; we hope by renewing covenant obliga- tions that we may be excited to newness of life and new obedience." The two ministers were afraid to put the Mississippi (liable to freeze up or be filled with running ice) between them and their Illinois homes at that season, and postponed the visit till spring. They were the nearest ministers. The next February, Mr. Turner wrote Mr. Reed : " We have had a little movement among the dry bones here. Meetings every night for two weeks of some kind. But the church are not engaged, and the minister is not en- gaged. Many sinners come to hear ; some thirty say that they think they have been converted; but what is this among so many ? Praise the Lord for his goodness ! but I ought to get into the dust." The two parts of this ingenuous expression of a faithful and burdened soul must be taken together, in order to do justice to the man and the pastor. He was humble, and yet worthy of honor for Christian usefulness of a high degree. Five years later, he said to an Andover senior, FRESH FIELDS.— E ABLY IOWA. 167 who had written him : " We feel that it would be hard to stay in New England while the wants of the West are so great." "Men must be hunted up," he wrote, "and preached to : the gospel carried to them." And he added the strong encouragement : " Doing this, with a proper spirit, in due time you may expect to reap. While I was at Quincy, about eight years, — one and a half spent in the East, — about four hundred united with the church, two hundred by profession, two hundred by letter. Some four other churches also have grown out of that one, able to support their own ministers. Where I am now, we commenced with scarcely materials enough to make a con- gregation : we now have a church of some hundred and ten members." How the Quincy pastorate ended, the autobiography tells : " I had been opposed to the installation of minis- ters, but I saw the difficulty of the question of continu- ance coming up every year. When they voted (1838) to continue me another year I declined, unless I was installed. I had [then] a call to settle. At the meeting at which the call was made, there were sixty male members present : forty-eight in favor, twelve against it." Of these last (against installation), Mr. Reed says : " I think some of them did not sympathize with his earnest working piety ; with one or two it may have been Presby- terianism ; and I suspect that his calls for frequent giving [very frequent] did not suit others." The autobiography says : — " The question of my acceptance was deferred till the meeting of the Association [which he had joined, leaving the Presbytery in 1836], when I was advised not to accept. During the discussion it was stated that I was popular with the church but not with the young people or outsiders. The next morning I was called upon, and 168 ASA TUBNEB. offered one thousand dollars for one year if I would stay in Quincy, and I might do as I pleased about preaching. The leader of this movement was [Lieutenant-Governor] John Wood. I thanked them for their good-will, but felt that I could do them no good and that the best thing for me to do was to leave immediately." One of the twelve said he did not know of " any minis- ter in the state who had done as much good." He after- wards became a minister himself, studying for awhile with Mr. Turner in Iowa. " His opposition did not inter- rupt the kind feeling between us." Half a dozen years later, The Home Missionary (monthly for January, 1844) reports 152 members in the Quincy church, in 1837 ; contributions to foreign missions since 1834, two or three hundred dollars a year — besides gifts to other benevolent objects, and "the amount ex- pended by the American Home Missionary Society, for the four previous years, $ 1,300," a good deal overbalanced by the contributions of a few successive years. " It is to be regretted that there is no record of the appropriations to the different benevolent societies, that the friends of home missions might see how much has been gained to the cause of benevolence by what was done for this church in its infancy." The generous urgency of the minister is to be credited with much of this large return to the interests of Christ's cause rather than to his own. After he had passed away, one who had been of the lambs of his Illinois flock wrote in grateful recollection of his tender sympathy and varied helpfulness in difficulty and sorrow, adding, " It is but a faint idea that I can give of the noble work of this good man. When I see the spires of the churches overlooking our great river, hear the sweet Sabbath-bells, and note the harmony which has ever prevailed here, I think of that under-shepherd of FRESH FIELDS. — EARL Y 10 WA. 169 Israel, who first led this little flock — whom the hand of the heavenly Shepherd now leadeth by the clear crystal waters of the pure River of Life." : In April, 1836, Mr. Turner with Mr. Kirby — neither then " in commission," and the latter not yet settled at Mendon — had visited the Black Hawk Purchase, helping organize the Warsaw church on their way. Mr Turner had seen Iowa in 1834. "Passing down the river with a Boston gentleman, before Iowa was open," he once wrote, " we were so charmed with Davenport [the site minus the city] that he proposed to get up a colony and make a settlement there if I would go with him. The thing was then impracticable, and I was blind to the future." This must have been after General Scott's treaty of September, 1832, which opened Eastern Iowa, and after the church at Galena was gathered, October, 1832, and on his return from preaching there ; that is, in 1834 or 1835. The Warsaw home missionary (not then a minister) had seen it in May, 1833, coming up from Macomb to Carthage, Commerce (now Nauvoo), and Warsaw. "His point of observation was Commerce, consisting of one log cabin and a corn-field. His eye could just distinguish bluffs and prairie with timber-skirted streams." 2 The two Illinois pioneers journeyed through what is now seven populous counties, — Lee, Van Buren, Henry, Des Moines, Louisa, Muscatine, and Scott, — then a green wilderness. A mile and a half east of Denmark they passed northward, missing the spot. " Mr. Turner may have admired the clump of hickories which stood there [on the West Point and Burlington road], but that naked, uninhabited prairie was forgotten as soon as it was passed ; yet with what an earnest gaze would he have scanned it 1 Letter of Mrs. H. C. Brown. 2 The Iowa Band, p. 58. 170 ASA TURNER. had he foreknown that there he was to do his life's work and love it better than any other place on earth ! " 2 The next October, six counties were erected where there had been but two, Des Moines and Dubuque, and two years later fifteen more. On this jaunt of discovery, Mr. Kirby preached at Farm- ington, or Burlington, the first Congregational sermon in Iowa. Mr. Turner's at Fort Madison would have been so accounted had he not been still a Presbyterian. He preached the first Protestant sermon in what is now Scott County, at the mouth of Crow Creek. Writing me (1856) he said : — " I preached at a place about eight miles above Daven- port, where there was quite a little settlement, at the house of a Brother Chamberlain. There was talk of some explorers who had gone up as far as the Wapsipinecon. Dubuque we did not then call a civilized place. True, there were some half-breeds, some whole breeds, and a few miners, but * it was n't any thing, anyhow.' All the West lay spread out just as the Lord made it, in all its primitive beauty. Muscatine had been disfigured by one cabin." " The night we reached there," he said once at General Association, " we occupied the whole place for sleeping — an uninhabited cabin of one room." Early in that year, Mr. Chamberlain had written from " Rock Island Rapids, Mo. T." (it had been attached to Michigan Territory, in fact, since June 28, 1834) that "the country for a hundred miles or more along the [west] bank of the river is entirely destitute of preaching. I think a church might be soon organized of fifteen or twenty members." Of Davenport, Mr. Turner wrote : " In the center of what now is the town was a corn-field ; a cabin had grown 1 Early Congregationalism in Iowa, p. 4. FBESH FIELDS. — E ABLY IOWA. 171 up to the eaves, but was minus a roof and gable ends. Le Claire's cottage stood about where his house does now, a field enclosed it around [depot grounds of the M. and M. R. R.R., in 1856], and a young orchard gave promise of future fruit. Some two thousand Indians were en- camped on the ground to receive their pensions from Rock Island [fort]. As we came from the south into town, we met a number of young warriors trying the speed of their Iowa Morgans. But our rushes and Cottonwood bark during the winter had not put energy enough into their muscles to make their speed dangerous. Many claims had been taken up between the two places " (Dav- enport and Muscatine). In another letter he continued the story of home mis- sionary reconnoissance : — "General Street, Indian Agent, occupied Fort Arm- strong on Rock Island. There were a few cabins in the town [then called Stephenson]. I crossed the river, and made my way down the east side, forded the wider part of Rock River, and as the water was deep (within one foot of my little borrowed ponies' backs) got quite wet. The sun was just going down as I got to the south bank. There was a house nine miles below which I hoped to find, and with it supper and bed, but missed my way; took the dragoon trace with the moon as my guide, keeping the right hand of this, and struck the timber in the morn- ing opposite the mouth of the Iowa River, forty miles from my fording-place." The cabin he struck in the timber that morning stood where New Boston now stands. There were sixteen in it already, but a log cabin in those days was never full. In another letter he says : " It was about twelve feet square. The woman had three in her bed, and two in a bed sup- ported by sticks driven into auger holes in the wall. She 172 ASA TUBNEB. got up and took one [child] off the floor to her bed, and the other to the patent bedstead, to make room for Brother Kirby and myself to lie on the floor. Brother Kirby went down on the Illinois side. "This was Saturday morning. I had an appointment at Yellow Springs [fifteen miles west] for the Sabbath. The ferryman refused to take me across the Mississippi River until five or six others should come and want to cross. I offered him five dollars ; told him I must get over to preach ; he still refused. I hired a skiff, took my saddle, found a house and horse three miles the other side, and fulfilled my appointment." He was obliged, however, to leave his saddlebags hanging on a tree, and send back for them. The determined pioneer paid for these hardships and his exposure to a hot sun by a three months' sickness. What now was the Black Hawk Purchase in which these explorers preached at half a dozen points in 1836 ? It was part of the Louisiana Purchase from Napoleon in 1803 by Livingston and Jefferson — part of that immense region named by La Salle in honor of Louis XIV. Per- haps it had been included in the vague, unbounded claim of England under the discovery by the Cabots (1499 or 1497). It was loosely covered by the French claims of De Soto, Marquette, and Joliet (1541-1673). The last two found a cluster of Indian villages four days after they floated out of the u Ouisconsin ' River, but whether opposite the mouth of Rock River or near that of the Des Moines can not now be determined. Nearly a hundred years later, by the Treaty of Paris (1763), France ceded her lands east of the Mississippi to England, but by another and a secret convention gave Spain those on the west. Iowa, then, was Spanish soil during our Revolution. Na- poleon claimed it again in 1801. After it was purchased FRESH FIELDS. — E ABLY IOWA. 173 from him, it had been successively part of the District of Louisiana (1804), and attached to Indiana Territory; part of the Territory of Louisiana (1805) ; of Illinois Territory (1807); of Missouri Territory (1812-21); of Michigan Territory (1834) ; 1 of Wisconsin Territory (1836). In 1838 it became the Territory of Iowa (June 12). Before this date Asa Turner had been invited to come thither; two months later he came. The late Senator Grimes, who came to Burlington in 1836 (May) while it was still under Michigan law, said in the United States Senate in 1866 : " I have lived in three different territo- ries, under three different territorial governments, although I have resided in the same town all the time." General Scott's Treaty with Black Hawk in 1832 secured but the nucleus of future Iowa — a strip of land from the Mississippi west, averaging forty miles only in width. The Northern Missouri line was its southern boundary as far west as Van Buren County now runs ; its northern boundary was a line from the " Painted Rocks " above McGregor about as far west. Above this lay the " Neutral Grounds ; " that is, neutral between the Sioux or Dakotas on the north, and the Sacs and Foxes, who had driven out the Iowas, on the south. There were still Winnebagoes in that region, while beyond the western line of Scott's treaty Pottawatomies held pos- session. Within the Purchase there were lands released to half-breeds by Congress in 1834, and four hundred *It has been noted by several writers that, after the Missouri Compromise, and before the laws of Michigan Territory were extended west of the Mississippi north of the Compromise line (January 20, 1834) , Iowa had no local government. It will be seen presently that there were hardly any settlers for years to be governed. But one law was in force, at least, one great national law, namely, that provision in the Missouri bill of 1820 excluding slavery from all the territory "ceded by Prance to the United States, under the name of Louisiana, north of thirty-six degrees and thirty minutes north latitude." 174 ASA TUBNEB. sections reserved to Keokuk and Wapello, along the Iowa River. In 1836 the latter was still there, where a county seat perpetuates his name. That year the United States government bought his reserve, and another tract in 1837. The remaining lands, composing the " New Purchase ' farther west, were bought in 1842. Settlements here were at first very slow. It was more than a hundred years from Marquette and Joliet to Julien Dubuque, the first lead-miner (1788) and Louis Honore Tesson, the first Indian trader and fruit-grower at the Lower Rapids of the Mississippi (1799). They were both French. A generation then passed away before a few Americans, attempting to mine at Dubuque, were driven off by United States troops (1832). Three brothers-in- law made settlers' claims at Burlington that year. David Tothers was living three miles south-west. In July, 1833, Dr. William R. Ross from Quincy made a claim nearer the town. That year Fort Madison and Bellevue, 1 which had been military posts, — the former from 1809 ; the latter from 1812, — became settlements ; and earlier, in the spring, Antoine Le Claire, General Scott's half-breed interpreter, occupied the site of Davenport. In 1834-35 there were settlers in Van Buren County. The first election in Iowa had been held at Burlington, October, 1834, to choose a justice of the peace and a constable; the first court was held there in April, 1835, and the last election under Michigan law in November. Bellevue had been first selected (in 1836) for territorial capital; but that year Burlington was actually made the seat of government for what is now Wisconsin, Iowa, .Minnesota, and Dakota. There the Legislature was in session (1838) ir The United States factory and stockade fort at Bellevue were besieged by several hundred Winnebagoes, and bravely defended by Lieutenants Hamilton and Vasquez with about thirty men (1812) . The Sacs, Foxes, and Winnebagoes carried a blockhouse at Fort Madison, but were repulsed (1813). FBESH FIELDS. — EABLT IOWA. 175 when news came that Iowa had been erected into a distinct territory, and there five months later the first Iowa Legis- lature met. Settlers had entered Henry, Jones, Clinton, and Cedar counties in 1836, and probably Jefferson. Fourteen counties were organized northward in 1838, up to the Minnesota line; but Fort Atkinson was still needed in 1842 for protection against Indians. The sites of Anamosa, Independence, Marion, and Cedar Rapids were not far enough east to have been included in the Purchase, to say nothing of Waterloo, Grinnell, Oskaloosa, and Ottumwa. The surveyors of the first state capital, Iowa City, had Poweshiek's band of Sacs and Foxes looking on from their camp a little west, while they ran their lines. The present capital, Des Moines, was a straggling line of log barracks as late as 1846, in possession of a company of United States infantry and one of cavalry. They were there to prevent hostilities between the Sioux and the Sacs and Foxes, and to keep white men off the New Purchase on the Des Moines River till Indian occupancy should end. This was October 11, 1845, three years after the cession of the lands. When these troops left, the next March, what was to become the largest of Iowa cities in 1888 had a permanent population of four families only and about twenty souls. Ottumwa, now a great and grow- ing manufacturing and railroad center, had about twenty houses. It is instructive to remember that a President of the United States had once so little anticipation of the settle- ment of Iowa by white men — to say nothing of the great states and territories beyond it — that he proposed to distribute the soil among Indian tribes, removing those east of the Mississippi thither for the purpose. How the nation should discharge its duty to its dusky wards was 176 ASA TURNER. then quite as unsettled a question as now. In his eighth annual message to Congress, December, 1824, President Monroe emphasized the dangers threatening them, espe- cially those within the limits of states, from the extension of our settlements. He referred to their possible extinc- tion, and the necessity of their gradual civilization upon a separate domain of the nation. "Between the limits of the present states and territories and the Rocky Moun- tains there is a vast territory to which they might be invited with inducements, which might be successful. It is thought that if that territory should be divided into districts, by previous agreement with the tribes now residing there, and civil governments be established in each, with schools for every branch of instruction in liter- ature and in the arts of civilized life, that all the tribes within our limits might gradually be drawn there. The execution of this plan would necessarily be attended with expense, and that not inconsiderable ; but it is doubted whether any other can be devised which would be less liable to that objection, or more likely to succeed." 1 This contemplated a permanent Indian nation. As the government of Missouri Territory had been withdrawn from Iowa in 1821, and that of Michigan Territory not extended over it till 1834, all free soil west of the Miss- issippi was in view, and Iowa was part of the vast region to be districted among surviving tribes. Of these only a remnant of the Sacs and Foxes remains now upon her soil, owning their lands and cared for by a United States super- intendent. This is the Masquawkee band (squaw-men), 365 souls, on the Iowa River in Tama County. That President Monroe's plan did not succeed prevented the American Board from sending Mr. Turner with his con- temporary pioneers (including the Iowa Band of 1843) 1 Statesman's Manual, vol. i, 976, 977. FRESH FIELDS.— E ABLY IOWA. 177 to some large Indian missions in Iowa as foreign mis- sionaries ! The Iowa portion of this immense proposed reservation is now a commonwealth of nearly two millions of souls. Now and then one dies who was the first man, woman, or child in one of its oldest towns, and there are survivors who have seen the whole of its wondrous progress from the beginning. While these pages were being prepared, the first white woman who ever lived at Dubuque died; she came to Wisconsin in 1828, when all beyond the river was Indian wilderness. Its soil, then all untilled, pro- duced in 1888 a greater proportion of our greatest Amer- ican crop than that of any other state in the Union — 321,629,962 bushels of corn. Its value, at the average price, was nearly $75,000,000. It exceeded the total net earnings of all the national banks in the country by $8,000,000. It was equivalent in quantity to six tons of corn for every man, woman, and child in Iowa. This is but one branch of production, and came from the tilling of only 7,797,000 acres of noble soil out of 35,856,000. If "corn is king," what of President Monroe's proposed Indian Territory of sixty-four years ago ? XXI. THE GOSPEL WEST OF THE FATHER OF RIVERS. The gospel was first preached beyond the Mississippi, so the tradition runs, by u Father John Clark," one of the first six Protestant preachers in Illinois. It was in 1798, the year after he came to the country, and probably below the Missouri line. W. D. R. Trotter, of Henderson River Mission, son-in-law of Peter Cartwright, " perhaps was the first traveling preacher who broke ground in Iowa." " In the autumn of 1833-34," says Dr. William R. Ross, first surveyor, first clerk, and first postmaster at Burling- ton, " I wrote to Rev. Peter Cartwright, on his route north, to send me a preacher. He licensed Barton G. Cartwright, who came to my house on my claim in March, 1834, with an ox-team and plow to break prairie through the week, and preach for us on Sunday." He was the first to preach there. But in May, Peter Cartwright, Asa McMurtry, with Trotter, and B. G. and D. G. Cartwright, held there the first camp-meeting in Iowa, two days, and formed a "class" of six. That year at Danville the first of the Baptist churches was organized, and three or four Methodist and Presby- terian families arrived at Dubuque, who started a united prayer-meeting. 1 A Methodist class of four was also formed, and these two classes — ten persons — embraced all the Protestant bodies in Iowa. Two ladies at Dubuque began a Sunday-school, but stores, " groceries," and gam- bling saloons were in full blast " Sundays, and amuse- 1 In 1833 a cabin for school and worship was erected. WEST OF THE FATHER OF RIVERS. 179 ments more so than on other days. In November, 1833, a gentlemen holding an important office, being anxious to procure a Bible, searched the town for one in vain, and went to Galena on purpose to obtain it, for which he paid Rev. Mr. K , about two years afterwards." A letter published in The New York Journal of Commerce in 1836 said : " The principal amusement of the people here seems to be playing cards, Sundays and all. The law they carry in their pockets, and are ready to read a chapter on the slightest provocation." May 1 of that year The Dubuque Visitor said editorially : " Another minister is wanted here — one who can reason, preach, sing, and enforce the fourth commandment." The sacrament of the Lord's Supper was administered at Burlington, July, 1835, by a Methodist presiding elder, *rom Missouri Conference. The next May, the Black Hawk Purchase was transferred to Illinois Conference. The first Protestant church edifice of any pretensions, " old time " Burlington, was erected in 1838, five years later than the chapel-school-cabin at Dubuque. Rev. E. P. Lovejoy had written the Home Missionary Society in 1835, from Missouri, that he was applied to for a minister for Dubuque, " Michigan Territory, two years old, nearly a thousand inhabitants." Rev. A. Kent, Galena, enforced the application. In December, Mr. Lovejoy wrote : u The Popish priest is before you " — foundations for a Roman Catholic cathedral having been laid. That month, however, the American Home Mis- sionary Society sent Rev. Cyrus L. Watson, Mr. Turner's old neighbor, thither. He had been there in 1834 on an exploring tour from Rushville, preaching at Canton, Peoria, Prince's Grove, Bureau Creek, and Galena, where he found Mr. Turner. He began his labors, January 1, 1836, and alternated in the one (log) meeting-house 180 ASA TURNER. three months with the Methodists. The Dubuque church records say : " He moved the people to build a house of worship." His work at "Dubuque's Mines " is described as " a remarkable work, the foundation of the subsequent prosperity of the Presbyterian and Methodist churches/' Mr. Watson was of Scotch-Irish descent, born in York District, South Carolina, February, 1800. The family emigrated first (1810) to the neighborhood of Edwards- ville, 111., and then to Pike County, Mo., near the town of Louisiana. They were there besieged by Indians in a log fort. Mr. Watson was converted very young. He made extraordinary efforts to obtain an education, at one time taking for the purpose, with his brother, a flat-boat loaded with pork down the Mississippi to New Orleans, where the yellow fever prevented a sale of the pork. To pay for this unprofitable cargo, the brothers had to work hard three or four years, after walking home much of the way from New Orleans. For some time Mr. Watson taught a regimental school at Jefferson Barracks, St. Louis, studying theology mean- while with Rev. Salmon Giddings. Licensed to preach by the Presbytery of Missouri in 1828, he then taught school at Springfield, 111. Ordained in 1829, he was commis- sioned home missionary for Rushville. After his short term at Dubuque, 1836, he preached at Bloomington, 111., and Rockford, where he was the second pastor of the First Congregational Church, and is spoken of as "a genial, social, elderly gentlemen ' (November, 1838-May, 1841). Also, at Milwaukee, Cleveland, Tecumseh, Mich., Loda, 111., and Clifton. Retiring from the ministry, he died at Peoria, 111., March, 1881. " He had the appearance of a New Englander," says Mr. Reed, " and he was one in his sympathies and beliefs." " He was a strong temperance and anti-slavery man, and WEST OF THE FATHER OF BIVEBS. 181 stood boldly by his opinions. He made the first temper- ance address, and formed the first temperance society on the Military Tract," perhaps in Mr. Turner's first year there. Dr. Bascom says : " He had a bright, active mind ; was a ready speaker and an acceptable preacher, a decided New School Presbyterian, and in full sympathy with our Yale Band, 1829." 1 Three years after he left Dubuque (May, 1839) a Presbyterian church was organized by Rev. J. A. Clark, Fort Madison, and Rev. Z. K. Hawley from Connecticut preached for it sixteen months from December, 1839. About three months after he left, Rev. Mr. Townshend supplied, and in 1842, the church becoming Congrega- tional, Rev. J. C. Holbrook was called to a long ministry, as it proved, and one eminently successful. All the first churches organized in river towns were Presbyterian, though all the ministers were not. Rev. William P. Ap thorp, the first of these to reside for any time, was commissioned for Fort Madison. He was born at Quincy, Mass.; graduated at Yale, 1829; studied theol- ogy at Princeton and Andover; was ordained by Harmony Association, Mass., April, 1836 ; and in July following commissioned at New York for La Harpe, 111. There seems to have been an interval between this service and tha^ at Fort Madison, and he did something to prepare the way for Mr. Turner's work. After leaving Iowa he preached a short time in North Carolina and in Massachu- setts, and was a teacher in Dr. Nelson's Institute, Quincy. He was a superior scholar. Later he was home missionary 1 Mr. Watson reported in May : •' I preach in some of the neighboring villages every Sabbath, when not employed here, and once a week preach an evening discourse at one of the ' diggings ' in the vicinity." Of the people he said : " I find some here who know how to appreciate the ministration of the gospel. My visits are cordially welcomed, and my public ministrations well received by the scattered sheep of all portions of Christ's flock here and round about. Sectarian strife is unknown." 182 ASA TUBNEB. at Oskaloosa, 1848-51 ; Port Byron, 111., 1852-54 ; Moul- tonborough, N. H., 1856-57 ; Polk City, Iowa, 1862-65 ; Bo wen's Prairie, 1865-66 ; and later still joined the Episcopal Church. He died in Florida, 1883. After Messrs. Turner and Kirby had passed north on their tour of 1836, the future founders of Denmark came to Montebello, 111., from Quincy, on their way to the Purchase. Gospel institutions were coming with them. But it was a year before a Christian minister chanced to visit their new home. This was James Park Stuart, teacher in Canton Academy, 111., 1836-37, who, with Robert A. Leeper, whose sister he had married, September, 1836, was looking up a college site. They found "a wild, uncultivated waste ; Indian wigwams along the Skunk River ; four families living in two or three log shanties." The next year the Leeper brothers had a house here for their brother-in-law to preach in, though he may not have done so till his studies were over at Yale, a year later still. In January, 1837, Mr. Reed preached the first sermon by a Congregation alist at Keokuk. It was in " Rat Row," as the river men called it, below the bluffs. The town consisted of about a dozen buildings near the river. There was neither Congregational nor Presbyterian church in all the region. During the summer fol- lowing, Rev. W. P. Apthorp, not then a resident nor under commission, preached at times to the few living near " The Haystack," — so the Denmark Manual and tradition run, — and returning from the East in the winter of 1837-38 did so occasionally. Rev. J. A. Clark was the first home missionary preacher at Burlington, October, 1838. The place was a bar-room ; the text, Ezek. 33 : 11. That year an Old School Presbyterian church having been organized (which died), another, New WEST OF THE FATHER OF RIVERS. 183 School, was formed in November. 1 In 1839 Mr. Gaylord was the first preacher at Fairfield. And now a few Congregational churches began to struggle into being. Those of Burlington and Dubuque (1839, above) changed their form of government ; those of Danville, Davenport, Fairfield, and Fulton and Lyons (originally Union Grove) were organized in 1839 ; that of Farmington in 1840 ; those of Mount Pleasant, Brighton, and Cotton ville in 1841 ; those of DeWitt and Crawfords- ville in 1842 ; those of Bentonsport, Muscatine (New School Presbyterian, Bloomington), and Maquoketa in 1843. Of these earliest churches thirteen were originally Congregational. Ten of these were in existence in 1842, with eight ministers and two hundred and forty-three members ; while besides them were about as many Presby- terian ministers, Old School and New School together, with a dozen churches and from three to four hundred members. The Baptists had less of either, though some of their churches date from 1838-39, and their State Con- vention from 1842, and within ten years from this date they counted about fifty. The Methodists had eighteen ministers and five hundred members ; the Episcopalians three ministers and two hundred communicants. It is easy to see the vantage-ground occupied among Protestant bodies by those who cooperated in home missions at that time, especially by those who led in this cooperation. And it should be easy to see from the results what must have been the labors and the qualities for laying the foundations of many generations of the first Congrega- tional builders in Iowa. 4 x By Rev. L.G. Bell, about the time of the Presbyterian disruption. XXII. EARLY DENMARK. While Mr. Turner at Quincy was loosing tethers to "go West," others in New England were preparing to lead his future way. And in this Providence was shap- ing a Christian future. In the fall of 1832 he had made one of his addresses to Christian laymen about Illinois at New Ipswich, N. H. " William Brown and Lewis Epps were deeply interested hearers. A year or two later, Lewis Epps visited Quincy on business, and on his return confirmed Mr. Turner's statements." That brought him and two others, Timothy Fox and Curtis Shedd, with their families, to Quincy in the spring of 1836, together with four young unmarried men. They journeyed by steamer from Providence, R. I., to Philadelphia, and thence by Harrisburg, Pittsburgh, and the Ohio to Quincy. Mr. Fox had a brother-in-law who was building a mill at Augusta, west of Burlington, and on visiting him they bought for two hundred dollars a squatter's claim, " sufficient for four farms, and a good deal to spare, with a small field fenced and a log cabin." That was a " double " cabin, sixteen feet by eighteen. " It had two half-windows, a puncheon floor, a clay hearth, and a sod chimney. If the top of a chimney is that end which discharges the smoke, it might seem by no means certain that that chimney was not built top downward." Yet that cabin in October received a fourth family, five persons more : William Brown, wife, and children. They had come by wagon, fourteen hundred miles, seven weeks EABLY DENMARK. 185 on the way. The number in the original cabin was now eighteen, one person for every foot of its length. No Iowa dwelling of the same size can now hold so many. The next year five other families came with other single men, three of them from New Ipswich. 1 Messrs. Epps, Fox, Shecld, and Brown were the original proprietors of the town. There are traditions that it received its name in 1835 from John F. Edwards, an Eastern surveyor then visiting Iowa, and from Rev. J. P. Stuart in 1837. One survey under the town name is said to have been made in the latter year, and a second in 1839 by Mr. Brown and the county surveyor. The township of Denmark is twenty square miles in extent. The first white inhabitant was John O. Smith, who made a claim to land April, 1835. He was from Illinois, a native of North Carolina. The first child born in the township was his son. He was sorry when he heard that " the Yankees were coming." His new neighbors soon had hay in a large common stack, and the place got its first name, " The Hay- stack." Between The Haystack and Fort Madison were four or five cabins. In 1837 the " Yankees ' had a school-house, Miss Eliza Houston from Lyndeborough, N. H., being the first teacher. They were hard-work- ing and intelligent men and women ; not all Christians, but all believers in religion. " The first motive," said one for himself, who joined them from New Hampshire in 1837, M was to find a climate favorable to consumption, as my father's family was dying of that common disease of New England ; and the second, 1 Samuel Houston, one of the first four unmarried men to arrive, June, 1836, came from Lyndeborough, N. H., in his wagon, eight or nine weeks on the way. Others from New Hampshire, Hillsborough and Cheshire counties, and from Vennont, towns of Hartford and Enosburgh, came earlier and later. Those not elsewhere named were Edward A. Hills, Henry Hills, Messrs. Wright, Callfield, Sautel, Rattan, Fletcher, and McKenzie. Some of these did not remain. Those who came earliest were not within the town limits. 186 ASA TUB NEB. a cheap home, as I was in my twenty-second year, and had only my hands for capital." " I believed the field of the Master was the world, and that wherever Providence should direct me I would find work for him." The future of pioneers of this character can easily be foreseen. But we are fast losing the power of realizing their toil and endurance in shaping a future. Of this one of the Denmark " girls ' of that day contributes a very realistic picture. Her father was born in London, England, 1787, was a sea-captain living near Damariscotta, Maine, and feared for his sons the temptations of the Maine coast to a sea-faring life. Their destination was Illinois, but on their four weeks' journey westward they heard of the Purchase. They reached it October 4, 1837. " As we drew near Burlington, in front of a little hnt on the river-bank sat a girl and a lad — most pitiable-look- ing objects, uncared for, hollow-eyed, sallow-faced ; they had crawled out into the warm sun with chattering teeth to see the boat pass. To mother's inquiries the captain said : ' If you 've never seen that kind of sickness I reckon you must be a Yankee ; that '* the ague. I 'm afeared you '11 see plenty of it if you stay long in these parts. They call it here the swamp devil, and it will take the roses out of the cheeks of those plump little ones of yours mighty quick. Cure it ? No, madam. No cure for it ; have to wear it out. I had it a year when I first went on the river. This decided them not to locate near the river. u We stopped in a cabin while father ' prospected.' He heard of a Yankee settlement on a prairie back from the river. Hastening to it he found two small cabins ; two families living in one (Messrs. Epps' and Shedd's), and Mr. Fox's in the other. Also, a mile to the west, in a little mite of a house lived a Mr. Brown. Thev divided with EARLY DENMABK. 187 us their 'claim,' and helped get the logs for our house. The fortnight it was being built, we lived in a cabin near Moffatt's Mill by the river ; father, our brother of sixteen, and a young man who came with us being made welcome in the cabin of Messrs. Epps, Shedd, Hill, and Houston. That they were all in the body we know, but how they all lived there I can not tell, only that those little pioneer cabins had extensive possibilities, as also did the heads and hearts of their occupants. Every night mother suffered from fear of being scalped by the Indians, not knowing where they were prowling about. But she did n't let us know it at that time. Wolves we sometimes saw in daytime, and often heard them sniffing around the door at night and setting up blood-curdling howls. Father had a massive [sea] chest ; it took the united strength of our family to drag it before the door at night and pile the others on top. Then we felt secure from Indians and wolves. " Once sister and I went to the mill for meal. We had nothing for bread but hulled or parched corn, pounded in a mortar or ground in a coffee-mill. Mr. Moffatt said the water was too high to grind, but he went to his house and kindly divided with us their meal. When our cabin was finished, father and Mr. Smith came for us with an ox-team. It was dreadfully muddy and some of us had to walk. Two miles, mostly up-hill, and as far as we could see one long view of black mud : the steep hill tedious, the mud so slippery, and no sods for rest or impetus. One contin- uous tread-mill slip. For the first time one little fellow cried to go home to Maine, where he could walk on stone walls to get by a mud-hole. Mrs. Smith had delayed her dinner for us ; mother would n't think for a moment of making her so much trouble ; but Mr. Smith had already stopped the team at the door, saying he 'had got the least 188 ASA TURNER. ones, and mother would have to follow.' Turning to us children, Mrs. Smith said : i You are tired, are n't you, honey ? ' and looking in mother's face : 4 Rest a good bit ; then you '11 feel better to fix up your house, and I reckon you '11 find right smart to do there.' Except Mr. MofTatt's, mother had not seen another face the fortnight we were building, and our nearest neighbor never lost a warm place in mother's heart. "It somewhat dampened our ardor when we saw our mite of a cabin standing on the bare prairie alone, and to our eager inquiries where the beds and table and this and that could be put, mother's cheerful answer would be, 4 Oh, we will find a piace, or make one.' Yet I overheard her tell Mrs. Shedd that when she came to that dark speck of a cabin on the prairie, with such desolate dreariness all around, it looked so unlike home, it seemed as if all she had given up rushed through her mind with crushing force. " That fall we were beset with difficulty to get bread. The water was so high mills could n't grind. Messrs. Fox, Epps, and father took their oxen and went together to West Point (perhaps Lowell), to grind corn, with the oxen. Five days they were gone, the three families living on hulled corn. Mother said she never thought she would get so tired of it, ' but we would be thankful we had enough corn.' The day of their return she tried to grind wheat in the coffee-mill : ■ wanted to surprise father with a flour biscuit when he came home.' We all took turns grinding, and ran it through a number of times, but the wheat was tough. Mother kept at it at times most of the day. When it was baked it was a small show for all our hard work, and required mother's deft skill to make it go round." When their pastor came from Quincy next season, he EARLY DENMARK. 189 pleasantly called this hulled-corn-bread, " cake." An early fellow-laborer testifies : " I have seen his children more than once making their suppers wholly of stewed pump- kin and milk. I have heard that his family and his horse have been supplied from the same barrel. In those days bacon, corn-bread, and potatoes were the staple articles of food ; and dried apple, pumpkin-butter, and the native crab and plum were the delicacies of the table." When the writer came West in 1844, dried peaches, unpeeled and bitter, held their ground on the best furnished tables in Northern Iowa, Wisconsin, and Northern Illinois, and it was years before even dried apples arrived. When wheat came it was at first trod out on the ground, and there were no smut mills. Water-power mills for grind- ing later indicated advancing civilization. But there was wild honey in the woods ; grouse, quails, sometimes par- tridges and deer, were to be had with proper pains and skill, and, more rarely, a bear. Corn-dodgers and bear- meat with wild honey formed our fare the first week in Clayton County, Iowa, in 1844. Besides the family whose representative experience has been given, there came in 1837 those of William B. Cooper, Ira Houston, David- Wilson, and Charles Whitmarsh, with Messrs. Hartwell J. Taylor, Francis Sawyer, Jr., Timothy Sawyer, John E. Leeper, Orson Newton, Alonzo Burton, and J. Gilman Field. There was now one Englishman and one person of Scotch descent in the settlement, but all save one had come thither from New England. Many were professors of religion. Accordingly in their new homes they "erected an altar unto the Lord, and met regularly on the Sabbath for worship ; " in their cabins, of course, at first. 1 They could no more make new homes ' They had a Sunday-school " every Sabbath in one of their two or three log cabins (July, 1837), Deacon Fox reading a sermon." The next summer they organized a Sunday-school again, with Rev. J. P. Stewart superintendent awhile. 190 ASA TURNER. without the religion they had learned than without a school. From the first the settlement was so moral that the people were unknown to officers of the county looking up delinquent debtors. They all knew that the traditional moral excellence of New England came from its churches. Scattered about through a circle of six or seven miles they soon spontaneously followed New England example. " In the spring of 1838 they took measures to secure a church organization. Rev. J. A. Reed, of Warsaw [the nearest Congregational minister in Illinois], and Rev. A. Turner, Jr., of Quincy, were invited to assist. May 5, 1838, thirty-two individuals assented to the Articles of Faith and covenanted with one another to serve the Lord. They were the first to unfurl that banner on the west side of the Mississippi which, more than two hun- dred years before, their fathers unfurled over Plymouth Rock." » The writer of the Manual was not aware that a church of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions had existed at Harmony Mission, Bates County, Missouri, 1820-32, probably Congrega- tional. It was removed to the Neosho River in 1832, and became extinct. Rev. N. B. Dodge, missionary to the Osage Indians, organized another, June 27, 1835, at Little Osage, Vernon County, Missouri. But this became also extinct as Congregational by turning Pres- byterian, May 25, 1842. Denmark Church is thus the oldest existing church west of the Mississippi whose Puritan " banner " has never been furled. " After the church was organized," says Mr. Turner, "and I had preached, they invited me to become their minister. Immediately after the [Illinois] Association in July we went to Denmark with three children." 1 Manual. XXIII. A NEW HOME AND WORK. In a private letter to Dr. Absalom Peters, the object of the two Illinois explorers of the Black Hawk Purchase in 1836 was said to have been, "to call the attention of those who love to lay the foundation themselves, and not build on another man's, to that interesting field of labor." " As to the country," wrote Mr. Turner from Quincy, " I see but one objection. It is so beautiful there might be an unwillingness to exchange it for the paradise above." His special reference was to the lands lying along the Upper Rapids on the west. Of the Purchase at large he ^ said : — " The soil similar to that of the Military Tract ; as a whole . . . better. Prairies generally dry and rolling, streams clear, — of course more healthy than they gener- ally are in this state, — better supplied with timber, water- power, coal, etc. Several places as densely settled as Morgan County. The settlers generally of much better character than usually falls to the lot of a new country. For enterprise, intelligence, and industry they far surpass those who first settled Illinois. I was surprised to find so many comforts, so good cabins, so large fields, the growth of two years : fields of corn from fifty to a hundred acres well fenced. A Methodist preacher had been on the circuit ; is now dead." He and Mr. Kirby were " the first Presbyterian preachers " to visit the tract. Early Iowa was not early Illinois over again. Its popu- lation was largely different ; no ancient French colonies, 192 ASA TUBNEB. and but here and there a Canadian settler; no large bodies of immigrants from southern states. The New England settlement in Lee County was not Quincy, and Mr. Turner found his birth and boyhood in agricultural Massachusetts made him at once at home among the farmers who composed his new flock. He had an earlier acquaintance than they with the opening of new lands. He could give them all practical appreciation and sym- pathy, and not a little e very-day help. Crossing the river at Fort Madison, he passed the Sabbath with Mr. J. G. Edwards, whom he had met in New York City in 1829, at the home of David Hale, Esq., editor of The Journal of Commerce. Mr. Edwards took Mr. Turner to the room occupied at Mr. Hale's by himself and Mrs. Edwards, saying, " I have brought a gentleman to see you who is going to join us in Illinois." Mrs. Edwards beginning to apologize for not being prepared for a call, Mr. Turner at once said : u Oh, never mind ; I suppose we shall all have to live in one room when we get to Illinois. ,, These excellent persons, for many years so useful in Illinois and Iowa, had become interested in Christian lay emigra- tion to the West through the appeals of Rev. J. M. Ellis at Boston. They had come West with Messrs. Baldwin and Sturtevant, November, 1829. From 1831 to 1837 Mr. Edwards had published at Jacksonville The Illinois Patriot, and had begun to issue The Fort Madison Patriot, March 24, 1838. He was interested in " The Haystack," through the plans of Messrs. Leeper and Stuart, related elsewhere, before it became Denmark. The winter after Mr. Turner came he removed to Burlington from Fort Madison, and issued The Burlington Patriot, December 13, the name of which was changed in 1839 to The Hawk-eye, which it still bears. Mr. Edwards was an able journalist. He died in August, 1851, and Mrs. Edwards in July, 1886. A NEW HOME AND WORK. 193 Their home was one of piety and happiness, and of abounding and unfailing hospitality to Christian friends. The home missionary found his future home at Den- mark, consisting of " three houses and the school-house. The house in which we spent the first night was called 'Copenhagen, the capital of Denmark,' about half a mile from the Center. It was built of logs, and consisted of two rooms and a sort of shanty addition for a bedroom. It was occupied by two families. 1 It was permitted to remain on the ground for years after it became uninhabitable, as a memento of early times. The first house [in the town- ship] was built by John O. Smith. It was in the form of a rail pen, and there Mrs. Smith spent one night entirely alone, miles from neighbors. The men were at Skunk River fishing. Of course the fire must be on the outside. She kept the coffee-pot on the coals as long as she dared to stay out, expecting the return of the men at any time. As they did not come she extinguished the fire and went inside the pen. They did not come till morning. These few settlers were subject to annual visits of Indians, who found this log cabin a very comfortable stopping-place, and many times the floor would be covered with them, their icet towards the fire." When the Denmark Association, then future, celebrated its thirtieth anniversary, in 1873, Rev. R. Gaylord wrote : — - "In the autumn of 1838 I visited Denmark, and was the guest of Rev. Asa Turner, in a small shanty a little east of the present church edifice." Sawed lumber was not then to be had for building. With it came houses on the village-site : John E. Leeper building the first (" Che- bunk ") ; William B. Cooper, the second (" Swan ") ; Leeper, the third (" Academy Boarding ") ; Isaac Field, iThis was the original " double " cabin of Messrs. Fox, Epps, and Shedd. 194 ASA TURNER. a residence, and Mr. Turner erected the fifth, the town proprietors giving him two outlots for the purpose. His family passed the first winter in the unfinished academy boarding-house, their rooms above and below all in one, without floors between. Meantime lands and homesteads had to be secured. How, let the family story already quoted relate : — " The next fall (1838), one year after we came, was the first government sale in Burlington. Much excitement, and, to some, great anxiety and trouble. They might now lose their homes, or, to get money to buy them, pay fifty per cent, to speculators or ' land-grabbers ' who stood ready to bid their homes from under them. Father knew that the money he brought had dwindled so it would not be sufficient ; the money owing to us back East was not due, and to borrow it at that time would necessitate his going there. The journey there and back might consume two or three months' time. To be sure of being in season, father had started for Maine in August ; he got the money; but coming back the river was low, so he was delayed. As the time drew near the all-absorbing topic at home was father's return. Many had been getting ready for a week to go to the sale, taking food, cooking utensils, and blankets, expecting to camp out several days, and not knowing, with thousands of others, when their turn to bid would come. " A few days before the sale, mother became so troubled she went to Mr. Epps and Mr. Fox. They told her that, if possible, they would bid in our land, or otherwise pro- tect it. But she grew so anxious she could n't eat, and I don't know as she went to bed at all the night before the sale opened. Mr. Fox called that morning, on his way to Burlington, to re-assure her that we should not lose our home. Turner Parsonage, Denmark, Iowa. A NEW HOME AND WOBK. 195 " In those days, waiting and looking for father's return from the East, not knowing what had happened, we con- stantly exercised an anxious vigilance towards the west for the Indians. They had made a treaty, but we knew of their treacherous atrocities. Large companies of them often passed to Burlington from their camping-ground a little west of us, and would stop for something to eat, asking first for doughnuts and * cow's grease ' (butter). Mrs. Epps first gave Black Hawk and a few of his braves some doughnuts ; they learned the word, and always asked for them. They were always hungry, and at first — though their capacious stomachs seemed limitless, and every thing cooked in the house quickly disappeared — mother did n't dare refuse them. It will not take a very extravagant stretch of imagination now to hear their stealthy steps coming through the porch into our house, especially on their return from Burlington, after being supplied with 4 fire-water.' " Mr. Epps and Mr. Fox bid in our land, and in a few days father arrived with the money, to the joy and relief of all." He had worked his passage down the Ohio to save expenses. At Pittsburgh and between Cincinnati and Louisville, he had happened upon two other Christian families bound for the Purchase and for Denmark, those of Isaac Field and Oliver Brooks, both afterwards deacons. The latter was for many years the clerk who kept church records notable for fullness and accuracy. As the fare from Cincinnati to the mouth of the Ohio was fifty dollars, he put his wife into the cabin and economically took a deck passage for himself. The steamer had a keel- boat in tow with sixty slaves on board. On this, by the captain's permission, with the offer of lumber and nails, this anti-slavery deacon and another passenger 196 ASA TUBNEB. built berths and an eating-room, supplying their own table. On landing, Mr. Field bought a team and drove to St. Louis through Illinois, passing the steamer and being repassed by it on the way. All reached Denmark the same day, Mr. and Mrs. Brown having been eight weeks from Boston " direct." Another settler in the county that year was six weeks coming from Austin, Ohio. They found and organized church in a shanty sanctuary, which was to be school-house as well for eight years. It was twenty feet by twenty-four, but soon lengthened to forty feet. One who had seen it before the organization, " without door, floor, or windows," says that it then " looked as though all the materials had been taken from the stump within twenty-four hours." It was hardly done when the church was formed. It had a loose floor, partly of slabs, was unplastered, and covered with "shakes" (oak splits). The seats were slabs with no backs, just enough around the walls for the primitive and plain congregation. No desk at first, and then one or two upright walnut boards, faced with two cottonwood ditto, and a six-inch strip nailed on top — all native Iowa wood. Yet over this bit of sacred architecture the pastor testified that many of the first ministers preached some of their best sermons ; and not to have preached there was almost not to have preached then in Iowa at all. Mr. Turner's first preaching previously had been at the cabins of the town proprietors. His permanent ministry began August 3, 1838, to be continued thirty eventful years. Giving half his time from the outset to more destitute places, he was appointed the next July the first home missionary agent for Iowa, "a kind of half- dnt, half-missionary," wrote Secretary Hall. A NEW HOME AND WOBK. 197 The town was now laid off (January, 1840) in twenty- four blocks, enclosing a park of four blocks — the whole plat three quarters of a mile square, on a naked, treeless prairie. No log cabin was ever erected within the plat. It is nine miles north of Fort Madison. XXIV. FIRST FELLOW-PIONEERS IN IOWA. It was Mr. Turner's good fortune to find west of the great river, as well as east of it, fellow-laborers for Christ with whom he loved to labor, and to whom he gave affec- tionate confidence. Geographically those in Scott, Jackson, and Dubuque — and even in Henry and Jefferson — coun- ties, who carried the gospel in advance of mail-coaches, were far from him on whom rested so largely " the care of all the churches," but in heart they were very near. A few ministers, principally Presbyterians, soon went elsewhere. Of these, as nearest to him, Rev. William P. Apthorp and Rev. James A. Clark should be mentioned. Mr. Apthorp preached at Denmark irregularly some months in the winter of 1837-38, and at Fort Madison till the following August. He had been at La Harpe, 111., in the summer of 1836. He was a superior scholar, a native of Quincy, Mass., 1806 ; a graduate of Yale, 1829 ; a theological student at Princeton and Andover, 1832 ; preached successively at Raleigh, N. C, Quincy, Mass., and Mendon, Mass. ; ordained, 1836, by Harmony Associa- tion, Mass. ; after leaving Iowa, taught in the Mission Institute, Quincy, 111. ; in 1848, returned to Iowa and preached at Oskaloosa ; then at Port Byron, 111., Moulton- borough, N. H., Polk City, and Bowen's Prairie ; was at Fairfield, 1867-68, as agent of the American Bible Society ; joined the Episcopal Church, and died in Florida at Talla- hassee, 1883. Mr. Clark succeeded him at Fort Madison early in 1838. Born at Lebanon, Conn., he graduated at Rev. R. Gaylord. (See page 199.) V $ R A R y >r tut or FIB ST FELLOW-PIONEEBS IN IOWA. 199 Yale, 1834 ; studied theology at Princeton and Yale ; was ordained by the Illinois Presbytery; preached at Fort Madison till 1844, and awhile afterwards ; then at several places in Connecticut, and died there in 1881. The first of his Yale friends to follow Mr. Turner to stay was a young man of twenty-six years, who entered Yale the' year he reached Quincy. Reuben Gaylord was born in Norfolk, Conn., April, 1812. Converted at the age of fifteen, he gave himself at once to the ministry. With his pastor (Rev. Ralph Emerson, afterwards professor at Andover for twenty-one years) and at Goshen Academy he fitted for Yale, and graduated 1834. He taught at New Preston, Conn., six months, but his graduating oration had so impressed Prof. J. M. Sturtevant, that he was persuaded to become tutor in the four-year-old college in Illinois. Here he conducted the preparatory department two and a half years, study- ing theology meantime with President Beecher, and graduating at Yale Seminary 1838. In his diary, New Haven, February, 1838, he records : — " Went out five miles into the country and met with a man just from Illinois. Obtained much useful informa- tion respecting the Iowa District [then Michigan Terri- tory]. Great want of laborers in the work of doing good there. In Monmouth and vicinity (Illinois), five hun- dred dollars offered for the support of the gospel. Some one ought to go.'' So much had become clear ! " March 19. A letter from Brother Perry [of '33 ? ], who is teaching at Troy, Mo., and one from the Secretary of the American Home Missionary Society, relative to the Iowa enterprise. Several brethren of this seminary have formed ourselves into an association for operating by a combined effort upon the Iowa District, and the Lord seems to be smiling upon us." 200 ASA TURNER. In this connection, he mentions his class-mate Buding* ton (W. I., d.d.) going to Illinois, and Fowler (Rev. Joseph) teaching in Callaway County, Mo., together with revivals under the labors of Yale men in Illinois, at Springfield, Jacksonville, Quincy, and Warsaw. Having been licensed to preach by Litchfield South Association, June, 1838, and in August ordained at Terry- ville, he was invited to preaGh at New Preston and Wood- bury, but came to Illinois in September, being four weeks and two days on the way. In December he preached in Iowa at Mount Pleasant, New London, New Baltimore, and Danville, being probably the first Congregational preacher in some of these places or all. Found "lines of division " strongly drawn between denominations ; " preju- dices easily excited and hard to be allayed ; the term 4 Yankee ' to a Western man as repulsive as like poles of a magnet to each other." Letters from friends at Plymouth or Round Prairie, 111., in the winter were two months reaching him. In five months he organized a Sabbath- school at Mount Pleasant, and then a temperance society ; then a church at Danville, June, 1839 — " Father Turner present " ; and, after living a year at the former place, took up his residence at the latter for sixteen years. He still supplied both places, sixteen miles apart, till a " notable accession," November, 1843. Mr. Gaylord did much general missionary work in destitute places, and in organizing churches at Fairfield (1839), Mount Pleasant (1841), Brighton (1841), and Washington (1842). Number of members respectively, twelve, seven, ten, and ten — "a day of small things." In his diary for 1841, he says : — " On a two weeks' tour. But two houses between Mount Pleasant and Wapello. About half-way to Bloom- ington [Muscatine] met an old Connecticut school-mate FIB ST FELLOW-PIONEEBS IN IOWA. 201 and townsman, C. H , engaged in a distillery. Remon- strated. Four miles out from Bloomington another, G. P . At Rev. Mr. preaches, weak brother, fallen into Old School ranks. Davenport, a most charming spot, one of the richest prospects anywhere to be found. To Marion, sixty-six miles, to Brother Emerson, who is preaching there. Crossed Cedar River at the Rapids. Superior water-power, if improved. Traveled in two weeks and two days three hundred miles, and preached seven times." Three months later he was at Davenport, "endeavoring to reconcile a difficulty in the church." Succeeded and received a call. He was installed at Dan- ville, May, 1844. Having been the second settled Congregational minister in Iowa, Mr. Gaylord — dismissed at his own request, November, 1855 — became the first in Nebraska, organ- izing the first church at Omaha the May previous. He had been in 1840 one of three to organize the first Asso- ciation in Iowa; and in 1857 was one of three to form the first in Nebraska. In 1864 he was made agent for home missions in Nebraska and two tiers of counties in Western Iowa, along the Missouri. Resigning at Omaha in 1871, he was sent to explore Utah and Colorado. Still preach- ing in destitute places, and supplying the La Platte church three years, in 1875 he became pastor at Fonta- nelle (the second church organized in the state), and after two years, of the Jalapa church also, riding twelve miles each Sabbath, and holding three services when past sixty years of age. He kept a robust constitution and much power of endurance to the end. This faithful man had often said : " When the Master comes, I hope he will find me at work and with the har- ness on." In 1880, during the Week of Prayer, he was unusually active and earnest in devotion. He closed the 202 ASA TUBNEB. Thursday evening service by saying, " The themes grow in grandeur and in importance as we progress. Bring your friends to-morrow evening and let us have the best meeting of all the week." The next morning on rising from bed he fell to the floor, overworked and paralyzed. After thirty-six hours of unconsciousness he passed away, at the age of sixty-seven. The next who came was another young preacher from Connecticut, who had known Mr. Turner there and in Illinois. % Julius A. Reed was born at East Windsor, Conn., Janu- ary, 1809 ; fitted for college at the academy there ; was nearly two years a member of Trinity College, Hartford ; and graduated at Yale in 1829, two years after Mr. Turner, five years before Mr. Gay lord. The next year he was teacher in the family of Hon. William Jay, Bed- ford, N. Y., and in 1830-31, at Ellington, Conn., in the high school. For two years afterwards he conducted a private school at Natchez, Miss. Studying theology at Yale, 1833-35, he was licensed in August of the latter year by New Haven West Association. Mr. Reed had traveled in Illinois on returning north from Natchez in 1833, and in 1835 was commissioned at New York " to go to the West." In April, 1836, Illinois Association, the only one in the state, ordained him at Quincy. The service was held in " God's Barn," Mr. Turner and Mr. Watson participating. He was then, and till February, 1837, home missionary at Warsaw, Monte- bello, and Nauvoo ; then a year at Warsaw and Carthage ; then a year at Warsaw. At Nauvoo (or Commerce), then innocent of Mormonism, he has said in pleasantry that Joseph Smith was his successor. In 1839-40 he was chap- lain of the lunatic asylum, Worcester, Mass. In June, 1840, Mr. Turner wrote him : " The people and Rev. J. A. Reed. (See page 202.) FIBST FELLOW-PIONEEBS IN IOWA. 203 church of Fairfield, Jefferson County, are all waiting for you. Situation very pleasant and healthy, and a wide field for usefulness in the county. About twelve miles north is a Yankee settlement called Brighton. I think you would be better satisfied here with us Hawk-eyes. We should be able to form an Association this fall. A. B. H., I under- stand, is coming. Enlist him for Iowa." (Mr. H. came to Davenport.) Mr. Reed came to Fairfield as a home missionary ; was installed there February, 1844; dismissed August, 1845, to succeed Mr. Turner as agent of home missions for Iowa, and filled this office with great industry and fidelity twelve years. In 1857 he became treasurer of Iowa Col- lege, holding this office till 1862, when, the state being divided into two districts for home missions, he became agent for Southern Iowa ; the late Jesse Guernsey, D.D., retaining the Northern District. Since 1869 he has had no charge, residing about ten years at Columbus, Neb., and now residing at Davenport. Fairfield he reported in his second year as " eight miles from the Indian country, partly located on land which three years ago was part of the Indians' hunting ground" (Mr. Gaylord had reported " fourteen or fifteen families " when the church was formed, in 1839), and containing then "rather more than one hundred inhabitants. In sight of the Indian fires intelligent and attentive congre- gations may be assembled. No Presbyterian or Congrega- tional minister in the territory more than fifteen miles from the river, except Mr. Emerson, in Linn County, and myself." The years from 1845 to 1857, when he cared for depend- ent churches, were years of great missionary enterprise in Iowa. More than sixty Congregational churches were born, including many that are now among the strongest. 204 ASA TUBNEB. The years when a college — part of the time without a faculty, and almost without " a local habitation" — was on his hands were most critical ones. No co-laborer was so closely associated with Father Turner for sixty years. The latter wrote him, when he removed to Davenport to take the state agency : — "We have been associated long in labors here in the West, and so situated that we could often see each other. But God has called you to remove. You can not tell how I feel. It is a loss to me which will not be made up in this world. I love our other brethren, but I know them not as I know you. I sometimes feel as though I must weep. But, my dear brother, I hope we shall love each other and think of each other, if we are wider apart. So often as it is duty I hope you will try to call on me. It will be a great favor. I thank you for all your kindness and labors for me the past year." Mr. Reed's unequal ed familiarity with the early his- tory of our churches gives great value to the pamphlets he has published, and to his annals of these churches printed in the old Religious News Letter, which, it is hoped, he may continue while materials are extant. The third of Mr. Turner's fellow-pioneers was Rev. Oliver Emerson, Jr., a native of Lynnfield, Essex County, Mass., March, 1813. The eldest of eighteen children, thirteen of whom lived to maturity, he was " accustomed to hard labor from the beginning of life." He was also burdened, says an autobiographical sketch, " with frequent sickness and helpless deformity in childhood." It was impossible for him with his limbs to walk in farm labor. The town had then less than five hundred people ; the school district but seven families; and a three or four months' summer school furnished his primary education. A sober and thoughtful crippled boy, he was nicknamed Rev. O. Emerson. (See page 204.) FIBST FELLOW-PIONEEBS IN IOWA. 205 " The Deacon ' by his school-mates. With no Sunday- school literature, no prayer-meetings, and intermittent preaching, as to his religious education he regarded the memorizing of the Bible as "the chief exercise. " A devout Methodist local preacher, who was also a shoe- maker, first impressed him, in 1827, with religious truth. " The Congregational churches were avowedly Unitarian, or largely pervaded by that unwholesome leaven." Join- ing the Baptist church in North Reading, to which his parents belonged, he had vivid impressions all his life that this denomination and the Methodists were in Eastern Massachusetts " God's agents to separate the Unitarian leaven from the Congregational churches, and awake them to a new and better life." The Methodist local preacher became the teacher of the district school ; " his school instruction was good and his Christian counsel a great deal better." 1 Early in 1828 Mr. Emerson entered Phillips Academy, Andover, Mr. John Adams, principal. An address in the town on the West, made by Dr. Lyman Beecher that year to the General Association of Massachuetts, led the earnest lad to fix his purpose to labor for religion in that part of the land. He graduated from Waterville College, Maine, in 1835, having been aided here, as at Andover, by the American Education Society. In his first college year a good lady in China, where he was teaching in his college vacation, made an appointment for him to preach in his school-room. At first refusing, he was led to comply, and to discover that his life was to be given to preaching. For nearly two years after graduation he was disabled by sick- 1 ** The district was too poor to have a school-house, and our rough slab benches, with a coarse table for a writing-desk, were carried from house to house, wherever a vacant room could be hired for school purposes." —Autobiography. " I left the Congregational church part of the time, because for the first time in my life I felt the power of a preached gospel. I sometimes remained at the old church because I could then remain unmoved." — Autobiography. 206 ASA TURNER. ness that threatened his life, but still taught the classics in the home academy. He must go to Dr. Beecher's Lane Seminary for theology, but despaired of means, till a memorable experience in prayer in one of the rooms at Newton Theological Institution, where he was visiting college friends, revived his hopes and even his health. "At last a few ladies helped me," he says, " to sixteen dollars for work at their social gatherings, and my father gave me ten dollars, though he expected that if I went West he would be called on to help in bringing me back. That he would not be, my only faith was that God had told me to arise and depart, for that was not my rest. I was in abject poverty ; needed a new trunk, but could not buy one ; had but one decent suit of clothes ; my only overcoat was light and thin ; but thirty dollars in money, and could obtain not another dime. Obtained certificate of good standing as beneficiary of the Education Society. Spent three or four dollars of my little stock for some second- hand classical books for the use of which I was hungry. Felt that I must have them. Some of them are by me to-day. [This autobiography was written in 1874, in his sixty-second year.] I am reading one of them, an old copy of Cicero's Orations, the present week. The old Bible my mother had given me, 1828, — the worse for bad usage during my long sickness, — I would not leave behind. My few books I packed into an old dry-goods box, my clothes into the old college trunk, which my dear mother had bought with the first money she earned when a young girl. The impression to the last was that my project was not warranted by prudence or even common-sense. But it seemed to me that I could trust God, and that he would direct." XXV. \ FELLOW-PIONEERS. — CONTINUED. On a Boston " coaster " bound for Philadelphia this half-alive but indomitable invalid started for Ohio, bar- gaining for passage only, and taking his own cold provis- ions (" bread and cheese "), as he did also from Frederick, Md., to Wheeling, Va., on the stage. His stage fare would have given out but for a present of two dollars at Balti- more from a lady. " It was a token that God's hand was upon me." At Wheeling he pawned his old watch for his fare to Cincinnati. Before reaching Cincinnati, "seemed to experience at once the advantages of a change of cli- mate. Left my little baggage at a tavern about a mile from the seminary, and went to the place on foot. Examined and admitted at once. But I had no money. The last dollar of paper proved uncurrent." Lived on milk and vegetables, two meals a day. For two years earned a little by preaching. But the Education Society aid was cut off, as the Baptist churches in Ohio were not open to its appeals. The Faculty started self-boarding by students in club, on account of their great poverty and loss of seminary endowments. Mr. Emerson con- ducted the club ; took care of the building ; rose at four a.m. to study; broke down by natural law, and was sick three months. Passing a day with a class-mate in Kentucky he " was in danger of personal violence for the expression of anti-slavery sentiment. The seminary still suffered from the difficulty with slavery in earlier years." 208 ASA TUBNEB. Long examination of the question of close communion led this devoted Baptist to adopt the " open " view, and Baptist ministers refused him ordination. Dr. Beecher planned an open communion church for him, but judging himself not strong enough for such a task in or near Cincinnati, he joined some Baptist families removing to Davenport in the Black Hawk Purchase. Sunday before Lane anniversary he preached at Lawrenceburg, just vacated by H. W. Beecher's removal to Indianapolis. For both occasions a new suit was needed, which he was able to pay for two years after with the first money received in Iowa from the American Home Missionary Society. His theme on graduating (July 10, 1840) was " The Atonement the Fundamental Doctrine of the Gos- pel." The evening of that day, with two others of his class, Thomas P. Emerson and Charles E. Blood, he was on a steamer for St. Louis. " I felt much like Abraham going he knew not whither, but only to the land of which God should tell him." " Burlington, the first town seen in Iowa, scarcely more than two hundred inhabitants. Keokuk made no preten- sions to being a village. Davenport, four hundred, the largest town." After preaching awhile to the Baptist church, his experience on close communion was repeated, even a certificate of church membership being refused. He then joined the Congregationalists on profession, and they, with some Presbyterians and Methodists, employed him to preach to a union congregation for fifteen dollars a month. There were more churches than ministers. He preached at Rockingham also. He "boarded round" like old school-masters in New England. Toward spring the first revival in the town occurred. The services were in four or five different apartments — one of them on what was known as " Brimstone Corner," the preacher FELLOW-PIONEEBS. — CONTINUED. 209 maintaining that it should be "ill with the wicked." " The last service was in the large cabin built by the supporters of General Harrison the previous year to promote his election to the Presidency." Peculiar as Mr. Emerson's subsequent life-work was, it can only be epitomized. He was the apostle to the scattered sheep in the wilderness. Though sometimes making a home for years in one place (three times he thus settled at Sabula), he felt called to look chiefly after those who had no religious privileges. He often had from four to seven congregations on the two sides of the Miss- issippi under his care ; sometimes from six to ten. Neither ill-health, small pay, exposure, loneliness, nor sore bereave- ment checked the tireless activity of this home missionary with one foot like one of Lord Byron's, and a heart like that of the Apostle Paul. Few men entirely sound in limb and body ever got over so much ground for the gospel's sake, or even for that of gain, or ever worked in so many places at once. 1 How he would travel ! He was specially active in organizing and reviving churches. The whole region between Davenport and Dubuque was evangelized by him, and at one time all Tama County. He gave up his commission from the American Home Missionary Society when it would not treat slave-holding by ministers and church members as it did intemperance. 1,4 The few scattered people would gather for preaching any day of the week and almost any hour of the day." He " went east as far as Rock River, and west nearly to the limits- of civilization." He continued this toilsome life till in February, 1872, he was found insensible in a fit of apoplexy by the roadside between Preston and Teed's Grove, having fallen from his buggy. A fourth time, even after this ; he was then preaching at Sabula — a six months' engagement. The people always turned to him in an exigency. The places he cared for were Sabula, Savanna, Albany, and Fulton (111.), DeWitt, Maquoketa, Cottonville, Lyons, Elk River, West Union, Taunton, Van Buren, etc. etc. The last words of his autobiography are : " I still love to preach, but can do so little of pastoral work that I wish I could live and educate my children without taxing the churches for my maintenance. But my habitual sentiment is of gratitude that I have been able to do such work through so many years." 210 ASA TUBNEB. This was in 1844. No home missionary had done such a thing, unless it was Rev. John G. Free, of Kentucky. Mr. Emerson was ordained by the Iowa Association (Messrs. Turner, Reed, and Gaylord, with one licentiate), October, 1841, in his twenty-ninth year. In 1852 he attended the Albany Convention, deeply feeling that the Plan of Union was working badly, and that aid in building churches should be found for the West. As early as 1845 he brought this forward in the General Association — proba- bly the first in the land to do so, and again in 1851. Mr. Emerson was a ready and vigorous preacher, a minute-man who could make an address on personal reli- gion, evangelism, or reform " on call," and often thrilled his hearers. In a speech for home missions once he called Iowa " the very Mesopotamia of the West." This phrase the writer repeated to Hon. Charles Sumner at Boston a few weeks before his death. Mr. Sumner turned to his great speech, " The Crime against Kansas," and read in sonorous and sympathetic tones his description of "the middle spot of North America," 1 adding, " I almost said the same once, but your veteran home missionary said it better." It is in a very cold and matter-of-fact way that a life has been thus epitomized which ever glowed with mission- ary fervor and was noble with Christian heroism. Mr. Emerson died at Miles, November 10, 1883, of chronic kidney disease. No one sympathized more profoundly with Mr. Emerson, as to his ecclesiastical position, his views of pioneer evan- gelism and reform, than did Mr. Turner. They thoroughly appreciated each other. They met in the spring of 1841, and this led to his ordination at Danville. Mr. Emerson savs : — i Works, Iv, 1, 37. Rev. J. C. Holbrook. (See page 211.) FELL W-PIONEEBS. — CONTINUED. 211 "Rev. J. C. Holbrook had been at Davenport during part of my stay there. He was weary of playing the part of Jonah, and was about yielding to his long-cherished conviction to enter the ministry. His wife was sick and died soon after. We obtained the loan of a lame horse, old and poor, and a buggy badly shattered and nearly ready to fall down. With this conveyance we started on our journey. We knew no one but Mr. Turner, and no one on the way — pilgrims and strangers. The meeting was held in a small school-house." There was perplexity in the little Association in the small school-house — no precedent to go by. But Mr. Holbrook testified to the Baptist brother's ability and usefulness, who declared his convictions both as to modes of baptism and communion ; and the Congregational brethren ordained him, along with Thomas P. Emerson and Charles Burnham. 1 " This was to the few original members," said Mr. Turner, in the Quarter Century Sermon before the General Association, " a day of rejoic- ing. We could now carry the ' gospel ' in our form of belief to the dwellers on the Upper Mississippi." Mr. Holbrook was licensed to preach at the same time, and to share notably in this work. John C. Holbrook was born at Brattleboro', Vt., Janu- ary 7, 1808. His grandmother, Sybil Lane, was a de- scendant of Governor Bradford. He was, as a boy, " full 1 Thomas P. Emerson, also a native of Maine, and his cousin, had been his class- mate at Lane, was home missionary at Marion, 1840-41, and itinerated along the Wapsipinecon, 1841-42; was afterwards a Presbyterian minister in Missouri, and later a member of Grand River Presbytery, Ohio. Charles Burnham, a native of Pelham, N. H. (1812) ; graduated at Dartmouth in Senator Grimes' class (1836) ; taught in Mission Institute, Quincy (1838-40) ; was licensed by Illinois Association; after ordination home missionary at Brighton, 1841-43; Brighton and Clay, 1843-50; Albia and Maryville, 1850-52; Knoxville, Pleasantville, Palmyra, 1852-55; at Brighton (Institute), 1S44-50; Bath, Maine, 1856; Meredith Village, N. H., 1857-71; Jamaica, Vt., 1871-74; Newfane, 1874-79. Died at Townshend, Vt., 1883, of heart disease. He was the first preacher at Chariton, Iowa, July, 1850. 212 ASA TUB NEE. of life, activity, and good humor, and invariably a leading spirit with his associates," a fair account of what he still is at the age of eighty. Two years in Hopkins Academy, Haclley, Mass. ; one year under private tuition ; two years a cadet in Captain Partridge's Military Academy, Nor- wich, Vt. ; he succeeded his father in book-publishing and paper-making at Brattleboro', and was junior partner at Boston, in the firm of Richardson, Low, and Holbrook. 1 The Comprehensive Commentary, William Jenks, D.D., editor ; The Encyclopaedia of Religious Knowledge, Prof. B. B. Edwards and J. Newton Brown, editors, and the Polyglot Bible (English Version, American Edition) were planned by him, and he returned to Brattleboro' to publish them. He was clerk of Dr. Lyman Beecher's old Hanover Street Church, and in his native town deacon in the same church with his father. He was interested in politics, and in railroads to Troy, N. Y., and New Haven, Conn. ; and as an original trustee of the state insane asylum, secured its successful establishment. His busi- ness undertakings proving too great for his means, the Brattleboro' Typographic Company was formed, of which he was president, resigning to go to Iowa in 1839. When the two Northern Iowa pioneers took that trip to Danville for ordination and licensure, Mr. Holbrook had been a teacher and a trader at Davenport, and had had one winter a farm at Camanche. After being licensed, he was invited to settle at Keosauqua. Losing his son and wife, he was on the point of returning East, when Dr. J. W. Clark, of Rockingham (since of Platteville, 111., and San Francisco), offered him a seat in his buggy for an exploring tour through Wisconsin to Milwaukee. This was the turning-point (February, 1842) towards a 1 His father was the first American publisher to use stereotype plates, importing from England those of the quarto Bible in 1816. FELL W-PIONEEBS. — CONTINUED. 213 long, energetic, varied, and useful Western career. Rev. Stephen Peet, agent of the American Home Missionary- Society, returned with them to the mining region, where Mr. Gallaher had been preaching with power, and during a revival at Potosi, Grant County, which the two preachers conducted, sent Mr. Holbrook to Dubuque to fill his ap- pointment. Calls came to the latter from Mineral Point and Dubuque. The sagacious home missionary agent, a man seldom mistaken on practical matters, said he had no idea the new licentiate would remain in Dubuque three months ; but he began there in March, 1842, a ministry in the West of twenty-two years. The church (organized Presbyterian by Rev. J. A. Clark) had eighteen members. Losing its unfinished stone building by mortgage for debt, and getting aid from New England, it became Congrega- tional. To secure certain changes, one of the younger members, now a widely useful state home missionary agent, " moved that the whole body of church members be elected ruling elders. It was carried almost mm. con., and from that time the church acted Congregationally, and finally adopted the polity." It then changed its relations from the Mineral Point Convention, Wisconsin (Presbyterian and Congregational), to the new Northern Iowa Associa- tion. The pastor had been ordained, June, 1842, by the old Iowa Association at Davenport, Rev. Asa Turner preaching the sermon, and installed in October by Min- eral Point Convention, Rev. S. Peet preaching. Mr. Holbrook's great vigor and enthusiasm were felt in all directions. Dubuque enjoyed successive revivals, in one of which between eighty and a hundred were added to the church. Throughout the region, both sides of the river, he did a large amount of laborious revival work in three adjacent states. At one place in Wisconsin a ware- house, at another a barn, and at a third a gambling alley 214 ASA TURNER. were fitted up for revival services. The billiard table was the pulpit, the balls and pins being collected into a barrel in an adjacent corner, while at the other end of the alley the liquor-selling and drinking went on, — a rough board partition between, — the sound of the toddy-stick being heard "occasionally in the intervals of worship." The son of the saloon-owner was converted. In the barn (at Elk Grove) part of the hearers occupied the haymow. After one of these revivals, a meeting-house was sub- scribed for by the gamblers of the town. Backwoodsmen, frontiersmen, and miners of the hardest character abounded in the region. In one secluded mining village, ten miles west of Dubuque, " The Pet Bear," as he was called, was converted. Powerful convictions of sin had seized him under the first sermon he heard ; the home missionary of the place passed nearly the whole of the next day with him, removing his objections to the salvation of so great a sinner ; the next evening he went to the meeting in " a tornado of oaths," occasionally saying to himself, " Spew it out, Pet ; it is the last time ; get rid of it ; for I mean to cut a new set of houselogs." As he returned to his cabin " door, he turned to his wife and said : * There, wife, it is all out,' and, with such an expression as she had never heard before, he cried out, ' O God, help me ! ' He took a seat before the fire, and scarcely altered his posi- tion during the whole night." " One day he went home to his cabin, sat down and pondered, and at length — as he afterwards said in his examination for church membership — suddenly jumped up and exclaimed, ' I swear I will become a Christian,' and fell on his knees and called on God for mercy." A few incidents of his evangelistic work were published by Mr. Holbrook in a small volume in 1863. 1 In many places prominent men and families 1 Prairie Breaking, pp. 89. Boston. FELL W-PIONEEBS. — CONTINUED. 215 were converted, notably in Galena in 1843. His preach- ing was stirring, solemn, and pnngent. At that time there was no territory north or west of Iowa, and " not a settled minister between Dubuque and the North Pole or the Pacific." On one of his first trips up the Mississippi, there was no white settlement above his home on the west side of the river, and the Indian village of Red Wing was a " foreign " station of the American Board. Iu 1853 two important enterprises drew him to Chicago. One was the founding of the New England Church, the other that of The Congregational Herald, now The Advance ; The Prairie Herald, nominally a Union paper, having been bought by Colonel Charles G. Hammond, Deacon Philo Carpenter, Mr. Lewis Broad, of Dubuque, and Mr. Holbrook. Both enterprises met with Presby- terian resistance, and required toil and pecuniary sacrifice. After three years he was recalled to Dubuque as pastor. A second church edifice was built at a cost of forty thou- sand dollars. In 1863 he was called to Homer, N. Y., and during his six years' ministry there visited Great Britain for the American Missionary Association, raising nearly thirty thousand dollars for the freedmen. Two years pastor in Stockton, Cal. ; nine years Secretary of the State Home Missionary Society of New York ; acting pastor of West Church, Portland, Maine, he removed to California in 1883, where he still resides almost as active as ever. Dr. Holbrook took part in founding Beloit and Iowa Colleges, Rockford Female Seminary, and Chicago Theo- logical Seminary ; in bringing the Plan of Union to an end, and separating home missions from slavery ; and has been for nearly forty years a corporate member of the American Board. His pamphlets and letters in religious 216 ASA TUBNEB. journals have been very numerous. His reminiscences are valuable. While an Eastern layman he assisted young men preparing for the ministry, and set others forward when he became a pastor. Among them was an English layman in the Dubuque church, of admirable simplicity and unity of Christian character, who was afterwards for thirty years a home missionary. John W. Windsor was born at Portsea, England, 1802. A midshipman at eleven years of age, he was on H. B. M. ship, the Cyane, in the engage- ment with our frigate Constitution ; afterwards in Brazil, the Shetland Isles, and France ; in 1820 he reached New York, and was converted under Summerfield's preaching at John Street Methodist Episcopal Church. The next ten years were passed in England, where he became a lay preacher among the Independents at Petersfield. In the spring of 1844 he came to Iowa, and settled on a claim on the Little Maquoketa River, with a family of eight. In 1845 Dubuque became his home ; his pastor found Chris- tian work for him in that region. Licensed by Northern Iowa Association, 1847, at Moline, Illinois, and ordained at Maquoketa, 1849, his work was done at Durango, Maquoketa, Vernon Springs, New Oregon, Cresco, and Keosauqua (twice). He was the home missionary in the " Pet Bear " incident. On a visit to England he preached at Petersfield Independent Church, where his children had been baptized. He died at Batavia, Illinois, 1881. One of his two sons, converted at Dubuque, and edu- cated at Iowa College and Andover, writes of his parents : " Theirs was a life cast in the most unpretending mold of Christian service ; but, as I know well, of the most loyal allegiance to the divine Master. To the world they shone in nothing but their humble goodness." Not among the least of the noble influences of early Iowa missions was FELL W-PIONEEBS. — CONTINUED. 217 the drawing " from pew to pulpit " of men like these last sketched. Allen Backus Hitchcock, a native of Great Barrington, Mass., born 1814, in a family productive of more than one minister, was at Davenport from September, 1841, to November, 1843. His parents had come to Fairfield in 1837. Rev. J. P. Stewart supplied Davenport from Stephenson, 1840. He had been awhile a student at Harvard College, and graduated at Illinois College, 1838, and Yale Seminary, 1841. The latter year he was ordained at New Haven. After vigorous service at Davenport he became in October, 1844, (second) pastor of the Moline church, which then passed from Davenport Association to the new Rock River (Illinois) Association. He held this useful pastorship twenty years. XXVI. SECOND PIONEER PASTORATE. The endorsement on Mr. Turner's first commission for Iowa was : " The times are very hard, and the prospects of the cause of benevolence very gloomy. But the Lord reigns." He was to receive for half his time two hundred dollars per annum. For the other half no stipu- lation is of record as to what the people were to pay. But fifteen individuals in Denmark guaranteed that the whole salary from both sources should amount to three hundred dollars, " one fourth to be produce." We are told that " the present inhabitants of Iowa know nothing of the poverty of its first settlers. They know what a poor man is, but a community of poor men they never saw. In 1840 and onward, coke was worth ten cents per bushel, dressed pork one and a half cents per pound, a cow about eight dollars, all in trade. There were men who had good claims, good cabins and teams, who wore through the winter straw hats padded ; some wore two pairs of summer pants, and clothing could not be so patched as to attract attention on the streets. They could dicker for the products of the country, but it was exceed- ingly difficult to obtain money so as to purchase dry-goods and groceries. Mr. Turner, about this time, rode once nearly half a day to borrow money to take his letters from the post-office. Postage on Eastern letters was then twenty-five cents." " Come with me, favored children from ample Eastern homes," says a daughter of a settler of the second year, SECOND PIONEEB PASTORATE. 219 "into our cabin, twelve by sixteen feet. One window of three panes of glass, made to swing out on leather hinges, a leather strap to fasten it inside, a large fire-place with sod-chimney, a loose floor, a slab-door, with wooden latch and leather string, an attic for store-room, to which we went up on wooden pins driven into the logs on the left side of the fire-place, while on the right were four narrow shelves for a cupboard, with a curtain hung before it. Two bedsteads in opposite corners ; under these, two trundle-beds ; back of them three swing-shelves against the wall for library. The table in the center, the side of a bed serving for seats while eating ; at night the table placed across the hearth so another bed might be made in the center. Every thing moved twice a day. Chests con- taining our clothing piled up at night, and spread around in the morning for seats. In this home thirteen of us lived, longed, and hoped; yes, and enjoyed. Some of the brightest, dearest, and saddest experiences of our lives came to us in that little cabin. Rather than have one bliss forgot, Be all its griefs remembered too." With such pioneers the Yale graduate and Quincy pastor began home missionary experiences over again. They were a sincere and serious people and simple in their ways and lives, like himself. Nothing shows more their old-time Christian faithfulness than their examining and propounding all who came to their church fellowship by letter, even from Quincy. They began with the Puri- tan intent of maintaining church discipline. It was five years before they had to excommunicate a member for swearing, neglect of worship, and Sabbath-breaking. One of their first records is of a case on which a committee made this straightforward and quaint report : — 220 ASA TURNER. " We have examined the case of Brother , and are satisfied that he took the flour thinking that it was his, but should have seen the miller and known certainly. Exonerated." Years later an excommunication took place in a revival and did not hinder it. 1 For fourteen months this was the sum total of Iowa Congregationalism. It was not so self-reliant as not to crave Christian fellowship with other churches. There being none nearer than those of the Illinois Association, it joined that body, meeting at Warsaw, April, 1839. The delegate who went with his minister testifies that at the stopping-places the cordial greetings given the latter, with the evidences of his power for good in Illi- nois, led him at last to say : " I don't know but I made a mistake in moving across the river." Later in the year he was re-assured as to the wisdom of it. " Sixteen were added to the church, including all of the original pioneers who were not already ' in it. He held a four days' meeting, like those of Illinois, in July. Five heads of families were among the converts. The young frontier church nearly doubled itself. " We now number about sixty. Two young men of promise will prepare for the ministry. One is the son of a deacon in Connecticut. He thinks it a wonderful providence that he must come to Black Hawk to know what he must do to be saved." Two Yale friends of the pastor, Messrs. Reed and Clark, ren- dered invaluable aid. On New Year's day previous a Sabbath-school had been begun, — the first among Iowa Congregational is ts, — and was growing and useful. But new as Iowa was, there were ten places of ingress ; a hundred families a day were pouring in. " Four weeks planted ten thousand souls on the New Purchase." Mill- in another case a letter of dismission was refused because of unchristian deportment, which was followed by repentance and confession. SECOND PIONEER PASTORATE. 221 ions of acres of Indian soil added to our domain . have always produced the same phenomena, seen more than once in Iowa — " thousands of purchasers for months standing upon the line ; every main road almost literally lined with men, women, and children, with their flocks and herds." Again and again " the army of occupation " has taken possession of claims at midnight. In 1841 the vigilant picket-guard at Denmark had seen the western- most gospel outpost established at Brighton, and his eye thenceforth was on the rich valley of the Des Moines. " Kneelandism " was popular, but new settlements made liberal offers out of their poverty for the preaching of God's Word. He had the spirit of Gallaher the evangel- ist, when, standing opposite the mouth of the Missouri, in 1832, he exclaimed : " South, one thousand miles to the gulf ; north, fifteen hundred to tiie sources of the Missis- sippi ; east, thirteen hundred to the head of the Ohio Valley ; west, twenty-five hundred to the sources of the Missouri. Lord Jesus ! this land shall be thine ! Thy Church will not give up the struggle." Mr. Turner entered Iowa — " The Place ' or " None- such," in Indian parlance — just as the first tide of souls began to flow in. The census of 1836, when he and Kirby coursed through its eastern margin, gave it 10,531 ; that of 1838, 22,859 ; that of 1840, 42,500 — doubling the total twice. His heart went with God's arousing provi- dences. New lands so filling up, he said, " will never have a superabundance of enlightened evangelical ministers. Numbers will grow faster than we shall." And this holds good in Iowa to-day. His industry in surrounding fields of religious destitu- tion was both of necessity and of conviction. Years later he testified : " This is the only practicable way we can carry the gospel in our form of belief to the masses of tb 3 222 ASA TUBNEB. people. Our great theory of laboring behind fortifications [alone, he meant] should be given up, and the aggressive policy be entered upon." He could not himself have pursued it, however, but for the faithfulness and painstaking of the laymen as to home affairs. Who could better record than he what they were worth to Christ's cause? In 1880 his grateful words were : " They did a good work for Denmark and all the surrounding country. The present generation will never realize how much they are indebted to the first settlers. They have left a rich inheritance to coming generations." XXVII. A NOTABLE ACCESSION. In June, 1840, Mr. Turner wrote to an Illinois minister then at the East : — "I have been here now almost two years, and during the time the A. H. M. S. has not sent a single man to this territory. Do try to find some more good men and true. We need some ten at least this moment — imperatively need them. Why should this most interesting territory be left? The land sales are over. Settlers have got their titles to earth. Now is the time to secure a title to heaven. ... I suppose every day adds to our number, even Sundays. Children come into the world without respect of days ; so [people] do into the territory. Do labor a little in our behalf." a By request from New York he now made an exploring * tour of inhabited Iowa, pushing as far north as Dubuque. All the land was open to settlers. Of the two hundred and fifty-four townships of the Black Hawk Purchase, a hundred and ninety had been mostly sold; the second Purchase (1837) not surveyed — " though almost all claimed, and immigrants stand on the western border ready to step over the first moment that the govern- ment gives permission." There had been an increase of twenty thousand souls in two years. He gave fresh information of soil, climate, people, health, resources, and 1 During five years "New England and New York sent one. Rome sent five. Have the churches yet to learn that the best time to teach a state, as well as a child, is in its infancy? " 224 ASA TURNER. religious destitution. In a tour of three hundred and sixty miles only three persons found sick. Every-where Christian labor called for. He pleaded with the Eastern churches for twelve more home missionaries. " May the Lord incline their hearts to pray the first prayer of Paul!" The next year he asked in his annual report : ! " Ought the six missionaries (here) to be left to labor alone with a congregation of about a thousand added to the territory every month?" A year later, 1842, the six had become twelve, and on ' several of the churches the Spirit of grace had descended. " Ten years since the first strip of territory was ceded by the Indians : now, in less than four years from its political birth, the people are well-nigh fifty thousand. But where are the twenty ministers that ought to be sent [hither] before another year shall end?" Answer years later : u Those commissioned at the East had to travel over a thousand miles of missionary ground before they could reach us. The first man insured through was Rev. Aaron Dutton, of Guilford, Conn., sixty-three years old, the father of Rev. Dr. S. W. S. Dutton, of New Haven. 2 He came, he said, to see if he could not shame some young men into coming. He preached through the sum- mer of 1843 at Farmington and Burlington, and returned in the fall. In a year or two he went to his rest." 3 In 1 Nothing but anguish of spirit could induce such a man to put forth an impracti- cable proposal like this, namely, that some Eastern pastors should substitute a month's observation " in this beautiful territory " for a fashionable summer tour in Europe or a visit to Saratoga or Niagara! " The effect on their health would be equally favorable, and then, how much good would be done!" It is not known that any of tbe "great and good men" to whom he appealed took it into con- sideration. — The Home Missionary, August, 1840. 2 His son Thomas came also, and supplied the church at Farmington, 1843, and died without charge at Durant, 1885. He was a graduate of Williams ('32) and Yale Seminary ^'36) ; had been tutor at Williams and teacher in Georgia, and in Mendon, m. His last work as a minister was at New Guilford, Conn., 1855-59, and Ashford, 1859-66. 3 Quarter-Centennial Discourse. A NOTABLE ACCESSION. 225 July of that year a layman who had given one thousand dollars for the work of opening Wisconsin gave the same sum for similar work in Iowa. "Now hope began to dawn." And the Spirit of God was moving meanwhile on the hearts of certain students at Andover. They began to inquire about Iowa as a field for consecrated lives. The first queries came (March, 1841) from one of them whom he had known in Illinois College, who expressed his own strong inclination towards the Valley of the Mississippi. He was a junior. " The majority of Andover students," he said, " have not sufficient zeal and energy for the West, but would very soon acquire [them] by mingling among Western people." Several seniors had offered themselves to the American Board. He could report none as con- templating home missions, but asked for information for the " Domestic Branch of the Society of Inquiry." The next January, however, a corresponding commit- tee of that society, Messrs. R. S. Kendall, J. J. Hill, and Horace Hutchinson, made extended inquiries of the Den- mark pastor, with a practical purpose. 1 " Our minds," they wrote, " are drawn towards the Great Valley. . . . Compared with the needs of other parts of our country, or even of the world, at this juncture, many of us incline to believe that those of three or four North-western states and territories are particularly urgent and imperative." 2 The points on which they asked questions were number- 1 About that time another offered to sustain a certain theological student in Iowa. "It will be about the same thing, " wrote the latter to Mr. Turner, " as though he paid the money into the treasury of the A. H. M. S., except that I shall be sure of my support." 2 April 28, 1843. Dr. Badger to Mr. Turner: "Letter just received from An- dover saying that six or eight of the best men in the senior class are determined to make Iowa their home. I rejoice in the good you have accomplished at Burling- ton. We have a man who will start for there about the middle of May, and, if he does not get stopped at Milwaukee, will, I think, be the man for them. His name is Chapin." He teas stopped at Milwaukee and Beloit College. 226 ASA TUBNER. less. Twenty-one years later lie thus gave his impressions of them : — " Their letter would have required, you will see, a volume to answer. T have no remembrance of my reply, but one thing I do remember. For twelve years I had written so many letters to call men into this Western field that I had about concluded it was a waste of time and paper. And especially after I got to Iowa. I had heard so often of ministers, boxed and marked ' for Iowa,' lost on the road, that I had lost pretty much all faith in spirit- ual transportation companies. I did not really believe that a batch of them would come worth their insurance policy. One of the number wrote me that my want of faith in their intention operated as a stimulant to make them determined to come anyhow." 1 This was probably the one to whom he wrote thus: " June 7, 1843. My dear young brother, I am happy to hear a reinforcement from Andover is talked of. I hope it may not end in talk, but I fear. I have received so many promises of the kind that they do not now even begin to excite hope. If your professors should write and say that the whole class would start for Iowa in two weeks, I should expect to see, in the course of two years, one or two of them who could find no other resting-place for the soles of their feet." Some of his answers amused the young theologues. " Effect of climate on healthy persons about as great as going from Andover to Lowell." As to clothes : u Get firm and durable, something that will go through the hazelrough without tearing." " Lay aside all your dandy notions which boys learn in college, and take a few lessons 1 This by the way. Their decision had deeper and other grounds. Pulpits of excellent standing in New England were not only open, but solicited them; a Nestorian bishop, Mar Yohanan, had interested churches and seminaries in Persia. " The field is the world," and Iowa was their part of it. A NOTABLE ACCESSION. 227 of old farmers or grandmothers." " The people will not call you Rev. Mr. B., but simply A. B., and your wife Peggy or Polly, or whatever her name may be." How numerously the young brethren laid the question of wives before the experienced missionary is not known, but letters before the writer all broach it. " It would be as well," he advised, u for three or four men who must go into new counties to leave the better half behind for one or two years, and then take a ten days' trip to old Yankee land " for them. 1 " Tell those two or three who think of leading out a sister this fall, that we will try to find homes as good as Keokuk, the high chief, and his lady live in, and my wife will have that kettle of mush and the johnnycake ready by some cold night in November." " Get wives of the old Puritan stamp, such as honored the distaff and the loom, those who can l pail a cow ' and churn the butter, and be proud of a jeans 2 dress and a checked apron." " Tell your intended that no evil will befall her here not incident to our fallen condition, and not one trial but will be overruled for her eternal good, if found in the path of duty." " A wife could be taken care of in any of the places named." " Ride round and be the instruments of converting some hundred souls, and gather together some half-dozen little churches, then go and get a wife." " Give my love to all that little band, and to all their intended ones, and say we hope soon to welcome them on the west side of the great Mississippi." The reader will conclude that by this time hope as to the notable accession coming had got the better of skepti- 1 " Suggest to some the propriety of riding a circuit for two or three years. It would do a young man great good. In such a case you need not be troubled to look up wives, as I presume you all seek such companions as a matter of duty and not of choice [!]." " Our climate will permit men to live long enough if they do their duty : if they never will, no matter how soon they die." 2 One of the Band once asked a merchant of Kentucky birth what language this word was. " Pure Kentucky," was the answer. 228 ASA TUBNEB. cism in the Denmark parsonage. The counsels given — smacking of "the Age of Homespun," and touched with humor — were well received. One suspects sometimes a tear — not sad, but grateful — trickling through the humor. Much practical advice was offered as to the time of coming and routes. We need not dwell on the details of the gathering of what had now become " The Iowa Band " (that is, of nine of them) at Albany in October, 1843, or their journey via Buffalo, the Lakes, Chicago, Davenport, and Burlington to Denmark. 1 But it is time to give their names. In the order of ages they were : Harvey Adams, Worcester, Vt. ; Edwin B. Turner, Monticello, 111. ; Daniel Lane, Leeds, Maine ; Erastus Ripley, Coventry, Conn. ; James J. Hill, Phipps- burgh, Maine; Benjamin A. Spaulding, Billerica, Mass.; Alden B. Robbins, Salem ; Horace Hutchinson, Sutton ; Ephraim Adams, New Ipswich, N. H.; Ebenezer Alden, Jr., Randolph, Mass., and William Salter, New York City. " Father ' Turner, as Iowa love and veneration had now come to call him, met them at Burlington, with Den- mark teams, the mail route from Denmark running to Fort Madison. With Mr. Gaylord he had made special explorations in order to advise them. Just before leaving Andover, a special service had been held in the South Church (September 3), Dr. Leonard Bacon preaching, Dr. Milton Badger giving a charge, and Dr. George E. Pierce, of Western Reserve College, Ohio, offering prayer. One of the number, Mr. Hill, was left behind sick ; another, Mr. Ripley, remained at Andover as "Abbot Resident," and William B. Hammond had left the Band, which was originally twelve. Mr. Robbins had been ordained at 1 At Buffalo a union home missionary meeting was held, addressed by Messrs. Salter, Robbins, E. Adams, Hutchinson, and Lane, and Professor Post of Illinois College. A SO TABLE ACCESSION. 229 Salem, September 20, and Mr. H. Adams at Franklin, a week later. Two other licentiates joined the number to be ordained, 1 making, with Messrs. Turner, Lane, Spauld- ing, Hutchinson, E. Adams, Alden, and Salter, nine present. Such an arrival of young preachers at one time had never before occurred in a Western state or territory, and such a day in the Christian history of Iowa and its ministry had never been. " Such an one," wrote Father Turner in 1863, " as I had never expected to see in my life-time. The most I could do when alone was to weep tears of joy and return thanks to God/' The sermon (on Prerequisites to Success in the Minis- try) was preached by Mr. Reed, from Acts 20 : 28 ; the charge was by Mr. Charles Burnham ; the right hand of fellowship by Mr. Gaylord ; the ordaining prayer by Father Turner. A signal event for Denmark, for home missions, and for Congregational growth in Iowa. u It settled the question of our denominational life, under God." "On Monday, November 6, three teams took them on their way to their several fields of labor." Bound up with the question of ordination on the ground had been the question of denominational relations there. But Father Turner had scrupulously passed it by in his J One of these, Charles Granger, who had been in Iowa four months, was a native of Randolph, Vt., 1806; a student at Andover, 1843; stationed at Crawfords- ville and Washington, 1643-45; at Long Creek also, 1845-46; Oregon, Iowa, 1846-48; and Paxton, 111., 1857-60. William A. Thompson, born at Holland, Mass.; graduated at New York (City) University, 1840; studied at Yale Seminary and Union, N. Y.; stationed at Troy, Iowa, 1843-45; at Fairfield, 1845-50; Port Byron, 111., 1850-52, and was drowned near Port Byron, May 3, of that year. This ordination service was the firot act of the old Iowa Association, just formed. There is a tradition of a bit of Yankee humor uttered as the examination closed, which was much relished by Father Turner. The Association was so short of men that the " charge " had to be assigned to a licentiate. One of the two youngest candidates said that he " did n't know about their being charged by a brother who wasn't more than half-charged himself." 230 ASA TUBNEB. letters. Once, at the last, when asked directly which polity was best for the West, he answered : " The Con- gregational the world over." Once he wrote in a general way : " Come on, brethren, come with the spirit of your Pilgrim Fathers, and plant their principles in this rich soil. DonH be ashamed of your mother as soon as you cross the Alleghanies, as many of our good brethren are, and even some on whom she has put honorary titles. The principles of church government planted on Plymouth Rock are, in my apprehension, the same as those taught by the Saviour and his apostles, and I am free to wish they might spread over this Great Valley." He did not know that they were to be apprised at Buffalo that in the West there were " none but Presbyterians to unite with ; ' and at Chicago advised in the s^me direction. " The Home Missionary Society being a cooperative body, I felt it to be my duty to leave all to their choice." At Burlington he told them that " if they wished to be Presbyterians, Presbytery was to meet (at Kossuth) at such a time ; if Congregation- alists, Association would meet at Denmark. Till after their arrival I had no knowledge, but expected, from past experience, that most — if not all — would apply to Pres- bytery. Congregationalists were known as radical anti- slavery men, and not in high repute among their own mother's children." On the ride from Burlington one young man expressed his Congregational preferences and those of another. (To Mr. Reed, 1863) : " You probably shared my surprise when we found them all at Denmark, asking to be set apart to the gospel ministry by us." On their examination the evidence that they had been taught little of church polity at Andover struck him ; " but I remembered the past, and concluded they had ability to learn, and in this have not been disappointed." XXVIII. THE YOUNGER CONTINGENT. Larger Iowa gatherings now of sons of the Pilgrims. Eight meetings of the old Association had been held, when the formation of the Denmark and the Northern Iowa made it the State Association. " With my staff I passed over this Jordan," the patriarch could say, " and now, two bands ! ' In 1845, at Muscatine, the general body drew to its sessions a dozen ordained men ; six months later, at Dubuque, sixteen ; next year, at Burlington, twenty-one, and, for the first time, a secre- tary of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions. In 1844-45 Rev. J. S. Clark, d.d., of Boston, declining to succeed Father Turner as Home Missionary Superintend- ent, all turned to Mr. Reed, whose residence was removed to Davenport. Out in the New Purchase the counties were receiving two hundred settlers a month each, and large exploration was needed. The barest outline is all that can be given of the work of the eleven from Andover. Father Turner appreciated it fully : " I can not doubt that they were called of God to their fields as really as Abraham was to his. Abraham saw little fruit of the first twenty-one years after his call, but the seed planted by him in Palestine is now growing in Iowa." Profoundly and tenderly, too, he appreciated to the end of life, with theirs, the work of the choice Christian women 232 ASA TUBNEB. he rejoiced to see presiding in their homes. 1 Their record also is on high, and a large proportion of the usefulness of their husbands has been their usefulness. But even to delineate it is here impossible. The outline story of the Band is this : — (1) Harvey Adams was born in Alstead, N. H., January, 1809. He fitted for college at Montpelier, in the academy, Rev. J. C. Southmayd, principal, pursu- ing one term of college studies also with him, and acting as assistant instructor. Entering the University of Ver- mont in the spring of 1836, he graduated in 1839. After one year at Andover, he taught a select school at Medway, Mass., 1840-41, and then studied at Andover Seminary again two years. In Iowa he has labored in five com- munities : at Farmington, twenty years ; Council Bluffs, three ; New Hampton, four ; Fairfax, four ; and Bo wen's Prairie, nearly nine. He retired from the active ministry several years since, but has occasionally supplied different pulpits, residing now at New Hampton. (2) Edwin Bela Turner was born in Great Barrington, Mass., October, 1812. He was apprentice in a machine manufactory till his conversion at the age of sixteen, and then at once held evangelistic meetings with other young men, which grew into a prosperous church. He prepared for college in the academy at Kinderhook, N. Y., whither his father, a well-known temperance lecturer, had removed, and went through freshman studies. The family removing to Godfrey, 111., he entered Illinois College as sophomore ; graduated in 1840, and entered at Andover. In two seminary vacations he taught a select school at 1 Dr. Tucker, of Providence, R. I., said to one of them (Mrs. E. C. Robbins) : •'You are crazy to go off West. I would sooner go to the coast of Africa." Another expressed her Christian purpose in these characteristic words: "It will be honor enough to have been built into these foundations out of sight " (Mrs. S. E. Hill). Rev. Harvey Adams. (See page 232.) THE YOUNGER CONTINGENT. 233 Manchester, N. H. To his seminary class-mates he was quite a cyclopaedia of Western information. He was one of two who, at Denmark, chose northernmost Iowa, and for eleven years had Cascade and Colesburg as his centers. Failing health sent him to Morris, 111., for a ten years' pastorate ; and he was then nearly twelve years Home Missionary Superintendent in Missouri. Beginning just before the end of the Rebellion, when Missouri had but two Congregational churches (at St. Louis and Hannibal), he left the state in 1876 with seventy-one. After a few months in Europe he supplied the churches at Oswego, Columbus, and Chenango Forks, N. Y., till 1882, and now resides, retired, at Owego, N. Y. (3) Daniel Lane was born at Leeds, Maine, March, 1813. His ancestors were English Puritans from Glouces- ter, England. 1 At Bridgton Academy, Maine, he prepared for Bowdoin College, where he graduated in 1838, and at once became teacher of modern languages and English in North Yarmouth Academy. Two years later he entered Andover Seminary. At the Denmark ordination a Keosauqua layman chose him from the Band as his home missionary pastor, and at that place he remained ten years, teaching also a classical and English school. The chair of mathematics and natural philosophy in Iowa College was meantime offered him and declined. In 1853 he accepted the principalship of the preparatory department, to which was soon added the professorship of mental and moral science. The college being closed in 1858, preparatory to removal, he taught a private school at Davenport one year, and another at Keosauqua 1 He often asked his grandfather, who brought him up from childhood, why he prayed constantly for a revival, since it never came. " It will come some time, Daniel, in the Lord's best time." That time was when the grandson was seventeen years old, and he was one of the first of those converted, of whom four became ministers. 234 ASA TUBNEB. three years. He was then four years acting pastor at Eddyville, and six years at Belle Plaine, and for shorter periods at Eddyville and Keosauqua ; but since 1872 has been without charge, sometimes laboring for the college, and residing at Belle Plaine, at Oskaloosa, and (now) at South Freeport, Maine. In the tasteful new church at Keosauqua is an oriel memorial window bearing his name and given by early pupils in loving and venerating remembrance. (4) Erastus Ripley was born at Coventry, Conn., March, 1815. He graduated at Union College, N. Y., in 1840, and entered Andover from Union Seminary, New York City. He remained at Andover as " Abbot Resi- dent ' till the autumn of 1844, when he became home missionary at Bentonsport, Iowa, and was ordained there April, 1845. Three years later he was chosen to the first professorship in Iowa College, as Carter Professor of Ancient Languages, which he held till the removal. He taught at New Britain, Conn., four years, and died in February, 1870, at Somers, Conn., where he had a school for young ladies five years. (5) James Jeremiah Hill was born at Phippsburgh, Maine, May, 1815, son of Judge Mark Langdon Hill, who filled out an unexpired term of United States senator from Maine, about 1820. He fitted for Bowdoin College in the Bath and North Bridgton academies, and graduated 1838 with Dr. Lane. He was for some time engaged in teaching and in the work of the American Tract Society, and entered at Andover, 1840. Sickness and his father's death detained him in Maine till the spring of 1844. He was ordained, April, 1844, at Phippsburgh. His first work was at Jacksonville (which soon became Garnavillo), Clayton County, Iowa ; then at Albany and Savanna, 111. ; then at Wapello, Iowa, Glencoe, Minn., Rev. E. B. Turner. (See page 232.) THE YOUNGER CONTINGENT. 235 and Hutchinson (where his choir was the " Hutchinson Family "). Exposure in that climate and disease drove him back to Iowa, and from Grinnell for some years he supplied Indiantown, Green Mountain, Genoa Bluffs, and then removed to Fayette. He organized a number of churches, and at Garnavillo, Savanna, Glencoe, and Fay- ette built houses of worship. From 1865 to 1868 he acted for the American Missionary Association in Iowa, Kansas, and Minnesota. After a year's painful illness at his last home, Fayette, he died, October, 1870, of cancer of the stomach, and his remains were taken to Grinnell for burial beside his wife and son. (6) Benjamin Adams Spaulding, born in Billerica, Mass., July, 1815. Converted when sixteen years old, he gave his life at once to the ministry. At Phillips Academy he prepared for Yale, and after one year there entered Harvard, graduating in 1840, and immediately entering at Andover. He chose the New Purchase (opened the May before), about and beyond the Indian Agency, for his field, where the busy city of Ottumwa — then a group of twelve log buildings and two frame struct- ures — and other towns were yet to be. 1 An evangelist, like his class-mates in the extreme North, u preaching in groves and cabins, and organizing churches where ten years before had been the Indian dance," he wrote after four years : " Although I have suffered more from sickness, severe toil, and privations than in all the rest of my life, I have enjoyed more real happiness." Of con- sumptive tendencies, his zeal was a lambent but intense flame. He longed for ten more years in which to " do something." Installed April, 1851, over the Ottumwa 1 " The frail dwellings, beaten trails, and newly-made graves of the Indians still remained, and they were often seen carrying away corn which had been raised on their fields, and sometimes lingering about their old hunting-grounds." 236 ASA TURXEB. church which he had gathered, after a few years grow- ing feebleness sent him north to minister at Eau Claire, Wis., part of a year. For many months he awaited death. His sense of sin was peculiarly pungent. " His life was gentle, uncorrupt, unassuming, independent, and high- toned; he was retiring, unobtrusive." He died at Ottumwa, March, 1867. In Eau Claire church is a " Spaulding window," and at Ottumwa a " Spaulding memorial parsonage." (7) Alden Burrill Robbins, born in Salem, Mass., February, 1817, prepared for Harvard at Greenwich, N. Y., Goshen, Conn., Brooklyn, N. Y., and Salem. His confession of Christ, at the age of seventeen, was in a church in Worcester County, resembling some wide- spread Western churches, — that of " Bolton, Stow, Lan- caster, and Stirling," — the one Orthodox church, Dr. John W. Chickering, pastor. He graduated at Amherst, 1839, with Dr. R. S. Storrs, Bishop F. D. Huntington, and Alden and Hutchinson of the Band. Tutor that year in Hopkins Academy, Hadley, and principal of Pawtucket Academy, 1840, he studied at Union Seminary one year, and at Andover two. He has never ministered to .any other church than that of Bloomington, now Muscatine, begin- ning in 1843, and continuing now to the forty-sixth year. Not an uneventful ministry, however, reckoning by changes of population, church membership, neighboring and associated ministers, and revivals, and by hard con- flicts with pro-slavery, saloons, and infidel and Popish influences. His church was long known as " Uncle Tom's Cabin." Official attendance on the American- Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions, Chicago Seminary, Iowa College, Wilton Academy, and commit- tees upon the American Home Missionar} r Society consti- tution and a new creed, have taken much of his crowded Il Kkv. Daniel Lank. (See page 888.) THE YOUNGEB CONTINGENT. 237 time. For seventeen years, 1847-64, before the college had a president, he was annually elected president of the trustees. (8) Horace Hutchinson was a native of Sutton, Mass., born August, 1817, and graduated at Amherst College in 1839. He was then tutor in Hopkins Academy, Hadley. After ordination he preached at Burlington, and received a call, November, 1843. 1 Every thing Christian felt at once the impulse of his sanctified enthusiasm and his kindling powers of speech. Otherwise than in being a consumptive, he was physically vigorous, and excelled in athletics ; but in little more than two years death claimed him, and he was the first of the eleven to go. Such promise and ardor in his sacred calling tested faith and submission, when the Master's will became apparent, and not in vain. He died at Burlington, March, 1846. (9) Ephraim Adams was born at New Ipswich, N. H., February, 1818, " on a rocky farm at the end of the road, between two hills ; ' converted at the age of twelve ; fitted for college at Appleton Academy and Phillips, Andover ; was one of fifty who left Phillips on being forbidden to form an anti-slavery society; graduated at Dartmouth, 1839; taught one year in Petersburg Classical Institute, Virginia ; then entered at Andover Seminary ; in 1843-44 preached at Mount Pleasant, Iowa ; from 1844 to 1855, at Davenport ; engaged in raising funds for Iowa College two years; 1857-72, pastor at Decorah; 1872-82, Superintendent for Home Missions, six years for Northern Iowa, succeeding Dr. Guernsey, and four years for the state ; after another service for the college, and the Western Collegiate Society, pastor at Eldora from 1883 to the present writing. For three years, 1844-47, while the 1 Some months before he went to Burlington it had " 1,800 inhabitants, twenty- six lawyers, and doctors in proportion, but no Presbyterian or Congregational minister." 238 ASA TUBNEB. college had no president, he was annually elected presi- dent of the trustees. " Never lost an appointment by sickness in my ministry ; never yet sick a whole day." 1 (10) Ebenezer Alden, Jr., was born at Randolph, Mass., August, 1819 ; descendant of John Alden " and Priscilla," as was also Daniel Lane (3). He prepared for college at Randolph Academy ; graduated at Amherst, 1839 ; was home missionary at Tipton, Iowa, 1843-48 ; supplied several pulpits in Massachusetts till 1850, when he became pastor of the First Congregational Church, Marshfield, Mass. In 1852 one of his parishioners, Daniel Webster, dying there, requested that the pastor whose ministry he attended should conduct the services at his funeral, and Mr. Alden accordingly preached the states- man's funeral sermon. After a thirty-five years' pastor- ship, he resigned in 1885, and is now pastor emeritus. (11) William Salter, born at Brooklyn, N. Y., No- vember, 1821, fitted for college in private schools and University Grammar School, New York City ; graduated at New York University, 1840 ; taught summer schools at South Norwalk, Conn., and Walden, N. Y., 1840 and 1842 ; was two years in Union Theological Seminary, and one at Andover ; was first missionary at Springfield (Forks of the Maquoketa), and just before Mr. Hutchinson's death called to Burlington. In his first quarter he visited " nearly all the settlements in the county, and preached forty-six sermons in sixteen different places." His pastor- ship is now the second longest west of the Mississippi — forty-three years, ending April, 1889. At Andover these brethren had had a Tuesday evening prayer-meeting in the library. No lights being allowed, they met in the dark, Mr. Lane, then librarian, placing chairs for them in the first alcove, left hand. Their plans i MS. Letter. Rev. James J. Hill. (See page 234.) THE YOUNGER CONTINGENT. 239 and doings were unknown to others. " The last meeting ever held at which all were together," says Mr. Adams, 1 "was in Father Turner's study," when places of labor were distributed among them. They "practically dis- banded on the morning of November 6, 1843, at Den- mark," says Mr. Reed, 2 " when [they] departed to their several fields of labor. They never acted as a band in any important matter after that day." It is probable that no equal number of young ministers leaving a theological seminary together ever founded so many churches in five or ten years afterwards, as these men. Their predecessors in Iowa had led the way, and con- tinued to do so. Mr. Emerson could say, in 1883, that his " itinerant work enabled [him] to lead in the forma- tion of not less than twenty-five," not all Congregational. Father Turner wrote Mr. Reed in 1863, of the Band: " I have never been disappointed in them. I have reason for gratitude to them and to God that they have always treated me with so much kindness and confidence, and that the experience of twenty-one years has led me to esteem them so highly in love for their work's sake." " These then young men, but now fathers, in connection with their co-laborers of other denominations, have planted seeds in Iowa which we trust will grow and bear fruit as long as our nation shall live. Atheism and Mormonism were then striving to get possession of our fair territory (1843). One boasted that 'Tom Paine's Age of Reason would soon take the place of the Bible in all the families of Iowa.' Another that ' Mormonism would soon rise to the sovereignty in Church and State.' But twenty-one years have left scarcely a vestige of either." Two of the younger contingent became professors in 1 Iowa Band, p. 37. 2 Cong. Iowa, July, 1881. 240 ASA TUBNEB. the institution they joined their predecessors in founding, Messrs. Ripley and Lane. Of the four who have died, three gave themselves much to revival work, and the fourth would have done so if he had not died so soon. Mr. Ripley's scholarly tastes did not promise this at first. Mr. Hill surprised his early friends by inclining to the work of an evangelist. Mr. Spaulding was a "ranger" after almost the early Methodist type ; traveling on horse- back "he preached in about thirty different places of meeting, some of them one hundred miles apart." His first communion season was held in the old " council house." Here "less than two years ago savages were sitting and lying upon the floor, smoking their pipes and singing their songs ; now Christians are celebrating the dying love of their Lord." The first service at Eddyville of this cultured young man was held in an Indian " wike-up." Father Turner visited them as widely as was possible. Within a year he was as far north as Jackson County, where Indian lands were not yet in market, and "there were no permanent improvements, nothing but cabins. He held a three days' meeting at Andrew' with Mr. Salter, " won the attention of the people," and gave warm sympathy to the young missionary, imparting "comfort and strength." Before his own active ministry ceased, more than two hundred others, most of them young, had joined the Iowa ministry, his paternal and winning interest in whom was expressed in cheering and moving ways. Up to 1866 almost one fifth as many as were then laboring in the state had died. Rev. A. B. Robbins. (See page 236.) XXIX. THE FIRST ACADEMY AND THE FIRST COLLEGE. For one who had u thought on a college ' for Illinois in distant New Haven, toiled for it through New England, and was still one of its original trustees, it was natural to think of another as the " best thing " — in Mather's phrase — for the attractive new territory. If in 1836, riding through it after it had for a few weeks been Wisconsin, with another Illinois College trustee and teacher, the thought passed their lips, it was nothing strange. We have no record of this. But as to another teacher at Jacksonville, we have some information at first hand. There is no evidence that it was known at Denmark or at Andover that an Iowa Association had been formed at New Haven, 1 of seven theological students, nine years after the old Illinois Association, namely, in 1837. One of them, Reuben Gaylord, said : — " It is our purpose to establish upon a firm basis a college for the future state of Iowa ; also, to encourage and assist in the location of academies throughout the district, and to lend a fostering hand to the general interests of education in the common-school department. We shall aim to secure an endowment which may be worth ten years hence two hundred thousand dollars. This can be done with little trouble in the first settle- ment of a country where land is cheap. All of our number, with one or two exceptions, are going there to preach the gospel, not to engage in educational work, 1 Known as Iowa Educational Association. 242 ASA TUBNEB. except as trustees of the college we hope to build, and to advise and help the people in the all-important work of a thorough education. The Home Missionary Board smile upon the enterprise." A pretty large undertaking for seven students of 1837 ! The Illinois movement, however, cheered them. Nine years after, three of them had resorted to Iowa, Mr. Gay lord to stay — J. A. Clark and J. P. Stewart, for a time. The last had been nominal trustee of another projected college, and the first of still another, eighteen years younger than Illinois College, and not then dreamed of, which was the first founded in Iowa, and whose origin was quite distinct from these projects upon paper. When Mr. Reed followed Father Turner and Mr. Gay- lord to Iowa, it was quite certain that the oldest of the pioneers should broach the subject to him as to one familiar with college building east of the river. He did so ; the first authentic mention of it. " It must have been in the summer of 1842," writes the junior home mis- sionary, " that Father Turner said to me, ■ We must take steps to found a college,' which was probably the first audible expression of that thought. The subject was thenceforward talked over." That autumn the (old) Association met on October 6 r at Brighton. The first action was now attempted — " a committee appointed to report upon the expediency of taking the incipient steps towards the foundation of a college in this territory." The same day the committee re- ported " that a discussion of the subject was inexpedient," and recommended that " a committee be appointed to cor- respond and take other measures which may be neces- sary." A. Turner, H. B. Notson (layman), and J. A. Reed were appointed, the last two of Fairfield. Rev. Ephraim Adams. (See page 2! 7.) FIBST ACADEMY AND FIBST COLLEGE. 243 This was the first " incipient step " towards founding Iowa College, after Mr. Turner's suggestion the summer before. But others had " thought " as early as these brethren in Iowa, though not in just the same way, and had taken "incipient steps" earlier — though the result was to be only a college " on paper." Among the laws of Wisconsin Territory, 1837-38, was one, of ten sections (No. 94), of which the first reads thus : — " Section 1. Be it enacted by the Council and House of Representatives of the Territory of Wisconsin, That there shall be established in the town of Denmark, in Des Moines County, a college for the purpose of educating youth, the style, name, and title whereof shall be, ' The Philandrian College of the town of Denmark,' which college shall be under the direction of seven trustees, to wit, Rev. Jeremiah Porter, Samuel Barrett, James P. Stuart, Robert A. Leeper, Timothy Fox, Lewis Epps, and A. M. Dixon." " Approved January 19, 1838." The Leeper family circle, in which this separate enter- prise originated, was Scotch Presbyterian, — " psalm-sing- ing r: variety, — and settled first in Bond County, 111.; then at Jacksonville. The father gave largely to Illinois College, and influenced its location there in place of Van- dalia. Embarrassing himself by paying up his pledges to it, he removed to Princeton, and built there grist and saw mills and a carding-machine. All the circle became at Jacksonville zealous for manual labor colleges, and the proceeds of the Princeton property were to make the " Philandrian " such a college for Iowa. One of the sons, with Stewart, a brother-in-law, explored the Black Hawk Purchase, and selected the site of The Haystack for it. The father dying at Princeton, in 1836, four of the brothers went to the future Denmark in 1837-38 to build. J. G. Edwards was a Jacksonville friend, and was to 244 ASA TURNER. remove his press thither to aid the enterprise. The Leepers furnished Mr. Stewart means to go East for twelve young men or more, to come and build academies as feeders to the Philandrian, preach, start churches, etc.; also, to get funds, and study theology at Yale. He se- cured neither money nor men. 1 Meantime the college charter- had been obtained at Burlington, probably by the three Denmark trustees. The other four were Illinois men ; Mr. Porter then lived at Peoria ; Mr. Dixon was the most zealous Presbyterian. At the same session, held in Burlington, seventeen insti- tutions for Wisconsin, under the names of academy, seminary, college, and university, were chartered by the Territorial Assembly, and located severally at Green Bay, Beloit, Racine, Monroe, Dubuque, Denmark, Mineral Point, Depere, Fort Madison, West Point, Burlington, Cassville, Mount Pleasant, Augusta, Farmington, Madi- son, Davenport (manual labor), and "town 69, range 3, west, Des Moines County." The first meeting of trustees at Denmark was to be held the first Monday of June, 1838. But before this time the mills at Princeton had burned down, uninsured, and the church at Denmark had been organized (May), Congregational. Probably the trustees, who were Presby- terians, never met as a Board, and the whole enterprise was abandoned. One of the Leeper sons writes : " Mr. Turner said, not to give up : if they could not have the college, they would have the academy. They made a success of it through the energy of Mr. Turner." 1 How much theology he obtained is uncertain. He preached at Burlington (teaching also) and at Davenport and Stephenson, at the latter place turning Swe- denborgian, and dying years ago at Philadelphia. Mr. Dixon was later home mis- sionary and principal of Platteville Academy, Wisconsin. His successors at Platteville were the writer and Dr. J. L. Pickard, of Iowa Slate University. Rev. Ebexkzer Alden. (See page 258.) FIBST ACADEMY AND FIBST COLLEGE. 245 An academy, then, was to precede a college in Iowa. If in its stead, the " Philandrian ' project had gone forward, many things in Iowa would have been different from what they were and are. There is a tradition that Mr. Turner conditioned his coming to Denmark upon the founding of the academy. There is evidence that he said, " There might as well not be a home or a living here, as no institution of learning." A town proprietor, not then a Christian, uttered the common feeling : u As well have no home as no church and no school." First settlers in a territory had then to provide neighborhood or private schools, sustained by tuition. For there were but two other alternatives — teach their own children at home or see them grow up in ignorance. The first neighborhood school was taught by Berryman Jennings, afterward a medical student and a trader at Burlington, who died recently at Oregon City, Oregon. " I was residing," he says, " on the Half-breed Tract, now part of Lee County, in 1830. Dr. Galland, six or eight miles above Keokuk, persuaded me to teach a three months' school. It began at ' Ah-wi-pe-tuck ' (since Nashville and Galland) in October, 1830." About the time it closed John Robinson opened the second of Iowa schools at " Puck-a-she-tuck ' (Keokuk). These places were occupied by white purchasers of half-breed claims, before lands were open to settlement. In 1832-33 Jesse Creighton taught at Keokuk. 1 In 1833 a soldier at Fort Madison taught a school for the United States troops. The lands outside the Half-breed Tract were opened next year. *He was a shoemaker; ** but finding it difficult to support himself, owing to the custom of those days of people going barefoot in summer and wearing moccasins in winter, he WW induced to open a school."— Mist. Address at Port Madison, 1675. The details in the text were collected before The Norm il Monthly Souvenir was issui-'i, most of them from nearly original sources. 246 ASA TUBNEB. The first school-house in Iowa was built of logs, where Burlington now is, by Dr. W. R. Ross, in the fall of 1833. Next spring Zadoc C. Inghram taught in it sixteen or eighteen pupils. The second school-house, a Methodist log chapel, was built at Dubuque in November, to be "used for a common school at the discretion of the trustees." The former was ten feet by twelve ; the latter, twenty by twenty-six (estimated cost, $255). General George W. Jones, long United States senator for Iowa, was a pupil at Burlington. George Cubbage and Barrett Whittemore were teachers at Dubuque. In May, 1834, the first lady teacher appeared in Iowa, Mrs. Rebecca Parmer, near Fort Madison, towards Denmark. "The house a small cabin, dirt floor, split rails for seats." Two years later three ladies taught at Dubuque, two of them in the log chapel. In 1837 the settlers at Denmark had a place for a school, and Miss Eliza Houston teacher, the first teacher in the town. These early schools — multiplied as new-comers planted themselves near enough to each other to sustain them — increased in numbers most in South-eastern Iowa, where settlements and churches were most numerous. As late as 1844 " more than two thirds of the population resided south of the Iowa River." Of more than forty teachers previous to 1838 fourteen were ladies, and twenty-one were in the two early counties of Des Moines and Lee. There is this record in the Denmark church manual : " It was the design of the pioneers to place the meeting- house and the school-house side by side. The original proprietors of the town, Timothy Fox, Lewis Epps, William Brown, and Curtis Shedd, donated an undi- vided half of the town-site for the purpose of educa- tion." The proceeds of this yielded the first stock for an academy. The first private school in Iowa where Rev. William Salter. (See page 238.) FIB ST ACADEMY AND FIBST COLLEGE. 247 higher branches were taught was that of Hon. Thomas H. Benton, Jr., at Dubuque, 1839. What sort of a school system — if any — Iowa was to have was then uncertain. In January the Legislature had passed " an act providing for common schools," and a year later another "to establish a system " — one common school at least in each county being contemplated. 1 The office of superintendent was created in 1841 ; but the incumbent "had no duties to perform except to draw his small salary." The charter of Denmark Academy was granted by the Territorial Assembly, February 3, 1843. The original trustees were Asa Turner, Jr., Reuben Brackett, Isaac Field, Oliver Brooks, and Hartwell J. Taylor. They had power to establish "ordinances, rules, and regula- tions," and to receive an income not exceeding three thousand dollars, exclusive of tuition. They organized a year later, February 23, 1844. This academy is, therefore, the oldest incorporated literary institution in Iowa. 2 Of those previously chartered in 1838, there only remain the names in the Wisconsin laws. The division of town-lots to promote education seems to have been a feature of the " Philandrian ' plan. One of the Leeper brothers — still living at Princeton, 111. — states as to the land outside of town, that on that plan it "was to be 'claimed,' one half for the college, and entered or paid for by money [realized] from the sale *It was not till 1851 that the first graded school was taught by George B. Dennison, at Muscatine. The same town has ttie honor of erecting the first frame school building, 1S40, and the first brick ones, 1850. 2 The Iowa Official Register, January 1, 1889, suggests that the State University is "perhaps the oldest educational institution in Iowa," lands being reserved in 1840. " Nothing definite, however, was accomplished until 1855, when the institution was opened; in 1856 re-organized and located at Iowa City." Denmark Academy was opened ten years before, and Iowa College seven. \y 248 ASA TUBNEB, of the * town-lots. This land was to be held for the college. The Leeper brothers commenced eleven log cabins south and west to hold the lands until the} r should be brought into market." "Mr. Stuart while in the East obtained a pledge of a Boston man to build twenty-four houses in Denmark." This pledge lapsed, of course, with the Philandrian scheme. But the thought that had occurred to these men, to Mr. Gaylord and his student associates, and to Mr. Turner, was to live. It was to be realized, though not within sight of the historic " Haystack." Other and younger men, meantime, had also " thought on a college " for Iowa. The year after Mr. Turner had suggested it to Mr. Reed, 1843, the "Band" (started at Andover in the spring), contemplating wishfully and wonderingly their future work at the west, self-moved hit upon the same thought. "If each one of us can only plant one good permanent church, and all together build a college, what a work that would be ! ' So said one. It was as natural a thought (may it not be said, as providentially inevitable ?) as those which came to young men at Yale in 1837 and 1828. They were moving on the while in Iowa. The first business of the Association at Denmark, April, 1843, was the report of the committee of 1842, Mr. Turner chairman, as to correspondence with the editor of The Congregational Journal, New Hampshire. The committee was continued till next year. Meantime information was received of an entry of land with water-power on the Wapsipinecon River in Buchanan County, by a Presby- terian layman of Keosauqua, Mr. W. W. Hadden, which was suggested as a college site. The plan of securing funds and colonists from the East was broached. In October, before the ordination of the Band, two of the FIRST ACADEMY AND FIRST COLLEGE. 249 Dumber, W. Salter and E. B. Turner, exploring from Burlington to Agency City, heard of all this at Keosau- qua. In November, at Denmark, the Band were taken into the councils, but nothing was done. The convention movement was going on. The next February, Messrs. Asa Turner and D. Lane were providentially at the house of Mr. Reed, in Fairfield, and, to prevent delay and loss of this Buchanan County site by movements of others, the three called a meeting of ministers in Southern Iowa, of both denominations, at Denmark the next month. Rev. J. A. Reed, Seth Richards, Esq., and Jonas Houghton, Esq., were made a committee to examine this site in Buchanan County, and other places. Mr. Reed reported favorably to the former at a second meeting, Denmark, April 16. To this meeting all Congregational and Presbyterian ministers were invited. Sixteen were present ; four others sent approving letters. Voted unanimously " to adopt measures preparatory to laying the foundation of a col- legiate institution." Of those present eleven were Con- gregationalists (six of these belonging to the Band) and five Presbyterians. The "Iowa College Association" was at once organized, and its executive committee, Messrs. Woods, Reed, and Lane, authorized to send an agent East. Mr. Turner was sent as the most influential, each home missionary giving him a draft on the American Home Missionary Society for ten dollars to meet his ex- penses. He visited New York, New Haven, and Boston, " and the object probably would have been accomplished," says the College Records, " but for the influence of those interested in the society just formed for the ' Promotion of Collegiate and Theological Education at the West.' At Boston, May 28, a meeting of these ministers and laymen was held, which gave an elaborate opinion against 250 ASA TUBNEB. the Iowa plan. Mr. Turner then abandoned it and re- turned home. At Brighton, October 6, the College As- sociation acquiesced. The college was to be located and started in other ways. A committee on location was now appointed, Messrs. Turner and E. Adams (with J. M. Boal, who left the state before they reported), who named Davenport. At a meeting held there, June, 1846, this was unanimously approved, on condition that the citizens of Davenport should furnish grounds and fifteen hundred dollars for a building. The members of the Association were also to raise one hundred dollars each and stimulate general con- tributions. One of them, Rev. James J. Hill, observing that the time had come to give as well as consult, had asked the privilege of being the first donor to the college, and laid a silver dollar upon the chairman's table. The Davenport subscriptions not being sufficient, other meetings were held at Denmark, January, 1847, and at Burlington in June. At this last — twenty-three present, one of these Presbyterian — the Association disbanded. It had fulfilled its end. Twelve trustees had been named to prepare a charter; but the Territorial Legislature having passed a general incorporation law, this was abandoned, and suitable articles, with fifteen trustees, were substi- tuted. Thirteen days later the articles were recorded, and the first Board of Trustees met, giving Iowa College legal and active existence. The first of the Articles of Association was as follows : — " Be it known to all whom it may concern, that we, Asa Turner, Jr., Daniel Lane, John C. Holbrook, Julius A. Reed, Harvey Adams, Reuben Gaylord, Alden B. Robbins, Ebenezer Alden, Jr., Ephraim Adams, William H. Storr, William W. Woods, Gamaliel C. Beaman, Henry Q. Jennison, James McManus, and Charles Atkin- FIBST ACADEMY AND FIRST COLLEGE. 251 son, do, for ourselves, our associates, and our successors, adopt the following Articles of Association." It exemplifies the tendency of the higher education to reproduce itself that four of these founders were educated at Yale, two at Amherst, and one (each) at the following colleges : — Bowdoin, University of Vermont, Norwich (Military), Vermont, Dartmouth, Union, and Maryville (Tennessee), the last the only one west of New England and New York. In the old College Association still other Eastern institutions were represented: Harvard and New York University among them. Iowa College is thus de- scended from no one Eastern college, but from those of New England at large. Instruction in the academy at Denmark was begun September, 1845, by Rev. A. A. Sturges. There was no academy building, the old historic church being occupied. The college was opened at Davenport, November 1, 1848 (at almost the same point of instruction, preparatory), by Rev. Erastus Ripley, in a small one-story brick building, between Fifth and Seventh Streets, on the bluff between Scott and Western Avenues. It was thirty-five by fifty feet; the north half, chapel, the south, two recitation- rooms, with hall between. It is now a two-story dwell- ing. In 1850 the first freshman class was formed. And so the first academy and the first college in Iowa were established and began their service to good learning and religion. XXX. MORE WORK AND WORK FOR MORE. While he was striving to obtain more workers Father Turner's people had moved to bind their minister more closely to them. Mindful of the mistake at Quincy, he assented to installation, which a foreign body had to meet at Denmark to accomplish. Messrs. Carter, Kirby, Reed, and Morris, of the Illinois Association, with Deacon Nathan Burton, delegate, held a meeting to consider an organization for Iowa, and to install him. Rev. R. Gay- lord and Charles Burnham, licentiate, were also present. November 8, 1840, is thus the date of the first installation north of Missouri. Mr. Carter, then of Jacksonville, preached. No stipulations as to salary or vacations. Messrs. Turner and Reed, being dismissed from Illinois, formed, with Messrs. Gaylord and Burnham, the original Congregational Association of Iowa, afterward divided. Eighteen days of "protracted meeting' in 1842, with three prayer-meetings a week for months previous. Messrs. Reed, Gaylord, and Clark aided in this second Denmark revival. Thirty-five new church members were • enrolled in May. But two unconverted adults in the congregation in November, with two or three lads, and the pastor began to say : " I must go from home to convert sinners." The cheering accessions to the ministerial force in the territory lightened his heart more than it lessened his labors. He had more men, fields, and churches to care for, more letters to write and answer, more advice to give, if not more journeys to take. Yet he was absent for months MORE WORK AND WORK FOR MORE. 253 the next year on agency tours. The laymen at home proved good " gap-men," reading sermons with prayer and song on the Sabbath. Early in 1845 he could not hold meetings elsewhere ; " it was harvest time ' at home. Messrs. Reed and Ripley took his place there in special work ; all summer feeble lungs laid him aside, and he did little. Installations in Southern Iowa rejoiced him — at Fairfield in 1844 ; at Bentonsport and Farmington the next year. Mr. Holbrook's, at Dubuque (April, 1843), had been too far away for him to attend, and was a Wis- consin transaction. The previous winter the first revival in that energetic place had saved the church from extinc- tion. The new-comers were now widely scattered and diligently exploring and laying foundations. One of them uttered the feeling of all : " I bless the Lord for sending me here. Not a moment of discontent have I had — not a tear from wishing to return to the more favored parts of Zion. Let me hunt up the sheep of the wilder- ness. Never, since I indulged the Christian's hope, have I been more happy." "Testimonies to their industry, devotedness, and acceptableness with the people," say the secretaries, " are of a highly gratifying character." * But they had their share of " hardness." New-comers found pioneering what their predecessors had found it. Their first letters contain such things as these : " Country settled but two or three months ; occasional sight of an uncompleted cabin, destitute of all conveniences ; families staying rather than living, seen about as well from the outside as by going into the hole left for the door." "People well supplied with pork and wheat, and little else." "Many men who have large farms enclosed can not pay postage on a letter." " Not half can pay for their land ; not a pane of glass in their cabins ; neither fire- 1 Annual Report, May, 1844. 254 ASA TURNER. shovel, tongs, andirons, nor crane ; and almost entirely destitute of furniture of any kind." Yet the preachers were so welcome to the settlers that two of them traveled nearly two hundred miles in six days at a gross expense of fifty cents — Messrs. E. B. Turner and Salter. No wonder that one of them described his " parish visiting ' thus : " I borrowed a horse sometimes, and sometimes caught a ride with others, and at other times went on foot from one settlement to another, and preached in every place I visited." Three of them traveling on the lower Des Moines, when cabins were hotels almost as much as any other places, had occasion to stop at one for dinner. They were welcome, of course, but after it was over were invited to give a lift in raising a mill ! " The timbers were heavy ; the majority of the men as sallow as if they had been colored with yellow ochre — blended with this that peculiar blanching which nothing but the ague gives. I really felt [and he was one of the smallest of the Band] that I could lift as much as half a dozen of these men." In Clayton County the writer spent a week with another, living on bear-meat and wild honey ; no butter — no milk — no pure water. Months later returning home in a snow-storm, the missionary there lost his way, and after going round and round, returning upon his tracks, spent the night under the lea of his wagon, wrapped in his buffalo-robes. On awakening the next morning he saw on the next ridge of the prairie the smoke of his own chimney. His wife — a genuine heroine — had passed the three days of his absence alone, drawing up the ladder after her into the unfinished second story at night. Even the outer wooden doors expected had not arrived from Dubuque. Yet one of the young gospel heralds wrote to the office at New York : " Scarce a single appointment has been lost by any one of us through ill-health for these nearly eighteen months of our labor here." MOBE WOBK AND WOBK FOB MOBE. 255 Thirty years later Father Turner wrote the Denmark Association : " Probably I have known more about perils by bridgeless streams and houseless prairies, and log houses and pioneer fare, in Illinois and Iowa, than almost any one, and still I bless God I had the privilege thus to do. As to sacrifices I never felt I had made any, because I wanted to do the work." Mr. Reed (who could claim the first honors of frontier travel with Father Turner and Mr. Emerson) gives this picture : — " There is not a stream in Iowa, north and east of Cedar Falls, or south of Cedar Falls and east of Des Moines, that has not been forded by one or more of these pioneers, and some of the largest at many different points. Sometimes they drove their horses through the creeks and caught them as they came out, crossing themselves on logs ; sometimes they swam their horses by the side of a canoe, sometimes took their buggies across large streams, piecemeal, in skiffs. Father Turner once swam the creeks between Farmington and Denmark, with his horse and buggy, though he could not swim a stroke himself. It was hard for him to stop when he had once started. Notwithstanding this condition of the streams and roads, not one of these pioneers ever met with serious loss or with serious personal injury in traveling within the state. True there were accidents, some ludicrous, some serious, and some narrow escapes. You may imagine a man emerging from a miry slough, his buggy stuck fast, his harness buried in the mud, him- self without coat or vest, barefoot, splashed with mud, holding his horse by the reinless headstall, the horse white in its normal con- dition, but now with only his head white and a narrow strip along his back, the man trying to get the attention of his horse to the nice grass growing at his feet, with the hope that he may go for his halter and return before the horse discovers that he is free, but taking only a step, when the horse throws up his head, takes a startled look to the right and left, and dashes at full speed over the ridge out of sight, leaving his master with his arms akimbo, and looking wistfully in the direction which his horse has taken. " Brothers Turner and Gay lord mistook the directions given them in fording the Iowa at Wapello, and were getting into deep water, when they were discovered and set right just in time. 256 ASA TUBNEB. Brother Lane had a narrow escape in the ice at Keosauqua; Brother Emerson spent a night on the prairie with his saddle for his pillow, and did not find a house until eleven o'clock the next day. Brother Ripley was carried over the dam at Bentons- port. When he saw that it must be, he threw off his coat and boots, headed his skiff for the dam, gave it all the headway that he could with a single oar, and as its bow projected over the brink, he sprang forward, dived beyond the undertow and swam ashore. One was crossing the Cedar at the mill three miles south-west of Fairfield. It had not been discovered that the freshet then subsid- ing had left the bank perpendicular below the surface of the water. He was thrown upon his horse, which in its fright sprang forward and dropped him behind the crossbar, with his arms across the shafts, and started down the creek upon a gallop ; the water was too deep for any thing more. At each jump the horse's hind feet came up before his face a foot away. This was forty years ago, but he remembers well just how they looked." It has been said more than once with truth that in those days Denmark was the Mecca to which tended all Congre- gational feet that pressed the soil of Iowa. But it is quite as true that here the younger frontiersmen of the gospel learned of wise, unflagging, affectionate pastoral toil and of the constant divine blessing upon it. In the winter of 1845, spiritual interest again, but the pastor was disabled by weak lungs once more. In July, 1846, a brick church was dedicated which cost four thousand dollars, of which only thirty dollars came from abroad. In the previous January one had been dedicated at Dubuque, in the face of greater obstacles, which cost three thousand dollars, — of which twenty-five hundred was raised by the ladies, — and friends in Boston and Hartford, Conn., afforded welcome help; in the December following one was built at Burlington, costing six thousand dollars — friends at the East contributing eight hundred dollars. These edifices were large and costly for the times — one of them forty feet by sixty-three ; another forty by fifty-six ; MORE WORK AXD WORK FOR MORE. 257 and the third forty by sixty. The winter following, a score of youth at Denmark were spiritually awakened. That year the twenty-eight missionaries who occupied the pulpits of thirty-nine churches saw ten humbler sanctu- aries built and began to hear in them the inquiry : " What must I do to be saved ? " The Denmark Zion was the model and delight of all. No need there to sing : — " Let strangers walk around The city where we dwell, Compass and view Thine holy ground, And mark the building well." It was a privilege to pass a Sabbath there, to be coveted by all laymen, and an honor to any minister to preach in the pulpit. All made "a fair report." One of the oldest pioneers, with preaching places enough in Northern Iowa for three or four men, remembers to record that a Sabbath as late as 1859 was " the first and only that he ever occupied that pulpit." Four months after the dedication he whose " throne " it was had the joy of writing the American Home Mis- sionary Society that Denmark would receive no more aid from the East. It had received $266.66, in all. His home support had been two hundred dollars per annum — the American Home Missionary Society paying as much more. But " self-support " left him on a salary of three hundred dollars, "poorly paid." Erelong he was compelled to borrow money for family expenses, and, imagining that dissatisfaction with his ministry caused a year's arrearage, he offered his resignation. 1 A request to remain so hearty that there were but two votes against it convinced him that he was mistaken. His salary was secured in those days by apportionment on individuals according to county 1 "Caused by sin of omission, not intentional, but equal to a sin of commission in its effects on me." — Letter. 258 ' ASA TUBNEE. assessment of property, made by a church committee — a plan ideally good for a community of angels. Arrear- ages being paid up, he was to really have three hundred dollars, and one hundred more when church and academy erection was done with. Twenty years after his settle- ment the salary was six hundred dollars. He could never have lived and labored but for the produce of his land. He always placed Christian benevolence above his own needs. Up to 1868 — that is, for nearly thirty years — the church gave more to benevolent objects than any other Congregational church in Iowa. " From 1848 to 1887 — one year being omitted — the annual average was $482.59 ; the total, $19,725.30 ; " besides twice build- ing the church and expending fourteen thousand dollars on the academy ; in all, $22,500, an average of $562.50. No large town growth in these years, no manufactures, the village a small rural one, remote from river and rail- road, depending upon farm labor and farm products. 1 When funds were lacking to complete the church edifice, — though all were denying themselves to help it on, — one of the founders of the town determined that it " should be completed if it took his farm." When work on the academy building was hindered in the same way, one of the trustees replied to his pastor's urgency : " We have given till we can give no more. This is the best coat I have in the world, and it is not fit to wear to church. You must give us a rest, and let us do something for ourselves." The pastor desisted : 2 but was his expe- 1 A deacon still living peddled vegetables and wood in Fort Madison, getting pay not in money, but in orders on stores and in labor making doors and windows to be sold to his neighbors — with a very little cash " to balance." 2 Accustomed as he was to prevail with his people, he never aimed at omnipotence. During the Mexican War he urged upon them something they did not wish to do. Giving it up with an almost admiring smile, he said in the pleasant tone they had learned to associate with insight and shrewdness : " If General Taylor's troops were like my church, I don't wonder he conquered." MOBE WOBK AND WOBK FOB MOBE. 259 rience a common one ? Erelong the people showed how well they could care for home needs, and after 1853 did so with ease. There were now sixty-nine families in the congregation, in fifty-three of which both husband and wife belonged to the church, while in others one was a church member, and in only three families neither. The whole church membership was one hundred and ninety-one. , / XXXI. STEADY PROGRESS IN IOWA. From such a people, cherishing such institutions, minis- ters, teachers, missionaries, and other Christian workers were sure to be sent forth. Besides those from the academy whose homes were elsewhere, one of purely home production deserves special mention. Among the converts received in 1846 had been one who became a frontier evangelist of a unique stamp. Some time in Father Turner's first year there came to the little settlement a sailor, born near Plymouth Rock, who had been two years in a harness-shop — till seventeen years old — and then eight years at sea. While a boy he had decided that he could not believe that the Bible is a revelation, or that there is a God. On a return from Iowa to Massachusetts (taking passage from New- Orleans) in a terrific storm at sea, all hope of outriding it was given up. " He lashed himself to his chest," says Father Turner, in a manuscript sketch unpublished, " and promised God — if he would spare him — that he would serve him. He was spared, and sent word of his vow to me through his friends." But on returning to Denmark, he had apparently forgotten it. He married, and settled down in life without God. " He loved a sailor's life and a sailor's vices, and was bound to have a good time in the world." One rainy summer Sunday in 1845, this unrenewed son of ocean strayed into church. The subject of discourse was prayer as the duty of Christians ; but the pastor was STEADY PBOGBESS IN IOWA. 261 moved on the spot to press it as a duty upon the uncon- verted. Without hesitation he declared: "The man who swears is as much under obligation to pray as the man who preaches : he needs the influence of prayer, and God is ready to hear him through Christ." To the sailor-farmer his heavenly Father hitherto had been, as he said, " as invisible as the wake of the ship on which he sailed." He went home saying to himself, " Strange doctrine to-day ! Such a sinner as I am, who don't know that there is a God to pray to ; such as I — pray? Well, if there is no God, it will only be empty breath, and will do no hurt; if there is one, it may do good." Entering his home he took down his Bible and said to his wife : " I am going to set up family prayer." He read a chapter, knelt, and prayed, and did so for six or eight weeks till light came. That God is, and answers those who diligently seek him, he became thoroughly per- suaded, and "prayed himself into the kingdom." This was Joseph C. Cooper. As a member of the church, he grew in grace, and in 1848 became a colporter of the American Tract Society, for Southern Iowa, laboring two years. He was specially successful with skeptics, hand to hand, and every way " a patient, earnest, and efficient laborer." After a period of darkness of mind in 1852, in which the church prayed constantly for him, till he emerged into light, he went to Father Turner with the feeling : " Woe is me, if I preach not the gospel." u His school education was limited, but he had naturally a clear, discerning mind and a good memory. His training as a colporter had done something for him. His spirit was kind and winning. He had learned to make use of his sea-life in illustrations. He had a wife and one or two children, and about as much property as Elijah had when the 262 ASA TURNER. ravens fed him. He studied theology in his little home, from March till August, when I went East," writes Father Turner, " and left him to supply my place till October. And though he had lived among the people as an unbe- liever, and they knew all about him, they were entirely satisfied with his ministrations, and from that day till his death no one was more heartily welcomed into the Den- mark pulpit. 1 " He was always in all places at work. In 1865, at the National Council in Boston, T agreed to meet him at nine p.m. at a given place, and go to his lodgings. I found him in the street, earnestly pleading with a sinner to bring him to Christ. His mind was entirely given to this one thing. Kevivals were his delight, though he seemed instinctively to labor for the conversion of all he met, in all circumstances, at all times. In 1856 he went to Fair- field, an unassuming man, poorly clad, but burning with zeal. For three weeks he preached with his peculiar earnestness, and visited from house to house ; liquor shops were closed ; barrels of whiskey rolled into the street and their heads knocked in by the evangelist; while he preached to the crowd of righteousness, temperance, and judgment to come." It is hard for one who once preached a few days in a work of grace with " the sailor-preacher " to copy these details without recording his own affectionate remembrance and gratitude for what he was and did. " Such a man's early habits cling to him. To shut him up in a study to make sermons would kill him in a little 1 The fear was once expressed at New York that "our brethren in Iowa will resort to the doubtful expedient of putting into the ministry laborers who have not been educated for the work. Other denominations pre-occupy the ground; thus, to use the illustration of a friend, ' they/eed the people; and if they have no fine flour they take corn; and if this be not ground, they pound it in a mortar.' This sounds like Turner or Emerson" (H. M. July, 1843). But Father Turner always regarded Mr. Cooper as well educated for his work. If ever impatient on this subject, it was when people seemed to him to be " civilized to death." STEADY PROGRESS IX IOWA. 263 while; but turn him out with his old horse or on foot, among the people, and before he was aware he would have a sermon made. " He once said : ' I never saw a place in my life I wanted to stay in more than three weeks.' He built up a church in Salem, a place of worship, a home, and when the people most wanted him to stay, felt he must go. His life was given to small and weak churches. The •destitute drew on his sympathies. He felt free among them." He was singularly forgetful of his own interests and wants. More than once his pastor had to suggest to others in well-to-do places where he was pouring out his soul and casting a strong and peculiar light on the way of salvation : " Remember that he has but little more to live on than the Lord gave him at his birth, save faith in Christ and a wife and two children. He had no financial ability, and little common-sense in temporal things, though his judgment in religion so commended itself to men as to account for much of his success. He said to me once that he could not take care of himself, and ' did not know what God made such a creature for.' In one place where he preached a debt rested on the little house of worship. It was due. He sold his horse and buggy and paid it, and went on foot." He could deny himself, at least. Many saved souls know now " what God made such a creature for," and why he put those words about a sin- ner's duty to pray into Father Turner's lips. Mr. Cooper was not intentionally peculiar ; did not strive to say fresh, pungent, bright things. All was spontaneous. " A chosen vessel of God as really as Paul," said one. He was ordained, 1853 ; died, 1872. " In his last sickness his language was almost that of inspiration." The home church in these years was increasing in 264 ASA TURXEE. numbers and moral power. In its first nineteen years, seven notable revivals occurred, besides other periods of special interest. Four hundred and seven persons were received in all — the largest annual number being forty- five, in 1850. Of these, twenty-eight came in by pro- fession, fruits of a previous revival, in which three of the pastor's children, three of pioneers of 1836, and a number of others who were children of the converts of 1839 were converted. Every year the hearts of other persons were reached who did not confess Christ. Father Turner's people were never demonstrative. A preacher in an early revival says : " Most of them were accustomed to listen with closed eyes. Like the Yankees of that day, they had been taught to suppress their feel- ings. But their anxiety for the salvation of their children and neighbors could not be covered up. There they sat with eyes closed and tears stealing down their cheeks." Their judgment and spiritual discernment were sound. An adventurer came to Denmark in February, 1859, without invitation, and " led, as he thought, by the Spirit of God." His sensational ways in preaching and other- wise made an impression, but were disapproved. " I am always fearful about men," said the pastor, " who know they are right in all things — know they are led by the Spirit. He could not work with me, he says. His leaving produced a good deal of injury for the time, but I hope we are getting over it." His after history gave point to the remark of another : " This church deserves credit for seeing through that man." Some extracts from the pastor's anniversary sermons, copied into the minutes by the careful church clerk, with a few letters, disclose incidents of these progressive and fruitful years. Sermon of 1855 : " During fifteen years divine service STEADY PROGRESS IN IOWA. 265 three times a day, and Sabbath-school in the intermission, has been discontinued but one Sabbath. No deaths this year. All church expenses paid, and four hundred dollars given to benevolent objects. Five of our youth are connected with our infant college at Davenport. "I remember the time, and many of you do, when we scarcely had a shelter for man or beast, and scarcely an implement of husbandry that we should now regard fit for use, and the whole settlement had to go to one place, if not to the Philistines, to grind an axe. The Lord has helped us to houses and barns and fields and orchards all filled and covered and loaded." In declining years he wrote a sister of the church in comfortable circumstances : " I well remember when your house bounded the settlement in sight on the west, — and you had an extravagant one too, — a frame covered with split boards, no barn or outbuildings, and your husband used to hang his harness on the yard fence. He and you were young and strong, and looked forward with hope. Well, labor, with the blessing of God, has changed all the surroundings, and the whole country about has been subdued and fitted for the wants of civilized man." In April, 1853, having changed his mind as to the proper relations of a minister to his church, he was received into membership from the Yale College Church. Mrs. Turner had been received in April, 1839, from Quincy. Great care was always taken to secure equal religious privileges to academy students with those afforded the children of families. Though the latter were increasing, as well as the former, a generous reservation of church slips from rental was made annually for the young people from abroad. This was but one way of many in which the true-hearted people of the settlement showed Christian care for them. 266 ASA TUB NEB. 1855 : " You are an isolated community, away one side of the world, living in one of the poorest parts of the state. From the beginning you have been talked about and talked against, and are now. There are a great many that don't love you. Your opinions have been regarded as fanatical, radical, and treasonable — and to such a degree, I understand, that the name of our quiet village is as familiar in the state south of us as that of St. Louis. I don't know that you can rival Nauvoo in celebrity, but you have had a name that will not soon be forgotten. " Now the tables are turned, and you are awarded a respect in this state as wide-spread as was your unsavory name a few years ago. I may venture to affirm that no place in this part of the state — of the small relative importance of this — exerts any thing like its influence among the better class of citizens. What I desire is that we be not puffed up, but use all the influence God has given us for the good of man. I have a desire to retain the respect of the world only so far as we can have the approbation of God." Letter, November, 1855 : " Tell Brother Clark he must not fail to come to us some time this winter. 1 There are very important reasons why he should. I am laid by perhaps for life. My left lung pains me much. What the Lord will do with me I know not. We have new- comers : a great many youth need the blessing of the Lord." Sermon, 1856 (of his coming in 1838) : " God has given five children, and taken two of them. In the eighteen years he has added six, and permitted them all to live." 2 1 Rev. George Clark, of Oberlin, who labored as an evangelist in Iowa with great success and wisdom; none more so. His preaching was both persuasive and searching, and the revival in Denmark that winter was of a most thorough and spiritual kind. Mr. Clark was in the first Oberlin theological class, who left Lane Seminary from anti-slavery convictions. 2 The years of progress had made the band of thirty-one pioneer Christians two STEADY PBOGBESS IN IOWA. 267 1857 : " (1) God has given us a comfortable place in which to pass our probation. (2) A good degree of temporal prosperity. (3) I do not know a community so entirely satisfied with their schools, and with reason. (4) Few churches have less strife." At the next Autumnal Meeting : " Our pastor stated that as there had been a change in business affairs, — the price of produce having greatly fallen, — he proposed that his salary be reduced to accord with our ability to pay. Finding that we have never paid him as much as he deserved, Voted, that we do not accede to his proposition." Letter, March, 1858 : " It shows some interest in our people to leave their work and come together in the middle of the day to talk about salvation." May, 1858 : " I have worked hard this winter for such an indolent "?] man as I am. If I could see the faces and hear the prayers of my brethren of Illinois and Iowa, whom the Lord has blessed this winter, it might quicken my poor sluggish soul. We have had an interesting time since I saw you. The Lord has been with us." hundred. His children were Henry Holmes, b. 1831; Sarah Evelina Austin (Mrs. Higgins), 1833; an infant, 1835; Martha (Mrs. Searle), 1837; Mary Elizabeth (Mrs. Shedd), 1838; Hannah Fisher (Mrs. Turner), 1840; Asa, 1842; Milton Badger, 1844; Watson Hull, 1846; Ada Olnistead (Mrs. Lyman), 1848. XXXII. THE HIGHER CHRISTIAN EDUCATION. The Denmark pastor never lost his interest in common schools like those he had taught long before in Massa- chusetts. More than with most Christian ministers of our day it was a habit with him to visit those in his neighbor- hood. In all missionary tours his eye rested with pleasure upon the small school-houses multiplying in all directions, and he was apt to enter their doors with a word of encouragement and fatherly counsel to the pupils. His wit bubbled up under the influence of eager young eyes. He once hit off the traditional appeal to the school-boy's ambition to be President of the United States, by sug- gesting that some little fellow before him might, by extraordinary merit, become a Washington ; adding, with a new twinkle in his glance, " Any one of you can be a ." The glee of the young folks sent home the lesson. He was a model as to zeal for all grades of education. They were inseparable in his mind from the kingdom of Christ on earth. Academy students always got from him a vigorous impulse towards college. Several years after retiring from active service, he wrote his old fellow-student and fellow-pioneer, Rev. President Sturtevant, as to Illinois and other Western colleges : — "I wish academies could be built up in different quarters for feeders. This is what is needed. Steam-mills are good ; but they necessitate wheat as a condition of profit." His care over the academy at home was unsleeping and Rev. A. A. Sturges, First Principal of Denmark Academy. See page 269. THE HIGHER CHRISTIAN EDUCATION. 269 • industrious. Successive principals found in him a tower of strength. Pupils from abroad hardly missed the loving pastoral solicitude left behind on going away from home. The first principal, Rev. Albert Anderson Sturges, had been very useful as a teacher at Washington, Iowa. Born in Granville, Ohio, November, 1819, he was appointed at Denmark, September, 1845, and remained two years. He graduated at Wabash College, Indiana, in 1848, entering Yale Seminary, and then the ministry in 1851, being ordained at Denmark in November of that year. With Mrs. Sturges, also of Granville, he sailed January, 1852, for Ponape, Micronesian Islands, as a missionary of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions. In two visits to this country (1870 and 1880), he largely deepened the interest of American Christians in those far- off heathen, to whose service he gave rarely generous endeavor, ardor, and wisdom. His house on Ponape was once burnt down, and six hundred dollars was sent from the Board to rebuild it. He returned it to Boston to help send the bread of life to the heathen, rebuilding his home with his own hands. After a stroke of paralysis in 1885, he returned to Cali- fornia, passing his last days at Oakland in surpervising and completing the publication of the Ponape New Testament. Under a third stroke of paralysis he died there, September^ 1887, leaving a hallowed memory behind him. In 1846 the old historic church edifice was relinquished to the academy, — whose status was yet ill-defined, — and the district school was also taught there. It was diffi- cult to exemplify academical education as such in these surroundings. As soon as possible, on the academy lands a stone building was erected (now a wing), and Rev. Mr. Drake was principal for two years, still doing pioneer work. In 1852 Rev. Henry K. Edson, who had been five 270 ASA TUBNEB. years the successful principal of Hopkins Academy, in Hadley, Mass., his native town, began in the only room yet finished, with eighteen pupils (one from abroad), his service as principal, which was to continue over a quarter of a century, till March, 1879. Henry Kingman Edson was born at Hadley, Mass., October, 1822 ; fitted for college at the academy ; grad- uated at Amherst, 1844 ; principal of Hopkins Academy till 1849 ; studied theology with Rev. John Woodbridge, D.D., and at Andover and East Windsor, one year each ; licensed to preach by East Hampshire Association, April, 1852 ; ordained at Grinnell in 1881. The village of fifteen years which greeted the teachers from New England, and from so beautiful a section of it, was still in the rough. " Blue sky and green prairie furnished all its natural scenery. The few houses were mostly of one story, or of one and a half ; few lots were fenced ; every thing seemed out-of-doors. The academy stood alone and unsheltered by trees upon the open prairie ; it had not even door-steps. Nor was there in the whole place sign of board or stone walks to keep one from sinking in the seas of mud. As to the church build- ing, flocks of sheep occasionally found friendly shade in it week-days, which led a wag to say that 'sheep occupied the house during the week, and goats on Sundays.' But kind hearts and ready hands " cheered the new beginnings, and above all, the prayers of the orderly and devout Sabbath congregations for them, led by the large-hearted and consecrated pastor." The first catalogue, at the end of the year, showed an attendance of a hundred and five — forty-four from abroad ; the second, a total of a hundred and forty-four — eighty -eight from abroad ; the third, two hundred and one — a hundred and forty-four from abroad ; the next Prof. H. K. Edson. (See page 270.) THE HIGHER CHRISTIAN EDUCATION. 271 year after the Rebellion, two hundred and seventy, of whom two hundred were from abroad, and from sixteen different states. In his fourth year the principal arranged a course of study for three years, including Latin. All this while tuitions were so low that if four hundred dollars per annum remained for him, after all expenses were met, he was content. The cost of living was light ; students paid §1.25 to $1.75 per week for board; Mr. and Mrs. Edson, $ 3.00 ; and their host informed them that they " cost him (each) eighty-three cents per week." The first graduates from the regular course were two ladies in 1858. From 1852 to 1878, twenty-three hundred were in attendance. In 1878 the number rose to two hundred and seventy-two, and included twenty children of early pupils. All through these years the church records bear the constantly recurring statement : u Special religious inter- est among the students of the academy." For this the pastor and teachers always labored, for this the good people of the town always looked. No institution of the kind in the land was more manifestly a nursery of piety as well as of learning. In 1867 a new and beautiful stone academy was dedi- cated. It cost seventeen thousand dollars, raised in part abroad. In 1869 Father Turner's portrait in oil was placed in it. " Your friends desire," said Principal Edson, in presenting it at the anniversary, " that long after the spirit that has animated these familiar features shall have engaged in nobler service above, survivors may be aided in recalling your inspiriting life and example, and gen- erations to come, especially of the youth, may catch your spirit by gazing upon this portrait." This most useful and honored institution had never been endowed — save by a small fund — till in 1874 lands 272 ASA TUBNEB. in Kansas estimated at ten thousand dollars were given. In 1877 the whole amounted to $17,209. About fifteen hundred dollars had come from the original town-lots. Mr. and Mrs. Edson had given three thousand dollars to the institution. In 1878 they had leave of absence in Europe for a year, to rest, study, travel, and regain health. Father Turner advised it. The next year Mr. Edson sent from Geneva, Switzerland, his resignation. The year before the trustees, now enlarged to fifteen, had put on record their testimony that he had " labored with the strictest integrity, with Christian honor and self-sacrificing zeal," and their appreciation of his " signal fidelity, energy, and success." In accepting his resignation, they expressed their " deep sense of the value of his services as Principal of the Academy for twenty-six years," and their "affec- tionate sympathies and fervent prayers for his continued usefulness." For the last ten years Principal Edson has been pro- fessor of didactics in Iowa College, a new chair to which he was called on his return from Europe. The writing of these pages had reached this point, when Mrs. Celestia Kirk Edson passed away, greatly loved and lamented. Her relations to Denmark and its church and pastor, and especially to the academy as lady princi- pal for nearly a quarter of a century, — a longer service in one place than that of any other lady teacher in Iowa, — and her own winning and shining excellencies, demand this record. Her Christian education and character were among the richest and sweetest fruits of Mary Lyon's work at Mount Holyoke, where she graduated in 1848. She went to Salonica, Turkey, that year, as the wife of Rev. Eliphal Maynard, of the American Board of Commis- sioners for Foreign Missions. After his death at Salonica THE HIGHER CHRISTIAN EDUCATION. 273 in nine months, she pursued the study of Spanish-Hebrew and other preparations for missionary work in the family of Rev. Dr. W. G. Schauffler at Constantinople. The change in the Board's policy as to the Jews brought her home next year, and she taught at Plattsburg, N. Y., and Lyndon, Vt. Her marriage to Mr. Edson in 1852 brought her to Iowa. She was born at Parishville, N. Y., November, 1826, and died at Grinnell, January 16, 1889, at the age of sixty-two years. Many graduates of the academy, and pupils of hers now widely scattered, rise up and call her blessed, for ripe beauty of Christian character and influ- ence. Principal Edson has borne this testimony to the moral order prevailing during his long service : " The academy was never disgraced by the practice of hazing." The nearest to it — a charivari — " was sometimes participated in by some of the students, leading in one instance to serious and prolonged difficulties." Partly this good order may be accounted for by the fact that in Den- mark always, as now through nearly all Iowa, " prohibi- tion does prohibit." There has never been a saloon there, or any open sale of liquor, even as an exception to the rule. The sheriff of the county (Lee), when unable to tell where certain residents lived who were wanted on legal grounds, has been wont to say : " I have occasion to know all the people of this county, save those in Den- mark. They must live there." Small irregularities have been cured by moral means ; but once — in the fifties — when the marriage of an aged couple was followed by a charivari, and the whole town felt disgraced, Father Turner's advice to appoint, in village-meeting, a committee on reparation, instead of leaving the young offenders to the officers of the law, proved unfortunate for him and the 274 ASA TURNEB. rest of the well-intended committee. Assessing and receiv- ing damages estimated, the committee were, each man of them, mulcted in a round sum. The exemplary discipline of the academy also re-acted on the good order of the town, a combined product of the firmness and sagacity of the two chief principals, of the beautiful influence of the long-time lady principal, and of the true-hearted pastor's pervading moral power. He made fair and kindly allowance for the perplexities and humanity of teachers, never so criticizing them as to promote insubordination. After Mr. Edson had gone to Europe he wrote the church, among other things : " He has the gift of government. I have never seen a school in my life managed with so little friction as the academy. Those characteristics which fit him to manage such an establishment will sometimes produce friction among those who are averse to it." He was so earnestly the friend of good order in the college that he once made a special visit to persuade students not to carve initials on the soft sawed stones of old Central College, which they found such a temptation to jackknives. The college indeed stood only next to the academy in the heart of the far-seeing man who had proposed them both. In 1855 he wrote : " I hope the Lord will remove the cloud that hangs upon the college. Now is the time that requires faith and perseverance. The proposed build- ing (35x50 feet) is no larger than it ought to be. Means must be sought without giving two per cent, a month, and I am confident there are those in the East who will loan the money for less. College property can be mortgaged, and, if that will not do, I am willing to mortgage my homestead [house and farm] for a part of it, say fifteen hundred dollars, and if the trustees will do something the same, we can get what is needful. It does not seem to me the matter need be discussed. It wants action." THE HIGHER CHRISTIAN EDUCATION. 275 Three years later it was beginning to be apparent that the college could not succeed at one side of the state, with rivals starting in the interior. He wrote, July 6, 1858 : "I shall go prepared for the removal of the college to Grinnell. Of the wisdom and right of this I have now no doubt. It is true we are doing something. But it is time we made the best move. I know not what induce- ments D. or M. may present ; but one thing is clear. They will be within a cluster of colleges so thick that we shall have, as our Western people say, ' no range ' for students. We can not afford to spend more money or time to furnish a school for D., and this is about all our college will be at present, if it remains there." Grinnell is one hundred and twenty-five miles west of Davenport, a town of New England origin, planned and named for Hon. Josiah B. Grinnell. It had had a Congre- gational church from April, 1855, when it was a year old, and a private school from June of the same year, taught successively by Miss Lucy H. Bixby (Mrs. Marshall Bliss), Rev. Samuel Loomis, Hon. S. F. Cooper, and Prof. L. F. Parker. It had also projected a " university," of which this school was to be the preparatory department when it should be opened. Before this could be done, the trustees (April, 1858) voted to transfer every thing to Iowa College, and the project was abandoned. The col- lege trustees accepted the transfer and voted to remove, suspending operations for a year. It 1860 the Grinnell school was made the preparatory department, with Mr. Parker as principal ; in 1861 a freshman class was admitted and the principal made professor of languages; and in 1865 thirteen were graduated, ten of these young ladies. The college, meanwhile, had never had a president, thoii'li Rev. Drs. Palmer and Bushnell and President 276 ASA TUBNEB. Jonathan Blan chard, of Knox, had been elected, and a committee had conferred in vain with two Connecticut pastors. Father Turner, who had always been on the committee with Messrs. Guernsey and Magoun, wrote, March, 1861 : " Mr. G. can see nothing that would make it duty to accept. Brother G= has written Rev. Dr. D. No answer. Brother R. thinks well furnished in Latin and Greek, but not in common-sense. The latter article will be worth more to our raw prairie boys than the exact knowledge of many Greek roots. As it seems so difficult to find a man who is educated for the post, perhaps we had better do as some women of large means and larger hearts have done, find a man in whom is the raw material and educate him for the place. Are there not men among our missionaries or pastors at the North- west abundantly able ? I am getting discouraged in look- ing after great men. ... If we can get a good man at the head, we can get along two or more years without others. We can find professors as we need them." In Jnly, 1862, Rev. George F. Magonn, of Lyons, who had been familiar with the enterprise from the beginning, and five years secretary of the trustees, was chosen president. As bnt nine thousand dollars of endowment funds were taken to Grinnell, after debts and losses were met, it was stipulated that he should be undisturbed in his pastoral relation while the presidency was unendowed. In the catalogue for 1863 his name appears as " President, and Professor of Mental and Moral Science, Elect," with four instructors, Messrs. Parker, Von Coelln, Goodenow, and Mrs. S. C. Parker. That year a trustee, Dr. Holbrook, was persuaded to ask the East for two thousand dollars for current expenses; he secured it by two Sabbath addresses ; the Dubuque church consented that he should be absent longer and raise twenty thousand dollars ; he THE HIGHER CHRISTIAN EDUCATION. 277 actually raised nearly twice this amount, including the first ten thousand dollars on president's endowment. June, 1864, the presidency was accepted — other instructors elected — and leave of absence in Europe given the president for eight months. At the close of his first year, July 19, 1865, President Magoun was inaugurated. It was a sore struggle for years after to keep the vessel afloat. Besides cares at home, teaching often five hours a day, and doing state work, the president had to obtain funds for current expenses, endowments, apparatus, build- ings, and fixtures, with library books. Half a dozen city pulpits and three college presidencies made advances to him, besides other enterprises — all with large salaries in promise. In 1871 the building most used burned down ; in 1882 all the buildings and contents were destroyed by tornado — the most complete college destruction ever known. The Faculty had increased to fifteen : the attend- ance to three hundred and fifty. Within a few hours, in both cases, Dr. Magoun announced that no recitations would be interrupted. In the latter case, the academy lost fifty students ; the college proper, none. It now had in the latter department more than any Congregational college west of Ohio ; a hundred and twelve graduates — there are college presidents and professors among them ; and had taught over four thousand youth. In eighteen months after the tornado every thing was rebuilt far better than before, with an additional building ; in two years funds for a fourth had been provided, and the college property amounted to between three and four hundred thousand dollars. Foundations for largely in- creased success had been laid. In 1884 — after twenty years' service — Dr. Magoun resigned the presidency, retaining the professorship of mental and moral science. Father Turner, as infirmities increased, tried to resign 278 ASA TURNER. as trustee of the academy and of the college. Both boards declined to remove his name from their head, and he died senior trustee of both. The comparatively youthful state, in which these are the two oldest incorporated institutions, has now a school population of more than six hundred thousand, with twenty-five thousand public school teachers, over twelve thousand school-houses, worth more than twelve million dollars ; a permanent school fund of four million dollars ; a goodly number of higher institutions ; and illiteracy 1.2 per cent., the lowest rate in the world. XXXIII. REFORM AND REFORM POLITICS. From the beginning all branches of Christian reform were advocated at Denmark. Some months before he made his home there the future patriarch gave a tem- perance address, and sixty persons in that sparse popula- tion signed the pledge. An original church rule forbade receiving as members any " who will not habitually abstain from the use and traffic of spiritous liquors, except for medical, chemical, and sacramental purposes." After an address from him at Burlington, November, 1839, the first State Temperance Society in Iowa was formed, Governor Lucas, president. 1 In the old wooden conventicle at Denmark the first juvenile temperance society in Iowa was formed by the pastor, and he often addressed it, to the delight of the little folks. One of them, a little white-headed boy, " spoke an anti-tobacco poem on one such occasion," says a daughter of the patriarch, "and father confessed that he needed the rebuke and would try to give up the filthy stuff. He tried more than once, at one time abstaining for two years, but a physician's prescription undid the reformation." 1 It is quite improbable that Iowa would have come so near to the front in late prohibitory legislation had Congregational ministers been " of doubtful mind." As this is written, a message comes from the National Woman's Christian Temperance Union respecting the revision of text-books by which twelve million children in the land are now brought under temperance instruction. Long years ago Father Turner had in mind a series of temperance school-books. He deeply felt that men would never be permanently and universally abstinent from alcohol till well instructed. 280 ASA TUBNEB. In one of his first reports he said : " I am preaching occasionally at a little place near me ' (Moffatt's Mill, or Augusta). "The last time I was there a grocery- keeper [always a liquor-seller in those days] brought out his bottle and said he would ' see who would get the greatest congregation.' I thought he would have taken the majority of the men in the place." What he did for temperance had generally to be done away from home, thanks, doubtless, to the church rule above quoted. So as to Sabbath reform. The prairie village was vastly different from the city on the Mississippi. So exemplary were all u Danes ' as to Sabbath observance that there is a tradition of one new-comer once making short stay among them when he discovered it. He had bought a small " place,'' and had moved in the last of the week. The following Sunday he occupied himself with little jobs about the house and land, while all, save his family, were at church. Monday morning a neighbor, passing early, in a very friendly way expostulated with him, and intimated that the Christian Sabbath was not so spent among that people. The church even set aside members for Sabbath-breaking. He was angry, and, after inquiring further, sold out and left. The Association in 1846 declared itself against desecra- tion of the Sabbath, especially by traveling on that day. The advance-guard of civilization is every-where com- posed of very hard-working men. It was said at their Semi-centennial that "it required the utmost efforts of many of the settlers of Denmark for several years to secure the necessaries of life." The need of amusement and diversion they doubtless often felt. Yet no one had an " outing ' when the summer's sun made field-labor irksome ; and we have seen how reading and a debating society furnished their first winter recreation. In a less BEFOBM AND BEFOBM POLITICS. 281 intelligent and religious community dancing and similar social hilarities would have taken the foremost place, as they did elsewhere, even among professing Christians. It was in keeping with their plain and vigilant Puritanism that when they saw signs of this coming to pass among them they declared dancing a disciplinable offence. They always exerted an influence to elevate, refine, and purify society about them. " There was only one opinion on this subject in this part of the West. Dancing, card-playing, and drinking usually went hand in hand." The churches in larger towns on the river were more troubled with all of these. On motion of one of their pastors the Associa- tion, as early as 1845, had pronounced "the practice of dancing by members of our churches inconsistent with a profession of religion, and [it] ought to be made a subject of discipline." " None in our churches in those days thought [the three things above mentioned] would ever be allowed in our denomination in the West. We believed that on these points the battle had been fought for all time." 1 From the first the state of temperance reform had been reported at Association meetings. At the second meeting, in 1841, defects in the laws for the suppression of immoral- ities were discussed, and action taken. Five years later this body put itself on the record in favor of county local option. Mormonism, doctrinal differences, perfectionism, a lay and itinerant ministry, peace, political duties of Christians, withdrawing fellowship from ministers and churches " unsound in doctrine or disorderly in conduct," the Mexican War, the Maine law, secret societies, were 1 This primitive discipline and its good fruits should leave no impression of an inquisition over individual or church life. Espionage was Father Turner's abomi- nation. In one of his "annual" sermons he discoursed of telling other people's faults. "Who of you," he asked, *' on visiting a family would inspect a sink-hole and report on the condition of the sink? " He loved to discover Christian virtues and dwell on attractive graces of character. 282 ASA TUENEE. among the subjects on which resolutions were passed. And hardly ever was unanimity lacking. It was felt to be necessary to any moral power. The repeal of the laws relating to blacks and mulattoes was agitated by Father Turner and his brethren in 1841. These laws were pronounced " a violation of the princi- ples of justice and the laws of God, oppressive in operation, and forbidding acts of humanity." Notwith- standing the prohibitory features of the Great Ordinance and the Missouri Compromise, the Territorial Act of January, 1839, required of colored persons coming into Iowa a court certificate of freedom, and a bond concern- ing becoming a county charge, any crime or misdemeanor forfeiting the condition of the bond. Failing to give this bond, county commissioners were to sell their labor for six months " for the best price in cash." Persons hiring them otherwise were fined five to one hundred dollars. Slave-holders were allowed to carry their " servants ' through the territory unhindered. Any black or mulatto claimed " as property " to be arrested and delivered up with a fee to the constable, etc. It is worth noting that in July, 1839, just after this law was enacted, the first case ever brought before the Supreme Territorial Court was that of " Ralph, a colored man, on habeas corpus." The sheriff of Dubuque County had delivered him to a Missouri claimant. It appeared that he had a written contract with his owner to leave Missouri and work in the lead-mines till from his earnings he had paid five hundred and fifty dollars, with interest from January 1, 1835, for his freedom. This he had not yet done. The Court ruled that to adjudge him to be a fugitive slave, because payment for his freedom in Missouri (which was to run through an indefinite time of absence by consent) was not complete, would be RE FOB M AND BE FORM POLITICS. 283 a construction which u would introduce almost unquali- fied slavery into all the free states." " For non-payment of debt," said Chief Justice Charles Mason, " no man in this territory can be reduced to slavery." " The laws should extend equal protection to men of all colors and conditions." " The prisoner should be discharged from all custody and constraint." The attorney who defended " Ralph," under the Ordi- nance and the Compromise (not forgetting Blackstone vs. slavery, as "repugnant to reason and natural law," or Deut. 23 : 15 vs. delivering " unto his master the servant which is escaped from his master unto thee ") was the same one who at Burlington, in 1836, informed Father Turner of Dr. Nelson's expulsion from Missouri. The Denmark pulpit in those days never gave an uncertain sound, nor failed to give a certain and ringing one. The righteous souls of hearers were stirred. From its first year, the settlement had had a monthly anti- slavery concert. A deacon, wonted to one at Lowell, Mass., suggested it to the pastor, and it began at once at the deacon's house. Neither of them could be at home where slaves were not prayed for. One of them bore life-long memories of the Quincy and Alton "epi- sodes." This entry stands in the other's church record : " Monthly Concert (Foreign Missions), first Sabbath evening of the month and contribution. Last Sabbath evening a prayer-meeting for the slave, and a collection frequently to assist in the deliverance of some." That there should be not a single note of dissent to all this would be incredible. One of the few letters pre- served by Father Turner is a long and remarkably plain one from an aged member — a New Hampshire immigrant. He reminded his minister that "the standard of holiness is to be raised by preaching the pure, unadulterated doc- 284 ASA TUBNEB. trines of the cross. Never till I came here did national policy disgrace the sacred desk in my hearing on the sacred day. The more interest I take in politics, the less I have in religion. What natural connection is there between harangues on national policy and the real doc- trines of the cross of Christ ? . . . Sometimes for a number of Sabbaths you are pretty well engaged in preaching the Bible : and I shall be willing to hear and pay you, if you will constantly take the Bible for the substance of dis- course, as well as for a text. . . . There are times in which it may be right to take the subject of national policy for an address to the people. . . . You will remember I am advanced in years. And I am confident if you do your duty as a faithful minister, you will leave out politics on the Sabbath and preach the pure doctrines of the cross. Then there will be no one in the universe to blame vou or harm you. You tell of the leaven of the gospel doing much toward the freedom of the slave. But, sir, I am confident it is the leaven of malice and wickedness that so ferments the land." Pretty faithful dealing this with one's minister ! and pretty faithfully the grounds of objection to the gospel cannonade against slavery were covered. With what gentle and gracious humility it was read and filed away at the parsonage, it is easy to imagine ; and how quietly and prayerfully the reader — then entering upon his forty- fifth year — proceeded to do his duty. The next September, on his motion, the Iowa Associa- tion adopted its first " testimony ' against slavery, with- drawing fellowship from professing Christians who held slaves, and declaring it the duty of all who held them to repent of it as "a heinous sin against God and a gross violation of the law and gospel of Christ," and to " forsake their sin." The next year the resolution as to fellowship REFORM AND REFORM POLITICS. 285 was re-considered, but restored in 1846, and all re-affirmed in 1848. From time to time, this " testimony " was en- larged and made more specific, especially as to national affairs, and the relations of benevolent societies to slave- holding ministers and churches ; it never lagged behind the exigency. Father Turner was commonly at first the author of these expressions, or on committees to frame them. He preserved another protest against his anti-slavery Christianity. It is a letter from his member of Congress, Hon. Bernhart Henn, of the House of Representatives, Washington, April 24, 1854, dissenting from two earnest letters received from him, protesting against the Nebraska bill of Senator Douglas. The member of Congress argued to the preacher that the repeal of the Missouri Compromise restriction upon slavery would weaken the peculiar institution by diffusion, and by increased immi- gration from the North into new territories south of 36° 30'. In general, he seems to have resolved the irrepressible conflict ' into the then undiscovered struggle for existence." " For some wise purpose," he wrote, ""Providence ordained that all of his creatures should differ from each other in mental as well as physi- cal faculties, and that the moral and political world, as well as the physical, should be in a constant state of war. . . . While I always looked upon African slavery as a political evil to those among whom it existed, I never looked upon it as a moral evil, but rather as an existing state of human inequality [ordained] for some unforeseen but beneficent purpose." 1 1 The member of Congress protested against Northern indignation at the Illinois senator's course, and the preacher's pungent comparison of it to the typical biblical example of betrayal. The comparison was often made in those critical days. Even the serene spirit of Dr. Post was so stirred that in his oration at Iowa College commencement, two years later, x-eferring to earlier days, he said: 286 ASA TURNEB. A multitude of incidents must here be omitted. But one has two or three times found its way into print, — not with entire correctness, — and as the writer was nearest to Father Turner of the immediate circle about him, and is almost the only one surviving, it is here given as it took place. It was earlier in 1854 than the letter just quoted. A state election was to be held in August. The anti- slavery forces were first mustered, and Rev. Simeon Waters, then home missionary at Mount Pleasant, had been nominated for governor. The writer suggested to a friend (a Burlington lawyer and a Yale graduate of 1834) that if Mr. Grimes could be nominated by the Whigs, and would take up the cause of slavery restric- tion and the Maine law, possibly (with his influence in the state and the votes of temperance and anti-slavery men and new settlers from the East) he might be elected. In the last previous Legislature he had influenced "more votes than any five members of the House combined." He had retired from law practice, and was giving his attention to extensive farming. This friend went to the state convention, and not only secured Mr. Grimes' nomination, but that of Mr. Waters on the same ticket as lieutenant-governor, a bit of unexpected finesse. There was vast excitement at once in anti-slavery cir- cles. A convention was called for March 28, at Craw- fordsville, of "Abolitionists, Liberty Party men, and Free Soilers." When it met, all opposed to slavery were invited to take part, and leading Free Soil Whigs were present. The writer, knowing Mr. Grimes' sentiments " Kansas and Nebraska had not risen to the horizon. No muse of history pointed thither with sad and bloody fingers, or brandished her avenging scourge over wrongs about to be perpetrated there, the foulest, meanest, and most portentous in American story. The Erostratus of that infamy was not yet emergent from the innocent obscurity of the common-school room." JtEFOBM AXD BEFOBM POLITICS. 287 thoroughly, went, at his request, with the manuscript of an address, " To the people of Iowa " (published a few days after, April 8), in his pocket. One of the Denmark deacons, Isaac Field, was chairman ; Mr. Waters had withdrawn from the nomination for governor ; and, after an evening's vehement discussion of the matter and ac- ceptance of his action (adhering to the rest of their candidates), Father Turner was made chairman of the committee on platform. At his lodgings we canvassed the situation till about midnight — then slept upon it. Next morning, while his room-mate was dressing, Father Turner wrote on the back of a letter in pencil this unique and characteristically terse " platform," probably now first published : — "Whereas (1), The Nebraska bill is the great ques- tion of national politics, and "Whereas (2), The Maine law is the great question of state politics ; therefore " Resolved, That we will vote for James W. Grimes, of Des Moines County, for governor." Vehement debate over this for half a day. Lack of personal acquaintance with the man was the chief obstacle. Even the author of the "platform' had to say that — though his neighbor in a sense for some sixteen years — as to present issues he did not know him, while much inquiry had satisfied him that he was the man to vote for. The latter part of his manuscript address to the people, read to the convention, removed all doubt, and the resolu- tion was carried with a substantial unanimity. Its brevity — not likely to be imitated in such conventions ! — and the shrewdness which excluded argument and epithet from it made it a chief factor in inauguratingthe career of one of the ablest of state governors and one of the wisest of United States senators. All parties in the convention 288 ASA TUBNEB. seemed to have about equal confidence in his sponsor. In the manuscript address Mr. Grimes had made five issues, namely, amendment of the State Constitution in some particulars ; the right of the Legislature to prohibit liquor-selling ; modification of the Homestead bill (pending in Congress) ; and defeat of the repeal of the Missouri Compromise. The last of these overshadowed all others. "Visiting nearly every portion of the state," says Dr. Salter of Mr. Grimes, in his Life (p. S'S), " he addressed the people in speeches that won him high reputation for ability and candor." His own impression, given in a letter to the friend who represented him at Crawfordsville, 1 was without doubt correct, that they did "more good to the cause of humanity and liberal ideas than all the speeches made in the state, and many sermons." It was the first political canvass of the whole state. A new moral attitude of the people, as well as a party transfer, was involved. Mr. Grimes took early occasion to ride out to Denmark and pass half a day with Father Turner, to the great satisfaction of both. Mr. Waters was induced to decline his nomination as lieutenant-governor. This helped Mr. Grimes with Old Line Whigs. In mid- campaign he signified to his friend that in the northern counties he should find place for the Maine law in his speeches, which he did with excellent effect, being the first public man in Iowa so to stake his political fortunes. He was the only candidate on the ticket elected, receiving a majority of 2,486 votes out of 43,594. Iowa, which in his inaugural, December, 1854, he happily called " the only free child of the Missouri Compromise," has ever since stood for freedom and the prohibition of slave-holding. The General Association meeting in Burlington, in 1863, had an address from Senator Grimes by special 1 Life, by Dr. Salter, p. 51. BE 'I 'OEM AND BEFOBM POLITICS. 289 invitation on the state of the country and the slave- holders' rebellion. In the course of it he remarked that such public servants as he was were " made " by the public sentiment created by such men as the Congrega- tional ministers and laymen around him ; adding, " I am myself the foster-son of him whom you call Father Turner, and the foster-brother of another of your num- ber whose blushes remind me that I must not pronounce his name." In a private conversation that evening between these two, the patriarch was asked if he had duly repented of his political agency as foster-father nine years before ? to which the prompt reply was, with empha- sis : " Never, and I never shall." There is no need now of saying that a Christian con- servatism, decisive and wholesome, mingled with the zeal and moral courage of this unpretending reform leader. In the letter of reproof from his aged parishioner here- tofore quoted occur these words : " Your friends, the Garrisonites, are for trampling on the Sabbath and demol- ishing government, both civil and religious." The pastor was as firm for government and law as he was for the Sabbath, as firm as he had been for all of them in perilous times in Illinois. His practical keenness cut through appearances and names to the core of things. Some months after the election mentioned, on reading U A Conservative View of the Nebraska Question," x he wrote : " I don't see, Brother M., as your conservatism is a bit better than my radicalism." The article closed by showing that slavery propagandism meant secession from the Union. The patriarch's foresight as to this was as undimmed as that of John Quincy Adams. " Some thirty years ago," says a lady who was then a child, " sitting by our fireside the conversation turned upon 1 New Englander, November, 1854. 290 ASA TURNER. slavery. [It often did by Denmark firesides ! " I can see his face as he said, ' I tell you, Brother S., slavery is a cancer eating out the life of our body politic. There is no remedy for it but the knife. It must be cut away. Torrents of blood must flow. The nation may bleed to death, but it is our only hope.' " It will surprise no one to know that fugitives for freedom were always welcome at the Denmark parsonage and in neighboring Christian homes. The village, it must be confessed, had the name of being one of the stations on the Underground Railroad. Masters from Missouri often crossed the Lower Des Moines and the south-eastern corner of Iowa in pursuit of runaways, or came up the Missouri by boat. No exciting contests occurred at Den- mark, however, as at Burlington, 1 and, indeed, the rural village had no attorneys to take part in them. 2 One of the Quincy Christians whose boat took Dr. Nelson across the Mississippi followed Father Turner to Denmark and aided in making " the underground railroad" a success. All in those days could tell of " hair-breadth escapes." Once two " Danes ' : crossed to Pontoosuc, III., on the same ferryboat with a Missouri " claimant," the object of his search lying flat on the bottom of the Denmark wagon, snugly covered with some sort of lading for market. " I remember," says a daughter of Father Turner,. 1 See Life of Grimes, pp. 72, 73. 2 There was no antecedent balance of probability in favor of a settlement so- near the Missouri line being zealous against slave-holding. Father Turner gives this "early "incident: " Passing a house one Monday morning, I was called in and found the principal men gathered there. ' We have been discussing your sermon of yesterday. Such and such men say, " We like Mr. Turner, like his preaching, but don't like his anti-slavery sentiments." ' I replied : ' Well, brother, I don't doubt it is just so, but what would you do, preach to please God or man?' 1 Don't know, don't know.' I consented to supply on one condition — that I be allowed to preach my own convictions of truth, and reserve the right to change my opinion before the next Sabbath, and when they did n't want me I would be off without trouble." REFORM AND REFORM POLITICS. 291 " with what absolute delight he first told us of the brave little woman in Salem (Henry County, Iowa) who had an invalid husband at the time of ' the Missouri mob ' in search of a fugitive. These lawless, drunken desperadoes were sure he was in the place [a Quaker village], and were searching houses, and gathered before this little home of two or three rooms. The wife, pushing the sick husband back, answered at the door. 4 Do you know where that nigger is ? ' 4 Yes, I do ; he is n't two hundred yards from this door ; and if you had n't been fools you 'd have found him long ago.' The mob looked elsewhere for the slave — and did not find him." The General Association, in 1853, affectionately '"requested the executive committee of the A. H. M. S. to adopt a rule under which aid shall be withheld from churches admitting voluntary slave-holders to their communion." Iowa lifted up her heart in joy and gratitude, a few years later, when informed from New York that this had been done. In 1858 Father Turner thus expressed himself on another practical question that perplexed his brethren : "I should be in favor of an independent Tract Society, with head-quarters at Chicago. I have no hope of the recovery of the New York Society before the dawn of the millennium. At that glorious morning I expect it will come up shouting the praises of liberty and affirming that it had always been the friend of the slave." By the anti-slavery action of the American Home Missionary Society " the understandings of other societies were gradually enlightened, and — last of all — the Ameri- can Tract Society was awakened by the roar of cannon, and filed to the rear of the army of Liberty." 1 If there had been a time when any of his Iowa breth- 1 Sermon at Semi-centennial Iowa Association. 292 ASA TUBNEB. ren felt that Father Turner was too impetuously and too far in the advance respecting slavery, that time passed away with the attacks on Mr. Sumner and on Fort Sumter. He once said very thoughtfully and deliber- ately : " I would do any thing to destroy slavery but commit sin." XXXIV. A LONG PASTORATE ENDED. Up to 1856 the largest Congregational church in Iowa was at Denmark, though it reached but two hundred and five members ; in 1857, that of Davenport became the largest ; the next year, that of Dubuque ; in 1865, that of Grinnell, with two others of the younger churches next following, Des Moines and Tabor (815, 440, and 333 respectively, Denmark having 150 in later years). As time wore on and newer sections of the state filled up, the churches came to number a hundred and forty- four — nine of these with over a hundred members each ; the District Associations, eight ; the ministers, a hundred and five ; the aggregate membership, forty-eight hundred and fifty. Iowa is now fifth among the leading Congrega- tional states, standing between Illinois and Maine. In these years Rev. Jesse Guernsey succeeded Messrs. Turner and Reed as Home Missionary Agent (Septem- ber, 1857). Five years later, Mr. Reed took charge of Southern Iowa ; two years after this Mr. Gaylord, of Western Iowa, and Rev. J. W. Pickett followed Mr. Reed and Mr. Gaylord in 1869. Jesse Guernsey was born at Watertown, Conn., 1822 ; studied at Sharon with Rev. Clarence C. Brownell ; by the Erie Canal he sought Western Reserve College, 1842, 1 and was in the theological department two years, 1 Converted two years before, walking for several weeks three miles every evening to religious services. For classical tuition he paid in part by labor at twenty-five cents a day, balancing the education account years after at Dubuque by helping on one of his tutor's six sons who had strayed West. 294 ASA TUBNER. and then three (1844-47) in Yale Seminary, getting what college education he could by the way, and u by the hardest ; ' was pastor of Bethesda Church, Charlestown, Mass., 1847-49 (ordained in 1847) ; was subsequently a useful pastor at Derby, Conn., 1849-52 ; Saybrook, 1852-53 ; Dubuque, Iowa, 1853-55 ; Woodbridge, Conn., 1856-67 ; and in the service of the American Home Missionary Society till his death at Dubuque, 1871. Joseph Worthy Pickett was born at Andover, Ohio, 1832 ; graduated at Alleghany College, Penn., 1855 ; taught two years at Taylorsville, Tenn ; graduated again at Yale College, 1858 ; and at Andover Seminary, 1861 ; ordained at Bristol, N. H., 1862 ; preached at Wentworth, N. H., two years, then at Mount Pleasant, Iowa, till he took the superintendence of home missions for Southern Iowa in 1869. In 1878 he became superintendent in Colorado, and was killed in the overturning of a stage on the mountains, November 14, 1879. Dr. Guernsey was of large make, both of body and mind, a man of great practical energy and wisdom, with a voice of remarkable volume and depth, of quick and strong sensibility, apt in affairs and fertile in expedients, and untiring in his devotion to home evangelization. In him, says one, "head and heart were very large." For five years (till The Advance was founded) he conducted, with Rev. G. F. Magoun, The Religious News Letter, the pioneer of state monthlies. He was an invaluable coun- selor in the college and the associations. Mr. Pickett was of a kindling and enthusiastic temperament, unsparing in gifts and sacrifices, adventurous, keenly appreciative of the beginnings of great enterprises, of warm personal attachments, with the heart of a devotee and the zeal of a popular evangelist. Both are profoundly lamented. They were notable and notably useful men, giving about A LONG PASTORATE ENDED. 295 fifteen years each to the dependent churches. They were succeeded in the superintendency — re-united in 1882 — by Rev. Ephraim Adams. Meantime the churches, younger and older, prospered every way under their tireless and wise care. The thirty Congregational Christians of 1838 became ten thousand before Father Turner's pastorate ceased. The General Association bore useful testimony on too many topics to be here recited. It led the way as to church separation from slavery and aid of new frontier congregations in erecting houses of worship — movements in which Messrs. Holbrook and Emerson were prominent. It favored the declaration that the Plan of Union had naturally come to an end, and the forming of a National Council. Its annual assemblies were noted for unity, brotherly heartiness, and a warm, devout tone, to which the removal of the daily prayer exercise from an earlier and less favorable hour to the middle of the forenoon — here first done — largely contributed. The custom began of closing the last session Sunday evening annually with singing Dr. Nelson's sweet hymn and prayer by Father Turner, or, in his absence, by the oldest minister present. He was once asked the secret of the peculiar and delightful harmony in this body. With a twinkle of his eye, he replied : " Because we 've no doctors of divinity." He discouraged the college trustees in mak- ing any. Erelong, however, Williams, Amherst, the State University, and other institutions began to drop scholastic honors west of the Mississippi, and Iowa Col- lege slowly followed, those of her constituency honored being the Reverends S. D. Cochran, 1867 ; Lyman Whit- ing, 1868 ; J. Guernsey, 1870 ; G. Thacher, 1871 ; W. W. Woodworth, 1879; E. Adams, 1882; D. Lane and H. Adams, 1887. 296 ASA TURNER. Another was once asked : " Why are there no leaders in this Association ? ' " Because we 've never felt the need of any," was the answer ; " Father Turner has been the most of one, because he did n't care to be, but only tried to persuade us of truth and right." Iowa ministers were too busy with church and evangel- izing work for much authorship. But a number of them wrote for Eastern religious journals, perhaps Messrs. Hol- brook, Cross, Guernsey, Salter, Turner, and Magoun most — and the latter for reviews and volumes ; many of them published occasional sermons and addresses ; Dr. Lane, a Manual of Congregationalism (having been a college founder and a professor, at the request of the trustees he drew up the " Code of College Laws," 1871-84) ; Dr. Holbrook, a small volume ; Dr. E. Adams, a sketch of the Iowa Band; and Mr. Salter, Lives of Miss Ada M. Parker, Hon. James W. Grimes, and Rev. J. W. Pickett, with a Hymn and Tune Book for his own congregation. The steady flow of pastoral experience at Denmark is- photographed in the following extracts : — Letter to Rev. George Clark, February, 1860 : " I have preached every night for ten days, and three times on Sabbath. I can preach ten days more as I have done, but I think more would attend if you should come." Funeral Sermon, March : " When we leave this world we do not die, but live right on, and those who believe in Jesus never die. It is but a change of habitation. A family dwells in a log cabin till it becomes rotten, leaky, and dilapidated. A good house, comfortable and well furnished, is erected near by, and when all things are ready the family steps out of the old cabin into the new home. Is that any cause for mourning ? " Letter, January, 1862 : " I shall be unable to redeem my pledge [in aid of the college] at the Association, for A LONG PAS TOE ATE ENDED. 297 our church or for myself. Our house is burnt. God withheld the rain and our people have to buy corn. And there is no mone}^ here. ... I have wished to sell my farm, hoping to pay my debts and save the land at G., so as some time to go there. But there is no sale here, and I owe between four thousand and forty-five hun- dred dollars, — nearer the latter sum, — at ten per cent, interest, most of it. For the last three years I have been unable to pay any interest. Salary, five hundred dollars, but not worth five hundred dollars in money. Our people are very much broken up." October : u Our young men leave to seek homes, and we are left a parcel of old fossils. Out of about one hun- dred liable to do military duty in our fractional township, we have about sixty-five in the army. [A son and son- in-law were among them. 1 ] If I could sell my place and pay my debts, I would be willing to go almost anywhere, but I know of no possible way to do it till the times change." Paying some taxes that year elsewhere, he could find no money for postage stamps. " I thought we were wicked enough in this county, but the taxes there are higher in proportion. People poor ; gave their notes for almost the amount to rebuild, leaving off steeple." September, 1864 : " I wish you to address our people on what your eyes saw and your heart felt at the front. I want an appeal to those who have been abiding by the stuff, not to share the spoil, but the burdens. If well-to-do farmers and business men would give one tenth of their gains this year in consequence of the war, there would be no lack of means [to prosecute it]. My heart rejoices 1 February, 1864. They were in Sherman's expedition, and on the Big Black, east of Vicksburg. "A has sent me his bounty, one hundred dollars; and more than thirteen dollars a month since he has been in the service. His heart seems to be set on helping me out of debt." 298 ASA TUBNEB. over the fall of Atlanta. I want to hear about Hood's army. Hope much that it was captured. It seems the have declared their purpose to make war on the abolitionists, and not stop till they take their place beside the negroes. I am in for the war to the end." December, 1865 : " Eighteen of our church enlisted, and only two lost their lives. All have been back but two. I don't think any were injured essentially in their Christian character ; some benefited ; and I don't know of any from the congregation injured. Such as had principle when they left brought it back, and such as did not carry any away with them did not bring any back. School prospering. ... I hope Congress will rectify the terrible mistakes of Johnson. How sad from the very sight of the promised land to go back into the wilder- ness ! " February, 1867 : " Have not preached the last four Sabbaths. Throat is better ; sleep better : appetite good. This is what stumbles me. Sometimes I think I am playing 'possum, and will go to work. Preached first Sabbath in January, and attended meetings week of prayer. This little effort brought me clear back, or worse. So I stopped and am better ; ashamed to be called sick. A man that can do his part at the table ought to be in the field. A good deal of interest all the fall. Five have indulged hope. A better state of feeling among students than I have ever seen without special effort." April: " I am becoming a young man. Preached three Sabbaths. Throat well. All the difficulty is I am too young. Pulse 90° disqualifies for great mental or bodily effort. Academy building growing like Solomon's tem- ple." October, 1868: "Three of our family in July have been called up higher — Mary W., a niece of Captain S., our A LONG PASTORATE ENDED. 299 Mary, and little Georgie." Of his own immediate and painful loss he said : " I feel that it was manifestly the Lord's hand, and have to say only, i Even so, Father, for so it seemed good in thy sight.' Mrs. Turner is wonder- fully supported, though very feeble. Seven weeks ago she took to her bed. Is able to sit up a little." The year before, anticipating his seventieth year of age, he had proposed the calling a colleague who could give half his time to the academy, continuing himself to preach Sabbath mornings and carry on the pastoral work, or else to release him altogether. The former proposition was accepted by the church, and a pastor in rural Massachu- setts called, who declined. Action was now delayed for a year, the pastor's health improving, and a salary of seven hundred dollars voted. In 1868 he requested President Edson to find at the East a successor. He reported the name of Rev. E. Y. Swift, of Williamsburg, Mass., who was called to be installed, October 21, his predecessor to be dismissed at the same time. The patriarch was made Pastor Emeritus. His service had overpassed thirty years. The church in accepting his resignation gave " most hearty thanks to the great Head of the Church that he has continued to this church, from its infancy, His under-shepherd, and has crowned his ministry among us for thirty years with richest and unnumbered blessings," assuring Father Turner of their " warmest thanks for his faithfulness, assiduities, and love " and of their " undimin- ished confidence and affection." The dismissing and installing council recorded " their profound emotions of gratitude to the great Head of the Church for the grace continued to his servant for these many years, that has enabled him with unwearied assi- duity, patience, and devotion to make full proof of his ministry ; to meet the hardships and privations of the 300 ASA TUBNEB. first settlement of the country with fortitude and cheer- fulness; to prosecute missionary labor in the regions beyond with apostolic energy and zeal ; to bear a promi- nent part in founding institutions of learning ; to lead the way in those great social and moral reforms by which the cause of liberty and just government has been assured; to preach the gospel in season and out of sea- son with evangelical simplicity and warmth ; being abund- ant in labor and ready to every good work ; in doctrine showing uncorruptness, and in life and conversation being an example to the flock." They assured him of " the sincere and grateful respect ' of " neighboring churches and ministers." Hardly less could have been said of those of all Iowa. XXXV. THE DECLINE OF LIFE. Very fortunate are aged servants of Christ, the tender love and gratitude of whose children provides a home of comfort and cheer for them when their active days of work for his Church are over. It was nearly the early summer of the next year after the pastorate closed when Father Turner and the dear wife of his youth and age, greatly honored by all who knew her, were able to remove from Denmark to the hospitable and attractive home of their son-in-law, Captain Charles P. Searle, at Oskaloosa. It had been proposed among his old flock to give him a small salary as Pastor Emeritus, that his last days and his grave might be among them. His answer was char- acteristic : " You can not afford it." Yet there is a quiet and manly pathos in his writing another of the pulling up of a tree whose roots had been growing in the same soil thirty years, and in his confession : " I don't know what to do with myself. To preach and to prepare for it were my delight — my daily food." Years after he testified to a younger minister : 1 " It is a great privilege to have been employed in His work, and will outlast all tempo- ral things. If I was to live my life over again, I should not want any better work than preaching the gospel, or any better place to do it in than Iowa. You are doing a work here that will * on ages tell.' All I lament is that all my work was done so imperfectly." 1 Four years later, declining an Invitation to make an address at Denmark, he said : ** Sundering so many ties makes a heavy draught. ... It is only a new resurrection and a new death. It costs us both too much. I don't think I am the person to make the address." 302 ASA TUBNEB. He passed quietly and genially into the home, church, and social life at Oskaloosa, where the people felt that his coming was a benediction, and his juniors in the ministry greeted him as an apostle. In some business transaction at Denmark he had said of his being a minister : " They may question my right to be called such. I mean, how- ever, to preach where the Lord shall give me a place, and I wish to be numbered with them while I live." He was, with affectionate and reverential joy, in all denom- inations. Eight years after he wrote Principal Edson in a strain of touching humility of his work and his resignation which can not here be given in full. " It was a great trial, and one none can know but by experience. . . . While I have never recovered from the separation, never felt at rest without a special work before my mind, and never expect to, I think I acted in accordance with duty and the best good of the church. . . . My going to Denmark, I believe, was of God. He could use such a weak instrument then, when the country was new. My going away was clearly of his provi- dence. The change has been a great blessing to my health, and in some respects to my comfort. Religion becomes more and more a comfort to me, and while I am ashamed that I know so little of its power, I still desire above all things to see God's kingdom come in the world. I have felt, and do now, that it was one of the favors of God that he sent you to Denmark, and that I was permitted to be associated with you so long, and may God in his infinite mercy permit me to have my portion with you and the dear ones that have gone from Denmark in the church above." Mrs. Turner's health also was improved. No mother who reads this, and who knows what a home may be made THE DECLINE OF LIFE. 303 for such a mother in a daughter's family, will ask why, before the change, he " had no expectations she could long survive, and felt [he] could not bear to be left there alone ' in the old parsonage to which so many Christian friends had come in the passing years and from which their children had gone forth. One of the first uses of his leisure contemplated was a visit to Santa Barbara, Cal., where his oldest daughter, married in Iowa, was an active and original member of "the southwesternmost Congregational church in the United States, planted by the A. H. M. S." a year or two before. In a few months he went, accompanied by a long-time friend, Seth Richards, Esq. He appreciated to the full the climate and scenery of the wondrous Pacific Coast. "After asking the blessing at the dinner table," says his daughter living there, " his eyes would light upon our mountains, as he raised his head. With streaming tears and choking voice he would say : * O blessed Santa Barbara ! haven for the weary and suffering, did God ever make another spot so beautiful ? ' What strength, what pleasure was ours, shut in from all the world by the mountains, from the delightful air and the play of light and shade upon them, standing in neutral tints clear-cut against the azure sky, and how transfigured even life itself by the setting sun and the little patches of fog that drifted hither and thither in the canyons. He thought he knew nothing of art: he was nature's most sacred priest, appreciating unconsciously every phase of her beauty. Did you ever see him stand and look upon the orchard in full bloom till his pleasure was so great he would clasp his hands with delight ? " Of a Santa Barbara Sabbath he would say : " It is one of God's own days. Will I ever, this side of heaven, see any so perfect ? " 304 ASA TUBNEB. Glimpses of what he busied himself with, his letters to his wife will give. He has been called " a born evangel- ist ; ' he was certainly u born again " into this vocation. He writes of invalids at Santa Barbara, and specially of a consumptive wife from New York. April 11, 1870 : " A Christian and ready to die. Very low; a great sufferer; her husband wholly disconsolate; refused to be comforted. He had come in hope she would be spared to him, but now he must give her up in this strange land. I urged him to give himself up to Christ, and then he would be willing to give up his wife." " Saturday I called again. She was more comfortable. She said he had agreed to kneel down by her bed, while prayer should be offered for him. He knelt, his head resting on her bosom, and her arm around his neck. I then committed them to God ; asked the Holy Spirit to take possession of the husband, and hear the prayer of the dying wife. Quite a while after I arose, he remained kneeling, her arm embracing him. He arose converted, and I counseled him and left. u Yesterday called again ; she was comfortable, and seemed happy, and he thinks he has given his heart to Christ. " As I returned Saturday, a man drove up to the door to sell a load of wood. I spoke to him. He asked me if my name was Turner. I said it was. He sprang forward and grasped my hand with deep affection. • Don't you know me? You attended the funeral of my child last week.' A little girl six years old ; five miles out of town. The parents with the dead daughter, and each a child, and a few neighbors, just enough to bury the dead. I felt that the Lord assisted me to speak to them, and when we parted at the graveyard he said he would give his heart to Christ. He told me Saturday he thought he had." THE DECLINE OF LIFE. 305 On returning to Iowa, he found the steamer from Santa Barbara would not get into San Francisco till Sunday, and gave up going till the next boat. " My visit was out, and it did not seem that I could wait; but I thought I could not afford to sin. I feel this morning that I did right, although the people may laugh at my superstition. I wish to keep a conscience void of offence. My short- comings and sins are enough without adding to them. By staying till Thursday, I shall be able to get into San Francisco, Saturday a.m. But it will delay me one week on my return, as I can not leave Sacramento till Monday, and not travel on the Sabbath. You will be disappointed, but not more so than I am, and need not be assured that it is not out of any want of love to you and the dear chil- dren left behind." "Peach-trees are just in blossom. Apple-trees on the ranch last week had not swelled their buds. The diffi- culty is, they kept it up so late last fall and winter. They are like city folks who sit up so late at night they have to lie in bed next morning." At Burlington next year he was pleading the cause of the college and of the academy (which was in danger of losing an invaluable teacher). Later, the academy emergency again called him out. His judgment of the relation of the two institutions again finds expression. He was now living between the two, and his prayers were many and sympathies strong. " We ought to have built academies before we did colleges. Our denomination needs six or eight in this state, or will soon. East Col- lege, Grinnell, burnt down Saturday. No particulars." Neither poverty nor calamity chilled his zeal for either institution. His letters are full of academy plans. 1 J On his second visit to California, he secured a gift of Kansas lands to the acailemv worth some ten thousand dollars. 306 ASA TUBNEB. January, 1872 : " Health quite recovered ; commenced my work again in the Welsh church." February, 1872 : " I preach at Depot. Commenced December 17. Took up contribution yesterday ; about twenty dollars for the time. Not extravagant wages ! One dollar and fifty cents a week, with two and a half miles' travel every Sabbath morning. Well, it occupies my mind, and I am happier than to do nothing. I miss old Fannie. She ran awav last November. Have heard nothing of her. Have to get a horse." 1 After attending the Methodist Conference in 1872, and noticing the effectiveness of the system and authority employed, while observing that " Scripture don't give the authority," he wrote Principal Edson his wish that ministers and people among Congregationalists could be better kept together. "We need the Spirit poured out upon them, what Brother Finney has been writing about in The Independent. I could not but think the Metho- dist plan of raising up ministers the best, after all. If they have native talent and the Holy Ghost, they can do > good. If they have not, three years will be likely to discover it. And if they have all the learning in the world it won't be worth much without the Spirit. My conviction for many years has been that what I needed was the blessed Spirit of God in my heart. Professor Bartlett's sermon before the American Board at New Haven is noble. It is what the churches need — will do good." It is not to be understood that he would not have any Congregational ministers thoroughly educated. In October, 1873, he visited California again, Mrs. Turner and a daughter accompanying. Rev. J. W. 1 To a Denmark friend : " I have bargained away our place. I feel sad to give up the last spot of earth. But soon we shall leave all below." THE DECLINE OF LIFE. 307 Hough, D.D., then preaching at Santa Barbara, writes from Paris, France : — u The church was sharing the quickened life which had come to the dreamy, half-Spanish town with the influx of Eastern people, and now numbered forty or fifty members. Father Turner at once interested himself in the work and growth of the little church in a manner so easy and natural as to be wholly free from any suggestion of omciousness or self-assertion — in a manner which seemed the simple expression of the fact that wherever he dwelt the Church of Christ was his home, and that it was the habit of his life to be busy about his Father's business. His large experience among the struggling churches of Iowa enabled him at once to grasp the situation and appreciate the needs of the young church on the Pacific coast. The pastor speedily found in him a sympathizing friend, a willing helper, an unobtrusive and wise coun- selor. The Sabbath service knew him as a constant attendant and an appreciative listener. The little prayer- meeting, held at one and another private house, came quickly to recognize him as part of itself. His large « acquaintance with the sacred Word, his spiritual insight, his deep, rich Christian experience, and at times his quaint, quiet humor, rendered his share in the services especially stimulating and helpful. He found presently a parish of his own among the large number of invalids; walking or riding with some on the sunshiny, midwinter days, and ministering with words of sympathy and conso- lation at the bedside of others, who had come to that mildest of climes too late for the coveted restoration. He entered easily into social life, but carried with hinr every-where the impression and the influence of a man who walked with God, all in all not unlike the sunshine of the sunny land to which he came, warm, bright, genial, gentle, a blessing and a benediction." 308 ASA TUB NEB. Santa Barbara, November, 1873 : " Forty-three years ago last summer, my wife promised to go with me wher- ever duty called, if it was to the ends of the earth. That was in Boston on the Atlantic. Now we are in plain view of the Pacific, and I am willing to regard her vow ful- filled, and not require her to go at least any farther West. In coming down two hundred and forty miles we had the experience of the patriarchs renewed ; camped as best we could, but no frosts, little cultivated land ; scarcely any thing but stage-stations. One man owns fifty thousand acres. Another has twelve million dollars, living without God and without hope in the world ; his body diseased and enfeebled — what is it worth to him ? The land all the way used for pasture. Very dry and dusty. People are trying to have wind-mills. Mr. Richards and family we expect this week. The Sabbath is not remembered by multitudes." December, 1873 : " Never more busy in my life. All I want is a heart to do the will of our beloved Master — to comfort and help all I can." Among the numerous invalids he found a brother of John Brown, a second cousin of Dr. Enoch Pond, and a highly cultivated physician from B , N. Y., u a great student, of Mill's cast of mind." To several invalids, " the idea of a vica- rious atonement was abhorrent." One "imbued with spiritualism, Unitarianism, and Universalism," another "did not need a Bible." April, 1874 (Mrs. Turner to Mrs. C, Oberlin, Ohio) : " A pleasant winter here. Fogs now, which are not pleasant. It has not been so cold but that I could go into the garden and pick a bouquet any day. Such roses I have never seen anywhere. It is wonderful what an amount of flowers can be raised on a little bit of ground. I never tire of writing about them and the THE DECLINE OF LIFE, 309 mosses we gather at the beach. There is a calla in our garden on which I counted fifteen blossoms, very large. My health has been much better." Father Turner to Mr. C, with a Massachusetts farmer's and a Western fruit-grower's eye, writes of a plant " as hard and solid as Osage-orange or locust, and grows very fast. Orchards two or three years old bear wonderfully. Grapes grow or bear almost before they are set cut ! Barley and wheat very stout. It is pleasant to see roses, lilies, etc., all winter, almonds in blossom in January. This is poor land, not equal to much other land. . . . The climate is very enjoyable to old people and invalids. The place has grown wonderfully in four years. Church seats about two hundred, usually filled; a noble minister. I have preached occasionally, as I had opportunity ; but with a three thousand dollar minister, a congregation could hardly be satisfied with an old, worn-out home missionary. Have been down to. San Diego. Counted forty saloons in a population of twenty-five hundred. Called at Los Angeles, a city of some fifteen thousand. A movement here for local option." Revivals at the East occupy the rest of the letter. 1 Oskaloosa, October, 1874: "In almost three thousand miles out and back, not a single accident or delay. God has given friends on the way and friends there, and friends every-where. . . . But my lungs are so susceptible, J The Methodists of Santa Barbara holding special services, he preached for them some. "Our minister is a very superior man, one of the best preachers it was ever my lot to listen to for any length of time. I feel interested and fed." On a visit to San Diego, he was directed to the Baptist church as the Presbyterian. "Sermon very good; and communion immediately following. No invitation was given, but we thought it was the Lord's table and we would eat with our Presby- terian cousins. I have become a Baptist of the straitest sect! During the week apologized to the Elder for our ignorant sincerity." He was deeply interested in the temperance issue in California. At a risk of losing two thousand dollars in his business the owner of the Santa Barbara wharf was advocating local option. He wrote election day : " My wife is out as spry as a young girl, going up to wagons and men as they come in, and offering them temperance votes." 310 ASA TURNER. I must avoid exposures — must be content to be nobody's nothing. When I was coming down Platte Valley, I did not feel the least tired with all my trip — judged myself about sixty. But my cold soon carried up my age to ninety, and where it will leave me, don't know. Your air has not the California tonic for old limbs. But I must be content. . . . Iowa is a good soil to raise up inhabitants for the Celestial City, and I believe there is a better country than California, even a heavenly. Am rejoiced to hear of your prosperity. May God work in the hearts of teachers and scholars. Men are useless only as God works through them, and will never carry forward his cause only as he works in them." Other letters of this year to his yoke-fellow at Denmark disclose his wide and quick interest in all that was going on in all lands, especially all that touched the cause of Christ, in England, Scotland, France, Spain, Italy, Turkey, China, Japan, and in the work of American evangelists abroad. The death of his class-mate, Henry Durant, in California, and the memoir of his townsman, Dr. William Goodell, deeply moved him. Absolute de- pendence on God for all good was his key-note. 1876 : " Dear Brother S , A dearth of news from Denmark of late. Don't know whether you are in the world or out of the world. The bottom has fallen out here, and whether we shall stop this side of China remains to be seen. Mud ! mud ! Our children [in Polk County] have been quite blessed this winter. Seven united with their little church. " Our nation needs purifying. . . . But don't be alarmed ! This nation has a work yet to do for the world, even if God has to heat the furnace seven times hotter. . . . You see the ground the ex-Confederates take — that they have all the time been loyal to the THE DECLINE OF LIFE. 311 nation our fathers planted ; that the fanatics of the North drove them into rebellion ; that we are not a nation, but a conglomeration of states ; and it is not treason to secede ; the crime was in not being able to do it successfully" "Revival among the Quakers only. Most of them, with the good spirit in their hearts, act just like other Christians under the same influence. . . . Mother and her two sisters (from the East) do enjoy themselves hugely this winter." Passing the next winter at Hartford, Conn., he wrote : — February, 1877 : " I have been greatly interested in the work at Chicago and Boston. Shall we look on these wonderful things as harbingers of good times to come? Who of us has believed more than a little of the surface of the gospel ? Oh, the heights and depths of God's wonderful plan to save rebellious man ! I know less and less of it the more I try to study it. " Brother Edson writes me of a good work in the academy. I am older than I was ten years ago. My cough has troubled me more than ever before. Hartford is a pleasant city, with a great many cultivated people and rich. Still, I am thoroughly Westernized, and with all the discomforts of Iowa, the real comforts to me abound there." He said to a friend that he "dreaded the thought of dying anywhere but in Iowa," and was "anxious to lay his bones there."* Mrs. Turner wrote from her birthplace : " He finds it dull. But he is very cheerful. I hope we may be per- mitted to go to Iowa in the spring, for I am too much a Western woman to enjoy society here." The death, before his return, of the last of the Denmark founders led him to say : " I must hurry up, or all my friends will get home before me." Then came the solemn reflection : " One more has gone to report con- 312 ASA TUENEB. cerning my stewardship of the manifold grace of God, ... It is a comfort to me that through Jesus Christ our imperfect service and imperfect faith and love can be accepted. We all come at last to one point, — no matter what our position or work, — sinners saved by grace." Concerning his aged friend just deceased he had been comforted the summer previous by " his increased interest in the soul's concerns. I hoped then that God was- preparing him for a better inheritance." XXXVI. THE END. One is manifestly preparing to exchange worlds when he can say : " I have had to cut loose from earth in every way I could, so I could be ready at any moment." " I have got where I can see the things of earth about as they are. The atmosphere around is clear. And earthly things look so transient as to be worth little care and labor. I have been thinking that probably God means to convert Japan ; and through its people China and the old Asiatic nations.'* His profound lowliness was a marked feature of his Christian growth, blended always with intense longings for the coming of the kingdom : " I can not say with Mr. Moody that I know I am saved ; still I can say I know I desire God's kingdom may come." " I want to live till as a nation we return to our loyalty to God." "I don't feel personally that we ought to be anxious about any thing but to do his will. I feel I am not worthy to be called a disciple, I have been so ignorant, so unbelieving, so stupid, so brutish. I see more and more of the won- derful, glorious gospel." " I surely don't know whose will I wish" done with me if not God's. Surely I don't wish my own. I have not wisdom or knowledge enough." " I don't know as I am ' called,' but I do think I love God, and am willing he should do with me now and forever what he sees fit to do. Only one thing man needs — in the inner man, to be renewed." "I feel more and more what a little creature man is, and how 314 ASA TUBNEB. little are all his works. I used to feel I was of some importance, but God has opened my eyes in a measure, and I begin to realize 'a little cloud which appeareth and vanisheth away.' If God would only burn up in us all the wood, hay, and stubble." He had unspeakable content in his heavenly Father's dealings with him. His testimony to this is incessant. "All I wish to ask for is put into the Lord's Prayer." " In regard to old age, I have every thing to be thankful for: — (1) That I have not a wife in heaven, but on earth; (2) Children who do all for me that children can do ; and a great many kind Christian friends." u I don't expect to go to heaven till I am fitted for it." "About your going to Europe, I don't know. But for me, I had rather take passage in the old ship Zion towards the new Jerusalem. I want to get there. I have a great many friends who have passed over, and to meet them, and to have a great many things made plain I do not understand, and to feel my eternity is made sure through grace — what a blessing ! Perhaps my poor cold heart will be warmed up to sing the song of Moses and the Lamb, and I shall be able to sing." (A gift denied him.) His letters often end thus : " Victor Emmanuel is a loss to the world. God can do without him, and without any other man." " Alas ! for the poor Turks and the Russians and all those nations that know so little of God. And alas ! for the poor United States, so little disposed to fear God and give glory to him." To the last this unflagging interest in affairs continued. When ability to read was gone, Mrs. Turner (and when she failed him, some one else) read through the daily paper to him. " Do you get any light on the conver- sion of the Mohammedans ? " he asked the writer, as he suddenly entered his room. " I 've been praying for it the past two weeks." • THE END. 315 To one who wrote of his forgiving others he replied : " I had for a long time loved you and trusted in you ; but on the receipt of your last, I loved you much more than ever before." To another : " There is no good thing in us, save as divine grace produces it, and it looks very bad for us to throw stones. Those who do the most forgiving, the most healing, will be the favored ones. Be not among the sinners, but those sinned against. You have a glorious opportunity to honor the gospel and Christ." To the widow of an early citizen : " In many places they have Old Settlers' meetings. If I ever get to heaven I should like to have one there, that we might together confess our follies and short-comings, and recount the long-suffering of God towards us. I feel I am near the journey's end. I do not pray God to prolong my life, but by his grace to fit me for the Canaan we love. I can't say my affections cling to this world. I enjoy the comfort and food and shelter necessary for me here, but why should I get a great load of earthly things on my back and make my journey so much harder ? ' " The Bible shines with a light I used not to see. The plan of salvation through God manifest in the flesh has a glory about it I did not know. It is wonderful, wonderful ! Mystery of mysteries ! All I can do is to receive it, as far as my little mind will allow, cast all my hopes for eternity upon it, — saved or lost, — risk all on Jesus Christ, the Son of God, who takes away the sin of the world. . . . It all comes round to this, a sinner saved by grace, if saved at all. As to earthly good, we have enough, we hope, for our passage. All the riches and all the honors of the world have their values depreciated as we approach eternity." Years of invalidism followed, the details of which can 316 ASA TUBNEB. not be recited with interest. The gentle and winning presence that had been by his side since the perilous ride on the burning prairies of Illinois in 1830 was still his exceeding comfort and stay, and every want was antici- pated. It had added charm to his hearty hospitality for a generation at Denmark, and now touched with motherly grace the waning activities and waste places of age. Long before feebleness and disease came, the two helpers of each other and of all about them had been affectionately coupled as " Father and Mother Turner r throughout Iowa. As the meeting of General Association approached one year he wrote a letter of tender recollection to its members, in which he spoke of himself as " about to be introduced into his future home." The body responded with loving reverence through Messrs. D. Lane and E. P. Smith, and while he yet lingered for half a dozen years remembered him annually in united prayer. A paralytic stroke came in 1878. Mrs. Turner wrote : " I don't think he will ever be so well again ; his cough must in time wear him out ; and he may have other attacks of paral- ysis." A few days after the shock the writer called upon him. Rising to say " Good-by," and attempting in vain to use his drooping right hand, he said, with diffi- culty : " I can t-t-tell you what you c-c-can't t-tell me." "You can tell me many such things, Father Turner ; what is it ? " " Why, w-w-what the p-p-palsy is." " Well, what is it ? " The old-time twinkle was in his eye : " It is j-j-just l-l-laziness struck in" The more helpless he became, the more tenderly grateful he was. In the last of his days he would often send for the daughter with whom his home was, to thank her again and again and yet again. Once, forgetting to do so when she appeared, he spoke of himself as needing so much care — - " a nuisance." His own mother-wit came back to Mrs. Martha B. Turner. (See page ::15.) THE END. 317 him in the quick reply : " Well, father, you 're better than most nuisances ; you know you are one." In 1881, a large album came from Denmark with many well-known faces in it, and fifty letters from the dear old flock. " It recalls old times so forcibly," wrote Mrs. Turner, " that the tears will come ; and we can assure you, one and all, that, while we live and have our reason, we . . . shall pray that when Jesus comes to make up his jewels there will not be one of your number missing." It was the custom of the aged couple, after family worship, to pray in their own room for old friends indi- vidually. Mrs. Turner gave much time to comforting them by letters — scattered as they were " from Maine to California " — when paratysis disabled him. " Our sympa- thies are kept fully alive," she said, " in thinking of many friends in bodily and mental suffering." u I find the enjoyments of earth changed ; but I still have the comfort of my husband's society. Had I not that, I can imagine what loneliness would be. I try to bring my mind to the point of submission, and then I think, perhaps I shall go first. I could wish to live as long as he, to wait on him. I will leave it with my Father. We have all our wants supplied, and our own son could not be kinder than Mr. S." " We can see as we look back six months a gradual failure in father, both in body and mind. More feeble in his step, and requires a good deal of watching that he does n't fall. . . . Do you know about the 4 Shut-in Band ' ? We can unite with them if we do not belong to the Bard." The faithful and tender wife was to go first. She died March 6, 1882. Her mild and wise usefulness had kept pace with his in church and congregation, and in her home she had been priceless. The beautiful young life of Hart- 318 ASA TURNER. ford and Litchfield and Boston had developed into the more beautiful mature life of Quincy and Denmark, and a most beautiful old age. Gratitude for her release stayed the survivor's grief. She had outlived their " golden wedding" (August, 1880), and they had journeyed fifty- one and a half years together. When his own end approached he had joy in the thought of seeing her again so soon. One of his last acts of public worship (seconded by her) had been the baptizing of the pastor's youngest child. " Merely performed the ceremony ; not able to stand longer." Another, well remembered by the people, was his attendance upon the Lord's Supper, his steps aided up the aisle by his faithful friend — now his townsman — Dr. Daniel Lane. The silent blessing of the people rested upon the two aged men as they passed along. His last act as a citizen was the casting his vote for the amendment of the Constitution of Iowa, prohibiting the sale and manufac- ture of intoxicating drinks. He was borne to the polls in the arms of his son-in-law. He had prayed to be per- mitted to live to cast this vote. His pastor says: — "For many months before his death his mind was clouded : he did not recognize his own children ; but the day before he died he was himself, but could not speak. Evidently he desired to talk, but was not able. It was the day of sunshine between the two days of cloud. When asked if any thing troubled his mind at the thought of death, he gave a motion of his head, answering no. When the verse in the Twenty-third Psalm was read, ' Though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil ; for thou art with me, thy rod and thy staff they comfort me,' he signi- fied his satisfaction in the thought of the divine presence." He passed away December 13, 1885, at the age of eighty-six years, six months, and one day. Capt. C. P. Searle's Residence, Oskaloosa. See page 300. jj v /, 1a XXXVII. CHARACTERISTICS. The reading of these pages will suggest to many who best knew " Father Turner ' unique traits of his, and shrewd and pithy sayings — especially on moral and religious topics — which, if they could have been fully set forth here, would have more justly and expressively exhibited the man. They could not all have been brought together by any one. It has been out of the power of the writer to gather more. They enrich and brighten, and in many cases sweeten, the memories which those who survive him love to cherish. He retained his individuality to the last. Any thing related of his earlier years seemed characteristic of him to those who knew him only in later ones. He was some- times swindled by those who applied to him for charity, — one of these once obtaining a pretty good outfit and one hundred dollars in money, — but his heart was as open to the next applicant. One who grew up from girlhood under his ministry remembers that he "was always read}' to lend, hoping for nothing again." " On one occasion a parishioner came early in the morn- ing to borrow his old reliable horse, which any woman or child could drive, as he wanted to go to Burlington. But alas ! poor Fanny had not yet been returned to the stable by the neighbor who had borrowed her the day before for an 'outing' [not known then by that name], so Father Turner was reluctantly compelled by circumstances to refuse a favor to a neighbor, a rare thing for him. 320 ASA TUBNEB. " But in a few moments poor old Fanny returned home, no doubt hoping for a quiet day, when she was immedi- ately sent after the disappointed applicant by one of his sons, and by her trip to B that day added another link to the long chain of friendship which bound the hearts of his people to the good, generous pastor." He early planted an orchard, and was liberal in the bestowal of its products. " You have no fruit yet," he would say to visitors who were opening farms. " Before you start for home fill up your wagon-bed in the orchard with apples." Going to church on the Sabbath he always crowded his family wagon with neighbors, and taught his people to do likewise. Calling once on a lady of the church absent in wet weather, who gave as an excuse the lack of rubber overshoes, he asked her to get a pair at the village store charged to him. She did not do it, but the moral effect appeared in her after attendance. One who had carried on his farm, on leaving with four yoke of oxen to open a new one in another county, found at the first mud-hole, on the outskirts of town, that an unbroken yoke of steers was unmanageable. They became inextri- cably tangled up with the others. Going back to the parsonage, after long and futile effort to start again, and stating the difficulty, " You need another yoke of steers that are broken," said the thoroughly practical minister. " But I 've no money to buy any more, and my partner has none." The pastor's hat went on without a word, and he went out. Returning presently with fifty dollars in his hand, he said : " There, buy you another yoke. Brother has some good ones." He was equally quick to purchase an improved washing-machine for a deacon whose wife had limited strength, and for others. Before bringing it in he asked : " Deacon B., do you love your wife?" He once invested ten dollars in a therapeutical CHABACTEBISTICS. 321 invention fitted to cure the ailing wife of another. He responded at once to every religious want at home, and promptly moved the General Association to send an " American organ ' to a former home missionary " tour- ing " in Japan in the service of the American Board. He was practically thoughtful of all the necessities of his people and of those of the heathen as well. Far removed from sentiment as one could well be, want and suffering anywhere deeply affected him. His home was the center of a bounteous and unhesitating hospitality, not only to all friends, but to strangers, especially Christian ministers and laymen. When he was about to leave Denmark he gave five hundred dollars to the academy from the proceeds of his property. He took special pleasure in doing it then, because as long as his personal interests were identified with the town he " might have had mixed motives " in doing so ; now he could have the comfort of giving without them. Nothing was more characteristic of him than this. His own interests were always second to religion. An early " Dane " relates that one summer after a bountiful hay-crop, a drought set in. His tenant wrote him of the distressing condition of his farm — pastures dried up, every thing discouraging to the farmer, and what should he do with the cattle ? Father Turner wrote him to "feed hay and pray for rain." To his hired man he once said, " George, you 've cut less wood than usual to-day." " Yes," was the reply, " I had to ; so many people stopped over night, and I had so many horses to groom, I could n't get off to the timber till ten o'clock." " Well, George, it 's all right." No wonder an early resident says : " He possessed a peculiar power to get the good-will of every one." No wonder that he 322 ASA TURNER. often told his brethren, as he said at the Albany Con- vention, that he " would sooner stick up poles and cover them with corn-stalks for a house of worship than send any one to the East to beg for aid." As a pastor he was tireless in all possible methods of cultivating Christian activity, benevolence, and zeal among his people, both in Illinois and in Iowa. He always thought those to whom he ministered could do much more than they did. In his laborious pioneer days he once asked one of his deacons for the loan of a horse to keep one of his Illinois appointments. " The deacon answered jocosely : l Mr. Turner, my father used to say that a minister or a negro never ought to have a horse, for a minister has no judgment and a negro has no mercy.' He loaned him the horse, however, knowing that he was as kind and considerate as circumstances permitted, and knowing also that he would exact from his horse, as he would from himself, a hard day's work whenever needed." 1 The luxury of giving to Christian objects he could well commend out of his own experience. He had been brought up to habits of economy (not parsimony), and knew its value as a feeder to benevolence. Yet he once observed in his last days that he wondered that he still had means to remember in gifts the causes he loved. One of the Iowa Band who lived at that time in Oskaloosa sends the following incident: — " While confined to his room in his last sickness, he thought it was time to contribute his annual mite to the A. B. C. F. M. But as nothing was done as yet in the church regarding its annual donation, he became some- what impatient at the delay. He therefore sent his monejr as a private gift. A few weeks after, the tirne^ 1 Letter of L. Bull, Esq. CHARACTERISTICS. 323 for the annual church collection arrived. But in the collection was another ten dollars from Father Turner. He had forgotten transmitting the same amount by letter to Boston. I believe he enjoyed the mistake more than the secretaries of the Board could have done, had they known it." * In declining days he was interested especially in what a Unitarian writer says of Christ's emptying himself and his self-abnegation to elevate and bless others. " This is what I need," he adds. It seemed to those who best knew his unsparing life that he longed most for attain- ments in the very directions in which he had made most, and just there was least satisfied with himself. " The ruling motive in his life was the love of Christ. He had a constant sense of the priceless worth of the soul, and of the great sacrifice which Christ had made for its salvation, and it was his joy to spend and be spent in helping onward the cause of his Master." The writer of these words once said of him : " I never knew him to say or do any thing that betrayed selfishness." He showed himself a man for that early time and for the example and work it demanded in that his great goodness of heart did not run into goodishness, and his lenity toward evil was not laxity. His forbearance could readily be abused. The law of kindness was on his lips, and he was slow to speak of any one unless he could speak well : but his judgments of unworthiness and wrong were incisive on occasion. In the retirement of his old age he observed that if he were to live his minis- terial life over again he would make " more use of love ; " but the weak sentiment commonly signified by such expressions was not his ; and it is not to be believed that his kindness of treatment would have sacrificed justice 1 Rev. D. Lane, d.d., Letter. 324 ASA TUBNEB. or principle, or conscience have given way to love. He could always be counted on to resist local evil. Church discipline in his day was not only maintained in his own church, but encouraged elsewhere. He thoroughly be- lieved in the law of Christ's house as a moral barrier. It would have been very idle for a slave-holder, a distiller, a brewer, a saloon-keeper, — as well as for an intemperate man, — to ask admission to Christian communion at Denmark. With all his genial charitableness, he thor- oughly believed in dividing lines, and in maintaining them intact. His keen judgment of one who misrepresented the West was : u If he has any religion, it is of that charitable character which will allow men to go to heaven without repentance and faith." In his earliest work he found reason to think that some had given " too much ground to the enemies " of the truth. u They have feared to proclaim the humbling truth because is so powerful." He once wrote concerning a class-mate : " His love of originality was so strong he must differ from every one else. Jacksonville was originally a very muddy place — very difficult to get from house to house. Supposing there were good sidewalks where the people walked, and would go in the middle of the street [at the foot of the hill] over boot-tops in mud, rather than walk where other people did. was very much beloved in . His influence was great in the church and in the region. I did not think it was always good. Many of his imita- tors did not have his mind. Mr. Moody's visit was a great blessing to the region. It brought men back from the word of man to the Word of God." Of his own preaching, he once said to Principal Edson : " I have roamed over these prairies so long that I can not shut myself up in my study to write sermons. The CHARACTEBISTICS. 325 people must bear with it as well as they can." But when the sermon seemed to him inadequate, they were richly repaid for attendance by the devout and tender spirit of the prayers, by the graciousness of his personality and of his spirit in the services. , A friend writes that he met in Nebraska in 1866 a thoroughly irreligious young man, who admitted that " with all his scoffing at, derision of, and contempt for. the views and the religion of Denmark people, there were two persons there [he was a former resident] whose feelings he never wished to hurt. One of these was Parson Turner." This deference was due, adds my correspond- ent, especially to " the deep sincerity with which the patriarch uttered his religious views." He keenly felt the difference between the Christian spirit and that of politics. At one time an election debate by politicians from abroad occurred in the town, marked by acrimony and loud personal abuse, to which the air of Denmark was unaccustomed. It was Saturday evening. The text next morning was 1 Peter 1 : 22 : "See that ye love one another with a pure heart fer- vently ; " and the first sentence of the sermon was : " Politicians, my friends, do not love one another with a pure heart fervently ! " This was certainly a portion in due season. The absence of religion in things religious always called out his disapprobation. He once said of a sermon we had heard together : " There was n't grace enough in it to convert a rat." Religious papers were at times discussed in the General Association, with reference to their use- fulness in our frontier churches. On one occasion when one had been largely commented on by a number of speakers with much earnestness, at the close Father Turner quietly said : " The only objection I have to 326 ASA TURNER. it as a religious weekly is that there is n't a mite of re- ligion now in it." He passed one winter in New England, and met on Monday mornings with city ministers. At the close of his visit, two Mondays were consumed in discussing in essays ideas of atonement in ancient classi- cal writers. It was very tiresome to him, and he was the last called upon the second Monday to speak. " Brethren," he said, " I have listened to this long debate, pro and con, with pain. Why should I go to any old heathen for my views of the mediation of the Lord Jesus Christ ? " There was sometimes a quaint directness and simplicity in action, as well as a primitive incisiveness of speech, about him. Other things besides learned speculation at the East displeased the Illinois and Iowa pioneer. Once at Templeton he suggested, on reading a second hymn, that instrumental interludes could be dispensed with to edification, and at the Lord's Supper passed the bread left for the pastor and himself across the table to a vener- able member of the church in front whom he recognized. A church choir and persons careful of church punctilios would certainly have objections of taste to these things. It was pleasant to his younger brethren always to allow his sometimes abrupt yet ever patriarchal manners at meetings of Association. Very enjoyable were the " short sermons ' he sometimes gave to the brethren, and in turn to the sisters, in the last years of his attendance. The resolutions we sometimes passed on tobacco called out his good-humored bantering. From childhood he had been accustomed to the use of it on the farm by his older relatives, and by village pastors even of that time. Once as we were about adjourning he arrested us by saying, " I notice, brethren, you have not passed your usual reso- lutions against tobacco. I told you last year that I should use the weed a little all the same. But I have had an CHARACTERISTICS. 327 experience. There came a time when it had to be decided whether tobacco was master or Asa Turner. I put my foot down and said : * Asa Turner shall be master here.' But you'd better believe, brethren, I had a time of it ! " The close and warm ties uniting the household in the Denmark parsonage were observed of all. " His children knew," writes one of the eldest, " that if we needed any thing, and it were possible to get it, we should receive it, though it were a luxury ; and if we had done wrong, we feared more the sorrow he felt than any punishment that could fall on us." He recognized the perfect equality of man and woman in his home. "In my earliest years I remember his hand on my head, — before I was four and a half years old, — and his saying, as he stroked my curls : 1 My daughter is going to be one of the best teachers in the United States. I wish she could preach, too.' ' " He knew I inherited my mother's hatred of speaking or doing any thing else in public." "He rarely used the word obey in the marriage ceremony. i If women did n't wish to obey, you could n't make them,' adding, with that merry twinkle in his eye, ■ I don't know as a man ought to be obliged — if he hasn't common-sense enough to secure the obedience through love.' His love for my mother was idolatrous, and yet not sinful ; and such was his happiness in family life that he thought every one should marry. " You remember how father loved a joke. You do not know that if one of his children played a joke on him, or succeeded in giving him a keen, witty reply, he enjoyed it better even than from friends." He often brought a smile by what seemed like humor, but was, instead, a kindly shrewdness. He had wit and mother-wit. Too serious a man to give way to extended 328 ASA TUENEB. pleasantries, the Yankee acuteness of his speech often gave it a flavor as agreeable as Attic salt. 1 " The analysis of his sermons would show," says Dr. Lane, " that he concentrated his thoughts on two objects : the conversion of men ; higher personal attainments and greater activity in the churches." " In times of religious interest he often had great power over the consciences and convictions of his audi- ences. He once preached a sermon in Keosauqua on the first and great command. The subject was the adaptation of the law of love to promote the ■ highest happiness of men and of the universe.' There were lawyers, county officers, and the most intellectual portion of the city among his hearers. The arguments were, for the most part, by simple illustrations, addressed to the conscious- ness and observation of all present. Every eye was fixed upon him from the beginning to the end of his discourse. One lawyer, afterwards a federal judge and a United States senator, went into that Sabbath morning meeting a careless man as to religion. During the sermon he was so impressed by the thoughts presented that he yielded himself to* the Author of that law, so beneficent in its design and so perfectly adapted not only to secure the happiness of all created intelligences, but also to remind them of their personal obligations to the God of such legal wisdom and evident goodness. He went out of that gathering a Christian man ; that night he erected a family altar, and afterwards with his wife became a member of my church." 2 Some of the most useful things he said, in his later days especially, were short and pithy and dropped in prayer-meetings, in the house, or in the field. Stopping 1 The first head of a sermon addressed to ministers' wives was : " I. Dear Sisters, Don't tell your husbands every thing that is going on in the church." 2 Dr. D. Lane, Letter. CHARACTERISTICS. 329 over night once with a good deacon not far from the Des Moines River he found small prospect of wheat and corn. The deacon-farmer talked discouragingly if not complain- ingly. Father Turner caught the tone of a want of trust and looked at him a moment, " the earnestness of his soul so lighting up his eyes that the deacon felt that in some way he had been guilty of wronging God," and then said : " Dear brother, have you not yet learned that God does all things in love ? ' "A lesson for a life-time," said the hearer to his young pastor. 1 " During the Rebellion when corn had gone up to one dollar a bushel, a substantial farmer who had raised a large crop declined to sell any of it to one of his poorer brethren, holding it for a rise. The poor brother went with a complaint to Father Turner, who thereupon wrote down a verse of Scripture, and affixing his own name to the paper, gave it to the complainant to hand to the farmer. Upon receiving the paper, the farmer manifested great excitement, was ' hopping mad ' for a few days, and went about his home and barn ejaculating to himself, k Asa Turner ! Asa Turner ! ' But many days did not pass until he sent word to his less favored brother to come for a load of corn at fifty cents a bushel." 2 Without familiarity with "the logic of the schools" (which he always had too much good sense to denounce) his pat way of putting things often reminded one of it. In a New England state, at an association of ministers, he once heard the statement from a minister that the people of the West were "all a gang of speculators and thieves. He was out in Illinois, and all were so whom he saw. As I took my leave of the association," adds Father Turner, "I said that I should tell our i Letter of Rev. C. C Harrah. 8 Dr. Salter, Letter. 330 ASA TURNER. friends at the West that every man in New Hampshire was a Congregational minister, for, at such a day, in such a house, in that state, all present were." His home ways were unique enough to make lasting impressions. A young man led to the village by interest in one of the excellent young ladies appeared at prayer- meeting with a deacon. Supposing him to be a younger brother of the deacon, Father Turner twice called on him by his supposed name to lead in prayer. No response. After other exercises, pointing his index finger that way, he said : " Will that brother be good enough to lead us in prayer, whoever he is ! ' A few days after, having learned the young man's errand, on meeting him socially he remarked : " We have lost many of the lambs of our flock of late — are you sure you are here on lawful business ? ' His shrewd judgments of men were often not a little amusing. To one charged with the task of placing young ministers he wrote : — " Brother wants a larger place than nature has made him to fill. Brother is out of a place, and my fear is that he always will be out of that to which God calls him so long as he remains in the ministry. He is a good man, but his upper story is not high enough for a Western minister. If you can find him a place among Eastern people where he can read his sermons, he will do much better than at and vicinity, where they want men to preach by inspiration." Along with this should be taken what he said of himself at the Association Semi-centennial. He came to a village of " two rude shanties, with three other tenements within the radius of a mile. Two circumstances decided my choice : first, to find a place small enough for me, and second, to make a place in which I could educate my children. I failed in the first, but not in the second." CHARACTEBISTICS. 331 He wrote a few years later : " I look upon my past life in a great measure as a failure, clouded with so much unbelief and ignorance ; and I feel that in all places where I have been I have been an unprofitable servant." His humility, exceeding great, and his low estimate of what he had been and had done were among the most distinct things in the mellowing days of age. The first thing he said on my calling upon him one day was : " I have been looking over my past life as a Christian and a minister, and I find that I have made no attainments and accomplished nothing ; absolutely nothing." It would have been the idlest of answers to such a father in Israel to praise him to his face. It would have collided with the work of divine grace in him. It would have been no comfort. The subsequent conversation showed that he had been advancing largely in his estimate of what a follower of Christ should become and should do in his work. The comparison this brought with it was inevi- table, and was one Jonathan Edwards would have made. A few years before, he wrote another minister : M It is not Unitarians alone who are ignorant of Christ. Alas ! that I have such feeble conceptions of his character and work, such faint and cold love to him. Flesh and blood will not reveal Christ to man, nor any merely biblical studies. The same that revealed Christ in Saul is essential now, and none of us can say that Jesus is the Christ but by the Holy Ghost." His favorite hymn was that of Dr. Watts, beginning, — " Great God! how infinite art thou! What worthless worms are we I " XXXVIII. SOME HEAKTFELT TRIBUTES. By an arrangement made years before, the patriarch's ministerial neighbor of longest continuance, Rev. William Salter, d.d., preached his funeral sermon at Oskaloosa, December 16, 1885. He said : — "Like one and another of the patriarchs, prophets, and apostles, we may say of him -that he walked with God, as Eiioch; that he was the friend of God, as Abraham ; that he was the servant of the Lord, as Moses; that he served his own generation by the will of God, as David ; that he was a good man, and full of the Holy Spirit and of faith, as Barnabas ; that he fought a good fight, that he finished his course, that he kept the faith, as Paul. We honor the Lord, we magnify his salvation when we pay a merited tribute to one of his servants, who ascribed to divine grace all the good which he possessed and all the good which he accomplished. " Few have a higher sense of the divine power and glory, or of the majestic sweetness that sits enthroned upon the Saviour's brow. In love and devotion he was a pupil of Saint John, and like the bosom disciple ; in faith and hope and courage, he was a pupil of Saint Paul, and like the apostle of the Gentiles. I remember at one period in his pastorate that he was absorbed in the prophecies of Isaiah, while preaching a course of sermons from them. The magnanimity of spirit and largeness of view exhibited by that prophet, the indignation at oppression and greed, at hypocrisy and cant, the portrait of the Man of Sorrows and acquainted with grief, the promised conversion of the Gentiles, touched the sympathies of his nature ; and I have thought of him as a pupil of Isaiah and like the fifth evangelist." Rev. Julius A. Reed observed that he was a far greater man than many whom the world calls great. Doctors SOME HEARTFELT TRIBUTES. 333 Robbins and Adams and Prof. H. K. Edson shared in the services. His pastor, Rev. J. E. Snowden, published a sketch of his life in which he testified that u as a member of the church he was as faithful as he was in the pastorate. He grew in Christian character each day. His mind was progressive. He saw far into the future. He looked on every thing as having to do with the Redeemer's kingdom. It is said of him by one of his children, 4 1 never heard father complain of his circumstances.' The pastor closed with the words of another, who knew the venerable man unusually well : — " Father Turner was a character of a very unique, noble, and delightful sort. Strong mother-wit, quick and keen perception, unfaltering loyalty to truth and right, fearlessness, shrewd judg- ment of men and things, practical benevolence, tender, child-like piety, and unquestioning faith united in him. Entering college at twenty-four, he was always older than those he acted with, and was looked up to for wise counsel and prompt, decisive action. He could lead without ambition or exciting the jealousy of others. His hope and fortitude never failed in doubtful situations of the good old cause or dark days. Multitudes bless his memory." The academy trustees at their next annual meeting, and the college trustees at theirs, fitly noticed the death of the oldest of the founders. The former recorded their appreciation of " his great and invaluable services in planting the institution, and in sustaining it through the labors and struggles of its early history." They testified to " his fervor and devotion in the cause of Christian education, his sagacity, his zeal, his generosity, his self-sacrifice, his fidelity to all the trusts of life," and urged the completion of an academy endowment fund bearing his name. The Denmark Association of churches and ministers set forth "the esteem and veneration cherished for his 334 ASA TUBNEB. character and memory." As home missionary and super- intendent of missions, " he carried saving health far and wide among the infant settlements. He was a leader in moral and social reforms. The evening of his days was rich in patriarchal grace and blessing, until in age and weariness he was gathered to his fathers." "The Spirit of the Lord rested upon him, the spirit of wisdom and understanding, the spirit of counsel and might, the spirit of knowledge and of the fear of the Lord." Rev. Julius A. Reed was requested to prepare a paper " containing reminiscences of his life and labors," and satisfaction was expressed "that a memoir is to be pre- pared by President Magoun." The General Association of Iowa adopted a minute touching his connection with the history of Iowa Con- gregationalism and his noble personal character. "A Christian experience deep and thorough, formed under peculiar obstacles in youth, developed into an unwearied evangelism ; an industrious and conscientious use of his time, energies, and means for the salvation of men ; an ever-vigilant care of the churches among which he labored; a constant interest in the spread of the gospel every-where ; and a notable courage in bearing reproach and facing danger for the cause of truth and righteousness. . . . No form of human improvement too obscure, nor its objects too despised, to escape his notice or be excluded from his prayers. . . . He saw all habitually, devoutly in relation to the kingdom of Christ. . . . The acuteness of his mind ; his genial and incisive mother-wit ; the kindly interest that he took in all whom he could benefit — especially all of the household of faith ; his benign and gracious patriarchal manners as age wore on ; his utter lack of self-seeking ; his constant benefi- cence, won him, without effort of his own, the dear SOME HEABTFELT TRIBUTES. 335 esteem and fraternal and filial love of Christians and ministers of Christ beyond all denominational lines. And reverence for his great and thorough nobleness, simplicity, and truth of character, and his consecrated life, deepened in all who knew him to the end." APPENDIX. DENOMINATIONS AND CHRISTIAN UNITY. It was certain that one who was so thoroughly a New England Congregationalist would find his Iowa ecclesias- tical relations free and more to his mind than those which he first assumed in Illinois. It was quite as certain that his Christian charity and love of unity would have more scope. As his spirit and line of action are, in this, repre- sentative of Iowa pioneers, some facts are here brought together exhibiting him as an Iowa Congregationalist. He hardly needed to remark to an Eastern assembly : "I am known at the West as a Congregationalist, and I do not think I shall be known as any thing else." Yet few men had a broader or sweeter charity for all the followers of Christ; few have been more willing to be practically identified with good men from whom in much he strenuously differed. Five ' years after the beginnings at Denmark, the question of ecclesiastical union with Presbyterians on the plan of the General and District Conventions of Wisconsin was seriously considered in the infant Iowa Association. It was brought up at the semi-annual meeting, May 19, 1842. "Feeling deeply the importance of a union of plan and action, and being desirous of entering into some proper bond of union," the Association chose Messrs. Turner, Gaylord, and Burnham a committee "to corre- spond with the Presbyterian ministers and churches composing the Des Moines Presbytery, and invite them to unite in convention to discuss and recommend a plan DENOMINATIONS AND CHBISTIAN UNITY. 337 of union." At the annual meeting, October 6, this committee reported their duty performed, and were dis- charged. There is no record how the advances of the Congregationalists were received. But a year later at the annual meeting, September 14, 1843, an elaborate Constitution for a General Convention, and one for District Conventions were adopted. The local churches were to " adopt either the Presbyterian or Congregational mode of government, and be represented at the meetings of the convention by one delegate." (The Constitution of the Association gave each Congregational church " two or more," but of these only one a voter " in cases of disci- pline.") Records of the Presbyterian churches to be reviewed by District Conventions, and appeals allowed to them from Presbyterian " sessions," and from them to the General Convention — " Congregational ministers and delegates not required or expected to act in such appeals." The general body was to be " a bond of union, peace, and mutual confidence among [the] churches, and take meas- ures for the promotion of the benevolent objects of the day." Some of its features were Congregational ; others, Presbyterian. Article IX read thus : " Considering the importance of harmony in the Christian Church, and the duty of all its ministers and members to unite in promot- ing the interests of the Redeemer's kingdom, and sympa- thizing more particularly with our brethren of the Presby- terian and Congregational churches in the United States, this Convention will hold correspondence with their general ecclesiastical bodies as far as practicable." A number of Presbyterians, ministers and laymen, were present when these constitutions were adopted, and took part in the other proceedings. Rev. Reuben Gaylord and Rev. W. W. Woods (Presbyterian) were made a com- mittee "to call a general convention, after the [Des 338 ASA TUBNEB. Moines] Presbytery shall have acted upon the subject." At the annual meeting of Association at Brighton, Octo- ber 3, 1844, — more than two years after the subject was first mooted, — Mr. Gaylord, " from the joint committee appointed to call a convention of this Association and the Des Moines Presbytery, reported that no information of any action by the Presbytery on the plan of union pro- posed by the Association had been received. Report adopted." Mr. Turner and others were heartily in favor of this movement, but no further mention of it appears in any records. The hope was peace in united work. Expecting that something would come of it in 1842, the Denmark church, on his suggestion, appointed a delegate to the pro- posed convention, but the committee of which he was chairman never proceeded far enough to call it together. The convention — of which there are no known minutes — seems to have been held at Yellow Springs (Kossuth), Father Turner in the chair. The Association committee of 1842, Messrs. Turner, Gaylord, and Burnham, had invited the Presbytery of Des Moines — a body two years younger; and a later committee (1843), Messrs. Turner, Woods (Presbyterian), Burnham, and Boal 1 (Presby- terian), had reported to the Association general and district convention constitutions. 2 One of the Presby- terians present, Rev. Adam L. Rankin, says : " The Con- gregational brethren were a unit for a union of some kind; the Presbyterians were a tie." Father Turner opened by explaining the Wisconsin plan, and urging it for substance. Other Congregationalists and Rev. William C. Rankin, Presbyterian, followed. One Presby- terian, Rev. W. W. Woods, m.d., of Iowa City, was unde- 1 Of Dayton Presbytery, Ohio. Only a short time in Iowa. 2 See Early Minutes, 1840-45 (printed 1888), pp. 19-22. DENOMINATIONS AND CHBISTIAN UNITY. 339 cided. Rev. A. L. Rankin says : " I was hostile to any plan ; had grown up in the midst of the Old School and New School controversy, and came to the conclusion, in Lane Seminary, that if there never had existed a Plan of Union the bitter controversies and jealousies, on the one hand, which resulted in the absorption by Presbytery of the Congregational churches of Western New York and the Western Reserve, and, on the other, the division of the Presbyterian Church, would not have occurred. Rev. J. A. Clark was opposed (but unwilling to lead off). I was comparatively a boy, with a boyish appearance, 1 and with great reluctance followed my uncle, and labored to show that in every instance plans of union resulted in damage to both parties. Rev. W. C. Rankin urged me to desist, as it would be a damage which a young man like myself could not afford to suffer. The vote of the Presbyterians was three to one in opposition. So we did not unite, and the convention adjourned." The Association committee reported no response from the Presbytery. " I have always rejoiced and thanked God," adds Rev. A. L. Rankin, " that I was permitted to defeat it. At one of the triennial conventions in Chicago [later], Father Turner most heartily thanked me." Meantime he was shaping the religious future about him in the way of practical Christian comity and equity. Acting for the American Home Missionary Society, he introduced both Presbyterian and Congregational minis- 1 He disclaims having been influenced by zeal for Presbyterianism. He was born in Jonesboro', Tenn., March, 1816 (now seventy-three years old), son of Rev. John Rankin, long of Ripley, Ohio; graduated from Ripley College — a state institution, for many years extinct — and from Lane Seminary; home mis- sionary at Keosauqua, 1841; returned to Ohio, 1843; in pioneer work as a reform Presbyterian ten years; in Illinois, 1856, working along railroad lines, forming churches opposed to connection with slavery; chaplain one hundred and thirteenth regiment, Illinois infantry, 1862-65; at Memphis, Tenn., till 1873; home missionary since in California, largely at his own expense, and resides at San Francisco. Ecclesiastically since 1856 he has been a Cougregationalist. 340 ASA TUBNEB. ters, when any were to be obtained. He scrupulously respected the preferences of the people, and where a minister was wanted duly notified the society at New York what sort of one, ecclesiastically, was preferred. His own account of this exploring and supervising work is as follows : — "I was the first home missionary agent for the Congre- gationalists. The agents that preceded me acted on this plan — to give a Congregational minister to a Presbyte- rian church and vice versa. I told the people where I went that I was a Congregationalist — they had a right to be so, if they chose. The Home Missionary Society would aid either." His sense of impartiality was doubtless quickened and confirmed by some of his experiences. He relates one that occurred when he was in Quincy : — "I was sent for by Brothers Gale [Rev. George W., founder of Galesburg] and Miter [Rev. John J., " after- wards of Milwaukee and Beaver Dam, Wis."] to go to Monmouth to form a Congregational church. I went a hundred miles in very bad going. I inquired of the ministers who were there at the time attending Presby- tery, if it was best to form a church. They said they thought it was, and a church was formed. About three months after I was passing through the place and asked how they were getting along. ' Oh,' they said, ' we Ve become Presbyterians, because they told us we must, to secure aid from the A. H. M. S.' " In the same connection in his autobiography, Mr. Turner gives some unique Iowa experiences : — " I was sent for to organize a church in Iowa City. I sent word that I would be there in two or three weeks. In due time I went. In the meantime Brother Bell, a Presbyterian minister, taking Brother A. L , went DENOMINATIONS AND CHRISTIAN UNITY. 341 and preached to them. Brother Bell told them that if they would be Presbyterians they could secure Brother L for their minister. But Brother L fell from Presbyterian isrn before long, and did not go there. " The minister at Muscatine sent word to me that he would get ahead of me, for he would make all the male members ruling elders ! After he left I went up to Muscatine to see them. They called a meeting of the members of the church. I went in and was introduced to each one as a ■ ruling elder,' till I came to the oldest, Brother Plin}' Fay. When I began to laugh, he said, 1 / am the only private. ' " This was under the Plan of Union. The plan of mixed conventions in Iowa, which Mr. Turner did his part to inaugurate, might perhaps have carried out the principles of the former with more fairness. But he had no thought of renouncing his honest and mature preferences. In a speech before the National Council (1865) at Boston, he said : — " I have been an advocate for this polity " (that of New England) " a great many years. I was its advocate, I believe, before the fathers in Massachusetts were — when they ignored it. I have conversed with a great many men upon the subject in times past, and I do not recollect a single instance in which the polity was not approved by those before whom it was laid." He was wont to say that he had no fear in a new church of a fair majority vote, as to the form of government which should be adopted. But he never went into mourning when another form than that of his own choice was preferred, or blamed those who preferred it. In his ripe old age, approaching his eightieth birthday, his conclusions as to forming churches were set down in these words : — 342 ASA TUBNER. • " Our Puritan fathers formed the civil government upon the ecclesiastical. The voice of the people was the supreme law. Every town meeting managed its own concerns by popular vote ; they taxed themselves, and appropriated money as the popular vote directed. School and church were considered indispensable to the welfare of society. Their great idea was self-government, under God, in Church and State. If it is asked why the members of Congregational churches do not live more in accordance with their principles ? — why did not the chil- dren of Israel live more in accordance with the divine pattern? — the answer is, Unbelief in the will of God expressed through Moses. Multitudes [of Congrega- tionalists] fail through ignorance. The great difficulty is that ministers have failed to instruct them according to Deut. 6 : 6, 7. I feel that I have failed to comply with this command, and I think that almost universally the ministers in New England failed. Within the last thirty years there has been a revival of interest in the polity of our fathers." He had none of the dogmatism which creates a secta- rian spirit. His liberality in the Quincy organization as to one article common to the two denominations has been noted. On other points he loyally followed the " D wight Professor " at Yale, both where he agreed and probably where he disagreed with Presbyterian teachings. At an early day in Illinois he had described a self-taught minister of vigorous mind and warm heart, a native Illinoisan who afterwards appeared in Northern Iowa, who had " obtained his theology from the Bible." In Missouri licensure of this minister had been objected to because he did not adopt limited atonement or moral inability. His Quincy yoke-fellow found that their coincidence of views "con- firmed him in our New England theology." DENOMINATIONS AND CHRISTIAN UNITY. 343 In a private letter of his, February, 1875, to Dr. Salter, his neighbor for twenty-six years, he said : " The Script- ures teach me that Christ was God manifest in the flesh. And while no definite knowledge of him is necessary to salvation, it seems abhorrent to look upon him as depend- ent. I was raised a Unitarian, and the fruits [of the system] were not such as to commend it to my judgment now. Still, I have always been disposed to look with hope on those who were striving to be what they should be." That this generous Christian spirit should subject him to misrepresentation touched his native humor at times. It never ruffled him. In his Albany speech he observed : "I have labored with Presbyterians more than with Congregationalists. There is a class [of the former] with whom I can labor with all my soul." (" Old School " men.) " I tell them I know they are not entirely Orthodox, but I can fellowship them truly." Another neighbor, Dr. Daniel Lane, says of his views on both denominational matters : " In theology and church polity his ultimate appeal was the Word of God. His theology was like that of Professors Park and Phelps, not that which compromises the doctrines of inspiration, atonement, and eschatology." " In church government he had no reverence for cen- tralized politics or any antiquities older or younger than principles laid down by Christ and the writers of the New Testament." After he had laid down his active work he wrote Presi- dent Sturtevant, in his free, unsectarian way : — " There are many things about Methodism I can't approve. But it sends men into the field and keeps them there better than [our] voluntary system does, with the present degree of piety and self-denial. What shall we 344 ASA TURNER. say? That our Lord mistook in establishing the voluntary system, and that he can work through bishops and presid- ing elders better than he could through the brotherhood t Or that the difficulty is in the want of consecration in the brotherhood, and that our system — Congregationalism — if imbued with the Spirit from on high would have even greater power than any man-made system ? This is my belief. The conclusion I come to is — the very best of us have but little piety, little love to God and men. I trust the time will come when the Bible administration of the church will be more efficient than any other, God's children being left to work under our Master Christ, and to go out into the lanes and highways. " It was his habit to ascribe the growth of Congrega- tionalism in Iowa to his early contemporaries — whom circumstances had trained to promote it — and to the unexpected accession from Andover. The mixed mem- bership of the early churches prepared for it. His own pastoral charge, in the fifties, embraced persons from seven different sects ; the DeWitt church was formed with seven members from four states of the Union and five denominations ; that of Cedar Falls had eighteen original members from nine different denominations. He instructed and surprised the Albany Convention of 1852 by showing how Christians of different antecedents, led, in a new town, to unite for their own good and that of their families and neighbors, found themselves agreeing on the simple plan of our fathers in church order, " and behold they are Congregationalists ! We have many churches formed in this way. ... I never lay a straw in the way of the organization of a Presbyterian church, and I ask them to allow me the same freedom." His spirit in this was not exceptional among Iowa Congregationalists. At its thirteenth annual meeting, in June, 1852, the DENOMINATIONS AND CHRISTIAN UNITY. 345 General Association passed unanimously four resolutions affirming its unity with the Presbyterians "in doctrine and efforts to promote the cause of Christ " ; recommend- ing "a union of the members of both denominations in one church in places where there ought to be only one organization " ; declaring the decision of the majority upon the form of church government "the only proper ground of union in such cases " ; and " 4. That this is the principle upon which we have ever acted, and to which we are willing to pledge ourselves to our Presbyterian brethren for the future, whether we act unitedly or separately in the work of missions." UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY BERKELEY Return to desk from which borrowed. This book is DUE on the last date stamped below. AUG 5 1974 1 4 gEC'D C SEP 2 2 1979 rttc. „.K. MAR 2 8 RC DEPT MAY I'M 7 9 1979 INTERLIBRARY LOAN JAN 2 9 1982 UNIV. OF CALIF.. BERK LD 21-100m-9,'48(B399sl6)476 ' ^ H-