METHODIST PIONEERS THINK OF PERU
November 16, 1952
Dear Footser: . . . I have, in a rather small way, suggested to Mutiny and Margaret that we try to spend from mid-January to about mid-April in Lima, Peru. . . There was an article in the Nov., 1952, Holiday telling about Peru and how cheap it was to live there. . . I realize how much of a handicap we would be under. As time goes on, I get a little deafer, and God knows I am too old to try to learn any Spanish. . . If we could rent a modern furnished house and get reliable servant(s), then I don't know but what I'd try it. I just don't like cold weather. At the same time, I don't want to get into any particularly tight place. The article in Holiday was very favorable, as you know it would be. But the real facts might be far, far different. If I were 30 years younger, and without any wife or family, I think now, I'd sure try it just for the hell of it, if for nothing else. I wouldn't under those circumstances stand back, or even be fearful. But as it is, it is different. What do you think about it?
Frank and I had a whale of a time last month going to Kansas, Okla., Texas, Miss. and Kentucky. You just don't know how high in Methodist circles us Durhams are. I'll tell you. I found it all out on this trip Frank and I took. Grandpappy, my grandpappy, Jacob Durham, came to Russellville from Perryville, Ky., in about 1828. About three miles east of Perryville, on the way to Danville, is what is known even now as the old Durham Farm. A man named Godbey now owns it. Old man. He was there when Mutiny and I went camping on that farm about 35 years ago. His mother was a Durham. Well, since we were there, the Pioneer Mothers or DAR or Methodists or somebody have erected a granite monument to my great, great grandpappy, one John Durham. He owned the farm, and in 1783 he organized the first Methodist Church—then called "Methodist Society"—west of the Allegheny Mountains. He built a log church on his farm about 300 feet from where the monument now stands. The marker says that, and the records in the First Methodist Church of Danville back it up. My great Uncle Milton Durham in the 1890's, put a stained glass window in said church, with a full size picture in colored glass of what they must have imagined John Durham looked like. But there it is, brass marker and all. Uncle Milton graduated from Old Asbury in 1844, I think it was. Grandpa Durham put him through college. I have seen him. He carried the cane for a few years prior to his death. He was tall, and the cane didn't reach the ground. He was the first Comptroller of the Currency the U.S. ever had. Grover Cleveland appointed him in the '80s.
Now what do you think of all that? And to think this Methodist
DePauw University some 50 odd years ago broke relations with me,
and the faculty gave me 24 hours to leave—23 of which I still
have coming to me.
Pappy
Pap's final reference above was to the university's intention to suspend him for organizing a fraternity dance during his student days. He beat them to the punch by switching to Indiana University to finish out his college years.