NOVEMBER REPORT TO THE EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE.
REV. J. E. ROY, D. D.
On the day after the election, I left my home at Atlanta to attend in Memphis the Central South Conference and the Council for the installation of a pastor, Mr. B. A. Imes, of Oberlin Seminary. In the Conference I drew up the memorial which was presented to the National Council in behalf of a re-statement of our Creed and Catechism, urging the peculiar need of our Southern work, and preached on the Lord’s day, once in our Second church and once in the Second Presbyterian, lately that of Dr. Boggs. As moderator of the installing council, I led in the examination and delivered the charge to the people. Both bodies I reported daily in the Memphis Appeal; wrote them up in a “Pilgrim” letter to the Congregationalist, and gave their items to the Advance and Christian Union.
As a delegate from Georgia in the National Council at St. Louis, your field superintendent nominated as assistant moderator Rev. J. D. Smith (colored), of Alabama, who was elected on the first ballot, and secured the appointment of Rev. Drs. Sturtevant and Goodell to offer fellowship to the Presbyterian General Assembly South, hoping for some incidental benefit to our work.
At Dr. Strieby’s request I went on with him to Kansas for the purpose of initiating our Refugee mission, for which a lot was bought and a house contracted for at Topeka.
Thence I went down to Paris, in Texas, to assist in the ordination of two of our Talladega men, J. W. Roberts as pastor in that city, and J. W. Strong to take the pastorate in Corpus Christi. Spending five days there, I preached for our church in Paris, also for the white Congregational church which I had organized six years ago, planned for a new church site and building, and visited and preached for our country church at Pattonville, twelve miles out, arranging for the supply of this and two other little churches by local preachers.
At Little Rock, Ark., I explored and found the fit material for a Congregational church to be organized as soon as we can have the money. In time we must have for Arkansas one of our first-class institutions at this beautiful capital, which has seven or eight thousand colored people, and which is the centre of a large population of Freedmen.
In three days, at Tougaloo, I inspected the Institution; counselled with the managers as to building schemes; lectured on “How to make money,—by labor, economy, education, investment;” and delivered a missionary address and a sermon, being permitted to rejoice that day with the teacher in the conversion of one of their most interesting young men.
The tour, which was one of 2,804 miles, occupied a month. The cost of travel was $88.15, unusually large, even for so long a trip, as I had to use the two great roads leading to Texas, which decline the usual ministerial courtesies. With five nights of riding, and only two of those in sleeping cars, with a steady push in travel and in work, it was a wearying tour. The postage of the month, $4.55, shows the amount of correspondence kept up along the way with the “field.”
In contrast with the two railroads referred to, I wish to report that I have in hand the annual half-fare permits of twenty-eight railroad companies in the South, nearly all that I have occasion to use, besides an annual free pass, held now for two years, on Senator Joseph E. Brown’s road from Atlanta to Chattanooga, which I use a great deal. Having received marked and unvarying courtesy from the officials of all of these companies (and, indeed, from everybody South as yet, without exception), I count it a testimony to the recognized position of the American Missionary Association in the South that these favors have been granted so generally and so cheerfully.