The Making of a Country Parish: A Story

by Harlow S. Mills

THE HISTORICAL SETTING OF THE STORY

The story of New England with the Pilgrims left out could be neither understood nor appreciated. We must know something about those sturdy, conscientious men and women who became exiles and crossed the stormy Atlantic that they might have “freedom to worship God.” We must understand something about the barren and the wintry coast that received them, something of their struggles and sufferings, their aims and aspirations, if we would know the history of that civilization that they founded, or get a true conception of the experiment in democracy that they so successfully wrought out.

The story that is about to be told had its Pilgrims. To leave them out would be to spoil the story. It cannot be understood without knowing something of their heroic spirit, their sincere devotion, and the manner in which they permanently impressed their ideas and their personality upon the community which they founded and the institutions which they planted. Some account of its historical setting will be necessary in order to make this story of country evangelization complete.

The half century between 1825 and 1875 witnessed the most remarkable educational movement that our country has ever seen. It was the era of college planting. During that period a line of Christian colleges was projected from New York to California, many of which have been developed and stand to-day as monuments to the zeal and foresight of that remarkable generation of nation builders. The value of their work, and its influence for good upon the people and the institutions of the most populous, the wealthiest, and the most influential section of our country cannot be estimated.

In 1858 a company of people from northern Ohio, who had lighted their torch of religious and educational enthusiasm at the flame of Oberlin, came into the vast wilderness of northern Michigan with the purpose of planting there Christian institutions. They were high-minded, sturdy people, with strong religious convictions. The Pilgrims did not bring to the New England coast a truer motive or a purer purpose. They were willing to put into the enterprise their lives and their fortunes. They stamped the new community that they founded with the impress of their ideals, and that stamp has persisted.

These modern Pilgrims repeated with some modification the experiences of their New England prototypes. After a long and stormy voyage on the Great Lakes they landed in the late autumn on an inhospitable coast, built them some rough shanties that their descendants would not consider worthy to shelter their cattle, and there they passed a severe winter. They explored the northwestern Michigan woods, and finally, with a strange indifference to the importance of a railway to the development of a town, they lighted upon a level plateau on the top of a high hill, two hundred feet above the placid waters of beautiful Lake Crystal, and eight miles from Lake Michigan, and there they pitched their tents. Like Abraham, their first work after entering the Promised Land was to build an altar to Jehovah, and like him and their New England ancestors, they built it on the highest elevation that they could find. One of the first things they did was to select a site for a church and for a school, and, standing under the tall maples and beeches, with hymn and prayer, to dedicate that high hilltop to the cause of Christian education.

The church that they planted, the first in all the Grand Traverse region, celebrated the fiftieth anniversary of its organization in 1910. It has now a membership of about three hundred, and is the center of the religious and social life, not only of the immediate community but also of the territory known as “The Larger Parish,” twelve miles long and ten miles wide. It has been the mother of churches, and now stands encircled by a number of younger organizations that are growing strong and sturdy under its cherishing influence.

Benzonia, the village that they founded, never became the populous center that they hoped it would be. There are now but about four hundred people living on the hilltop, and nearly as many more in the village of Beulah, which, at the bottom of the hill nestles around the head of the Lake, half a mile away. The two villages of Benzonia and Beulah form one corporation, and contain together about seven hundred inhabitants. The school which they established is still doing business, though not exactly in the way that they anticipated. They thought to repeat the history of Oberlin by planting in the woods of northern Michigan an institution of learning such as the fathers planted in northern Ohio. But the conditions were very dissimilar. Oberlin was in the zone of quick settlement. Cities and towns soon sprang up all about it, and it became in a few years the center of a large population. But the northern Michigan region developed very slowly and it was a long time before there were enough people to maintain a college or to justify its presence. But from the first there was in operation a school of high order, and it performed a splendid service in those early years, doing the educational work for all that region, and supplying teachers for the public schools throughout a wide territory. It is now conducted as an Academy and is doing an excellent work, sending forth each year large classes of young people well prepared to enter any college or university in the country. The Academy has been maintained very largely by the gifts and sacrifices of the people of the community, and is an important factor of the work that is being wrought out in “The Larger Parish.”

The people of this community are unusually homogeneous. There are no Roman Catholics, few foreigners, and no colored people. They are hardworking and industrious, none of them possessing large wealth, and none of them being very poor. All are compelled to toil for their daily bread. There, if anywhere, it is possible to live “the simple life,” and in such healthful conditions the community life has developed. Though the presence of the Academy has been a means of culture and the center and inspirations of literary life, it is by no means true that all the people in the wide parish are well educated. A few miles from the village primitive and pioneer conditions are found, and there is no lack of genuine missionary ground.

The social life of this community is very satisfactory. There are no classes or cliques. The people mingle together freely on a common basis, and exemplify to an unusual degree the principle of brotherhood. There has never been a saloon in the community, and the people are for the most part steady-going and law-abiding. They are loyal to their home institutions, crowding the church on Sunday and taking a lively interest in all things that pertain to the welfare of the village and the surrounding country. They are dependent upon themselves for literary and musical entertainments—no shows or moving picture combinations ever come that way. But a good lecture course is maintained, and there are frequent musical and literary entertainments by the Academy and high school and by the people of the town; so there is no lack of the means of recreation, and that of a high order and of a helpful character.