Personal Recollections of Pardee Butler

by Pardee Butler

In May, 1867, my two-year-old brother, Ernest, was accidentally scalded. He lingered a week, then death claimed the youngest of the flock.

When the Central Branch Railroad was built the little town of Farmington was laid out, a mile to the northwest of father's house—Pardee being two miles to the southeast. Many of the original members of the Pardee Church had helped to organize the Pleasant Grove Church, six miles west. Father thought it would be wise to break up at Pardee., and move church and village to the railroad town, but some objected. Thinking that the rest would soon follow, he left Pardee, and organized a church of twenty-three members at Farmington, October 6, 1867. Bro. McCleery held a successful meeting here the next December, and preached once a month during the following year.

For several years much of father's time was given (gratuitously), in caring for this church and Sunday-school, and the church soon numbered a hundred members.

After the war many colored people came to Kansas, and a number of them settled in the neighborhood. They had heard of father, as a friend to the colored people, and some of them wanted to work for him. He frequently employed them, and usually found them faithful and efficient. They liked to work for him because he treated them as he treated white men. As there were not enough of them in the country places to form churches of their own, they attended our Sunday-schools and meetings. We were much surprised to find that some of our brethren objected to colored children being in the classes. One good old colored man, who had been a member of the church in Missouri, was much respected by the community. A white brother requested our deacon, W. J. May, a son of Caleb May, to ask this colored brother to take a back seat, and to pass the bread and wine to him last. Bro. May replied: "I shall do no such thing; as long as I am deacon in this church there shall be no respect of persons."

A colored man, who had been a servant in the family of one of the governors of Virginia, presented himself for membership. He was a neat, good-looking man, with pleasant manners, and had been a member of Col. Shaw's colored regiment, when they so valiantly stormed Fort Wagner. A white sister borrowed a pair of gloves, when she went up to give him the hand of fellowship, so that she "wouldn't have to touch a nigger's hand."

Father wanted to teach them, without giving undue offense, their Christian duty to the colored people. He preached a sermon on the parable of the Good Samaritan, telling how the Jews and Samaritans hated each other, and how Jesus taught in that parable that even the most despised of earth's races are our neighbors. He also told the story of Peter's vision at the house of Simon, and how God taught him not to call any man or nation of men common or unclean, but to carry the gospel to all nations. The nearest that he came to modern times, in that sermon, was the remark that the Jews despised the Samaritans as much as the Americans despised the Africans. He left them to make their own applications of the Bible teachings.

What an excitement it raised! Many said the colored people had to be turned out of the Sunday-school, or they would leave; and some did leave. In nearly all our churches father had to meet this prejudice, but he remained firm in his position, that in church and Sunday-school there should be neither white nor black, but all should have equal rights.

In the spring of 1869 father sold his timber land in Missouri, and paid the last of his debts. He had some money left, and the first thing he did was to go into a book store, and spend forty dollars for "Barnes' Notes," and "Motley's United Netherlands," and "History of the Dutch Republic." He remarked as he did so, "I have felt the need of these books for years, and this is the first money I could spare for them."

Men who had seen father working with tireless energy on his farm, or the plains, or "logging" in the timber, sometimes said: "He is craving to get rich."

He has often been misunderstood, but in no point more than this. I never knew a man who cared less for wealth than he. The one all-absorbing object of his life was to preach the gospel. But he had also resolved to have the means to pay his debts, and to have a home for his family.