The Heroic Women of Early Indiana Methodism: An Address Delivered Before the Indiana Methodist Historical Society

by T. A. Goodwin

And what is true of these is true of the whole family of preachers' wives of that heroic period of Methodism. They were called to endure the greater hardships and to bear the greater burdens, and they bore them heroically. The husband in his rounds may sometimes have had to share with his people in their destitution, but, personally they shared also in their abundance. The best bed in the best cabin of the settler was at his command, and the best food of the fattest larder of the neighborhood was set before him, and this was often both abundant and luxurious. Besides this, he was the centre of a large social influence, receiving attentions and admirations which greatly alleviated every discomfort, while the wife was often alone in a remote cabin, or at best in such a house as happened to be unoccupied in some half-deserted village, and could be rented cheap for a parsonage. There she was surrounded by her family of half-fed and half-clothed children, with none of the alleviations which made her husband's life not only bearable but often enjoyable. It is no exaggeration to say that the wives of our early preachers often suffered for want of nourishing food, while, when on his circuit, the husband had abundance. Besides this there was the absence of almost every domestic and social comfort which the annual and long moves necessarily implied, and yet in mentioning the heroes of early Methodism in Indiana these are seldom referred to. They were in all cases the greater heroes.

But these heroic wives and their heroic husbands were not the only heroes of that period, nor the greatest. We are so accustomed to sing praises to those who are conspicuous because of accidental position, that we fail to remember that in the humblest private in the ranks is often to be found every element that constitutes the real hero, and who is all the more worthy of recognition because never recognized. Allen Wiley was never as great a hero in his after life as he was those years in which he added the unrequited labors of a faithful and laborious local preacher to the work of a diligent farmer. He became more conspicuous but never greater.

Among the real heroes of that heroic period were the Culls, the Conwells, the Bariwicks, the Swartzes, the Brentons, the Morrows, and hundreds like them, who did not merely supplement the labors of the traveling preachers, but who often led the way. Three-fourths of the early societies in Indiana were organized by local preachers, a class of heroic men who never figured in Conferences, and whose names are not mentioned among the heroes of the period, but who, on the contrary, were often held in light esteem by their traveling contemporaries because they were not in the regular work, though often in labors quite as abundant as the most laborious of these. As she is the greatest of heroes as well as the best of wives who faithfully discharges the duties of a step-mother, under the burning criticisms of intermeddlers, not to mention the too frequent ingratitude of the immediate beneficiaries of her care, so the local preacher who is faithful to his calling, notwithstanding unfriendly criticisms and conspicuous ingratitude, is to be ranked as the greatest of heroes. And of such there were many in the early years of Indiana Methodism.

But even these were not the greatest heroes of early Indiana Methodism. The exigencies of the period developed a class of heroes without whose part the labors of the Wileys, the Stranges and the Armstrongs could not have been any more than the achievements of the Grants and the Shermans and the Washingtons in the military could have been without the burden-bearings of the heroic private soldier. Was it nothing heroic to open the cabin of the settler for preaching, month after month, for years, and not merely to prepare it for the meeting, but to put it in living order after the meeting was over, and then to feed the preacher, and often a half dozen neighbors who were always ready to accept a half invitation to dine with the preacher, without ever suggesting that a good way to enjoy that luxury would be to invite the preacher to eat at their own table? And yet the men who did this year after year are hardly mentioned, even as an appreciable force in the history of early Methodism, much less as heroes of no low grade. The preacher who preached in that cabin and ate at that table has been duly canonized, but the man who made that preaching possible at a sacrifice of time and money, and of domestic comfort which money can not measure, has generally been regarded as under unspeakable obligations to the preacher and to his neighbors for being counted worthy to do and to suffer such things for the church. But the demands upon these for heroic living did not cease with the removal of the preaching from their cabins to the school house, or to the church when built. To the end of their lives their houses and barns were always open to Methodist preachers, whether they were their pastors or were strangers. It was sufficient that they came in the name of a Methodist preacher. These heroes were not always the richest men of their several neighborhoods, nor of the church, but, honoring God with their substance they not only prospered in worldly goods, but as a rule they gave to the church and to the world a race of stalwart Christian men and women, who, following in the footsteps of their fathers, felt it a pleasure to do for the church. Three-fourths of the early students of this University came from homes that had been open to the early traveling preachers, and the generation of preachers and the preachers' wives just passing away was recruited almost wholly from them, and the later generations of students and preachers, and preachers' wives, not to mention the men who are foremost in all honorable callings, are largely the grand-children and great-grand-children of these same devoted heroic men.

Indelibly engraven upon the tablet of my memory is one such cabin, which in many respects represents hundreds. In 1840, among the hills of Dearborn county, on my first round on the Rising Sun circuit, I preached at it. The congregation was composed of primitive country people, mostly dressed in homespun. I had never seen one of them before, but the entire class had turned out to hear the new boy preacher, filling every chair, even the one behind which I was to stand, and every bench that had been provided was full, and the sides of each of the two beds in the room, and some were standing. Among these was a gawky youth, about twenty years of age, green—that is, immature—in appearance, and dressed in store clothes. I noticed that after meeting, with a great many others, he stayed to dinner. Later on I learned that he was a son of the heroic man and woman whose house had been open for years for preaching and for the entertainment of preachers, and that he was at that time studying law in Wilmington, which accounted for his wearing store clothes. Years passed, and that green boy ripened and developed, and he went out into the world to become a Circuit Judge, a State Senator, a Supreme Judge, and he has been for nine years the honored Dean of the School of Law in De Pauw University.

But the opening of their doors for preaching was not all. Sometimes these same heroes would entertain an entire quarterly meeting, and a great part of a camp-meeting when it was expected that tent-holders would feed all who were not tent-holders. Was not he a hero who would, year after year, not merely kill the fatted calf for a quarterly or camp-meeting, but the yearling, and provide as liberally of other things required for entertaining the guests and their horses, and yet keep open house, day and night, for the gratuitous entertainment of preachers? No traveling preacher ever displayed greater heroism than these truly great men, and yet they were not the greatest heroes of that heroic age. Such sacrifices as they made from year to year are not to be lightly esteemed, yet the supplying of the larder and of the crib was the smallest part of the sacrifice required for such an offering to the Lord. Was the cooking for twenty to fifty at a quarterly or camp-meeting, or the care of the guests whom the open house invited, to be counted as second to any work done for the church? Let it be borne in mind that these demands were made before the introduction of cooking stoves and other appliances for making housekeeping easy. The meals for those quarterly meetings were cooked by the open fireplace, before and over a huge log fire, often without the aid even of a crane, and at the camp-meeting by the side of a big log used as a kitchen. Looking back through the years, and having been in position to observe every type of church work, and every class of church workers, from the early bishops on their long horseback tours; and the early presiding elders, going the rounds of their large districts; and the early circuit riders, preaching twenty-five to thirty times every four weeks, and traveling hundreds of miles on each round; and the early local preachers, with their gratuitous work, often without even thanks, and the large-hearted men who not only contributed of their substance toward the payment of salaries and such benevolences as were then required, but who provided liberally and cheerfully, also, for the entertainment of these bishops, and elders, and preachers, I am prepared to say that the very highest and purest type of heroism ever displayed in early Methodism in Indiana was shown by the women who set the tables and cooked the food and prepared the beds for these wayfaring men. And their name was legion. Every circuit had one or more, though unavoidably and without rivalry some one easily ranked all contemporaries of any given neighborhood, and some, from position as well as real merit, acquired almost a national reputation, so that a strange preacher or a bishop would be directed, when hundreds of miles distant, to what were known as "Methodist taverns," by the way. The presiding elder, before leaving home for a series of quarterly meetings, always mapped out his journey with reference to these "taverns," and the retiring preacher gave a list of them to his successor with the plan of his circuit, and a long horseback journey to conference was always arranged so as to strike one of these at or about noon or night, and as they were not always located with reference to such emergencies, this very often made an extra dinner or extra supper, or an early or late breakfast, a necessity, imposing an amount of extra labor upon the generous housewife that few are now aware of, and which tested her heroism as a face to face encounter in battle tests the heroism of the soldier. To call the roll of these heroes would be impossible, yet some so stand out in the unwritten history of Indiana Methodism that I can not avoid the mention of Mrs. John Wilkins, of Indianapolis, whose hospitable door was always open to the Methodist preachers of that heroic period, whether they came as bishops, or elders, or circuit riders, and her central position made her house almost an open one. Mrs. Isaac Dunn, at Lawrenceburg; Mrs. Caleb A. Craft, at Rising Sun; Mrs. Charles Basnett, at Madison, and Mrs. Roland T. Carr, at Rushville. But I can not name them all. There were thousands of them. They bore the very heaviest burdens of their times; and yet, outside of the little family circle that knew what was involved in their toils and sacrifices, no one ever seemed to care for them or sympathize with them. The men who received these hospitalities were rated as the heroes, while what these women did or suffered was counted of little worth, or certainly only as commonplace; yet they were the greater heroes by far, if for no other reason, yet, because their labors were even harder than the labors of others, and quite as essential to results, and wholly without compensation—even the moral compensation which comes from realizing that the eyes of approbation are upon you—the only eye that seemed to see them was the eye of the Father in Heaven. It took the stuff that heroes are made of to endure all this, yet they endured it for years and until the necessity for such service had passed.

Merely as a specimen of this line of service, let me lift the curtain and introduce you to the inner life of one of these heroes as I knew it for fifty years or more. We are familiar with the deeds of those who have been voted the heroes of early Methodism, but no one has ever told what were the sacrifices and hardships of the heroic women, whose time and strength were devoted to the same cause, in a less conspicuous way.

While Indiana was yet a Territory, and her one-roomed house, with a half-story above, was yet unfinished, and while the Indian reservation, yet inhabited by the Delawares, was less than two miles distant, and no Methodist preaching had yet been established in Brookville, my mother opened her doors to the transient preacher and for prayer-meetings, then for class-meetings and for preaching, and thus she entered upon her life work, and for more than fifty years those doors stood open to Methodist preachers. Was it any inferior heroism which would prepare that single room, at once parlor and bed-room and kitchen, for prayer-meetings, and then, after the meeting was over, clean up after the filthy tobacco chewers who not only defiled the floor, but sometimes, from sheer devilishness, would besmear the walls? Later, and when an addition was built to the house, the best room was specially fitted up for a preacher's room, with its bed, and table, and chair, and fire-place, and then another bed was added, because one bed, though carrying double, was often insufficient for the demands. That room was never occupied for twenty-five years by any member of the family, for it could never be certain, even at bed time, that some belated traveler would not call for entertainment before morning.

A panorama of that heroic woman's work for twenty-five years would give new ideas to many of this generation of the demands made upon the women of that heroic period, and how they were met. For many years either Bishop Soule or Bishop Roberts, or both, were frequent guests, going to or returning from one of their Conferences, and Presiding Elders Griffeth, and Strange, and Wiley, and Havens, for twenty years never stopped in Brookville with any other family, whether attending our own quarterly meetings or passing through to some other; and for more than twenty years the bi-weekly rounds of the circuit preacher never failed to bring a guest, while the junior preacher, always an unmarried man, made it his headquarters, and spent his rest weeks in that preachers' room. There John P. Durbin studied English grammar without a teacher, and Russel Bigelow, and John F. Wright, and James B. Finley were frequent guests. The new preacher, with his family, always stopped with us until some house somewhere on the circuit could be rented, for it was before the days of parsonages, and preachers moving through to their circuits stayed over night, and often over Sunday, with their hired team and all. This, too, at a period when in addition to the duties of housewifery as now understood, spinning, and weaving, and knitting, and making, and milking, and churning constituted no small item of domestic affairs, and usually without the intervention of the modern appliance called "help." To these were to be added a quarterly meeting once a year for a circuit that embraced nearly half of the present Connersville district, when for years no other door was opened to entertain a single one of those who came from all parts of the circuit, and a camp-meeting once a year, with all the burdens that old-fashioned camp-meetings fastened upon tent-holders. But this was not all—it was hardly half. For a decade or more after the opening of the "New Purchase," not a week passed that some one, purporting to be a Methodist preacher, did not claim the rites of hospitality as he was going from Ohio or Kentucky to the "New Purchase" to enter land or to see the country. These, with an eye to economy, always inquired for the next "Methodist tavern," and they never failed to avail themselves of the information obtained. In many respects these were sometimes burdensome. They were not only strangers, but they were traveling on business purely secular, and they were often irregular and called at unseasonable hours. One of these calls I had occasion to remember. It was in the summer of 1825, and before the days of lucifer matches. If the fire died out, there was no starting another without getting a live coal from some neighbor. Such a calamity had occurred at our house, and I was dispatched to the nearest neighbor's for a coal, only to return with the intelligence that her fire was out, too. "But why did you not go to the next neighbor?" asked my mother. "Go, and keep on going, till you get what you go for," was the command, and I went. The next day was wash day, and the family dinner had been served, and the dishes put away, and the wash tub resumed, when two strange preachers rode up and asked for dinner. What was to be done? In addition to the hindrance in washing, there was not a crust of bread in the house, and even if the travelers had time to wait, there was no time to spare from washing to bake bread. In the emergency I was dispatched to the nearest neighbor to borrow a loaf, but her cupboard was bare, too. Remembering the instructions, "Keep going until you get what you go for," I started at double quick to the next neighbor, and to the next, and the next, for three-quarters of an hour. I must have zig-zagged several miles, only to return with the sad news that there was not a loaf of bread in the town. Meanwhile my mother had taken in the situation, and when I got home exhausted and disgusted, the travelers were eating their dinner, a skillet full of biscuits having been baked at short notice. Soon they were on their horses, and the work at the wash tub was resumed. Though the occasion was a trying one, not a word of murmur escaped the lips of that heroic woman, for she endured as seeing the Invisible. Was she not a hero?