The principal argument at those meetings was something to excite fear through most terrible picturings of hell, and the length of an eternal damnation and death. Scores would be converted, and many would backslide before the probationary season had ended. Some were annually re-converted, and as often returned again to their natural state. Many remained true to the new life, and became useful and prominent members of the church and community. It cannot be successfully denied that many were reached and reformed at those meetings whose consciences never could have been touched by any milder form of preaching. They had to be gathered in a whirlwind or not at all.
THE SECOND ADVENT
This chapter cannot well be closed without some reference to “Millerism” and the preaching of Millerite doctrines in the winter of 1842-43. It is doubtful if any other religious movement of modern times, and certainly few in all historic time, have ever, in so short a period, awakened so vast a religious excitement and terror as the announcement and promulgation of these doctrines. Ten years before Rev. William Miller, of Pittsfield, Mass., began preaching upon the subject of the second coming of Christ, and claimed to have discovered some key to the prophecies by which the near approach of the end of the world and of the judgment day was clearly shown. His earnest manner and elaborate arguments, apparently fortified with abundant historic proof, had attracted great attention and started many followers to adopt and preach the doctrines, so that, at the period named, the excitement attending it throughout Christendom was at its highest point. The time for this holocaust had been definitely fixed by these modern interpreters. The year was 1843 and February was the month when all things were to collapse and end. Even the day was fixed by some. On that, however, all did not agree. Some fixed the 14th and others the 16th of February, and others still other days in that month for the happening of this terrible event. When we recall that the doctrine found millions of believers in the most civilized centers of the world, and for a time seriously paralyzed business in London, New York and Philadelphia, we will not wonder that with the people then living in the dreary solitudes of Dallas, such a doctrine found ready listeners and willing believers almost everywhere. The old log schoolhouse was not large enough to hold the meetings, and others were started in different places. A very large one was conducted at the “Goss” or “Corner” schoolhouse. The time was getting short, and with the nearing of the fatal day excitement increased. Half the people of the community were in some degree insane. Many people refused to do any business, but devoted themselves entirely to religious work and meditation. These meetings were started early in the fall, and were kept up continuously through the winter. The plan and intention of the leaders was to convert everyone in Dallas township, and with a few exceptions the plan succeeded. Of course there were different degrees of faith. Some were so sure of the dissolution of all things on the appointed day that they refused to make any provisions for a longer existence. One man, Christian Snyder, refused to sell corn or grain, but was willing to give it away to the needy, and only desired to keep enough for the needs of himself and family until the fixed final day. Many of the people spent that dreadful winter reading the Bible, praying and pondering over that horrible interpretation. The memorable meteoric shower which extended almost over the whole world on the night of the 12th and 13th of November, 1833, was still fresh in the memory of almost every adult, and was well calculated to prepare the mind to believe the proofs and prophecies of such a catastrophe. That never-to-be-forgotten rain of fire must have been frightfully impressive even to the most scientific man who could best understand the causes which produced it. It has no parallel in recorded history, and one can quite readily understand how such an interpretation of the holy prophecies, following immediately such a fiery manifestation in the heavens, should find easy believers.
Converts were frequently baptized that winter by immersion through holes cut in the ice, and in one instance, I am credibly informed, when a parent only succeeded in converting a doubting daughter on the night before the supposed fatal day, he took her himself on that bitter cold night to the nearest mill-pond, cut a hole in the ice and baptized her by immersion. The man was personally well known to me, and to the day of his death, which occurred only within the last decade, he remained firm in his faith in similar interpretations of the prophecies, and continued calculating and fixing new dates in the future for the coming of the end of all things. He was never disconcerted by any failures, but seriously accounted for it by saying that he had made a little error in his calculation, and gave you a new and corrected date further on. This man was Christopher Snyder.
An anecdote is told of Harris in connection with the meteoric shower above referred to, illustrating the common belief that the stars had actually fallen from the heavens. On the evening following the shower, Mr. Harris said he could see a great diminution of the number of stars in the heavens, and ventured the belief that a few more showers like the one of the evening before would use up the rest of them. So common was this belief that the stars had actually fallen, so great and memorable was the event, that to this day, among the older men about Dallas, you will occasionally hear men trying to fix the date or year of some long past occurrence, and not infrequently one will say something like this: “Well, I know it happened then because the stars fell in thirty-three, and this happened just so many years after” (or before, just as the case may be)—“now figure it up yourself.”
SOCIAL THINGS
Of “apple cuts” I can speak in lighter vein. They were generally occasions of great merriment.
It has been truly said that a country is poor indeed when it is so poor that dried apples become a luxury. Before the days of cheap sugar and canned fruits, dried apples and cider apple sauce, the latter made of apples boiled to a pulp in cider, were luxuries and necessities both in many places besides ours. Apples were always abundant and cheap in Dallas. In fact, when the forests are cleared away, apple trees are found to spring up spontaneously in some places, and only need a little trimming and protection to become good orchards. This fact was accounted for to the writer by the owner of one such orchard as follows: He said a good many people had marveled at the natural growth of his orchard, and had asked him how he could account for it. “Of course you know,” said he, “that it has always been my habit to give such things a good deal of thought. I could never be satisfied, like most folks, to just sit down and take things as they come without trying to understand them, and I always keep at them until I cipher them out. Now, you see it’s just like this about these apple trees: Some day or ’nuther, probably millions of years ago, this hull country was overflowed by the ocean. That’s plain enough to any man who takes the trouble to think about these things. Well, right about over here somewhere there has been a shipwreck some day, and a ship load of apples has sunk right here, and these apple trees have sprung from the seeds. You know a seed will keep a great while and then grow.”
The work of paring the apples and removing the cores for an ordinary family’s winter supply of dried apples and apple butter, before the days of machines for that purpose, was a task of no little magnitude. All had to be done by hand and as sometimes happened, many bushels had to be so treated. It was a task that would have occupied the working portion of an ordinary family several days, and thus much of the fruit would, from long keeping, have lost its value for cider appliance by becoming stale and partly dried. For this reason there seemed almost a necessity for calling in help sufficient to do the required amount of work in a very short period of time. The apple cut solved this difficulty successfully. When a family had once determined on having an apple cut, it was given out to the nearest neighbors, and from them it spread of its own accord for miles around. Those who heard of it could go if they chose to. No special invitations were required. The apple cut was an evening festivity, and was most “prevalent” just after buckwheat thrashing, when the nights were cool and the roads not very muddy. I am told that in later years it began to be considered “bad form” to go to an apple cut without special invitation; but apple cuts were degenerating then, and they died soon after when the apple parer in its present improved form was introduced.
The old-fashioned apple cut was a very informal affair. Each guest upon arrival was expected to take a plate and knife, select a seat and some apples, and begin work without disturbing anyone else. The “cut” usually lasted for an hour or two. Twenty or thirty people could, and did usually, accomplish a good deal in that time in the way of work as well as say and do a great many of the commonplace things that country people ordinarily indulge in when thus congenially thrown together.