There was enrolled 32 names that day, and this was the beginning of the Christian church in Effingham.
From this number myself, Henry Shell, Sr., and J. W. Jones were elected Elders and brethren J. W. Wilson, J. M. Shell and C. M. Gregory were elected Deacons. This was in the month of May, 1895. I preached on for sometime, but the infirmities of the flesh and old age creeping upon me I had to give up preaching. So for about 12 or 15 years I have preached but little. Indeed for many years before I quit preaching I preached under a great weakness of the flesh.
In the meantime the observance of the Lord's Supper was kept up each
Lord's Day, and a Sunday School had been organized with the M. E.
South Christians and ourselves working together, by electing Prof. J.
W. Wilson as Superintendent.
In the summer of 1895 Evangelist O. L. Cook held a meeting of fifteen or twenty days under an arbor on Main Street. At that meeting the number of members was increased to seventy, and the church and Sunday School were more fully organized, and have been meeting regularly on the Lord's Day, and are at this time meeting in their own brick veneered building, on Elizabeth Street. All these years I have had the honor and responsibility of being the Senior Elder.
From the beginning to the present, 1911, there have been 448 added to the church roll. At present the church owes nothing and is having preaching all the time by Frank Richard, an able and conscientious minister of the Gospel. The church, by removals, decrease almost as fast as it increases. The membership at this writing is about 150.
Muscotah is a thriving little city just west of Effingham. There are but few disciples there except those in the churches of the town. I have preached there a few times. Once the funeral of a little girl, name Clara Hastings, but she was no kin to us. At other times the funerals of a very aged man and wife named Mooney. The wife was an own niece of Alexander Campbell. She was a very good and learned woman.
In 1899 with Clara who was in her 22nd year, I made a second trip back to old Indiana. It had been eighteen years since the other trip. The eighteen years had made many wonderful changes. So much so that I felt almost like a stranger in a strange land. Had it not been for the sweet, bright, joyful, spirit of the dear daughter that accompanied me, the trip would have hardly been tolerable. O, the joy of the father whose sons and daughters rise up in his old age and bless and honor him! It was on this very visit when Captain Hastings, hearing me talk of my boys and girls, said to me, "Cousin Simpson, I see that you, like your dear old mother, love your children. I never knew a mother that loved her children more than she did." "True, Captain", I said, "I have always like the extremes of age, the young and the old, and of course I like my own children. I think when they were little about my knees was the happiest period of my life."
We returned home to dear old Kansas—to our home near Effingham, but it was not like it was at the first return eighteen years before when the buildings were in their home nest, and great blue eyes were looking out for me. But now some had already flown and others were about ready. True, your dear old mother was there, and Edith too, and Milo were there but in three short years Edith took her flight in company with the angels to the skies to return no more.
In 1904 your mother and I went to St. Louis to see the World's Fair, and to attend the National Convention of the disciples of Christ. We made our home at Harry's and so enjoyed the wonderful sights at the Fair, and feasted upon the rich spiritual things of the Convention.
Once again we, (your mother and I this time) returned to our humble home. Do you know, boys, that there is no place like home? Well, this is true, if home is home. But I declare to you when it comes to taking your place at the old dining table and all the places on each side of its full length are empty and only the two end places are occupied, it is lonesome. Only one more leaving and this was true of your father and mother's table. For when Clara on the 28th day of June, 1905 the thirty-fifth anniversary of her father and mother's marriage and the twenty first anniversary of her brother Milo's birth, was married to Mr. Charles G. Sprong, the last place of the children was vacated, and we were left alone.