James W. Bashford, pastor, educator, bishop

Contents

PAGE

Preface 7

I. Early Years 11

Preface

Shortly after his death I was requested to write the biography of Bishop James Whitford Bashford. This request, coming from Mrs. Bashford, endorsed by certain bishops of the Methodist Episcopal Church and many others, could not be lightly regarded. Believing that his character was so distinctive and his career so distinguished in its service to humanity as to demand a record of the story of his life, the task was undertaken as a sacred trust and a labor of love.

My purpose is to give an interpretation of the man and his work rather than a chronological transcript of his life. In other words, my aim shall be to present such facts and incidents as will be illustrative of his character rather than "mere records of personality." The important question to ask concerning every man's life is: What was his central aim and how closely did he realize it? It is an alluring task to discover the motive that actuated James Whitford Bashford; to feel the thrill of the ambitions and the aspirations that stirred him; to measure the energy that was driving him on ceaselessly; to see the visions that were haunting him by day and by night; and to make an appraisal of his 7

PREFACE service to his generation. If I can make him live again in the memory of his friends and so portray the essential elements in his nature and the outstanding achievements of his career as to make those who did not know him see him in imagination, I shall be satisfied.

There is available for this study a great wealth of material. The writer has read and re-read the fifty-four volumes of notebooks written by Bishop Bashford, thousands of pages of correspondence both personal and official, all his books and published articles besides many sermons and addresses in manuscript. Scores of interviews with mission workers in the chief centers of Bishop Bashford's work in China, with Chinese officials, native preachers, and foreigners resident in China have been held. Many personal letters have been received which have contributed valuable information.

I wish to make grateful acknowledgment of the valuable and sympathetic help given by Mrs. Jane Field Bashford in putting into my hands personal correspondence and much private matter not otherwise available. I am deeply indebted also to the former private secretaries of Bishop Bashford, particularly to Mr. Harrison S. Elliot, the Rev. James H. Lewis, and Mr. Joseph P. Mac- Millan, for help in transcribing notebooks and verifying facts; to the late Mr. 0. A.Wright in making

PREFACE possible a trip to China to study Bishop Bashford's work in the Orient; to many friends and even strangers who have furnished me with letters and personal incidents; and to Bishop W. F. McDowell for helpful suggestions in the revision of the manuscript.

George R. Grose.

Greencastle, Indiana, June, 1922.

Chapter I

James Whitford Bashford was born on May 29, 1849. It was in the period of the great territorial expansion of the United States. Pioneers from the Eastern States, indifferent to privation and hardship, pushed into the Middle West, built homes, established schools and churches, and laid the foundations for the future development of the American nation. The year 1849 marked the beginning of the migration to California in search of gold. In Bashford's early boyhood he saw his cousin John B. Parkinson, later Professor of Mathematics and Vice-President of the University of Wisconsin, join a company of men with ox teams on their long journey to the Pacific Coast.

The conditions which the early pioneers in western Wisconsin faced required souls of stern stuff. There were few comforts and many hardships. Indians were numerous and bears were quite neighborly. The wolf at the door was more than a figure of speech. One day James' mother beat off with a shovel a prowling wolf about to enter the log cabin where her young child lay 11 sleeping. But the very rigor of pioneer life in the Middle West was an important factor in young Bashford's early training. His hard work on the farm laid the foundation in physical vigor for his long career of eminent service. The stern conditions of life in a new community, the struggle for self-support, the close contact with the simplehearted country folks gave him a priceless inheritance in energy, initiative, simplicity in taste, ambition to achieve, and sympathetic understanding of people.

It was in Fayette in southwestern Wisconsin that Bashford was born. His home was the first frame building erected in the community, all the others being log cabins. There were two small churches and no schoolhouse. The Bashford home housed the village school until a new church building was erected which provided for the school in the basement. The picture of his early Western home as Bashford recalled it in later life is fascinating. Rugged simplicity, tireless industry, few diversions, a neighborly communism altogether consistent with independence, and an atmosphere that stimulated sober thought and lofty purpose.

The Bashford family was of English origin. They came originally from Devonshire and settled in the North of Ireland, where they were granted land in the reign of Queen Elizabeth.

Though the Bashfords came to America from Ireland, they were of English and not Celtic stock. One of Bishop Bashford's ancestors was a soldier in the Revolutionary Army, was captured by the British and imprisoned in the Old Sugarhouse prison in New York City. The father of Samuel Morris Bashford, a blacksmith by trade, was impressed as a seaman and brought to the United States. He died suddenly of apoplexy at the age of thirty-eight. Several of the Bashfords in England were graduates of Oxford and Cambridge and became ministers, educators, civil and army officers. With plenty of militant blood the whole clan had an intellectual bent and ambition for high attainment and for public service.

Samuel Morris Bashford, the father of James Whitford, was born in Newark, New Jersey, and went to Wisconsin when he was twenty-two years old. In his early manhood he studied medicine and at the same time was employed in the drugstore of a physician. On coming to his Western home he became a farmer. He was licensed at an early age as local preacher in the Methodist Episcopal Church and devoted much time to holding services and preaching in the schoolhouses and country churches. He was frequently called to minister to the sick and always carried medicines with him, but refused to accept any compensation either for preaching or visiting the sick. On one occasion he accepted five dollars for his services, but gave the money to a poor family before he reached home. He was utterly unselfish in character and made the spiritual welfare of others his absorbing concern. He died in the pulpit of apoplexy at the age of thirty-six, when his youngest son, James Whitford, was only one year old. He was a devout man, much given to introspection, with a mystical type of piety; an idealist whose generous impulses outran his practical ability; but everywhere revered for his genuine goodness.

The Morris family, to which the grandmother of James Whitford*Bashford belonged, was prominent in the early history of the republic. The grandmother's fine benevolent face, her wide knowledge of current affairs, and deep religious character made upon young Bashford a profound impression. His mother, Mary Ann McKee, was a descendant of the McKees of Illinois, Kentucky, and Virginia, and was of Scotch-Irish descent. The family was noted for men of affairs. One was a member of the Constitutional Convention of Virginia, and voted for ratification of the Constitution according to his convictions and contrary to the instructions of his constituency; another was a member of Congress; another was an officer in the Mexican War; several were prominent educators and ministers of the gospel.

Though not educated, the mother of Bashford was a woman of large natural abilities, of great physical strength, of unusual capacity for business, with great energy and practical sense, with strong convictions and a rare gift of leadership. All the references in the family correspondence portray the features of a woman of heroic mold, with a fine sense of personal honor, lover of her children, "lover and giver of life."

In a unique degree James Whitford Bashford united in himself the distinctive qualities of both his parents. From his father he inherited a deep religious nature, with a vein of mysticism and idealism, which found lifelong expression in a devoutness that was both fervent and attractive, and in such a sense of the Divine Presence as made him a true seer among his fellows. His generosity, one of his most outstanding traits, came from his father. Young Bashford was told by his mother stories of his father's visiting the sick as physician, serving as a minister of the gospel, also, in the absence of a lawyer, drawing deeds and administering estates without charge. His subscription to the village church and school which was building at the time of his death was so generous that several years were required for his widow to complete the payment. The references which the boy Bashford heard made to his father by men in the pulpit and in private made upon him a profound impression. "On one occasion," he said, "an unconverted man put his hand on my head when I carried water to the field where the men were harvesting the grain and in a half-prayer and a half-wish expressed the desire that I 'might be as good a man as my father,' then added he did not expect I would ever measure up to the ideal." When he began to preach he writes, "I had large audiences crowding the schoolhouses the first time I preached in various parts of the country, many of the people telling me that they came not at all to hear me, but out of reverence for my father." This inheritance of imagination and spiritual insight from his father was no less noteworthy than his indebtedness to his mother for his practical sense, for his sagacity in worldly matters, and for his power in handling public affairs. Quiet and undemonstrative in manner though she was, nevertheless, the ruggedness of her convictions, the loftiness of her mind, and the strength of her personality entered like iron into the soul of her children. Piety, learning, energy, patriotism, and strong personal convictions were the traditions of the family. Young Bashford had therefore, in the character of his parents and in the influence of his early home, the most valuable asset with which a child can be endowed.

He had also the advantage of a large and mixed family life. Previous to her marriage to Samuel Bashford Mrs. Bashford was married to Carroll Parkinson, through whom she had two children. A few years after her first husband's death she married Mr. Bashford and bore four children, Sarah, Robert McKee, John Wesley, and James Whitford. By her last husband, William B. Trousdale, she was the mother of Samuel Whitney Trousdale. The contact and the struggle of this large domestic circle made a lasting mark upon James Bashford. The mother's solicitude in making equitable distribution of her meager estate among her children, the cooperation of the children in helping one another to get an education, their pride in one another's attainments, reveal the home environment in which Bashford's fine human touch was fostered.

In his childhood traits the boy Bashford was father to the man. His appearance marked him as a child of unusual promise. A lady seeing him for the first time when he was five years old observed: "He will make a great man." His brother Robert once remarked that, while Jim was the youngest of the four children, he was the "bell-wether." As a boy he was inquiring and energetic, enthusiastic and unselfish. The memories of childhood which he recalled late in his life show an early devotion to his family and his friends, also a strong sense of justice and fearless conviction. One of his relatives recalls the following incident of his boyhood:

The boys were playing in the street and one of them hurled a ball through a window. All of them ran away but James. He promptly went to the man and said that he had broken the window and would make the loss good. He said they had a common purse at home; and while they never had much money each one had access to the family pocketbook.

His ambition to excel, one of his marked traits of character, appears in his early youth when he takes his place among the seasoned workers in the fields determined not to be outdone. He earned his first money at twelve years of age by driving a cow six miles for a neighbor, for which he received twenty-five cents. He was fond of telling the story of a valuable business experience when he was a lad of fourteen. He went to a neighbor to urge his selling a cow to a poor man who had come to Wisconsin from the South, compelled to leave on account of his Union sentiments. Although the amount was only thirty-five dollars, the owner refused to sell unless young Bashford would indorse the note. When the boy was called upon to meet the payment, he explained the circumstances to his father, who advanced the money. He adds: "I worked the next spring at five dollars a week to earn money to meet my obligation.

The experience was a valuable one for me, as I learned the necessity of meeting financial obligations promptly and of care in signing other people's notes."

Another act of friendliness in behalf of the same neighbor shows the fiber of young Bashford. Mc- Farlane's grain was being destroyed by the depredations of the hogs of a neighbor, who refused to repair his broken fences. When Bashford's father appealed to the owner of the hogs, he became very angry. Young Bashford was aroused by the inconsiderateness of the neighbor. He prepared a pen and drove the marauders in, and informed the owner the hogs would be kept at his expense. A quarrel followed between the lad and his neighbor. After the man's anger cooled, he offered to pay for the damages and claimed his property, but young Bashford declined to accept pay for the grain which the hogs had eaten. "The hog incident," Bashford observes, "was closed with great friendliness on both sides, and thereafter my neighbor reckoned with me as a man and not as a boy."

His early surroundings in a new country and the serious atmosphere of his home life were not favorable to the playfulness of youth. But with abounding good nature he shared the interests and joys of his family and school fellows. We have an interesting glimpse of the working of his youthful mind in his own story of the first election of President Lincoln.

"The political excitement laid hold of the imagination of the boys and almost every boy in our neighborhood was an active partisan. I remember William, John, and Carroll White shouting lustily in their field for Douglas, while I shouted for Lincoln in the adjoining field. Their voices were more lusty and I was beaten in the shouting. I then decided to offer up a secret prayer for Lincoln's election every time one of them shouted, and this I did with the somewhat mechanical belief that every prayer would count for a vote. From that time on to the election I offered many prayers. As our town was overwhelmingly Democratic I did not anticipate the election of Mr. Lincoln, even though I had spent much time in praying for it. Upon the news of his election I was filled with responsibility, fearing that my prayers had accomplished the result."

The typical American home in the Middle West had a consuming interest in education. The fires of ambition for learning were kindled in the Bashford household by the traditions of the family. While the mother of the Bashford children had only a common school education, her ancestors were educated people and for several generations had been lawyers, ministers, teachers, soldiers of distinction, and public leaders. Besides, the father had left a small library of valuable books, among them a few Latin and Greek books, commentaries on the Bible, theological books, and the Sermons of John Wesley. The mother repeatedly urged the children to secure an education and thus be able to care for themselves, as she could make no adequate financial provision for them. The Bashford boys were strongly influenced in securing a higher education by their cousin, John B. Parkinson, who was one of the first students in the University of Wisconsin. Upon his graduation from college he opened a high school in the village of Fayette, where the Bashford brothers prepared for college, and later entered the University of Wisconsin, from which they all graduated. In this obscure Western village was being enacted in miniature the most important act in the great drama of the nation's development. No sooner was the forest cleared and houses built than some place, however rude, was provided for a school. First in the Bashford house, later in the church basement, and then in the schoolhouse, the Bashford children began the training which led to careers of distinction. Bashford's story of his preparation for college reveals his intellectual eagerness and his boundless energy in overcoming all odds:

"I remember indeed the part of the farm which I was plowing when learning the Greek alphabet and the Greek declensions. I would stop a few minutes to glance at the book at a particular corner of the field and then study over the lesson and repeat the part learned earlier as I walked around the field behind the plow. Professor Parkinson only allowed us time to translate the Latin and Greek which we had mastered and to ask questions concerning passages which we could not construe. We missed some essential things which students should learn in the early study of foreign languages, nevertheless we gained a strong grip on the essentials of the subject, so that we found ourselves able by hard study to hold our own with other students in college."

At the very opening of his young manhood Bashford exhibited an insatiable desire for knowledge, an ambition to excel in every undertaking, an energy in work, and a consuming passion for life at its best which marked him until the end.

Chapter II

In the autumn of 1867 James W. Bashford matriculated as a student in the University of Wisconsin. It was in the early days of this institution, now widely famed among the State Universities of America. The student of to-day in Madison cannot easily picture his Alma Mater of fifty years ago. Instead of a campus crowded with massive buildings, there were a few recitation halls and a dormitory; instead of yearly appropriations of several million dollars for building and maintenance, then the most meager provision for both equipment and salaries; now several thousand students enrolled annually in graduate and professional schools, then about three hundred men and women, mostly classical students. Now the teaching staff numbers more than twice the student body then. In the university then there were great teachers and distinguished scholars. Among the professors were William F. Allen in Latin, John B. Parkinson in Mathematics, and Professor Carpenter in Literature, and President John Bascom, who made upon young Bashford a lasting impression.

Other changes have taken place even more sig- 23 nificant than the changes in campus walks and buildings. In Bashford's day the standard of living was simple and inexpensive. The majority of the students had a hard fight to support themselves. Twice during his college course he had to leave school to earn money by teaching. The long summer vacations he spent working on the farm. But pathetic as was the self-sacrifice of parents and the severe struggle of students for an education, the type of character which was produced was the pride of the college and the hope of the country. In spite of the limitations upon the colleges of fifty years ago in mean buildings with meager equipment and inadequate funds, they afforded true intellectual discipline and good training in character.

From the very outset Bashford took high rank as a student. He threw himself into university work with all the mental eagerness and intense application which characterized him as a student to the end of his life. When he entered the freshman class in the university he was deficient in Latin and Greek. Before the end of the year he led his class in these subjects. "I made it a rule," he said, "never to retire at night until the lessons in Mathematics, Latin, and Greek were prepared for the succeeding day, and many a night during the first two terms I studied until midnight and sometimes until two o'clock before retiring." His ambition to excel was kindled early in his college course. One day he was so humiliated over the laughter of his teacher and the class at his pronunciation of his first Greek sentence that he says, "As I stood tingling with shame I resolved that before the year was out I would stand at the head of that class or die trying, and I at once set about making good my resolve." He was soon recognized as a student of such undoubted powers as to give promise of distinction.

In his freshman year he was chosen with two others to represent the Athenaeum Literary Society in a debate. Generous credit for winning the debate was given to young Bashford. Unusual honor was conferred upon him by his election both in his sophomore and junior year to represent the society as debater. He was prevented by a long illness from serving in his sophomore year, and was reelected and led in the debate in the winter of 1871-72, and was again victorious. The subject discussed was the Ku Klux Klan legislation recently passed by Congress. The debate required so much time for preparation that Bashford had given up all thought of leading his class in scholarship. He consoled himself, however, with this reflection: "I am securing splendid mental discipline which I regard as the main object of a college course, and at the same time I am learning how to utilize every moment of my time. While I was kept from entering the social life of the college, the training in the value of time was of priceless advantage." These early academic debates reveal the intellectual honesty and thoroughness which so finely characterized all his later literary work. He declined to support a given side of the question unless it represented his own convictions. He gave himself to the contest with the utmost enthusiasm, caring chiefly for the honorable recognition which his success would bring to the Athenaeum Society. He was ambitious for college honors, but his chief concern was for intellectual excellence and the promotion of a worthy cause.

Several of his contemporaries who have favored me with reminiscences of this period of his life testify to the strong impression which he made both on his teachers and fellow students. His buoyancy of spirit and uniform cheerfulness made him a general favorite. While his complete occupation with his varied university tasks deprived him of many of the fellowships of college life, he was not a recluse. He had strong convictions, but was never morbidly conscientious. Always deeply serious in purpose, he never lost his boyish spirit. His classmates recall his participation in college pranks, but always with self-respect.

BASHFORD IN COLLEGE

The Rev. I. S. Leavitt relates this incident of college days: Huntington and Leavitt had two squirtguns, named "Little Tommy" and "Big Tom." "Big Tom" would hold a gallon of water and was used on various occasions in practical pranks. "Big Tom" disappeared, no one knowing what had become of the gun. Leavitt warned his roommate and other close friends to say nothing about its being taken. Some two weeks afterward, Bashford put his head out of the window of his room, called to Leavitt and said, "What has become of 'Big Tom'?" "Oh, it will return," said Leavitt, in an indifferent manner. Leavitt immediately reported to the other boys that he was sure that Bashford had taken "Big Tom." Some of the boys were charged with looking up the schedule to see when Bashford and his roommate were to be out of the room. They procured the key and proceeded to search Bashford's room and, as anticipated, found "Big Tom" under Bashford's bed.

Dr. William E. Huntington, a fellow student, one time president of Boston University, writes of Bashford as a student: "Few men whom I have watched as they passed from youth to manhood and riper age have retained as steadily as he their early traits. His buoyancy, his thoroughness in all work, his love for books, his rapidity in processes of thought and in utterance, his interest in the fundamental questions of government, economics, social ethics, philosophy, and religion were marked characteristics of Bashford in his student days." Another who knew him as a classmate writes: "Whether in the classroom or in the hall he seemed head and shoulders above all the rest of us, but utterly unconscious of himself, though having always an atmosphere of his coming greatness."

Bashford's intellectual bent and the influences of his college days clearly marked him out for a professional career. He had strong inclinations toward the bar. Even after he had decided to enter the ministry and had become a theological student the desire to become a lawyer returned again and again with great force. One can readily understand his strong leaning toward the law as a profession. He possessed in a marked degree the qualities necessary for a successful career as an advocate. He had natural ability, an alert mind, the habit of intellectual thoroughness and tireless industry. With clear insight into situations, deep interest in public affairs, and a rare gift of speech, he would undoubtedly have taken high rank either at the bar or in politics. As young Bashford early in his student life is struggling with the question of his future career one is reminded of the fight of Robertson of Brighton with his ambition to be a soldier, and of George

Matheson to be a lawyer, and of Phillips Brooks to be a teacher. These serious questionings only intensified the purposefulness of Bashford as a student.

In the third term of his freshman year Bashford had a religious experience which influenced his whole subsequent career. His success as a student in securing the highest grades in his class and the second highest in the university, kindled the fires of ambition for prominent place. For the time he was mastered by this passion. While cherishing the dream of political power and professional distinction the conviction became strong that God was calling him to the ministry. "From my earliest recollections," he writes, "I had been conscious to a greater or less extent that I was called to preach." During the spring vacation which he spent at his home the fight between ambition and conscience became desperate. The mental struggle was so severe that every incident of the next few weeks made an unforgettable impression. When he reached home, revival meetings were being held in the village church. These became unendurable. When he proposed to return early to the university to resume his work, his mother, sensing his inner conflict, said quietly, "There are two persons you can never run away from: You can never run away from yourself; you can never run away from God." He felt at once that some decision must be reached in which he would find peace. His chance companion on the train to Madison assured him that he was going to be a minister. This remark added to his unrest of mind. Upon his arrival in Madison he was met at the station by William C. Damon, a member of the junior class, who told him on the way to "Old College Hall" how the Christian men of the university were struggling against great odds and invited Bashford to join them.

About the same time I. S. Leavitt, another fellow student, appealed to him to confess Christ and give his life to the Christian ministry. Again and again in later life he told with telling effect the story of these momentous days: "At heart I was trying to lead a Christian life and I would not have hesitated a moment openly to confess Christ and join the church and help these men in their struggle, if only I could be excused from preaching. But I knew that any profession of faith was impossible without a surrender to God, and that involved the tremendous struggle in which I was engaged between conscience and ambition. Running away from the revival services and from home, even with mother's consent, resulted in great loneliness. In the loneliness of that week I fought out the battle to a finish. The hollowness of worldly ambition dawned upon me. The conviction that I had already been a coward to duty in spending two terms at the State University in a selfish struggle for personal advancement and in dreaming of political preferment in the future, without helping the little band of Christian students in their struggle for higher ideals, grew upon me, and already I began to realize the moral degradation of a life of selfishness. Two convictions became clear at that time: that personal ambition carried to its utmost length and succeeding beyond all rational expectations could not satisfy the soul; and, second, that obedience to conscience would bring peace." At this juncture another human factor strongly influenced his decision.

D. L. Moody visited Madison and spoke in the assembly chamber of the State Capitol to a great audience. The conviction of his moral cowardice was borne in upon young Bashford with such overwhelming power that he resolved to make an early confession of Christ. And yet he was still haunted by the conviction of earlier years that he must preach the gospel if he professed the Christian faith. His brother, Robert, who had persuaded James when he was twelve years of age to make a confession of faith, had become a skeptic. Nevertheless, he now advised James to yield to his conscience and added: "We boys can outargue father and mother on the problems of Christianity, but we know that they have an experience we do not possess, and there is no peace in skepticism." He sought counsel from his cousin, Professor Parkinson, who urged him to follow his own highest convictions of duty, also adding, there is no blessedness in skepticism. He then went to Professor Allen, a Unitarian in faith, whom he greatly admired, and told his story of inner unrest and doubt. He advised Bashford to go to the Methodist boys who could help him in his struggle, as he could not. Following Professor Parkinson's directions and still under the impulse of Mr. Moody's heroic faith and courage, Bashford went to a prayer meeting held once a week in one of the recitation rooms of the university. The leader of the meeting that day was I. S. Leavitt, who later became a well-known minister of the Methodist Episcopal Church.