Davis, soldier missionary

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Foreword

Sir Sidney Lee, in his " Principles of Biography," states that the test of the worthiness of a life for perpetuation is, " did this man render a unique service, which, had he not lived, would not have been performed?"

The test is a difficult one for a son to make for his father, and, in this case, has been left to those who knew him best as fellow-missionary, as well as to world-wide critics of missions.

Shortly after his death, Dr. Davis' closest colleagues, notably, Dr. D. L. Learned and Dr. D. C. Greene, urged that his biography should be written. Secretary James L. Barton, of the American Board, and Dr. John R. Mott, of the International Committee of Young Men's Christian Associations, reinforced this opinion with their judgment that the story of my father's life should be told, as constituting an essential link in the development of the Kingdom of God in Japan, and they have steadily encouraged me in my task.

Special acknowledgment is due to the secretaries of the American Board for placing at my disposal its library and archives with the thirty-nine years of my father's correspondence with the Board; to his comrades of the Fifty-second Illinois Vol. Inf. regiment, for their generous response in material bearing upon his military life; to his college and seminary classmates, for intimate pictures of his student life; to his missionary colleagues and Japanese friends and pupils, whose characterizations of him in varied relationships have placed me permanently in their debt; to the International Committee, for its kindness in allowing me special facilities for visiting the battle-fields of Shiloh and Corinth, and for granting the necessary time

FOREWORD

for writing; to Drs. Learned and Cary and Professor Lombard, of Kyoto, whose intimate acquaintance with my father and his work have rendered them invaluable critics and counsellors; and, finally, to my wife, whose steady encouragement and help have been large factors in the successful completion of the work.

My father's full diary, with valuable collections of letters and manuscripts bearing upon the history of the Doshisha, the American Board Mission in Japan and the Kumi-ai (Congregational) Church, has been freely used as the backbone of the story.

I have tried to depict my father's part in the dramatic history of the early years, by letting him tell his own story of the controversies and troublous problems in which he not infrequently played a leading part. On the other hand, I have, so far as possible, presented an impartial statement of facts, irrespective of his prejudices and beliefs, which, with the added light of half a generation, reveal certain vexatious questions of relationship in a juster form.

My father's military record has been given a full treatment, because of the vital connection which this phase of his preparation had with his acceptability to the Japanese and with fitting him for meeting his most difficult tasks.

The work has been accomplished at odd moments, in the midst of constant distractions and the press of many other duties, but such difficulties as have been met with have been far outweighed by the privilege of making a detailed study of my father's life, — its sources of power, its valleys of defeat and its heights of victory.

If these pages reveal to others something of the charm of his manhood, the strength of his faith, the springs of his martial achievement and his spiritual power, so as to impel them to similar ideals of service, the highest wish of the writer will have been attained.

Contents

CHAPTER PAGE

I. Ancestry, Birth and Childhood 1

II. The Forging of the Blade 9

Chapter I THE LIFE OF JEROME DEAN DAVIS Ancestry, Birth and Childhood

THE two families represented in the person of Jerome Dean Davis trace their origin to the early days of New England history. They migrated from England and Wales in the seventeenth century, John Woodbury settling on the north shore of Massachusetts Bay in 1623, and Isaac Davis finding his new home on the sand dunes of Cape Cod, some seventy years later.

John Woodbury, the founder of the American family of that name, left his father's estate in Somersetshire in 1623, as a member of the Dorchester Company, and arrived in the summer of the same year upon the Massachusetts coast. Three years later he entered the Massachusetts Bay Company and helped to found the town of Salem. In 1627 he was sent to England as the Envoy of the Company to negotiate the Letters Patent which secured the new enterprise to the colonists. As a member of Governor Endicott's Council, Deputy to the Colonial Court and Lord High Constable of the Colony, he enjoyed the confidence and esteem of the whole Massachusetts Bay Settlement. As official Surveyor to the Colonial Government he had charge of the laying out of Lynn, Revere and Salem, while parts of Cambridge and the campus of Harvard College were staked out by him. In recognition of his public services, the town of Salem gave him, in 1632, two hundred acres of land in the new parish of Beverly, of which he became the first settler.

John Woodbury's great-grandson, Benjamin, moved to Sutton, Massachusetts, in 1734. Here, seventy years later,

Jerome Davis' mother was born in the family of Benjamin's grandson, Captain John Woodbury, who served with distinction in the Sutton regiment through the Revolutionary War.

The Woodbury family records are full of military, naval and political leaders. A Lieutenant Woodbury was an aide to General Wolfe before Quebec. Another Woodbury, a midshipman on the U. S. S. " Constitution," lost his thumb on the wheel of that frigate while steering her into action with the British " Guerriere " in the War of 1812. A great uncle of Jerome Davis was one of the first governors of Vermont, while a cousin of his mother, Senator Levi Woodbury, served as Secretary of the Navy under President Jackson, was Secretary of the Treasury in Van Buren's cabinet, was elected Democratic Governor of New Hampshire in 1823, and later served upon the Bench of the Supreme Court of the United States.

The paternal ancestry of Jerome Davis presents an interesting contrast to the Woodburys. The courage and hardihood of sea-faring men, weather-beaten by generations of combat with Cape Cod storms, united with blood of sturdy farming stock, was the heritage of the Davis family. About the middle of the eighteenth century a tide of migration set toward the western frontier of the Massachusetts Colony, and, in 1760, Hope Davis left Cape Cod with his brother Isaac and began to clear the forests and build the first frame houses on the site of the modern town of Lee, in the Housatonic Valley.

The town records show that these brothers took a leading part in overcoming the difficulties of the raw Berkshire Hills, and in contributing to the public life of the pioneer community that grew up around them. Hope Davis was especially interested in the spiritual welfare of his town and was chairman of the committee of citizens chosen to build the first meeting-house of Lee, at a cost of seven hundred pounds.

THE LIFE OF JEROME DEAN DAVIS 3

The men of the Berkshire Hills responded eagerly to the call of the provincial New England Assembly for troops to expel the British from Boston. The Battle of Lexington was scarcely fought before the farmer battalions of the Colonies began to converge upon Massachusetts Bay. Hope Davis' second son, Nathan, Jerome Davis* grandfather, was one of the seventeen men of Lee who marched in the Berkshire regiment upon Boston. He participated in the battles of Bunker Hill, Bennington and Saratoga and fought for seven years in the Continental Army.

Jerome's father, Hope, the youngest son in a family of ten children, was born in Lee, in 1796. Six years later the farm was ruined by the bursting of the mill-dam and Nathan Davis removed to the township of Groton, in central New York, to begin life again in the midst of the wilderness. Here, industry and frugality were rewarded by well-tilled fields and a comfortable home. There were few educational advantages, but the public school had migrated with the pioneers and by steady application Jerome's father secured a common school education. When nineteen years old he began to teach and was known as the District School teacher for nearly twenty winters.

Jerome's mother, Brooksy Woodbury, whose ancestry we have traced, moved to Groton as a child with the family of her older brother, Caleb, and became the second wife of Hope Davis.

Jerome Dean Davis was the third son in a family of seven brothers and sisters. In his diary, written in mature years, he says, " Our early home was an old-fashioned, square, two-storey, brown house in East Groton. Its huge chimney in the center, its cheerful fire-places, its wellstored cellar, its classic garret, and every door and window are all indelibly impressed upon my memory. In the pleasant sitting room was a large fire-place, where a great back log could be laid on, which would last all night, yielding a cheerful mass of glowing embers in the morning. Beside the fire-place was a brick oven where bread, beans and meat were baked. Three large rooms above and three below all had fire-places and, to crown all, there was the huge garret around the chimney, in whose weird recesses we children could play by the hour. There were three barns where we used to jump in the fragrant hay, while the homestead was surrounded by an abundance of fine sugar and fruit orchards."

The busy seasons came and went, each crowded with its characteristic and homely tasks, in which each child was able to add his small contribution toward the prosperity of the rural world of which he was a part. Though the early acceptance of a man's burdens in the struggle with the soil sobered and developed Jerome, the delights as well as the hard work of the country boy were his. He was so fond of Nature and the joys of life in the open, of plowtime and harvest, of corn-husking and " sugaring off," that the crowded events of seventy years did not dim the memories of his childhood. The sugar bush was the experience of the year to which the children looked forward with greatest delight, when for ten days the entire household camped in the maple woods, tending the buckets and boiling the sap night and day.

Jerome's education began at home, where at the age of seven he earned his first book, a New Testament, as a reward for reading it through. The following winter he trudged off through the snow to the old schoolhouse, a mile away, took his seat on the grimed and whittled benches and received his initiation into the mysteries of District School education and the deeper mysteries of human nature in the fifty scholars ranged along the hard planks about him. At recess on his first day at school the boys laid a pitfall for the green youngster, by making

THE LIFE OF JEROME DEAN DAVIS 5

spit-balls and throwing them against the ceiling. They said that the teacher would not see nor mind such harmless fun. Jerome determined to try his hand at the game, but was cut short on his first attempt by the teacher, who made him stand in deep disgrace before the whole school.

He was a studious boy, too loyal to school authority to join in the pranks of his mates, who waged ceaseless warfare on the master; too absorbed in his studies and too conscious of the brevity of the winter's freedom from farm work to spend much time in play or in loitering to or from school. At recess he was often seen with a book, sitting in a quiet spot, completely absorbed and content. In spite of his quiet habits Jerome was liked by his comrades, since he was full of fun and could enjoy a joke upon himself as well as on another. Moreover, when still a young boy he gained a reputation for courage by accepting a dare to walk at night through the old graveyard, which the country boys gave a wide berth after sunset.

In rural New York, in the 'fifties, each pair of hands was an economic asset to the home that few could sacrifice to educational ideals. The school term lasted while snow lay on the farms and no longer, so that from March until December there was little studying for Jerome and his brothers. Furthermore, the District School had its limitations, so that by his thirteenth winter Jerome had gone over the elementary courses and was hungry for something new. He says, " Just before I was fourteen years old, my father bought me an Algebra. It was a difficult one, — 1 Davies-Bourdon.' Although he had taught school for nineteen consecutive winters, my father had never seen an Algebra; neither had the teacher of our District School, nor any one else within my reach. So I went to the schoolhouse every day and dug it out alone, bringing it home at night, and when husking corn or paring apples in the evening, I dug away at my Algebra. I sometimes spent three days and three nights on a single problem, but by the middle of March I had gone through it."

Jerome was always invincible in spelling. He later attributed this to the " spelling down " system of his first school. He says, " One day I went from the middle to the head of the class on the word, ' resurrection,' and never forgot how to spell it afterward." Among the treasures saved from those early days are two faded little books, received as prizes for faithful work, entitled, " The 111- Natured Little Boy " and " The Renowned History of Richard Whittington and His Cat." The home had a few books and one newspaper, The Rural New Yorker, which Jerome used to read through from cover to cover, advertisements and all. When ten years of age his father took him to the District Library of less than one hundred books kept in a little square case. The sight of such an imposing array of volumes marked an era in the boy's life, and the happiness with which he drew his first book, with the privilege of taking it home to read, staid with him through the years as one of the vivid memories of childhood. In this library he formed a life-long friendship with the characters of Scott, and through the reading of Fremont's "Journals of Exploration in the Far West" and other books of travel, his natural fondness for travel was stimulated. He often read, or tried to, like Livingstone, while at work and was chided for it. But in spite of the rigorous discipline of the household, the stern father was proud of the boy and it is clear that he furthered Jerome's progress in every way that he felt consistent with the welfare of the family and farm.

Jerome's memories of his mother are best told in his own words: — "I remember my mother as a tall, slender form, with pale face and dark hair and eyes. When about seven years old I told her a lie. She did not punish me, but took me away to the parlor, all alone, and there talked

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with me and knelt down with me and asked God to forgive me and make me a good boy. This, so far as I remember, was my first and last lie.

11 One scene stands out, however, more vividly than all others during those boyhood days. My mother had been in poor health for two years, but during the spring after my eighth birthday, she grew rapidly worse, and finally, brain fever terminated her life at the age of forty-one. I well remember when we all stood around her bed, just before her death, and her words to me, ' Be a good boy, Jerome.' That evening, feeling lonely, I went out to the barn where my father was milking, and he said, ' Jerome, you have no mother now. I don't know what will become of my children. I fear they will all be lost.' Then came the funeral, and the choir in the high gallery sang to the tune of ' Ganges,' the hymn,

' Lo, on a narrow neck of land ' Twixt two unbounded seas I stand,

Yet how insensible.

A moment's time, a minute's space, Removes me to yon heavenly place, Or shuts me up in Hell.'

At the close, my grandmother lifted me up and asked me to touch the white face and I was startled at its icy coldness."

We cannot analyze the character of Jerome Davis, without full recognition of the qualities that his mother gave him.

From his hard-working father he received the shrewd, practical judgment, the resourcefulness under new and trying conditions, the determination and iron will that had marked the Davis family for generations and made it typical of the stalwart, indomitable spirit of the American pioneer. It was the mother, however, who kindled in her boy those spiritual qualities, which uniting with the stalwart nature of the father, created the soldier missionary of later years. From his mother came that sensitiveness to the suffering and rights of others, that unusual capacity for sympathy and quick intuition, which made him all his life a valued counsellor and friend. His mother gave him, too, the capacity for religious faith, the appreciation of the unseen realities of the spiritual world that glorified his life as a missionary. It was his mother to whom he owed the artistic side of his nature, the chivalry, ambition and broad interest in men and affairs. And, finally, it was the moral courage of the Woodbury line of military men, united to the physical hardihood of the Davis stock, that fixed in him those heroic fighting qualities which characterized him in every relationship in which he stood.

Chapter II THE FORGING OF THE BLADE

THE years following the mother's death were heavy years in the Davis home. The father's third marriage was not a success and the family was gradually involved in debt. This period of unhappy home conditions and family trouble supplied the influences that led to Jerome's conversion. He was not yet fourteen, but his environment was rapidly maturing him. " Until I was thirteen I had no very serious religious impressions. After my mother's death I gave up the habit of prayer. That fall everything looked dark and the difficulties in our home reached a climax. My mind was filled with gloomy thoughts and I was impressed with the fact that I could find happiness only in Christ. I seemed to hear an inner voice saying, ' Unless you become a Christian now, you never will.' But I resisted again and again and each time the conviction returned, sometimes so vividly that I could not sleep. At length, in November, our father took the little sister away to live with an aunt and was absent three days. It was one of those cold, rainy days that I was alone in the barn, husking corn, when these convictions came to me with astonishing power; again I resisted and again and again they returned, each time stronger than before, until I felt that unless I yielded then I should be forever lost. At last with a force of will the strongest that I had ever put forth, I compelled myself to kneel down and ask God to forgive me and Christ to save me. This brought relief. Up to this time I had not said a word to any one about my feelings, and no one had spoken to me for years about being a Christian. When my father returned I told him and he was quite overcome with emotion.

" The next Thursday at the church prayer meeting, I timidly stood up and told my determination and asked their prayers, but I did not find a settled joy at once. I expected a great and instantaneous change, which did not come. Then, too, I sometimes yielded to my quick temper, when everything would turn dark and I would fear that I was not a Christian and after much discouragement I would go to Christ again and find peace and pardon. Finally, I decided that I would do my duty as a Christian, anyway, saved or unsaved, and leave the result with God, and then I began to find a settled peace."

These months of religious struggle were the determining experience of his life. In giving himself to God he loyally yielded his whole life. If he were God's child, then he must work for Him; the relationship was as clear and the obligation as binding as in the case of his earthly parent. Every fibre of his intense and conscientious nature responded to the demands of this new relationship, to which he began to adjust himself, and the aim of his life, " How can I make my life count for the most for God and for men," was born. These words reveal the dynamic power that impelled his life for fifty-nine years, and to which, more than all other influences, may be attributed his success.

Before uniting with the Groton Church, Jerome visited the pastor, Rev. S. T. Kidder, who talked and prayed with him regarding the step he proposed to take. One February afternoon, as the spring twilight was deepening on Groton Church Hill, a knock came at the door of the room where the deacons were met with the pastor to discuss candidates for baptism. The door was pushed open and for a moment, an awkward, homespun clad figure stood outlined against the western sky. With cap held in fingers that trembled, Jerome stated that he was a candidate for admission to the Church.

THE FORGING OF THE BLADE 11

At that time child members were rare and it was a question whether the admission of a boy scarcely in his u teens " should be permitted. However, he had reasoned out his position and his clear answers to their questionings convinced the deacons of the genuineness and grasp of the boy's belief.

" I shall never forget that Spring Sabbath, six months after my decision, when I went up alone in the middle aisle of the church, with a row of boys in the gallery looking down at me, as I publicly assented to the creed and entered into covenant with the Church," With the row of boys in the gallery he now found less and less in common; the family troubles, his natural taste for study and his rather extraordinary step of church membership tended to isolate him from the lads who overran the countryside with their pranks. However, Jerome had the capacity for making and keeping friends, and as opportunities for play offered themselves he entered heartily into them; but more than is the case with the average boy, he was able to hold himself steadily to hard mental and physical tasks, with eyes fixed upon his chosen goal of efficiency and service. This enabled him to endure drudgery while other boys were playing and loafing.

He inherited a sensitive, affectionate nature from his mother, and after her death was led to hide his emotions and to develop a stoicism of face and demeanor that concealed the currents of feeling that often surged in his heart. These years of conflict with environment are responsible for the habit of repression, expressed in set jaw and reserve of manner which clung to him and against which he struggled in later years.

In the winter of 1853, matters in the home reached a climax where a separation became inevitable. Hope Davis sold his farm and turned toward the western frontier, as his forefathers had three times done before him, to begin life under more favorable conditions in northern Illinois.

Upon the close of the Blackhawk Indian War, the Fox River Valley had been settled by groups of New England pioneers, and to one of these new communities in the northeastern corner of the state, the family made its way. The journey from central New York to northern Illinois occupied four days and nights and was Jerome's first glimpse of a steam railroad or of the outside world. Of it he recorded, " Chicago is a city of 50,000 people and is undergoing the state of being lifted out of the mud. The sidewalks are constantly going up and down stairs, as some buildings are not yet lifted at all and others have been raised ten feet."

Dundee, a village of six hundred inhabitants, was typical of the new settlements of the Middle West. A neighborliness, amounting almost to intimacy, pervaded the community. Many of the settlers had been friends in the East before migrating, while the hardships of the pioneer, the stimulus of overcoming the difficulties of a new country and the joy of helping to lay the foundations of a commonwealth, shared in alike by every household, tended to create an atmosphere charged with patriotism, energy and intellectual and physical incentive. The spirit of alertness, of achievement and of perseverance was in the air, and sluggish must have been the blood of him who failed to respond.

Under such stimulating conditions it did not take the newcomers long to feel at home. They soon fitted into an honest share of the life of the town; the father cultivated his farm: the sons worked at the carpentry trade and taught school. The first memory of an old resident of Dundee of Jerome Davis was seeing him build a barn behind his father's house. He was handy with tools, with a knack for construction, and as carpenter, mason's appren-

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tice and bricklayer he found plenty to do. When the farm work was heavy he worked in the hay-field or walked behind the plow, and for years, in the absence of a housekeeper, he did his share of the plain cooking and washing for the family. He stood loyally beside his father, to whom he gave all his earnings until the farm was paid for.

There was a small Congregational Church in Dundee, with which the family united. Jerome was the only young man in the Church, and for years father and son were alone among the men of the community in their attendance at the weekly prayer-meeting.

A picture of the motherless family is left by one who was associated with him in later years: " Every Sabbath I saw a short, dark, somber looking man preceding his children into the church. He always sat at the end of the pew. They were very grave people. He was a deacon in the little church. His prayers were precise and dreary. Augusta was a fair, timid girl who was neatly and carefully dressed. Jerome had the air of a humble, timid, earnest boy, who at every opportunity offered would rise to testify for Christ — hesitant in speech, but so deep, tender, reverent, that all loved, admired and honored him.

When sixteen years old he was chosen Church Clerk, and in that capacity had to take part in the trial of the minister for attempting to spread Unitarian doctrines in the parish. Thus early in his career was Jerome Davis placed on the defensive in matters of faith: a forecast of that wider arena in which he was to stand in defence of the fundamentals of his belief.

About this time, Jerome's aunt, Mrs. Wilder, or " Aunt Mercy," as she was known to the family, nursed him through a serious attack of pneumonia, saved his life and laid the basis of a life-long affection between them. A council of physicians had given him up after a struggle of many weeks. Mrs. Wilder, undaunted at the situation, took command, steeped a quantity of smart-weed, packed the patient in the pungent mess and in a few hours had him conscious and on the road to recovery.

As in New York, so in Illinois, the winters brought an opportunity for study in the village school, which provided better facilities than those he had yet enjoyed. A classmate writes, " I remember him as a good boy in school and always studious. He later attained the dignity of the back seat, the place reserved for the older boys and girls. We noticed his methodical ways. He was rather tall and slightly built, with a somewhat serious face and reserve of manner that did not invite careless advances, but there was a merry twinkle in his eye and a brisk manner of speech and action that won him friends. He was a trifle shy and ill at ease with ladies and certainly did not star at the local parties. Determination, reliability and worth were written all over him."

The winter session of the village school was a poor substitute for the college preparation which he craved. If he was to carry out his great aim of efficient service he must have a college training, but loyalty to his father and the family required that he place his time and earnings at their disposal.

The dilemma seemed incapable of solution if he were to be true to both calls of duty. He faced the situation squarely and while continuing to give his wages to his father, prepared himself for college by the slow process of winter and evening study. " Many a time did I shed tears as I saw other young men able to go to Elgin Academy, while I had to work. When I was seventeen I bought a copy of Virgil with a Latin Grammar, Reader and Lexicon, and that winter recited once a week to the lady who taught our village school. This was the only help that I had in Latin before entering college. The next fall I bought some Greek books and began that study, but