Home mission trails

Contents

CHAPTEB PAGE

Foreword 7

I. Along the Trail 9

Foreword

Approximately one half of the missionary money given by Methodist Episcopal Sunday-school pupils is used for work in the United States. It is most important, both for the sake of the work and for the sake of those who are sharing so generously in it, that every contributor should understand as fully as possible the nature of the enterprises to which he is giving his money and his prayers. The purpose of this book is to help interpret the Centenary home mission program in concrete terms.

Prepared under the direction of the Department of Missionary Education of the Board of Sunday Schools, these sketches are designed primarily to assist Sunday-school superintendents, missionary superintendents, and department superintendents in presenting the meaning of the Centenary to their pupils. It is hoped, however, that many ministers and laymen not directly connected with the Sunday school, will find the material of genuine interest for reading purposes and of value in their work,

The material of the book has for the most part been secured from personal visitation to the fields described, and every effort has been put forth to insure the accuracy of the statements made. No attempt has been made to make the book comprehend the entire scope of the Centenary home mission program. Instead it is frankly a book of snapshots rather than a panorama. The persons mentioned are not more heroic or more efficient than scores of others; they chance to be real individuals doing real tasks, and they are therefore interesting. The fields discussed are only typical of many similar fields with similar needs and opportunities.

Since the material of the book is designed for platform presentation, each sketch is expected to be complete in itself. Related sketches have, however, so far as possible been grouped together.

Jay S. Stowell.

New York City, August 1, 1920.

•

On the Trail

Chapter I Along The Trail

The trail of the home missionary in America is a very old one. It begins with the earliest American settlements and it follows down through the years a clear-cut, well-blazed, easily recognizable path.

America owes a larger debt to her brave, persistent, and ever-present Christian missionaries than she is likely soon to acknowledge. Wherever a settler has made his way into the uncut forest, there, sooner or later — and usually sooner — the home missionary has found him. In the Western-moving caravans the missionary has ridden, and when the new settlement has been established the Christian preacher has been there to proclaim Jesus Christ and the way of life which he came to teach.

For examples of courage, fidelity, self-sacrifice, and unselfish service one has only to read the annals of our home missionary heroes. While others have sought fortunes in new lands, they have been content to be the servants of Him who had not where to lay his head. Often underpaid, they have remained faithful and uncomplaining. In the midst of selfishness and greed they have taught brotherhood, cooperation, and service; in the face of recklessness and lawlessness they have stood for law and order and the established forms of justice. They have built churches, established schools, and provided Sunday schools, without which millions of our young people would have grown into manhood and womanhood uncared for by the church and ignorant of Jesus Christ.

In the first blush of our country's westward expansion the task of the home missionary seemed to be and was primarily that of church extension. He planted churches where without him no churches would have been established. To be sure, those churches were often little more than shells which a passing wind might almost blow away, but they were symbols of something much more substantial and worth while. The multitude of such churches which the home missionary has built is beyond comprehension, and his untiring persistence in the task has been little short of marvelous to the observer. None of the ordinary incentives of material gain or profit were his, but an incentive

ALONG THE TRAIL 11

far greater than that of worldly profit kept him faithful to his task.

As the years have passed conditions and needs have steadily changed. It is no disparagement of the work of those who labored in the past to say that the plans, the equipment, and the methods which they used are no longer adequate to meet the needs of a new day. Forests have given way to cities and towns, railroads and factories have sprung up, deserts have been transformed into gardens, and a simple frontier organization of life has been replaced by complex social and economic machinery, which has vastly increased our demands upon life and our facilities for satisfying those demands.

There is still genuine need for church extension in America, but the crying need of the present hour is not that of extension to new fields, but, rather, the placing upon an efficient working basis of those churches which have been established in the past and which in altogether too many cases have been allowed for lack of support to languish in the face of large need.

The cry of the church is still "Forward," but the great triumphs of the future must be among new social and racial groups in communities already occupied, and in a larger and broader ministry to the lives of those who are already related to the church or living in its immediate vicinity.

Cheap, barnlike, one-room churches must give way to substantial buildings with many rooms and adapted to the needs of religious education and to community service of many sorts. A staff of trained workers adequate to meet the religous needs of the community must take the place of one often untrained man upon whose shoulders responsibilities too great for him to bear have been loaded, A program of many parts, including generous provision for religious education and social activities of various sorts, must be made to supplement the present limited ministry of the church.

We must learn to minister not alone to those who, temporarily separated from the church, welcome its appearance, but also to millions who living under the very shadow of the church find in it nothing to attract them. We must study to win for Jesus Christ the multitudes who, born on foreign shores, but now living as our neighbors, do not understand our ideals or ways of life, or the religion which we profess. We must discover how to get hold of the young life of our nation not now in any church or

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Sunday school and give it an adequate Christian training.

It is something of this sort which home missions means to-day and is to mean in the days ahead. We are a little further down the trail, that is all; and as we proceed broader vistas open before us and we see more clearly the rich significance of the religion we profess, and with it all there dawns upon us something of the immense proportions of the inspiring task which we undertook when we set out with our Master to help make and keep America Christian.

Chapter II Called To An Important Work

In the year 1855, Dr. J. P. Durbin, secretary of the Missionary Society of the Methodist Episcopal Church, said in his annual report that the Society was desperately in need of a man for New Mexico, "who," as he phrased it, "will give his life to this work and make the New Mexico Mission the great and only enterprise of his life, keeping clear of all worldly schemes, and becoming the apostle of the Spanish population of that territory. It is a work worthy of a great and devoted soul. Such a man to superintend, to preach, to establish churches and schools would leave his life an illuminated mark on the page of the history of the church and of the present territory and future State of New Mexico."

The Methodist Episcopal Church had begun its missionary work in New Mexico in 1850, almost as soon as New Mexico became a part of the United States, but it had seemed difficult to secure anyone who would really give himself unreservedly to the work in this very difficult and even dangerous frontier field.

At the time that Dr. Durbin was making his report to the Missionary Society the Rev. Thomas Harwood was just about preaching his first sermon in Wisconsin. His soul was full of missionary zeal, but he had never thought of New Mexico as his future field of labor, and had never so much as heard of Dr. Durbin. Whether or not Dr. Harwood was the man raised up in response to this appeal and need of the Missionary Society you perhaps may best judge after studying his life and some of the things which he accomplished. In one respect at least Dr. Harwood fully met the qualifications laid down by Dr. Durbin, for he literally gave the best of his life to New Mexico; and we know also that in spite of temptations to the contrary he did keep himself free from "all worldly schemes." It was some years later when Dr. Harwood actually reached New Mexico, but in the meantime, without any planning on his part, he was receiving a training which fitted him admirably for the arduous tasks of the New Mexico field.

During his early years he had struggled with all of the difficulties of a rough frontier farm;

later he struggled to secure an education; for five years he taught in the East, and then as many more in the West. Interspersed with his teaching were extended periods devoted to land surveying on the frontier, often where the Chippewa and the Sioux Indians were numerous. For a number of years Dr. Harwood served as a local preacher and as a regular pastor. For eighteen months during the Civil War he was a soldier in the 25th Wisconsin Volunteers, and for eighteen months following was chaplain of the same regiment. After his discharge from the army he spent three years more in the active work of the ministry. He was, therefore, forty years of age before, responding to a pressing invitation, he and his talented wife found their way into the territory of New Mexico, at that time a field unreached by railroads or other modern conveniences. Like Moses, he had had his forty years of preparation, a large part of it in the wilderness.

He did not then know that the rest of his life was to be devoted to New Mexico, but, staying steadily by the task first as missionary and then as superintendent, he built himself into the life and history of New Mexico until the two are inseparably linked. For more than forty years he made his interests and those of the people of New Mexico one. He had the fine faculty of making friends, even of people who differed from him in their ideas, and possibly no one has been more intimately known throughout New Mexico and more generally loved than has Dr. Harwood. It has been said of him, as of another great man, "If you ask for his monument, stand anywhere [in New Mexico] and look about you."

During his years of service in New Mexico he dedicated sixty-six churches, chapels, and schools, and saw thousands of Spanish-Americans won to Christianity. He had such a rare combination of talents that some one said, "He finds it not difficult to return from praying with a sick Mexican child and pick up his pen and write a forcible argument in defense of statehood." Positions were offered him under the United States government, but he refused them all and stayed faithfully at his chosen task.

When Dr. Harwood reached New Mexico not a public school building could be found. There was hardly a Bible in one family in a thousand and only a few other books were in the Territory. Public roads and bridges were unknown, except such few as had been built by the government or by Protestant pioneers, and there was hardly an American plow, wagon, or buggy in the entire region. Seventy-three and one half per cent of the people over ten years of age were unable to read, and seventyeight and one half per cent were unable to write.

Dr. Harwood's field was not altogether well defined when he first undertook the work in New Mexico. He asked of Father Dyer, the presiding elder, where he was to work and what he was to do.

"The first thing for you to do is to secure a horse, for your circuit will be large," was the reply.

A man standing near by and hearing the remark said, "I have plenty of ponies and will loan Brother Harwood one; he can have his pick of a dozen or more, and he may use the pony as long as he wants to." The pony was brought out.

"Now, if you had a bridle and saddle you would be ready for your work, wouldn't you?" said the presiding elder. At this one man volunteered to furnish the saddle and another man the bridle, and so, almost quicker than it takes to tell the story, the new missionary was fitted out for his field.

"Now get your pony shod," was the instruction, "then start northward by the way of Fort Union, Ocate, Elizabethtown, Cimmaron, Vermejo, and Red River until you meet a Methodist preacher coming this way. Then come back on some other road and rest up a little; thence go south until you meet another Methodist preacher coming this way; thence home again and rest a little; thence westward and eastward until you meet other Methodist preachers coming this way. All this will be your work."

It did not take the new missionary long to discover that he had a large field. Taking the pony to a blacksmith shop he met a very talkative blacksmith, who admitted that he was the son of a Methodist class leader, although he had come out to the wild country of New Mexico and had become what he called a "tough case." He had been drinking freely, but when Mr. Harwood offered to pay for shoeing the pony he said,"0 no ! I know I am a hard case, but not hard enough to charge a Methodist preacher anything for shoeing his horse."

The first Sunday school ever organized in New Mexico so far as the records reveal was organized by Dr. Harwood, and the place of meeting was an adobe, dirt-floor, flat-roof hen house. Here, with Mrs. Harwood's help, a day school also was opened which soon had about thirty pupils. The Sunday school had about the same number of members, made up of Americans and Mexicans.

There were many discouragements in these early days. On one trip Dr. Harwood fell in with a man who was an inveterate talker. He found fault with the churches and with the government for having so long neglected New Mexico. He said that the government had never given them a school, nor aided them in any way; neither had the churches.

"Now," said he, "the Methodist Church has sent you here as a missionary who cannot speak a word of Spanish; and even if you could, it would do the Mexican people no good, for they are Roman Catholics and you can never make anything more of them. You might as well go down and preach to those telegraph poles." Even this fault-finder Dr. Harwood's personality won, however, and he had in him always an admirer and a strong friend.

Some of the trips which Dr. Harwood took in those early days with his pony were long and tedious, involving weeks and even months of travel and covering many hundreds of miles. The fact that he did not know Spanish was a genuine handicap, as he could not even inquire the way while on the road. On one occasion he was obliged to turn back and spend the night at the place from which he had started in the morning simply because he could not understand the people and they could not understand him. He then resolved to master some Spanish at least, and after supper by a blazing fireplace he received his first lesson. His host could talk Spanish, but he could not write it; he had learned it from the people. The thing which Dr. Harwood wanted most of all to say in Spanish was, "Is this the road to Elizabethtown?" And so the lesson proceeded somewhat as follows :

Dr. Harwood said "is," and his host said "es." This Dr. Harwood wrote down. Dr. Harwood then said "this," and his host said "este." Dr. Harwood said "road," and his teacher said "camino." Dr. Harwood said "to," and the host said "a." Dr. Harwood said "Elizabethtown," and the response was the same. Then Dr. Harwood read the result of his first lesson, "Es este el camino a Elizabethtown?"

The next morning Dr. Harwood started out quite elated over the fact that he could speak Spanish, and he proceeded to ask every person that he met, "Es este el camino a Elizabethtown ?" He had not gone very far, however, before he overtook a man on foot, and with all the ardor of a boy trying a new toy he paused and said, "Es este el camino a Elizabethtown?"

The man turned, looked full at Dr. Harwood and replied, "Lawd, man, you'll have to talk English to me. I doesn't understand de language of dis country." He was a colored soldier.

Thus traveling, talking, preaching, and working, Dr. Harwood gradually became the friend of the people of New Mexico. He slept in their homes and they came to know him and he to know and to understand them. The fine chain of Mexican churches and missions, Albuquerque College at Albuquerque, New Mexico, and the Harwood School for girls in the same city are a few of the monuments to the self-sacrificing efforts of this courageous man and his efficient and unselfish wife.

The Centenary is going to make possible new church buildings, a better trained leadership, better college buildings, and other advances in method and equipment in the Spanish-American work in New Mexico; but we cannot understand all that is involved in it unless we understand something of the labors and achievements of Dr. Harwood, the man who all unconsciously came to answer the appeal made by Dr. Durbin in his annual report to the Missionary Society in the year 1855.

CHAPTER m

A CHRISTIAN TRAINING FOR MEXICAN BOYS

A visitor to the grounds of Albuquerque College in tlie spring of 1914 would not have discovered very much resemblance between this institution and the picture which is ordinarily created in the mind by the suggestion of a college campus. The yard was grown up to weeds, the window lights were smashed, and the entire institution had the appearance of dilapidation. Inside, the rooms were dirty, the plaster was crumbling from the walls, and a more undesirable place for a school to be held could not easily be conceived.

It seems like a tragedy that this fine school, organized in 1889 by Dr. Thomas Harwood, so long superintendent of the New Mexico Mission, should have been allowed to fall into such a state of disrepair that it could no longer be used. For some reason, for which no particular individual was responsible, this institution, which did such excellent work for some years, did not receive satisfactory support, and because

A CHRISTIAN TRAINING 25

it did not receive support it soon lacked pupils, and then because it lacked pupils it was doubly difficult to get support. The school was closed and for two years was unused.

It was not to be expected, however, that an institution so much needed would be allowed permanently to languish. Bishop Francis J. McConnell at last discovered Dr. H. A. Bassett, who had for sixteen years been a missionary in Mexico, and to him he offered the hard task of making a real school out of this institution which, at the moment, was nothing but a group of unsatisfactory, dilapidated buildings. Dr. Bassett came to the field and with true modesty but genuine vigor set about accomplishing the impossible. Money had to be raised to rehabilitate the buildings; the weeds had to be eliminated from the yards, and an immense amount of hard work had to be done before any school work could be thought of.

At last the buildings were semipresentable, and Dr. Bassett announced that on the eighth day of September school would open. The only reason that the school did not open on that date was the fact that there were no pupils. The date of opening was changed to the 17th, and again it was changed. At last, the first day of October, the school actually did open with three pupils, and before the end of the year thirteen had been enrolled. The second year there were twenty-seven; the third year thirty-nine; the fourth year came our participation in the World War, and thirty-five pupils were enrolled. The next year the enrollment was the same, but the following year (1919) the number reached sixty-two and a considerable number of pupils had to be turned away because the buildings were inadequate to meet their needs.

The teachers in this school have demonstrated a heroism which has been typical of all fine Christian workers throughout the ages. They have stood by their tasks even when more alluring financial offers came their way, and now they are to be rewarded by having more adequate facilities supplied to them. This is one of the Centenary projects, and to anyone who is familiar with the needs of the Southwest it is apparent that the sort of work done here is one of the most needed. In no other way at present can the leadership necessary for maintaining the various Spanish-speaking churches and missions of the Methodist Episcopal Church be secured.

A CHRISTIAN TRAINING 27

Of course many of the boys who come to this school do not enter the Christian ministry. Many of them go out into business and other pursuits. Here they have a steady and persistent influence upon the large Spanish-speaking population which is to be found throughout the Southwest. One graduate of this school, who came here and took two years of theological training, is now working among his own people in Mexico and has been there since 1917. Three or four of the boys served in the army; some are teaching; some work in stores, and others are engaged in other occupations. At the Columbus celebration a quartet from this school skilled in playing the guitar formed one of the interesting features of the Spanish- American exhibit. Professor F. G. Heslet, the musical instructor, accompanied these boys.

It ought to be said that Albuquerque College is in reality not a college at all, but, rather, a school with few entrance requirements where Mexican boys of reasonably good character, who for one reason or another are not having a fair chance at an education, may come and receive such education under Christian influences. The school is popularly known as the "Harwood Boys' School." Some of the boys who come to this school are from Catholic homes; many of them can speak little or no English. Their parents are anxious for them to have a chance to learn English, and they are willing for their children to be educated in a Protestant school. Sometimes, however, the priest strongly objects to their coming, especially if he discovers that the boys are becoming interested in the Protestant religion.

It is something like this which has happened in the case of one of the most promising boys; but we will let his letter to Dr. H. A. Bassett, president of Albuquerque College, tell its own story. It reveals something of the hold which this school has on its pupils. This boy does not know why his father will not permit him to return to the school he loves. No one who reads the letter, however, can doubt for a moment that the schooling of this Mexican boy has been worth while, even though it has been interrupted by forces which he does not understand.

Sept. 14, 1919.

My dbajr Mr. Bassett:

I thought I would write a few lines to let you know that I am well and at the same time to tell you that I received your most welcome letter a long time. I am awfully sorry that I didn't had enough time to answer it.

A CHRISTIAN TRAINING 29

I tried as hard as I could to come to school but my father didn't give me permission to come. I didn't know why. I hate to leave the school and at the same time I hate to leave you because I know you have been trying hard in making a real man out of me. But at any rate I am going to try and be a Christian man all my life and I know I owe all this to you. I hope my father will change his mind.

I am too busy now, Mr. Bassett. I sure am working hard. I wish myself back in the "dear Albuquerque College." I am here in the mountains and am just thinking of my dear school.

Please excuse writing with pencil, I am too far from home. So with my best regards to Mrs. Bassett, I remain, As ever yours,

(Signed.)

This is but a suggestion of the fine Christian influence which Dr. Bassett and his associates throw around the boys while they are receiving their education. We may well rejoice that the Centenary is to mark a new day of opportunity for this much-needed institution with its high record of service.

The Centenary, however, is to do another fine thing for the Mexican work in Albuquerque — the small, inadequate, and over-crowded Mexican churches there are to give place to a large and attractive building to be erected almost in the center of the town, just across

SO HOME MISSION TRAILS

from the post office. The lots have already been purchased and the work of building will move forward in the near future. Since the population of Albuquerque, the largest place in New Mexico, is one half Mexican, it is easy to imagine how wide an influence this enlarged and better-equipped work will exercise.

Chapter IV The Romance Of A Big Task

One hundred and fifty years ago the owner of a loom house in England was accustomed to turn over the building to his friend John Wesley for the purpose of holding religious services. To-day in the mountains of northern New Mexico the grandson of that loom house owner lives. Every second Tuesday evening he is present at the service conducted by the Methodist missionary in the little schoolhouse at Red River. Little wonder that this man is faithful to the services, for until recently the community was entirely without religious ministry.

The missionary, in order to preach in this schoolhouse, is obliged to drive a Ford automobile forty-five miles from Cimarron over mountain roads at some points two miles above sea level, or, when the roads are rough, to ride a saddle horse and lead a pack horse behind, so that he can carry books, magazines, and other materials into the homes, where without this ministry no good literature would be available.

si

In the heart of winter, when the roads are worse than usual and the weather is most disagreeable, it is next to impossible to travel over these mountain paths even on horseback, and so during that period of the year the Red River services are of necessity discontinued.

The romance of home missions is well exemplified by the work of this missionary, the Rev. Gilbert Traveller. In brief, his field may be summed up as follows: More than two thousand square miles of territory, four agricultural communities, three mining camps, one lumber camp, one important mixed community, and uncounted ranchers, settlers, cowboys, mining prospectors, and others, hidden away in some of the most beautiful mountains, canyons, and fertile valleys which the mind can picture. And this Methodist missionary is the only religious worker in all that large and important territory.

It is indeed a man's job to minister in this unusual field, for, added to the physical endurance necessary to cover the field, a most unusual mental agility and adaptability is the sine qua non of success here. The field indeed is one of contrasts. The mountains are filled with gold, but notwithstanding the fact that the entire

Schoolhouse standing only a few hundred feet from ruined Church

The only Protestant Church in an area of two thousand square miles

ROMANCE OF A BIG TASK 33

region is predominantly Protestant the only Protestant church in the territory has for years been little better than a barn, and last winter (1919) it tumbled into a heap of ruins after a moderate snowfall. Here are graduates of Yale and other Eastern colleges, and also boys and girls from Protestant homes who have never been in a Sunday school or heard a Christian sermon. Here are individuals who have traveled four times around the world, and others who know little beyond their immediate environment.

On this same field are homes costing as much as fifty or sixty thousand dollars and filled with the finest that art and literature and the skill of man can provide; here also as well are log shacks and huts of the humblest sort. Here are mountain passes two miles above sea level which can be crossed only with the greatest difficulty, and fertile valleys where oats, and barley, and rye grow luxuriantly without even the trouble of irrigation. Further down a million-dollar irrigation project is now nearly completed. The dam and immense reservoir lie above Cimarron, and the land to be watered lies below just adjacent to the town. With the opening of this project new settlers will arrive in sub-