We Plow God's Fields

Front matter

The Life of James G. K. McClure

John Ager can Mes We Plow God’s Fields

The Life of James G. K. McClure by John Curtis Ager

Contents

Acknowledgments

Researching and writing a book is on the whole a solitary and lonely pursuit. And yet, you are dependent on a whole range of people for help. I have needed a large contingent of people to urge me on, to encourage the work. My mother, Mary Lucille Ager, my wife, Annie, my sons, Eric, Kevin, Jamie and Douglas, and my mother-in-law, Elspeth Clarke, have all been my primary encouragement team, and I am indebted to them beyond words. Debbie Aly, secretary to the McClure Fund, labored over her typewriter long and tedious hours for the benefit of this project. Buffy White agreed to subject herself to editing the manuscript, masterfully providing order in the midst of a whirlwind. The Trustees of the James G. K. McClure Educational and Development Fund, including James McClure Clarke, Reuben A. Holden, Dr. Harold Bacon, Mrs. Burnham Colburn, Martha Guy, Julian Woodcock, and Richard Jennings, patiently provided the funds and the time to complete this biography. Tom Eller of Warren Wilson College guided me through his word processing maze. John Murphy, Donna Kilpatrick, Doug Clarke, Franklin Sides, Donna Price, Susan and Chris Crosson and the Brown family (Ralph, Shirley, Clifford, Ben and Charlie) all kept the cows milked and the apples picked at Hickory Nut Gap Farm while I stole away to write this book. Finally, I am grateful to all my editors at the Appalachian Consortium, and to those who typeset and printed this book. In the end, it has been a community project, and how fitting that it should be.

Prologue

And for their sake I consecrate myself, that they also may be consecrated in truth. John 17:19, a favorite sermon text for Jim McClure)

Describe Jim? That’s difficult. He’s tall & very well set up. About 5 feet 11 in his stockings & weighs about 170 pounds. He looks more like an Englishman or a Scotchman than an American & he wears his clothes the way they do—Tweeds and such likes. He has a very refined rather small head with dark hair & dark eyes that are very brilliant at times & with humorous lines about them. He has the most charming smile I’ve ever seen on any human being, and that’s not merely the opinion of his prejudiced wife! He has regular features & a certain youthful almost childlike look to his face combined with an expression of immense strength & a curious concentrated vitality. He has a warm brown coloring that suggests an Italian ... He has an extraordinary mind & a very real gift of expression, a singular intellectual quickness and a german thoroughness of investigation. He is one of the most original thinkers I have ever known & is wholly untrammelled by tradition. Added to that he has a humor & wit that is the joy of all who know him. This is written as much as possible with the eye of a cold outsider! (Elizabeth Cramer McClure to Martha Clarke, July 7, 1916)

This biography is a story of the life of one man, James Gore King McClure, Jr., and his vision for a better life in the mountains of North Carolina. At his prompting, and under his leadership, the Farmers Federation was founded in Fairview, North Carolina (near Asheville) in 1920. Out of his own determination and his superb organizing skills, he created a cooperative agricultural movement that began to shift the economy of Western North Carolina from one hopelessly beset with inertia to one that gave the farmers of the area new hope. The Federation organized markets, provided test trials for farm products, and upgraded breeding stock. For the first time in many years, farmers had money in their pockets and a legitimate pride in their production.

A name like James Gore King McClure seems made to be announced in a resounding bass voice, after which all mumbling and chit-chat would quickly subside into attentive silence. But though honor, respect and even power would eventually come to this man, they were won more with a smile and a cheerful remark than with an authoritarian presence. He was brought up, a minister’s son, in the posh Chicago suburb of Lake Forest, Illinois, but was able to break through the narrow circle of this society to move easily among different levels vi We Plow God’s Fields and conditions of humanity. He inherited a powerful Presbyterian vision as the descendant of staunch Scottish Covenanters, and was trained in theology and the rhythms of Protestant church work. He could challenge the complacency of a prominent New York City church with his message of the Social Gospel; and two weeks later, in shirt sleeves, challenge the mountaineers of the Bearwallow Baptist Church in Gerton, North Carolina, to take hold of their own lives, to consecrate themselves for the sake of their neighbors and their children.

Jim McClure always felt a thrill when he gathered together the varieties of people in his life. He possessed the gifts of charm and humor, and the ability to create an ambience of good feelings and warmth that brought individuals with little common ground in touch with one another. The man drew a kind of power out of a crowd, a spiritual power he returned in kind. Whether it was playing Santa Claus for the mountain children at his home, Hickory Nut Gap Farm, or raffling off a rooster to a wealthy dowager at the Waldorf Astoria in New York, he had a knack for understanding what it was in a situation that gave people a sense of ease, satisfaction and excitement. He knew when to be serious, and when a tense moment needed relief. His skills were human ones; and they brought into his life most of all many, many friends.

This is also the story of his wife, Elizabeth Cramer McClure, an extraordinarily sensitive woman who saw the rich colors of life with a painter’s eyes, and who taught Jim to balance Calvin with Monet. Without her sense of proportion and beauty, Jim’s work for the Farmers Federation would certainly have failed. She made a home for him, remodeling an old neglected inn and surrounding it with flower and vegetable gardens. There were the two children, Elspeth and Jamie, with their friends and cousins romping about the mountainside. It was the kind of place Jim McClure could both entertain his guests and really relax, and where he could find support and comfort in his spiritual struggles.

Elizabeth’s portrait of Jim continues to greet his descendants and old friends in the dining room of Hickory Nut Gap Farm. One mountain woman who had grown up on the farm said every time she passed by it she just thought he was going to jump out and start talking to her. Elizabeth, an exquisite portrait painter, captured his gifts on canvas. It was with his famous eyes that she told with her brush of his “immense strength & a curious concentrated vitality.” The eyes are determined and full of the adventure of a great vision of life. And his mouth, with a little smile, balances the Presbyterian hardness to portray the “humor & wit that is the joy of all who know him.” Elizabeth showed how the mouth and the eyes complemented each other, in the portrait as well as in her marriage to him.

This man chose and articulated the highest ideals, and then doggedly pursued them. He had to struggle not only with the ingrown fatalism of the mountaineer, but with himself and the limitations his own culture imposed on him. Both he and his wife worked to enjoy and appreciate the incongruities of their lives. Their grace and good humor, though, did not leave them casual wayfarers. They were hard-working participants with and movers of the people around

Prologue vii them, always ready to take a stand for progress and then to battle hard for its fulfillment.

It would be easy to say that these two people lived in an era when faith in progress supported them. It is true they had the backing of a dynamic American society that was making such economic strides that no problems appeared insurmountable, and yet was still old-fashioned enough to believe in an American destiny. But Jim and Elizabeth McClure faced the cynicism and hypocrisy that are always prevalent in human societies. The story of Jim’s life is full of human hope and courage. He wanted his life to stand for spiritual excellence, not as a contemplative monk but as a man who was unafraid to dream that the Kingdom of God could be established on this earth and was willing to dirty himself trying to build it. His struggle was imperfect; not all of his projects were successful. The Farmers Federation itself died a suffering death. His life, like most, was filled with tragic elements that would haunt and discourage him. And yet he kept battling and fighting right up to the very end. Read this book to discover a great human spirit, the man baptized James Gore King McClure, Jr.

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Chapter 1 The McClure Family

Grandchildren are the crown of the aged, and the glory of sons is their fathers. Proverbs 17:6

The memory of my Father is a constant inspiration to me—in every high and holy line. James Gore King McClure, Sr., to James Gore King McClure, Jr., October 6, 1928)

The oldest room at Hickory Nut Gap Farm, the original log cabin in fact, was made over by Jim and Elizabeth McClure to be their study. The bookshelves were filled with his theological and historical works, with several shelves reserved for her art books, and volumes on landscaping, interior design and horticulture that were used for the transformation of the old inn. When there was a need for serious talk, the McClures retired to this study, closing the door behind them. Of all the rooms in the house, it was the one reserved almost exclusively for business matters and intellectual stimulation. It is no accident that Jim and Elizabeth hung above the old fireplace in that room an engraving commemorating a decisive development in Scottish history. Although these events occurred nearly 300 years earlier, they had such a profound effect and so powerful an influence on Jim McClure’s ancestors that they were in large part responsible both for his desire to enter the ministry and his very presence in the United States.

The engraving is peopled with figures going about a most serious and, for some, painful ordeal. On the right, men of the nobility arrive on horseback amid aristocrats still wearing their swords and uniforms of command. No one smiles. On the left, a confident and stern-faced minister of the gospel shoves into the scene a small book, perhaps the hated Anglican Book of Common Prayer. The light, the outstretched arms and the faces all focus onto the center of the picture, where a simple country woman sits with an open Bible on her lap. Her face looks off into the distance with an expression of unnamed terror, because she understands better than all of the others that the consequence of this gathering will be war. And war, to the peasant mother, threatens her family most of all, because it brings along not only death, but hunger and disease as well. The year is 1638, and the Scottish Presbyterians are rising to oppose the ill-fated King Charles I and his Archbishop, William Laud. The specific issue is a decree that the Scottish church must use the Anglican prayer book. But the real issue is: who rules Scotland, the English crown or the Scottish Presbyterians? To under-

“The Covenanters,” an engraving hanging over the fireplace of the study at Hickory Nut Gap, Fairview, N.C. Engraved from a painting “By His Most Obedient Servant George Harvey.”

stand Jim McClure, it is important to know what his ancestors were doing and thinking at this time of crisis.

The Scots never developed an institution comparable to the English Parliament. But in order to root out the Roman Catholic Church, John Knox (1505— 1572), leader of the Scottish reformation, had organized his Presbyterians into a powerful political force, one that was astonishingly representative of the different classes of its day. By the time Charles I assumed the throne, he was faced with a church body that wanted to rule Scotland, and he had to find a means to thwart it. The battle over the English prayer book was the loose thread that started to unravel Charles’s rule, ending finally with his execution. The picture in the McClure study commemorates the renewal of the Scottish Covenant with God, and it bound each signatory to resist the authority of the Church of England and its royal promoters. English historian G. M. Trevelyan wrote: “The Covenant with God . . . embraced all ranks from the highest to the lowest. In every parish men signed it, weeping and lifting their right hands to heaven. When the Scots display emotion, something real is astir within them.”! The Scottish resistance forced Charles I to call for the election of a Parliament to provide money for an army, setting in motion the famous struggle for power between that body and the English monarchy. When the dust had cleared, neither Oliver Cromwell nor the restored Charles II could abide a Scotland ruled by radical Presbyterians. Life was made increasingly uncomfortable for the

Covenanters. Some years earlier King James I, father of the ill-fated Charles, had created a plantation of Scottish settlers in Ulster, Ireland, sowing the dragon’s teeth of sectarian hatred amongst the Catholic Irish. Some members of the McClure family left Scotland at this early opportunity, and were well established in Northern Ireland when the screws began to tighten on their Scottish brethren later in the century. A family letter describes the situation:

It was towards the latter part of the seventeenth century that the Sloans with the McClures and Craigmiles were forced to take refuge in Ireland. As covenanting Presbyterians they were subject to severe persecution, and with their brethren in the faith they sought peace and safety in a land where they could worship God after the dictates of their hearts. Passing over from Craig in Scotland they found a resting place in the province of Ulster where the Presbyterians so largely predominated, settling in the County of Armagh; they there remained surrounded by sympathizing friends, enjoying the quiet they sought.”

One family story tells of a mother and daughter hiding in a load of hay being shipped across to Ireland. English soldiers sank their bayonets into the hay, but miraculously neither mother nor daughter was discovered, and they atrived safely. Through the fires of such adversity, a strong Presbyterian identity was firmly stamped on the McClure family.

At this point in the family history, individual McClure ancestors emerge. Archibald, Jim’s great-grandfather, married Elizabeth Craigmiles. Her father, if family traditions are accurate, felt that this McClure boy was too lowly to marry the daughter of a famous military man. James Craigmiles, born Craig, was a member of the family that had emigrated from Scotland with the McClures during the seventeenth century. He had made a name for himself, in the literal sense. At the age of eighteen he enlisted in the British Army, and in 1759 found himself in the New World as a part of the siege of Quebec. In one of the most celebrated military paintings of the period James Craig holds in his arms the brilliant young General Wolfe as death overcomes him on the Plains of Abraham. Wolfe’s watch and papers were delivered personally by Craig to the general’s family, and for his heroism he was granted property and the suffix “miles” (Latin for soldier) was added to his name.’

With the passing of time, Ireland ceased to be a haven from persecution. It was also a poor land where an ambitious person had little hope of satisfactory fulfillment. Religious questions and questions of national identity were hopelessly tangled, as they are today, and the London government felt forced to limit the rights of citizenship to those people loyal to the Church of England. By law, both Covenanters and Catholics

... could hold no public office, nor be married by their own ministers, nor bury their dead by their own simple rites, nor build churches, nor buy land, nor employ teachers except those of the Established Faith. Thus deprived by oppressive laws of every position of trust or honor, denied the liberty of speech, the free exercise of conscience, together with the burdensome restraints of commerce and extortionate rents from their landlords, they began to look toward America as another and a better home.*

The new American republic was attracting settlers who hoped to leave behind both the politics of the Reformation and the poverty of Ireland. In 1801 the McClure family made the decisive break, and Jim McClure’s great-grandfather, Archibald McClure, sailed for New York. James Craigmiles and his wife joined their daughter and son-in-law and their children for the voyage to America. Another young couple went with them, for Archibald’s brother John had married another of James Craigmiles’s daughters, doubly diluting his fine new name with McClure blood. Mary McClure, sister to Archibald and John, was on board as well. She was the crucial link in her two brothers’ future, for she had married and moved to America in 1794 and had returned to Ireland to see her family and accompany them across the Atlantic. The whole McClure clan was presided over for the trip by Mr. and Mrs. McClure, Sr., Jim’s great-greatgrandparents. They all settled in the primitive manufacturing town of Hamilton Factory near Albany, New York, where Mary’s family lived.5

Sailing the Atlantic in 1801 was very risky, especially for the older members of a family group. The boats were cramped and the crossing took many weeks. Tragedy struck the McClure voyage as yellow fever broke out on board, and when they arrived in New York the port authorities refused to allow the passengers to disembark until the disease had run its course. It must have been a dreary wait on the edge of the New World. The older passengers suffered terribly, and when the time came to set foot on American soil, only the old warrior James Craigmiles was alive among the collective parents of Archibald and Elizabeth. But despite the sorrows of death, these two entered the New World that much less encumbered with the ties and responsibilities of their former lives.®

But the doughty old James Craigmiles was apparently enough to deal with, remaining with his two daughters and making a terrible nuisance of himself. The habit of command rarely dies out in an army man, and how tempting it is for the most forbearing of fathers (which the senior Craigmiles was not) to give advice to his own children and sons-in-law. The tensions at home were perhaps exacerbated by the treatment he received out in the streets of the town. A spirit of Jeffersonian egalitarianism was sweeping the nation in 1801, and the common folk failed regularly to tip their hats to him in passing. Elizabeth and Archibald McClure must have been quite relieved when he decided to sail back to Ireland, complaining all the way of the insolent Americans.

By 1808, Elizabeth and Archibald had five children. In 1810, Archibald McClure died of a fever that had swept through the village. At his death, Archibald charged his wife to see that the children “feared God and were obedient.”’ The Presbyterian faith remained strong in this family. As each child was ready, the parents made a trek to the town of New Scotland, the nearest

Presbyterian Church, in order to have them properly baptized. Religion and education were inseparable in this household. Archibald, Jr. told his own children later how he learned to read the First Psalm by the light of the fireplace as his mother spun yarn on her wheel.®

The widow Elizabeth was an industrious mother, and was able to support her family adequately. “Grandma McClure was a good manager .. . She kept boarders, she made yarn and knit much, she put down pickels [sic] for a family in Albany named Russell. She was especially successful in spinning shoe thread and made . . . from it enough to more than keep her children in shoes. She also made linen thread which was sold in Albany.”? As the children were able, they helped their mother and grew up with the same industrious habits. The eldest son, James, went to Albany to be apprenticed to Mr. Russell, Mrs. McClure’s “pickel” fancier. He owned a paint and glass store, and was so impressed with the work of James that when young Archibald was of age, on his fourteenth birthday, he too went to Albany to work for Mr. Russell. Archibald had been a sickly child, and was quite attached to his mother. She found it difficult to tell him straight that he was leaving home for good. She explained that the trip to Albany was to be a special birthday present, a holiday with his brother. She carefully gathered together his clothes and placed them inconspicuously in the wagon. Elizabeth Craigmiles McClure did her best to give him an ordinary goodbye, but as soon as he was out of sight, she sat down and cried.!° Tradition handed down in the family tells of Archibald sleeping under the counter in Mr. Russell’s store, and walking home to see his mother every Sunday, a fourteenmile round trip.

Religion and education, as well as a gift for business, were yoked together in the McClure family. Mrs. McClure had certainly stressed these pursuits, and after only two years of Archibald’s apprenticeship, Archibald and brother James went into business for themselves. They bought their own drug and paint firm in an Albany buzzing with money and big ideas. The Erie Canal had just been opened, and suddenly the town became the funnel for enormous wealth moving down to New York City. At the same time, young Archibald devoted himself to his own education by attending a Sabbath School his brother James helped to organize. Classes were held in a sawdust-floored carpenter’s shop, and were designed to help those who worked the other six days of the week. This Sunday School was quite a controversial idea as many thought it a sacrilege against the sanctity of the Lord’s Day. When the school tried to merge with the Second Presbyterian Church the issue almost split the congregation. Archibald himself saved the situation by convincing Mrs. De Witt Clinton, the governor’s wife, to send her children to the Sunday School. Archibald McClure felt such gratitude to the school that for the rest of his life he worked to build up its resources and improve its services. He gathered together enough books to make a school library, an expensive aid to education in that era. Many of the poorest boys of Albany learned to read, write and ‘cipher’ at the Sunday School of the Second Presbyterian Church, hearing as well the gospel of Jesus Christ.!!

Archibald married Susan Tracy Rice on May 22, 1833. She was a woman of such deep-rooted New England ancestry that she could trace five direct ancestors to the Mayflower. Her father had served in the War of 1812, and her mother had been William Cullen Bryant’s first teacher. The poet honored her every year with a visit.!2 Susan had grown up in Washington, Connecticut, and loved to describe the visit there of the Marquis de Lafayette in 1825. The seven Rice children were perched on the fence along the road, each proudly displaying a new pair of shoes. The great hero spotted them in his parade through town, and made the grand gesture of giving them a personal salute.!3 Susan became a teacher like her mother, and went to Albany to accept a school appointment there. No one could have been more attractive to Archibald than a beautiful teacher, and happily his affections were well received by Miss Rice. They spent their honeymoon traveling along the Erie Canal to view the great wonder of New York, Niagara Falls.'4

Susan and Archibald McClure raised a family of seven children in a prudent and sober atmosphere. Morning and evening prayers were an unvarying ritual of daily life. No liquor, smoking, card games or dancing were allowed at any time or in any place. Outside the home, the Second Presbyterian Church of Albany was the most important family focal point. With Archibald’s business success, the McClure family’s social position rose to a level of great influence in Albany. The mahogany dining room table, made for Archibald’s family, became a gathering place for ministers, politicians and business leaders.

Archibald’s success allowed him time to travel as well. He made one trip to the Illinois frontier to investigate a mission society project of his wife’s. In 1847 he sailed for Europe, returning to the world his father had left almost a half a century before. On his return voyage, the link to the future of this story was almost broken. A terrible gale blew up. And as the ship began to toss about Archibald became gravely ill. A friend made during the passage, a prosperous New York City merchant named James Gore King, cared for him and nursed him back to full health from a state perilously close to death. Without Mr. King, our narrative would never have been, because it was after Archibald’s return that Susan conceived a fifth child. On November 24, 1848, James Gore King McClure, the father of our hero, drew in his first breath and let out his first wail of greeting.!5

Religion, education and business continued to blend and support one another in the McClure household, and young “Jamie” absorbed a balance of all three. For him to be a minister of the gospel, however, was the dearest hope of his parents. Archibald had been unable to study for the ministry himself, and looked forward to the pleasure of sending one of his own children into that honored profession, fulfilling a personal dream through one of his offspring. To that end, they dedicated his young life, continually praying that the living God would lead their son into His service.!© After his near death at sea, Archibald undoubtedly felt a keen sense of gratitude toward his Creator. In any event, spiritual prompting affected young Jamie quite early. In later life he wrote:

Archibald McClure. The following note was written on the back of the portrait by James G. K. McClure, Sr.) “This portrait was painted in 1838 Frederck Fink (?) of Albany, N.Y.—when my father was 32. This was 10 years before I was born. The memory of my father is a constant inspiration to me in every high and holy line. He lived to be 66. His black hair was untinged. It was perfectly black.”

The first distinctive religious experience that I recall was in 1858—when I was nine years of age. The revival which originated in the Fulton St., New York City prayer meeting in 1857 was a prayer meeting revival ... The meetings held in Albany were largely attended, were very hushed, had scarcely any exhortation, but had much outpouring of the heart in prayer . . . Moved by the atmosphere of such meetings, I asked a group of boys of my own age to gather in my father’s dining room—perhaps ten in all—and have a prayer meeting

Jamie McClure.

of our own . . . At that time boys of our age were not allowed to unite with the church—so we were virtually left to ourselves. !7

Jamie McClure grew up absorbed in the collected wisdom of his Presbyterian heritage, and with the stature of a taut and wiry athlete. His physical prowess opened up for him the boys’ world of baseball, which complemented the heavy doses of ecclesiastical training he received at home and at church. He was a happy and witty child, able to gain the confidence of his peers. His father sent him to preparatory school in Massachusetts and it was there, in the spring of 1866, that he made a firm covenant with God. He once wrote. “It was at Andover that I became a Christian . .. My whole life has been shaped by the decision there made.” (James Gore King McClure, Sr. to Marion Cooper, November 15, 1902) During his vacation, he united with the Second Presbyterian Church of Albany.

Fortunately three questions were not asked me. One was: “Had I experienced a precious hope?” Another, “Was I distressed for my sins?” the third, “Did I love God?” These were questions often in the air. Now the fact was that . . . I had not experienced anything “precious,” I had not been distressed about my sins and I could not claim any such feelings toward God as my love for my mother. All these features were in due time to be the fruit of the Spirit-but I was just planted ... Indeed I was rather irritated at God because I had felt forced to yield to Him and I initially said, “If you insist upon my being a minister, I will do as you say, but I don’t want to... ”18

After his spring vacation, he returned to Andover with the adulation of all of his parents’ friends ringing in his ears. Before he knew it, he was in trouble and the headmaster had to suspend him from school for a serious breach of discipline. He had been attending a meeting of a theological society along with a ball-playing schoolmate nicknamed “Tompie.” On the way home, a plan arose in some of the boy’s minds to “egg” a particularly hated teacher. The final strategy was to:

creep up the garden lawn and put the tick-tack* on the window, pull the string and when old B—— comes out we will throw our eggs at him and run. This was a turn in affairs for which I was not prepared. But Providence came to my relief. The boy next to me was tossing his egg up in the moonlight (he was a base ball player) when it slipped past his hand and fell upon the ground— whereupon I said to him, “Tompie, you can throw straighter than I can, you take my egg.” Pilate like I attempted to evade responsibility for the scheme in which I nevertheless was a participator. The scheme worked well. Old B—— came to his front door, the eggs showered upon him and we disappeared.