CHAPTER VII.

SECOND PERIOD. (1861-1870.)

   The Nebraska Conference came to its birth in a time of momentous events, its own organization being itself an event of great significance. On April 4, 1861, at Nebraska City, Bishop Morris gathered the fourteen Methodist preachers who were members of the Kansas-Nebraska Conference at work in Nebraska, and with these and two others received into full connection during the session, constituted the first Nebraska Conference. At the close of that Conference he found ready to receive marching orders twenty-one men, including those on trial. This band he sent forth against the hosts of sin who were in rebellion against the government of Jehovah.
   Of these, two were presiding elders, who, among other duties, were to serve as recruiting officers to enlist more workmen as the exigencies of the work demanded.
   Eight days after this, on the 12th of April. Beauregard fired the fateful shot that opened the slave-holders' rebellion, and which proved the death-knell of slavery. On the fifteenth of the month Lincoln summoned seventy-five thousand men to the army, and sent them out to subdue this rebellion.
   These events are not wholly unrelated, as may seem to the casual reader, nor is the relation one of mere coincidence in time. Both these great leaders are fronted with a rebellion, but with this difference; the one against

130

SOME WHO CAME IN THE SIXTIES.

1. J. J. ROBERTS. 2. A. L. FOLDEN. 3. W. S. BLACKBURN. 4. JOEL A. VAN

ANDA. 5. F. M. ESTERBROOK. 6. W. A. PRESSON. 7. GEO. S. ALEX-

ANDER. 8. LEWIS JANNEY. 9. D. H. DAY. 10. THOS. WORLEY.

which Bishop Morris organized his forces and sent out his bands was more fundamental, being against the government of God. This rebellion having depraved the human heart and placed selfishness on the throne instead of love, was the cause of the rebellion which Lincoln set out to subdue. The rebellion of the South was but an incident in the age-long and world-wide rebellion against God.
   But we may trace even a still closer relation. There can be no doubt that the defeat of the slave party in their effort to capture Kansas first and then Nebraska, and make them slave States, greatly exasperated the Southern leaders. So it is but the simple truth of history to say that the first battle was fought during the late fifties, when the conflict raged between the hordes of border ruffians, and the hosts of free men from the north, who had rushed to these Territories, many to Kansas as the point in greatest danger just then, but also many like H. T. Clark, Andrew Cook, and others, came to Nebraska, for the express purpose of saving these to freedom. We know the result. Kansas was saved to freedom, and that meant that Nebraska should remain free as God had made it. We are proud to record that Methodism, under the lead of Wm. H. Goode, was one of the prime factors in bringing about the victory won in this first battle. When the Conference met in Lawrence in 1856, many of the preachers, recognizing the situation, went armed, and all continued their work at the peril of their lives. But they staid and fought it out, and triumphed.
   It was this exasperating defeat in their scheme concerning Kansas and Nebraska. together with the subsequent election of Abraham Lincoln, that led to the cul-

mination of the "irrepressible conflict" in the fierce Civil War and the final doom of slavery.
   While it may be true that those at work in Nebraska were not as much exposed to these perils as if they had been in Kansas, they belonged to the same Conference and were subject to marching orders that would place them there if the work demanded it. Hiram Burch received his first charge in Kansas, and while there crossed the river into Platte County, Missouri, and bearded the lion in his den by preaching the Gospel in a county whose citizens had declared such action on the part of a Northern Methodist should be punished by tar and feathers for the first offense, and death for the second. David Hart, after planting Methodism in Richardson and Pawnee Counties, spent two years in Missouri preaching the Gospel in the face of these threats. Isaac Collins, after serving two pastorates in Nebraska, in 1858 received appointment on the Kansas side of the line, and at first Dr. Goode spent most of his time in Kansas. Thus, so far as their Church relations and duties were concerned, they were integral parts of the same body of men who fought this preliminary battle.
   But let us approach with becoming respect still more closely to this historic body of consecrated men. A few names with which we have become familiar during the struggles and toils of the fifties, are missing. The name of W. H. Goode does not appear, and will not appear again. But he has accomplished his mission and having just returned from his arduous work of organizing Colorado Methodism, he is spending a few quiet days in his home at Glenwood, preparing for the press that wonderful story of frontier work in his book "Outposts of Zion."

   Isaac Collins, the cultured pioneer, who was among the first who hastened to the front and began to lay the foundation of Omaha Methodism, has cast in his lot with the Kansas Conference, his last two pastorates being Atchison and Baldwin City, the latter the seat of Baker University, already established. He was soon after this transferred to the ranks above, departing this life in 1863.
   Jacob Adriance is temporarily absent laying the foundations of Colorado Methodism, but will soon reappear upon the scene. J. M. Chivington is presiding elder of the Denver District, and will be heard from in his celebrated military role. D. H. May is in the Kansas Conference, but will soon return and be heard from in Nebraska.
   A few others who appeared for a brief time have located and dropped out of the work. But most of those who have wrought in this field during the fifties are on hand to organize the new Conference and are ready to push the battle still further.
   Of these, Will. M. Smith is there but soon passes on west. J. H. Alling remains a little while, then goes back to Garrett Biblical school, takes the course and remains in the Rock River Conference. Theodore Hoagland continues until 1863 and then disappears from the list. Jerome Spillman goes into the army as chaplain, and at the Conference of 1863 is granted a location, at his own request, as is also L. W. Smith. Concerning Jerome Spillman it should further be said that after serving two years as chaplain of Fifth Iowa Cavalry, he went to his old home in Indiana, raised a company, was elected captain of this Company "G," Ninety-third Regiment of Indiana Volunteers, and went to the front and was wounded

at the battle of Jackson. After the war he entered the ministry in the South, and besides other charges, served one term as presiding elder of the Atlanta District. He died November 30, 1899.
   But there are a number of strong, faithful men who for many years, and some during their entire life, remain in the ranks. Among these are Martin Pritchard, David Hart, W. A. Amsbary, Z. B. Turman, J. T. Cannon, Isaac Burns, Jesse L. Fort, and H. Burch. It is the privilege of Hiram Burch to still tarry among his brethren and go in and out among the people, highly esteemed and revered by all Nebraska Methodism. Few have done more than this quiet, unassuming man of God, in making the history, and none have been so able and willing to render invaluable assistance to the writer in rescuing from oblivion many of the facts of the history of those early times. He has cheerfully rendered every assistance in his power.
   While we miss the great leader, W. H. Goode, his work as leader is bequeathed to three great leaders, one, H. T. Davis, coming to the Conference by transfer from Indiana in 1859, and the other two, T. B. Lemon and John B. Maxfield, being received on trial at this Conference. Dr. Goode's mantle has fallen on worthy shoulders. Indeed, it is manifestly providential that with the retirement of Dr. Goode, and just at the time when Methodism was entering upon its new era of separate work, and during its formative period, much of it through the stress and storm of adverse conditions, that the leadership should have fallen to these three stalwart men and capable and wise leaders, and that they were spared long enough to lead Nebraska Methodism into the full maturity of its organized career.

   True, Dr. Lemon was not allowed to give as many years to the work in Nebraska as either of the other two. But he entered the work at a more mature period of life and with a larger experience and thorough training acquired in the old Baltimore Conference, that mother Conference of organized Methodism, and hence in the twenty-five years he was permitted to give to the work in this State, his achievements rank with the best. For sixteen years he gave the eastern portion of the work the benefit of his great powers, contributing mightily to the building up of such centers as Omaha and Nebraska City, besides effective leadership as presiding elder. Then in 1877 began the great work of his life, the development and organization of the work in the western part of the State.
   It was the privilege of H. T. Davis to begin his work in Nebraska two or three years earlier than the other two, and continue in the effective ranks two or three years longer than either of them, beginning his work as a supply on the Bellevue Circuit in 1858, and ending it on the Lincoln District in 1901, forty-four years of continuous service.
   While the territorial range of H. T. Davis's work was more restricted than either of the other two, being confined to what is now embraced in the Nebraska Conference, with the exception of a few years of pastoral and district work in Omaha, yet within these bounds no name is so well known and no workman has left so deep an impress upon the Church and the cause of Christ in general, as H. T. Davis. His very presence in a home was a benediction. In the presence of this saintly man sin stood rebuked and righteousness strengthened.
   But these with others that joined the ranks later on

will be more fully appreciated as the story of their grand achievements is unfolded in the succeeding pages.
   Of the other member of this ecclesiastical triumvirate, John B. Maxfield, it may be said that for the range of territory over which his work extended in the course of his career, in the peculiar talents which he brought to the work, in the strength of his great personality and in the results achieved, he stands second to no one in Nebraska. He was by nature richly endowed with a strong mind that could readily grasp the great truths of the Gospel, and possessed a command of language that never failed to give clear, forceful, and often most attractive expression to these truths. This was true in the very beginning of his career. Such men as J. B. Weston, of Beatrice, who heard him when on his first circuit (the Beatrice, 1861), rated his sermons then as far above the average. With a wonderful mental capacity for quickly and clearly grasping the meaning of an author; with a most tenacious memory by which he retained the contents of a book, and being a diligent student, he made rapid progress. With what would be called a good education to begin with, though not a graduate, he soon reached a commanding position among his brethren and a high rank as a preacher of the Gospel, which was at once recognized by all classes who heard him, as the following pages will. amply demonstrate. Indeed as a preacher, it may be questioned if he has had a superior in the history of the pulpit in Nebraska, in our own or any other denomination.
   We would be glad to peer into the early life of this strong personality and trace the influences which wrought to make him what he was, but we are only in possession of a few simple facts. He was born in Syracuse, New

York, February 24, 1833,He was converted at a meeting held by the Wesleyan Methodists at Waddell Meeting-house, in Knox County, Ohio, in February, 1856, and united with the Methodist Episcopal Church at Waymanville, Indiana, in the following April. He soon felt the call to preach the Gospel, but, as in the case of many others, this was not to be without a struggle extending over several years. He was then twenty-three years old and may already have had other plans of life. The next year, 1857, he fell in with the currents that set in toward Kansas and Nebraska at that time, and soon plunged into the rough life on the frontier, first in Kansas and then in 1858 coming up into Nebraska. But all who knew him say he bravely met some of the severest hardships incident to life in a new country. He came to know what poverty meant. At one time he must part with his gun to pay his board-bill. And he knew what sorrow meant. It was here in the vicinity of Blue Springs, Nebraska, that he lost his first wife, the daughter of Dr. Summers, and soon he, himself, passed through a long siege of sickness, often hovering very near the verge of eternity. Good Mrs. Knight, who is still living, and who nursed him through this spell of sickness, says that the call to the ministry that had come to him in Indiana soon after conversion, came again, and he yielded. But though he had, up to this time, not yielded to the call to the ministry, Mrs. Knight and Mother Shaw and all who knew him, agree in saying that he had all this while maintained his Christian integrity. After his recovery from his illness, and receiving license, he preached occasionally during the winter of 1860-61.
   They tell the story that at the first service he con-

ducted he was so embarrassed that forgetting himself, he turned his back on his congregation when he knelt to pray. We can hardly believe this of the self-poised Maxfield that most of us knew in later years, but as a side light, served to explain in part, at least, his long hesitancy about entering the ministry. His sense of the great responsibility in preaching the Gospel and a feeling of inadequacy to the task made him hesitate, and overwhelmed him with embarrassment at the first attempt, as it has so many other strong men.
   He was recommended for admission on trial and received at the Conference of 1861. Perhaps of all the little band of twenty-one whom Bishop Morris sent out from the first Nebraska Conference to their several fields, none went to a harder or more discouraging post than did John B. Maxfield when he went as junior preacher to the Beatrice Circuit, which was on the extreme frontier, there being nothing further west. His senior, Joel Mason, had been on the circuit the year before and had received only $150 of the $300 promised. Now there were two of them to divide the $150, if they received so much, which, as it turned out, they did not, and the amount that J. B. Maxfield received for his first year's preaching from the people he served, did not exceed thirty dollars, the whole amount for both being sixty. dollars. His share of the missionary money would be $112.50, assuming that the junior preacher received half of the allowance of $225. But this strong man, to whom the world was beckoning with much more enticing offers in a worldly way, "chose rather to suffer affliction with the people of God," rode forth on his little white pony and began at the bottom that great career as a Methodist minister, asking no favors except

a fair chance to win his way and by the blessing of the great Head of the Church do his work "and make full proof of his ministry." As might be expected of so well equipped and forceful a personality, he soon finds, and easily maintains his place among the leaders for over forty years, as pastor, presiding elder, college president, member of General Missionary Committee, or as delegate to the General Conference, and is listened to with respect and interest.
   Of the standing which he won in the General Conference, and with the Church at large, we have an intimation in the following editorial by Dr. Buckley: "The Rev. David Marquette has contributed to this paper a memorial on the career of the late Dr. John B. Maxfield. With Dr. Maxfield we had as intimate acquaintance as was possible to be maintained by men separated by half the continent. In the General Missionary Committee, and in the five General Conferences of which he was a member, we met him frequently. As an extemporaneous orator he was far above the average. In the Committee on Episcopacy, in 1892, in a debate that sprang up unexpected and for which he could have made no preparation, he delivered an address which was, from one end to the other, a rolling current of true eloquence. It was upon the fixing of official residences in Europe, and a part of it was as lofty in thought and diction as any passage from the recorded debates of the great ecclesiastical bodies of England in the days when great men spoke without limitation of time. Dr. Maxfield always had the rhetorical manner, whether he said more or less important sentences or was more or less solemn.
   In the course of his life he had two severe attacks of
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paralysis, and so great was his general strength that not until the third, which occurred in the summer of 1899 (as Dr. Marquette observes in another paper), was he robbed of that power of speech that had meant so much to himself and his friends and the Church. His efficiency in every sphere was fully equal to his power as a public speaker, pastor, and presiding elder. Until paralysis had destroyed the mobility of one side of his face, he was a magnificent looking man, stalwart, well proportioned, and had his voice exactly adapted to his style of thought and expression."
   But while the number of preachers did not increase during the first eight or nine years, these three leaders were soon joined by others who took the place of those who left. Among them were such men as A. G. White, W. B. Slaughter, J. J. Roberts, and J. G. Miller; equal, and perhaps in some respects superior, to some of the preeminent three above referred to. These were all strong intellectually, men of culture, who will compare favorably with those of any other denomination. If they did not attain to the same pre-eminence, it was because they were not permitted to give as much time to Nebraska Methodism, or lacked the opportunities.
   The Conference was organized by Bishop Morris at Nebraska City, April 4th to 8th, with H. T. Davis as secretary, Martin Pritchard assistant, and Hiram Burch statistical secretary. The bishop conducted the opening services, consisting of the reading of the 10th chapter of Romans, singing the 137th hymn, and prayer.
   In the Minutes of this session the Disciplinary questions and answers took the place of the usual Conference journal, and from the statistical reports we find Nebraska

Methodism started out in its separate career with 948 members and 396 probationers, and twenty local preachers. There were thirty-one Sunday-schools, 214 officers and teachers, and 978 scholars. There were four churches valued at $7,700, and one parsonage valued at $600.
   Of the benevolences, only the Missionary and Bible cause received contributions, the former $36.22, and the latter $20. The claims, receipts, and deficits for pastoral support the preceding year, as reported at this Conference, did not present a very inviting prospect for these men, from a financial standpoint. On the Omaha District the total claims were $3,956; receipts, $2,364; deficits, $1,811. On the Nebraska City district the deficits were $426 in excess of receipts; only forty-five per cent of claims having been paid. The average per pastor and presiding elder on the Omaha District was $338, while on the Nebraska City District the average was $160. This does not include Missionary money, which was about $125 for each charge.
   This is the outlook for support which confronts these men. Will they go to such fields for such pay? A prominent pastor in a sister denomination, who was in Omaha in those early days, states that his salary was only $600, not half enough, he affirms, to support a family. If $600 was not half enough to support a family, how far short must the $300, the average of our men, including missionary money, have been?
   As the war had not yet broken out this Conference did not feel called upon to express itself on the pending struggle, but at the first Conference after the strife began, in 1862, it hastened to put itself on record in these emphatic words: "Resolved, That we hold in the deepest

abhorrence the wicked and treasonable efforts of the rebels of the Southern States, who are laboring to rend to pieces the best Government the world has even known.
   "Resolved, That it is the duty of every citizen of these United States to uphold and aid the Government in suppressing the present rebellion.
   "Resolved, That we highly approve the policy the Federal Government is pursuing, in the present agitated state of the country, and the vigorous and successful efforts she is making to restore her to her former quiet and prosperity.
   "Resolved, That the Government of the United States has our warmest sympathies, cordial support, and most ardent prayers, in this her fearful struggle."
   For the first four years, or during the war, the growth was slow. Indeed, in one respect they were at first not able to hold their own. Starting out in 1861 with nineteen pastoral charges, they dropped down to seventeen in 1863, and to eighteen in 1864. These losses are accounted for by the disturbed conditions incident to the war, and the check to immigration resulting therefrom.