Mansfield Methodist Episcopal Church

Last week, I did my research trip to Missouri and Kansas. This trip generated many insights for my book, and it will provide material for my next several blog posts.

Monday and Tuesday, May 24 and 25, I visited the State Historical Society of Missouri office in Rolla. It is housed in the Wilson Library at the Missouri University of Science and Technology, or Missouri S&T. This school was previously called the University of Missouri at Rolla, and before that it was the Missouri School of Mines and Metallurgy. The State Historical Society of Missouri has collections at universities around the state: Cape Girardeau, Columbia, Kansas City, Rolla, St. Louis, and Springfield. Materials at any location can be sent to any of the others. I requested some reels of microfilm be sent from the University of Missouri at Columbia to Rolla so that I could look at them. They were for the Mansfield Mail from 1895 to 1906 and the Mansfield Mirror from 1923 to 1936. Both were weekly newspapers published in Mansfield.

Katie Seale in the Rolla office kindly obtained the microfilm before I arrived. Once I was there, she taught me to use the microfilm reader, which was a scanner connected to a desktop computer. The technology was incredibly good, especially compared to the microfilm readers and printers used by historians for decades. It was able to make even very dark microfilm images readable. The system also allowed me to scan portions of a page of the newspaper and paste them directly into my notes. After several hours, I was in a groove, and in the two days I had looked at all the issues of the Mansfield Mail and had made some headway in the Mirror.

I was mainly looking for places where the local newspapers mentioned one of the churches in the town, other Christian activities, or the Wilders. I was not disappointed. In fact, it was the first issue I looked at that included a description of the founding of the Mansfield Methodist Episcopal Church, where the Wilders eventually settled. I reproduce that article in full:

The Methodists

Organized Sunday with a Good Membership

The Revival

               The revival held in the C. P. Church by Rev. Worthen resulted in much good in the interest aroused, the crowds that attended and in the enlivening of religious interest in the city, and, especially, in the organization of a Methodist Episcopal Church in our midst. The number of conversions were twenty-three and number of accessions to the M. E. church was twenty-six.

               Organization of the church was effected on Sunday, last, by Rev. E. G. Cattermole officiating, assisted by Revs. Rowden and Worthen. The organization starts out with twenty-six members, while twelve or fifteen more will come in soon. The new church will be in the Rev. Mr. Cattermole’s charge until Conference meets, which will be in March, when its future supervision will be determined.

               Rev. Worthen did a good work here and should have credit, we presume, for the most of the work, as he labored incessantly and without compensation. He is, in fact, an able minister and could do much good if he would learn not to antagonize every interest and every body not directly in conformity with his views, and berate them in language strangely in contrast with the doctrines of the Bible. Nothing can be gained by making enemies in church work; but everything may be gained by making friends and by persuasion. Nevertheless, the work accomplished here was a good work and just credit should be given for it, although enemies were made for the church by the bitterness of the language used by Rev. Worthen; but our people should remember that this was not the fault of our new church or of our home church people, but of an outside individual. (Mansfield Mail, 22 February 1895)

This is a striking article for a couple reasons. First, it sets the origin of the Methodist Episcopal Church in Mansfield in February 1895. The Mansfield United Methodist Church histories that I had read previously say that the church was founded in 1899. The first church building was completed in 1899, but according to this news story, it appears that the congregation was founded four years earlier. However, I’m still wondering about the entry Laura wrote about Mansfield in her diary of her family’s trip from DeSmet, South Dakota to Mansfield on August 30, 1894: “There is a Methodist Church and a Presbyterian.” (On the Way Home: The Diary of a Trip from South Dakota to Mansfield, Missouri, in 1894, with a setting by Rose Wilder Lane [New York: Harper and Row, 1962], p. 74). This suggests that there was already a Methodist church in existence the previous year. Perhaps I will be able to access Methodist Church district records that will shed light on when exactly the Mansfield Methodist Episcopal Church was founded.

In addition, it is fascinating that the author of this article combines straightforward reporting about the revival and its results with what might be seen as editorial comments about the pastors involved. This kind of editorializing was not uncommon during the late nineteenth century. It does indicate that some pastors emphasized their denomination’s doctrines instead of beliefs that all Christians share. It is unclear, obviously, whether the author’s assessment of the pastor’s actions was shared by others who committed to the new church. I think that Laura Ingalls Wilder would probably have resonated with the newspaper reporter’s attitude.

Another item provided regularly in these local newspapers is the schedule for full worship services led by the pastor at each church in Mansfield. There was some shifting over time, but it appears that there were “preaching” services either one or two times a month at the Methodist Church. In some years, it was the first and third Sunday mornings, during others it was the third and fourth, and sometimes it was just the third. This was because the pastor assigned by the Bishop served more than one church.

I believe that I now have an almost complete listing of pastors who served the Mansfield Methodist Church between 1895 and 1935. At least it is more complete than any list I have seen. They were:

E. G. Cattermole, 1895

J. S. Meracle, 1897

T. P. Leckliter, 1898

C. F. Tippen 1899

W. H. Yount or Yaunt, 1899-1900, 1903-1904

John J. Frazier, 1904

B. D. Jones, 1908-1909

B. E. Niblack, 1912-1913

J. J. Wolfe, 1913-1914

J. W. Needham, 1914-1915

Guy Willis Holmes, 1916-1919

Thomas E. Prall, 1919-1920

A. J. Graves, 1920-1921

Clyde E. Little, 1921-1922

W. A. Gray, 1922-1923

M. O. Morris, 1923-1924

George A. Wells, 1924-1926

C. C. Van Zant, 1927-1929

William A. Dahlem, 1929-1931

J. E. Owen, 1930-1931

Andrew C. Runge, 1931-1932

D. S. Frazier, 1932-1933

Holley Day, 1933-1936 (maybe longer)

Pastors normally only served for one year and then were assigned elsewhere. It appears that by the late 1920s and 1930s, however, it was more common for a pastor to serve multiple years.

As far as considering the faith of Laura Ingalls Wilder, I’m gathering answers to basic questions about the Methodist Church in Mansfield—when was it founded? When did they meet for worship? Who was the pastor?—in hopes that they will contribute to answering other questions: What was spiritual formation like for members of a church in a small town like Mansfield, where a pastor came to preach just once or twice a month, and where he served just one year and then moved on? Did the Wilders attend Sunday School, which was held weekly? The newspapers report on events sponsored by the Methodist Church Ladies Aid Society, and they regularly give the program for Epworth League and Christian Endeavor meetings for young people. It doesn’t seem that Laura was very active in the Ladies Aid. When Laura’s name appears in the newspaper, it is usually 1) as an official in the Mansfield chapter of the Order of the Eastern Star or in 2) relation to activities of two women’s clubs, the Justamere Club in Mansfield and the Athenian Club which had members in both Mansfield and Hartville. She also served as the Secretary-Treasurer of the Mansfield chapter of the National Farm Loan Association.

Many thanks to my institution, Trinity Christian College, for funding my travel. More about other things I learned on the research trip in future posts. Thanks for reading.

Links:

State Historical Society of Missouri

Missouri University of Science and Technology

Trinity Christian College