|
Who Became a Bishop
|
145
|
to that of my own District. I first conferred with Bishop Nichols of San Francisco and Bishop Leonard of Salt Lake who had been doing some work in Northern California. I also went to see Bishop Wingfield who warmly welcomed me to the task. I then made a thorough visitation of the District confirming candidates, encouraging the clergy and securing some new men for the work. This kept me busy until the 5th of April when I returned to Nebraska.
On Easter Tuesday Mrs. Graves and myself celebrated the twentieth anniversary of our wedding, inviting in twenty friends for the evening. Two boys, David and Paul, had been born to us in Nebraska. On the fourth of May I confirmed a remarkable class of twenty-three in the little village of Culbertson. It came about in this way. The Methodists and Presbyterians had united for a revival and employed a noted lay evangelist. He succeeded in stirring up the whole town in religious matters. We had been holding services there once a month by a lay-reader from McCook. The leading business men talked over the matter among themselves and agreed to unite with the Episcopal Church. They sought instruction from our lay-reader who was a seminary graduate and thoroughly competent. The day of the confirmation I gave the Holy Communion to twenty-seven persons in Culbertson. To show the difficulties of our western work I would state that ten years later only one communicant was left in Culbertson, all the others having moved
| 146 |
The Farmer Boy
|
away. Two days after the confirmation in Culbertson I gave communion to twenty-eight in Trenton. Ten years later there were only four left there. I could name a dozen places in my District which have had a somewhat similar experience. On the twenty-first of May I preached to eighty people in the school-house at Wood Lake, that number being more than the entire inhabitants of the village, some coming miles from the country. I could recall many experiences of that kind.
During July I attended the sessions of the Lambeth Conference in London, England. About one hundred bishops were present from all parts of the world. I arrived there the day it opened and started for home the day it closed, hurrying back to my double charge in California and Nebraska. During the brief intermission between sessions of the conference I visited five families in England who had relatives in my District.
On my return I made many visitations in The Platte and started September 29th with my wife for Northern California. I was busy there until Christmas, my wife going to most of the places with me, meeting with the various ladies' guilds and organizing a number of branches of the Woman's Auxiliary to the Board of Missions. Among other things I delivered a course of lectures to the divinity students at San Mateo.
|
Who Became a Bishop
|
147
|
CHAPTER XXV.
1898.
BEGAN my visitations this year in January so as I to get through in time to go to California in the spring. April 4th I was at Fort Robinson just before the breaking out of the war with Spain and addressed the soldiers on the subject of the war which seemed imminent. After service Colonel Hamilton who entertained me said: "We have practiced loading our horses on the cars and are ready to start for the war at a moment's notice, but I think the difficulty will be fixed up in some way and that there will be no war.
Two days after that his regiment was off for the war and in three months he died a hero at the battle of San Juan Hill.
On the third of May I started for Northern California, visiting Bishop Leonard and his institutions at Salt Lake on the way. Before the end of June I visited thirty-three places, started several news missions where churches were built soon after and closed up my work as far as the District of Northern California was concerned. In the autumn, Bishop Wingfield having died, the General Convention elected Rev. W. H. Moreland bishop of Northern California. This relieved me of that additional work. With my family we spent two months of the summer at Evergreen, Colorado, in the mountains west of Denver. I held services every Sun-
| 148 |
The Farmer Boy
|
day in the little chapel there. We caught many trout and were greatly refreshed by the rest and change.
The last of August I accepted an invitation from Bishop Hare to visit his convocation of Sioux, or Dakota Indians, held at Corn Creek, fifty miles north of my District. With the Bishop of Oklahoma and Bishop Hare we drove the fifty miles in a wagon reaching Corn Creek in time for the sunset service. Some two hundred Indians and the squaws by themselves in bright colored blankets gathered in a large circle on the open prairie. As the sun went down a few prayers were said then Bishop Brooke and myself addressed the Indians. Our speeches were interpreted sentence by sentence. Bishop Brooke told them of the hot climate in Oklahoma and I said I had seen many of them at the railroad stations in my District. The next morning Bishop Hare told us the Indians had a long Indian name for each of us, my name meaning "The Railroad Bishop" and Bishop Brooke's name "The Bishop from the Hot Place." Sunday morning I preached to the Indians under a booth covered with evergreens brought from several miles away. At the sunset service Bishop Brooke preached and that evening fifty-one Indians were confirmed by Bishop Hare. The fifty tepees, or Indian tents, were pitched in a large semicircle and all made on the open prairie a most picturesque and beautiful sight. The Indians had come in from a hundred miles east and west and remained about three days. The business meetings of the con-
|
Who Became a Bishop
|
148
|
vocation were very interesting. The different branches of the Woman's Auxiliary had brought their annual offerings in fancy buckskin purses amounting to about two hundred dollars. One hour after the last service the tepees had all disappeared and nothing but distant clouds of dust on the different roads told us of our departing friends. At 6:00 P. M. we started to drive fifty miles to Gordon to catch the two o'clock night train. Fast driving brought us in sight of Gordon when a hot box and groaning wheel stopped us until we saw our train in the distance, the only one in twenty-four hours, pass by without us.
Early in September I camped for eight days with the old Minnesota party on an island in the Mississippi River near Wabasha, Minnesota. We got some fish and less game, but saw the big steamers with their searchlights at night and great rafts of logs pass by.
In October I attended the General Convention in Washington, D. C. That convention added the eastern half of the great state of Wyoming to my District thus adding fifty thousand square miles and doubling my territory. The name of my District was then changed from "The Platte" to "Laramie" as there happened to be a cathedral building in Laramie, Wyoming. While in the east I visited a number of my good helpers, not to solicit funds at that time, as gifts came from them either spontaneously or in answer to letters, but my object was to let them see my face and realize more fully the character of our work. On my return I finished
| 150 |
The Farmer Boy
|
visiting the stations in Nebraska. My work that year involved travel to the extent of twenty-five thousand miles.
N the first day of January I was in the cathedral at Laramie to take charge of my part of Wyoming. The cathedral was barely finished. There were no furnaces in it and the stoves would not bring the temperature above forty degrees. There were fifty-five people present in furs and overcoats to welcome their new bishop. There was a debt of twenty thousand dollars on the cathedral, the people of Laramie were paying about three hundred and fifty dollars a year toward the support of their pastor and the Board of Missions was paying him as arch-deacon five hundred dollars more. I found twenty-three thousand five hundred dollars in debts on all the churches or rectories in eastern Wyoming. In fact all the churches except two were loaded with debt and the one at Sundance was sold by auction on the mortgage. Some of the clergy had followed Bishop Talbot to Pennsylvania and altogether the outlook was dreary and discouraging. I presently succeeded in getting some good men into that part of the District. The people took hold with
|
Who Became a Bishop
|
151
|
me and in three years we had every dollar of the debts paid. Bishop Talbot secured about eight thousand dollars on the cathedral debt. The rest was secured by me writing to friends in the east and from our own people. In the smaller places I offered to raise a dollar and in some cases two dollars for every dollar the people would raise. They all took hold bravely and soon the trouble of debts was over. To help raise the needed money I made visitations for a month in Ohio for Bishop Leonard who gave two hundred and fifty dollars for that work. The cold weather in Ohio was down to zero most of the time, there were but two sunny days and I became worn out and sick. The first of March I began my own visitations and kept steadily at them until the middle of June, riding hundreds of miles in stages in Wyoming..
The middle of June, the pastor having left the cathedral at Laramie, I went there myself and took charge of the work. I had a deacon with me, Rev. Wm. Toole, and we set to work to put things in better shape. Mr. Toole began canvassing the town street by street calling at every house and making a record of what he found. I followed a few days later calling at those places where we thought the people or their children accessible to the church or Sunday school. I made a complete parish register of all families and ages of the children who were at all connected with the parish. We also made a complete call book for the succeeding Dean arranged by street and number. We made many
| 152 |
The Farmer Boy
|
repairs with our own hands on St. Matthew's Hall and the cathedral. With the help of the Ladies' Guild we secured two large furnaces and set them in the basement of the cathedral. The new Dean, Rev. James Cope from Santa Rosa, California, relieved us the middle of August and began the great work of building up the cathedral congregation into a self-supporting and self-respecting parish. This with his helpful wife who acted as organist and choir trainer he succeeded in doing in the next four years.
I sent Rev. Mr. Toole to plant a string of new missions in the Little Snake Valley. This was an irrigated valley seventy miles south of the Union Pacific Railroad along the Wyoming and Colorado boundary line. An Irish ranchman there, Mr. J. Cambreth Kane, had already started a Sunday school and had done some lay reading. A year before this Bishop Talbot had sent a divinity student there who became a Methodist thinking he would obtain a better salary. The people soon fell away from him and the field was left to us. Mr. Toole with the help of Mr. Kane opened five mission stations stretching fifty miles along the valley. Some of these were in Colorado. The next year Rev. Alfred A. Gilman, another deacon, took up the work there and was instrumental in building a church at Baggs and also a church and log rectory at Dixon. For ten years we held that field without the competition of any other religious body. I visited it every summer spending two weeks confirming the candi-
|
Who Became a Bishop
|
153
|
dates, visiting the ranchmen in their homes and fishing for trout as well as for men. Snake River was what was known in the ranching country as the "Dead Line." North of it were the sheep ranges and south of it the cattle and horse ranges. If the sheep herders encroached on the cattle country their sheep were likely to be killed. One time a band of cow-boys came upon such a sheep herder, tied him to his camp wagon, sawed the spokes out of the wheels and with them beat the brains out of a hundred sheep or more. This seems like cruel justice, but it was necessary as the sheep spoiled the grazing for cattle. Cattle men had been ruined and driven out of whole counties by the sheep. These vast stretches of half desert country belonged to the United States, but were then freely used by the ranchmen.
The latter part of August and early in September I made visitations in Nebraska. I then joined the Minnesota camping party for a short vacation. We took our boat by wagon thirty-five miles from the railroad to Lake Itasca, the source of the Mississippi River. We spent two days exploring around the lake and fishing. We followed up the stream that comes into the lake to near the large spring where it rises. There we could easily step across the stream. I have sometimes shocked people by soberly asserting that when I was younger and more active I had stepped across the Mississippi River at a single step. For two weeks we floated and rowed down the river, camping each night upon
| 154 |
The Farmer Boy
|
the shore. We passed through four or five lakes and got plenty of fish and duck for our table. In October I attended the Missionary Council in St. Louis and after that made visitations over the most of my District. At the end of the year I had preached two hundred and seventy-nine times and traveled about twenty thousand miles.
LL the spring I was constantly on the road making visitations until July 4th. On that day I was in Sheridan, Wyoming, and gave up the day to the national celebration. A hundred or more Crow Indians had been invited down from their reservation and promised a feast if they would take part in the celebration. A sham battle was planned between the Indians and a company of the militia helped by a company of regular soldiers. It was to be a representation of the battle in which General Custer, not far from Sheridan, and all his soldiers had been massacred. The Indians at Sheridan were camped in some trees on a small stream. We first saw the company of regulars marching in from a mile away. As they drew near a hill opposite the town, out of the grove came the hundred Indians on their ponies in feathers and paint and giving horrible
|
Who Became a Bishop
|
155
|
war whoops. They strung out in single file and galloped in a large circle around the soldiers. The firing with blank cartridges began and one soldier after another went down. Occasionally an Indian warrior fell from his horse. Round and round they rode until all the soldiers were down. Then out came the squaws with their scalping knives and went through the form of scalping the soldiers. Later the military company appeared on a side hill behind a temporary fortification. Again the Indians came whooping out, but were finally driven back by the militia. These conflicts as seen from a distance were picturesque and thrilling.
The rest of July and August I worked with my son Eliot fitting up St. Matthew's Hall, Laramie, as a Church boarding home for girls attending the state university located at Laramie. Bishop Talbot had had a school in this building which belonged to the Church, but it was too near the state university to succeed. Mrs. Eva. S. Cochran of Yonkers, New York, who had originally bought the building for a school, now gave me one thousand dollars to repair the building and furnish it. We ran this boarding home for two years, but the number of girls attending the university decreased so rapidly that we had not enough boarders to keep the hall running.
In September I heard of a legacy of thirty-six thousand dollars, left to our Kearney Military Academy by the late Felix R. Brunot of Allegheny City, Pennsylvania. This greatly rejoiced my heart. We had
| 156 |
The Farmer Boy
|
had a long hard struggle to keep that church school going and now the interest on this endowment would sustain it in the bad times. The new principal, Mr. Harry N. Russell, took full charge under me and built up the school into a blessed success.
The following account of a visit to the mission stations on the Little Snake River will be of interest.
A TYPICAL MISSIONARY TRIP.
"On the seventh of August the Rev. Geo. A. Beecher and myself were met at Rawlins, my most western station on the railroad, by Mr. J. C. Kane from the Snake River Valley in Southern Wyoming. At noon we took our dinner at a ranch house, the only house on the road for fifty miles. After dinner our road ascended the great divide of the continent. For the next twenty miles we drove along the summit of this divide. All the streams on our right found their way into the Pacific Ocean and those on our left into the Gulf of Mexico and the Atlantic. Our road lay nine thousand feet above the sea. While there were higher peaks to the right and left of us they really belonged to the Pacific or Atlantic slope, while we were on the very backbone of the continent. As we gradually came down into the valley of the Savory we came upon a covey of sage chickens and Mr. Beecher and I secured a dozen of these with our guns for our larder. At night we reached a sheep camp under the management of a Churchman. He made us comfort-
|
Who Became a Bishop
|
157
|
able for the night, giving me his own bed in the sheep wagon.
The next morning we gathered some more sage chickens and some trout and then drove on twenty-five miles farther to Mr. Kane's ranch on Snake River near Dixon. We called at several ranches in the valley notifying them of services on Sunday. The next three days I spent with the missionary, Rev. Wm. Toole, calling on all the people up and down the valley for a dozen miles. When Mr. Toole went to the valley a year before there was but one communicant of the Church within fifty miles and that was Mr. Kane our licensed lay-reader. There was no other minister or service of any kind in all that region. Methodists, Campbellites and all sorts attended our services and responded heartily. They were very shy at first, but have all come to respect and like the faithful young missionary. One Sunday Mr. Toole is at the stations up the river and Mr. Kane at those below and the next Sunday he goes down and Mr. Kane up the river. At first no money was asked, only collections taken, but now nearly all subscribe liberally. On Sunday I went with Mr. Toole to Baggs and Dixon while the Rev. Mr. Beecher went with Mr. Kane to Battle Creek and Savory. I confirmed one at Baggs in the morning and three at Dixon in the evening. As Mr. Beecher's service at Savory was in the afternoon we all came together in the evening and had a rousing service with the school-house full of people. After confirmation we gave the com-
| 158 |
The Farmer Boy
|
munion to the newly confirmed who had come several miles to the service. As the missionary was only in deacon's orders this was the first communion service ever held within seventy miles of the spot.
The next two days we camped and fished near the mouth of Battle Creek and then drove to Clayton's sheep-camp again. This was well up in the mountains so that night, the fifteenth of August, water froze in the sheep wagon where I slept. The next day we drove fifty miles east over the Sierra Madre Mountains to Saratoga in the North Platte Valley. There I confirmed a class of four for our venerable missionary, Rev. Dr. R. E. G. Huntington, then eighty years of age. From there in the stage and much dust for thirty miles we came to the railroad at Fort Steele. The Rev. Mr. Toole came with us to Laramie where he was advanced to the priesthood and thence returned to his lonely work for another year.
N May of this year I made fourteen visitations for the Diocese of Colorado as Bishop Spalding had died and the diocese was vacant. In the summer I made two long trips with horse and buggy to most of the small towns within a hundred miles of Kearney
|
Who Became a Bishop
|
159
|
looking up students for our school. Under the former principal it had run down very much. I also spent two or three weeks working with my own hands repairing the buildings of the school. Our District Convocation was held August eleventh at Laramie and at that time the cathedral was consecrated, the debt having been all paid. Bishop Talbot, formerly of Wyoming, came out and preached the sermon. After that Mr. Iverson, of Laramie, took Bishop Talbot and myself up the Laramie River where for two days we visited and fished for trout together.
In September and October Mrs. Graves and myself attended the General Convention in San Francisco. On our way out we visited Bishop Brewer of Montana, Bishop Wells at Spokane, Dr. Llwyd at Seattle and Bishop Morris at Portland. It was a great satisfaction to see the work and compare notes with these pioneers of the farther west. At the General Convention the constitution of the Church was still further revised and five or six missionary bishops elected. We returned by Southern California where we again visited friends. The rest of the year I was making visitations in my own District. To show the character of such visitations I quote from my old diary:
"November 24th, 1901. At Valentine, Nebraska. Address Sunday school A. M. and preach to fifty people. Confirm four and address them. Collections for our missions in the District, three dollars and sixty cents. Preach again in the evening to twenty-five.
| 158 |
The Farmer Boy
|
"November 25th. A. M. Make calls in Valentine and see about exchanging Church lots in Cody. P. M. On to Wood Lake. Preach to fifty in the school-house and confirm two. Collection, one dollar and forty-five cents.
"November 26th. To Johnstown. Write ten letters A. M. Call all around with Mr. Bates. P. M. Evening preach in the Methodist Church, confirm three and address them. Collection two dollars.
"November 27th. Train to Ainsworth. Write ten letters A. M. Make calls P. M. Preach to fifty in the Congregational church in the evening. Collection four dollars and three cents. Gift from Ladies' Guild for our missions, five dollars.
"November 28th. Thanksgiving Day. In Bassett. Service A. M. in the school-house. Preach on thanksgiving and confirmation to forty people. Confirm nine and address them. Collection, six dollars and twelve cents. P. M. Watch a shooting match and make many calls. Write up my register of families in Mr. Bates' stations.
"November 29th. To Atkinson making calls there all day. Evening service in Methodist church. Sixty present. Preach, confirm one and administer communion to five. Collection two dollars and seventy-five cents.
"November 30th. A. M. Confirm one in private at Atkinson and then take train to Ewing. Make calls all P. M. Evening preach in our chapel to fifty and,
|
Who Became a Bishop
|
161
|
confirm one. Collection, five dollars and fifty-two cents.
"Sunday, December 1st. At O'Neill. Preach morning and evening, confirm two and address them. Collection, four dollars and forty-five cents. Call all around P. M.
"December 2nd. To Inman. Write eleven letters A. M. Calls P. M. Evening preach in Methodist church to forty-five. Collection, eighty-six cents.
"December 3rd. On train all day and evening getting home.
MADE a few visitations early in January, but was sick with nervous dyspepsia. On January fifteenth I started out for rest and change. I first visited my life-long friend, Philip Potter, in Omaha. He and his good wife put me to bed for a week and entertained me for several days after. Feeling the need of out-of-door life and exercise I started for the south, visiting some friends in Missouri and Arkansas on the way. I finally stopped at De Queen in southwestern Arkansas with a truck gardener. For two weeks I hunted rabbits, ducks and quails every day and rested. I gained strength and appetite rapidly
| 162 |
The Farmer Boy
|
though the weather was dark and damp which brought on the asthma at night. I returned the latter part of February and kept steadily at my visitations until July. The middle of May I took a flying trip to Cincinnati to attend a meeting of the House of Bishops at which we elected bishops for Salina, Honolulu and Porto Rico. In June I visited the missions in Southern Wyoming and drove with the missionaries five hundred miles across deserts and over mountains. We held some services in northern Colorado in places almost inaccessible from Denver. On these journeys I had to carry a jug of pure water as the alkali water from the ranchmen's wells always made me ill.
After our annual convocation was over, early in September, I joined the Minnesota party, to which Rev. Irving P. Johnson was now added, in a camp on Black Lake and Three Island Lake in northern Minnesota, for nearly three weeks. While camping here we explored an Island in Big Turtle Lake which we and others afterwards bought for a permanent camping place. We named the island Mekenock which is the Indian word for Turtle Island. Later on cottages were built there by members of the company and it became a regular summer and autumn camping ground. On my way home I visited many friends in my old parish of Gethsemane, Minneapolis. The remainder of the year was given to visitations in my large District.
In my visitations I always tried to adapt myself to the people and conditions I found. To illustrate this
|
Who Became a Bishop
|
163
|
I relate the following incident. A Church woman in Atkinson had several times declined to entertain me because she felt she could not do it as she thought a bishop should be entertained. At last she was persuaded to try it. After it was over the lady who persuaded her to try it asked her how she got along with the Bishop? She answered, "Oh, fine in every way. Why the Bishop is as common as an old shoe." She may not thought of it as a compliment, but I consider it the highest one she could have paid me. She was certainly pleased with my visit and was anxious to have me again. Speaking of compliments I rarely received them on my preaching for some reason. There were two I remember and highly prize. One was from a boy eleven years old. He told a friend that he could understand every word in Mr. Graves' sermon. The other was from an able clergyman eighty years old for whom I had preached many times. He said, "I have never heard you preach an ordinaire sermon." I do not think my sermons were such as would call forth flattering remarks, but I am assured that they have set many people thinking seriously and deeply.
During 1902 our Church school made great progress so that for the first time we had a surplus over expenses to use in making improvements. The building up of this school had been a long, hard struggle with much anxiety and toil.
| 164 |
The Farmer Boy
|
CHAPTER XXX.
1903.
ARLY in January I took my wife and oldest daughter to Gainesville, Florida, where we remained six weeks to escape the intense cold of the winter. On the first of March I started out on my visitations, but before reaching the first mission our train was wedged into a snow bank and could move neither way. I joined a squad of passengers and trainmen with shovels to dig ourselves loose, but without success. We had to wait about eight hours before the snow plow on another engine came to release us. We found a large basket of bread and a can of cream in the express car and appeased our hunger. I missed my appointment that night, something which has not happened once a year in all my episcopate. In every case, the cause was being snowed up on the train or a breakdown of the locomotive.
I was busy with visitations until the middle of July. I then prepared my annual address to our convocation and fourteenth annual report to the Board of Missions. I insert here an account of a missionary trip among the Rocky Mountains, which may be of interest:
On the twenty-fourth of June, the Bishop with his son, just graduated from Theological Seminary, were met by Dean Cope at Laramie. With his own
