Frank Sumner Townsend
Father: William Townsend
Mother: Susan Capron
Brother: William Capron Townsend
Brother Charles Edward Townsend
Daughter: Grace Elizabeth (Townsend) Stemple
Son: Arthur Sage Townsend
Born: April 19, 1857 in East Greenwich, Rhode Island
Married: June 25, 1885 in Cromwell, Rhode Island
Died: March 25, 1939 in Morgantown, West Virginia
My Great Great Grandfather had the foresight to write a short autobiography. I've used his writing and set up links to all of the people, places, and events he mentions. As I do more research more of the text will become hyperlinks to my discoveries! There is also a chronological list of the links after the autobiography.
The Autobiography of Frank Sumner Townsend
I do not think my life has been so remarkable that it deserves special mention for any historical reasons. But I have a fancy in my old age that my children, and perhaps my grand-children, may possibly take some interest in a little sketch of my life and experiences and may also be glad to have a little memorandum of the names of some of our nearest relatives and some other circumstances connected with our family history. So I write this for my children and any others of my descendants who may care enough about such matters to look over these simple records of the most important facts of my life. I begin the writing on Tuesday, Jan. 28, 1930, at my residence in Buckhannon, W.Va.
Birth and Family
I was born on April 19, 1857, which happened to be a Sunday, in the town of East Greenwich, in the State of Rhode Island. In New England a “town” is not a village or city but the unit of local government. Several towns are combined to form a county but in those days a county had no organization except for judicial purposes. East Greenwich was the place where the courts for Kent County were held, a large court-house being there. A town was divided into school districts, which were known by both numbers and names. There were also various names for localities, some of which were even funny. The neighborhood where I was born was called Frenchtown, though I have never know why. It was 3 or 4 miles from the large incorporated village which was simply called Greenwich, where the court house was.
My father was William Townsend. He was born Sept. 3, 1811, at Newport, R.I. Left without a father’s care at an early age, when he was six years old he was “bound out,” according to the custom of those times, to a man named Joshua Collins, in the town of Richmond. Here he grew to manhood, having a rather hard time and little education, though he was naturally of a very strong intelligence. The Collins family were Quakers and there were many others of that religious belief in that region. Then father was about 30 years old he married a Quaker girl, named Mary Knowles. Had she lived he would probably have joined the Society of Friends, for all through his life he held many of their beliefs and was much interested in their history and their work. He was a very religious man but never formally joined any church until he was well advanced in years, when at last he was baptized and received into the Methodist Episcopal Church, of which his wife and children were then members.
His first marriage lasted only about a year and then his young wife died, leaving a little baby boy. He was called David Knowles, and was taken and brought up by his mother’s people and was counted as a member of the Quaker Society until in his young manhood he withdrew from it. He never lived with us but often visited us and we him after his marriage. He lived to be quite an old man but has been dead for well toward 20 years. His daughter, Mrs. Julian R. Burdick, lives in a suburb of Providence, R.I. and we still correspond.
About ten years after his first wife’s death Father married again. He and Susan Capron were married on March 12, 1854, at Greenwich. I think she was born in that village and she finally died there. She was born on Oct. 19, 1827, being thus 16 years younger than her husband.
Their first child was William Capron, born Jan. 28, 1855. He became a Methodist minister and after an honorable career in the New England Conference he died in September, 1923. At this writing his widow and three of his five children are living in Boston, or Fall River, Mass.
More than three years after I was born my only sister came. She was called Mary Elizabeth and was born June 19, 1860. She married Edwin Whitford but her marriage was not a very happy one. She died in the year 1909 and is buried in the famous Swan Point Cemetery near Providence. Her two children have wandered away from the rest of the family.
On July 30, 1866, my youngest brother, Charles Edward, was born. He is now an insurance agent in Boston, living in the suburb of Brookline. He has been twice married but has never had any children.
Father lived to be nearly 80 years old, dying April 12, 1891.
Mother survived him nearly 23 years, dying on Feb. 22, 1914, when she was well into her 87th year. She had lived at different times with all of her children but for quite a number of years we had made a home for her at Greenwich, where she was cared for by Mary Anna Gould, a niece of Father’s first wife. While she was not really a relative of ours we always called her cousin and she called Mother, “Aunt Susan.”
Father, Mother, Will and various other relatives of mine lie buried in the cemetery at Greenwich, where our family lot is kept in perpetual care by a contract with the corporation. We children have shared in the expense of some of these matters but Charlie has done more than the others, being better off and also being generous and kind.
My father had a brother and a sister, both older than himself. The brother, who was named George, went west and finally settled in Minnesota. I never saw him except when he visited us in the fall of 1867 for several weeks. He had a large family of both sons and daughters and I presume that out in the western states I have a lot of cousins of various degrees, whom I have never seen and know almost nothing about. Father’s sister was called Elizabeth, but the children called her “Aunt Lizzie.” She was for years the house-keeper of an old lady who lived not far from our various residences and she visited us occasionally. She died when I was ten years old and I remember how I cried when the new of her death came.
Mother had various relatives, including two brothers and two sisters whom I knew well. Her mother and an aunt spent considerable time with us. There were a number of cousins among these relatives but as the years have gone on I have lost touch with all of these, and indeed most of these whom I knew are now dead. My coming so far away from the old associations has helped to do away with all touch with those whom I knew in my youth.
Childhood
My life has been a somewhat wandering one and that phase of it began early. The house in which I was born at “Frenchtown” was an old one then. I think it had been the residence of some well to do family but had much rund down by being rented to such tenants as could be found for the old “mansion.” Years after we left it I learned to know it very well. It was one of the old kind of houses, large and built with very solid timbers. About 25 years ago it was very largely repaired and improved and when I last saw it, in June 1925, it look as if it might stand another century.
I know that we moved from there back into Greenwich but do not know how old I was then. But in the spring of 1860 my memories begin. We moved from the village into the town of North Kingstown, but the place we not many miles away. Father and Will went with a wagon and a load of goods. Mother took me on a short Railroad trip to a little station a mile or so from the house we were going to and then we walked. As we went along the track to get to the wagon road I was afraid to walk over the open places left to keep cattle from going on the tracks. So I got down and crawled along over them. To this day I can see myself creeping along while Mother stood beside the track, with a mirror under her arm, encouraging me in the perilous journey. This is the first memory of my life and the only incident of the trip which I ever remembered. The next thing I can remember was seeing Mother wash and dress my baby sister and then hold her up, all sweet and clean, to love and kiss. I suppose this was more than a year after we came to that house.
The neighborhood was called “Stony Lane,” though I never could see that stones were any more plentiful than in the general region. About a mile in one direction was a little school-house, where I began my education. The same distance in the opposite direction was a church. This belonged to a peculiar sect of Baptists, small then and now extinct. They claimed to be the original Roger Williams Baptists and were called “Old Baptists.” The church had no Sunday School but one was started, I believe largely through Mother’s efforts, and my religious education began. In that little old church I made my first appearance in the pulpit by “speaking a piece” at a S.S. concert. I like that people of the odd little sect and in later years found some very good people among them. Another thing I have always remembered about that home was a sort of shed in the field across the road from the house. Some years before we came there a man had been accidentally shot from that shed and the bullet hole was in a board. We children used to feel that there was something dangerous about the place but we were occasionally brave enough to go there to play and would get a thrill by putting our fingers in the hold made by the bullet which had killed a man.
We lived there three years and then moved to a place a mile beyond that church. This neighborhood was known by the astonishing name of “Scrabble-town.” It was not a village, though a local joke was to call it a city. At a cross-roads there were two houses, a grist-mill, a blacksmith shop and a school-house. Also two or three farmhouses were visible not far off. We lived in one of those. Willie and I went to the school and we went to the church as before, only we walked in the opposite direction.
We only stayed a year here and in the spring of 1864 we moved four or five miles into the town of Exeter. We lived a few rods from a corner where a school-house stood but there was no school until fall and all that summer we boys enjoyed the country life and even I began to so some of the lighter work on the farm. At the school-house meetings were held quite often by the Second Adventists and I learned something of their peculiar view. But in summer we went two or three miles to a little church call “The Liberty.” I have never known whether this was union church for its neighboring region or belonged to some regular denomination. In the Sunday School they gave me a little blue book which I treasured dearly and have kept for over 65 years.
Through the fall and winter I went to school but along towards spring I had the most serious sickness I ever had in my life. They called it “canker rash” in those days but I think it would be been called scarlet fever now. I do not know if my life was in danger but remember that I had a disagreeable time for some days, possibly weeks. But I was convalescent when the time came for another of our moves, this time for about ten miles. I suppose we had to gin order to carry out contracts of some sort but I could hardly sit up in the house and certainly could not have done so for a ten miles drive over those muddy spring roads. They got a big covered wagon, called a “carry-all” in those days, put a feather bed in the bottom and put me in the bed, well covered up. On the seat in front were a driver and Mother, she holding little Mary in her arms. So I traveled toward my new home. I remember nothing at all about the journey itself but know that we got along without any serious trouble. When we came to the house there was but little furniture in it and no fire. They carried my bed in and put it on the floor and laid me down on it again. Mother put four chairs together to make a crib for Mary and put her to bed. Then she began to do things around that house. Father and Will, with the loaded wagon, must have come in soon and nobody suffered anything from this rather trying journey.
Father had leased quite a large farm for three years. This was in the town of Warwick, which was on the north of East Greenwich. It was about 12 miles from the city of Providence and a mile or two from the beginning of a long series of manufacturing villages. These extended along what was called the Pawtuxet River and its tributaries for a dozen miles and more. Cotton and woolen mills were the chief industries. The first village we came to in going from our home was called Crompton, but we went more to the next one, called Centerville. We got our mail and did most of our trading there and it was the location of the Methodist Church of which we all became members in later years. But our school was out in the country on a cross road. This school was locally called, “Rocky Hill,” and I attended it “more or less” for the next six years. Thus within a few days of my 8th birthday I came to a comparatively settle life.
This was in the spring of 1865 and I remember some things about the close of the Civil War and the day when my cousin came down from the village to tell us that President Lincoln had been shot.
We lived three years on that farm and then father bought a much smaller one which was somewhat nearer to the villages. That was my home and head-quarters for 12 years though at times I was absent from it considerably.
During the winter before this removal there was a great revival all around that region and many persons professed conversion. Children as we were Will and I took our stand among the converts. Our own church had a children’s class which was led by a lady of remarkable character, whom a lot of us children almost worshipped. But matter of baptism and formal church membership were rather carelessly handled in those days, though after a while our names were recorded on the “Probationers Roll.” This lasted until the first Sunday in June, 1870. On that day we two boys were baptized in immersion in the river which flowed close by the Centerville Church and were then received as full member of the Methodist Episcopal Church. So on the first Sunday of the coming June I shall have completed just sixty years as a member of the church. I think this is perhaps a good time to close the period of childhood.
Education and Youth
In those old days the schools in the country usually had a summer term taught by a woman and a winter term taught by a man. Occasionally there was no summer term and all the teaching and learning were somewhat haphazard. Children usually began to go to school when they were 4 years old and I suppose I did so. I remember some things about the three schools I attended from then until I was eight years old. For the six years following that date I lived the ordinary life of a New England farm boy in those days. Much of the summer terms was lost to boys because they had to work on the farms. I had begun to do things in the summer when I was 7 years old and by the time I was 10 I was a regular farm hand. But I never liked the life and was usually considered rather poor about the work. But with regard to the school I was supposed to be as much above the average there as I was below it in the farm matters and I was commonly in classes with scholars older than myself. Also I got a name for being an unusual reader – which did not improve my proficiency on the farm and brought a great deal of scolding upon me. I think I must have been trying to the grimly toiling people around me who considered the ability to do hard physical work the most important thing in life. But gradually my parents began to see that it would be wiser to develop me along the lines where I could do best than to force me to be comparatively a failure in matter for which I had no gifts.
Mother once said that she saw I meant to have an education and asked how I thought I could do it. I said I was going to try to get learning enough to teach a school and thus earn money to go to higher schools myself and so gradually work up. Some of my teacher and pastors and some of the more intelligent people around me – especially in the villages – understood at least a part of my feelings and wanted to help me. I borrowed books as much as I could get them and get time to read them. My Sunday School teacher had something of a library and from that I got and read nearly all of Goldsmith, Irving and Cooper. From various places I got many of Scott’s novels and poems and at home I finally had some poems and other books given to me.
In the fall after I was 14 I was allowed to go to the school in Centerville, though it was no my district. Some opposition arose about the matter and finally it was settled by my working for my board in the village and thus getting in to that district. In the spring I went back to the farm.
The next fall I got into the school at Crompton. I was really an intruder there but the teacher, shoes name was John Nye, took a great fancy to me. I think he considered me a kindred spirit, for he had gone through some of my struggles. He lent and gave me books. He put me into studies not usually taught in such a school, as Latin and geometry. He persuaded the authorities to overlook the irregularity of my coming out of my own district and I went through the winter. When in the spring I had to go to work again he arranged to have me come to his house for study and help on two evenings a week. I shall never forget how much I owe to him.
We lived about four and a half miles from Greenwich. In that village was a school locally famous then and still doing good work. It was called the East Greenwich Academy but was the “Conference Seminary” of the Methodist conference. Late in the month of August, 1873, I entered there at the beginning of the fall term. The school year had three terms and a full course was supposed to be three years. I was slightly beyond the required preparation for entrance but had got what I knew in so irregular and broken a way that it took some time for me to adjust myself to the new conditions.
Some days I went back and forth from home, mostly walking. But I had a room in the village or in the Academy boarding hall al the time I went there. Sometimes I would carry down food for several days and would supplement this by buying from the stores. I went through the two terms, which ended early in March. The direct expenses for this winter was about $50.00. I paid about half of this from my childish earnings and savings, drawing the latter from the Savings Bank, and Father paid the rest. This was the last direct expense I was to m parents.
I got a good testimonial from the Academy and in the middle of March, about a month before I was 17, I began my school-teaching. Between then and the middle of September I taught two schools, having only three weeks vacation for myself. For this I received a sum of $182, which in those days was quite an amount. I paid for board five days in the week where I was teaching but came home for Sundays. The ability to earn so much money settled all questions about what I would do with myself for some time to come. From that time I consider that I have been self-supporting. I stayed at home from time to time but did a great deal of work there. At time I got things needed there and once I paid off a note for fifty dollars which was troubling Father. I paid for my own clothes and books and all other expenses. But I never could have gone through all that I did if I had not had a good home ready for me when I needed rest and comfort.
In the fall of 1874 I went back to the Academy. The year from the spring of 1875 was passed in the same way, a mixture of teaching, farming and attendance at the Academy. In the spring of 1876 I closed my school and went to board at the Academy for the spring term so that I could have all my time and strength for the final effort. Of the supposed nine terms I had actually been in attendance only 5. But I was a little advanced when I entered and had studied much by myself when not “keeping terms” – and anyway schools were not as strict in certain lines then as they are now. I have always felt a little dissatisfied as to my exact qualifications for the graduation but the school passed me and a week later I passed the entrance examinations for Brown University, so I could not have been entirely lacking. On June 15, 1876, I was one of a class of seven which graduated from the old Academy and I felt the grandest that day that I have ever felt in my life and the diploma received then has on the whole meant more to me than any of those I have received since. There were 7 in the class, 5 boys and 2 girls. My best friend was “Charlie Greene,” whose memory has been a great thing for me during most of my life. He is still living, out in California. Thus when I was 19 I came to a marked epoch of my life.
Law, College and Ministry
I thought it wise to take the examinations for Brown University but I had no intention of immediate entrance. I was very tired and had spent nearly all of my money and needed to comparative vacation I spent at home. I wanted a college course but was not sure that I should continue the effort for further schooling before I began professional training.
The first of September I was back at a teacher’s desk once more. That winter I not only taught but tried to improve some points in Greek and geometry in which I felt somewhat deficient. In the spring I abandoned the purpose of a college course and entered myself as a pupil of the Hon. Dexter B. Potter, a prominent lawyer and politician of my state. I did not expect to do regular office work but to read the course and learn what I could for a few years, then do enough full office work to be qualified for admission to the bar. I have always felt a deep gratitude to Mr. Potter for his kindness to me, though nothing definite came out of my law studies. All educational and professional matters were then much more dependent on personal work and study than they are now.
The next three years were passed in teaching, intervals on the farm, and in my law studies, during which I read through the ordinary law course of those days and could have been admitted to the bar of a good many states. Rhode Island was not one of these, however. I had a general plan of going to Connecticut for a year in an office, after which I would have satisfied that state’s requirements.
My teaching was spread over just six years, from March 1874 to March 1880. In that time I taught 8 different schools. Six of these were the one-room country schools. The others were village schools, called “Grammar Schools,” where there were two rooms and I had a primary teacher under me. The lowest salary I received was $28 a month and the highest was $50.
My last year as a teacher saw the great change in my plans for life. I have never tried to pose as a model boy, either before or after my childish profession of religion, but I think I always had a religious disposition. This was developed by the mixture of Puritan, Quaker and Methodist influences around me. It was a vary common belief among people that I would be a minister, though I objected to this and really resented it. My boyish choice was to be a lawyer and my father wanted me to be one. An impossible ambition of his own was to have been a lawyer and he naturally like the idea of seeing me win where he could not. I was active in church work and ready to help in any way that I could but did not want to preach. But the church gave me an exhorter’s license when I was about 22 years old and some time after I was asked to go and spend a Sunday with a little struggling church a dozen miles from my home. I went and on the first Sunday in June, 1879, I made my first attempt to preach. The result was that I went there about half of the Sundays from then until the next spring and in the mean time I was regularly licensed as a local preacher. But men in all sorts of business and professions occasionally preached and never dreamed of entering the regular ministry. Nobody tried to drive me but I knew that many friends wanted me to preach and finally during the winter a clear conviction of duty in the matter came to me. I never dreamed of resisting what used to be termed, “a call,” but I yielded grudgingly. I have always fancied that y feelings with regard to the change of my plans were much like those of a man who has been disappointed with love. It took years to get me to feel just right in that matter.
Now the question of further education arose and all varieties of advice were poured upon me. Thoroughly educated men were not as numerous fifty years ago as they are now. It amuses me to think what a local prodigy I became as an Academy graduate and a lot f people could never understand why I wanted to go to college or why I stubbornly persisted in going through after I entered. But I found good advisers and fortunately took their advice. Prominent ministers took up my case and in April, 1880, I was sent to “supply” tow little churches in Connecticut, with the understanding that I was to go to Wesleyan University in the fall. It happened that my first Sunday on that work was the 18th of April and the next day was my 23d, birthday. At that age I definitely took up a new line of work and ambitions.
I worked hard for my little churches and also at reviewing my Academy studies, which had been somewhat forgotten for nearly four years. Late in June I passed the examinations at Wesleyan and was admitted, with just about the same conditions as at Brown four years earlier. In September I went up to Middletown and began college work as a freshman in the Class of 1884.
My churches were about 20 miles from Middletown and were miles off the railroad. I managed to look after the work through the winter in spite of cold and stormy weather but was glad when spring came. The New England Southern Conference, which had the work on the east of the Conn. River, could not arrange a more convenient place for me in the spring but I got work in the New York East Conference on the west side. I was appointed to Cromwell, the first town to the north of Middletown.
I went through my year there but the most noticeable thing about it was not my church or college life and work but my first meeting with Hattie Alice Sage. She was of a Congregational family but our acquaintance developed more and more during the year and we became engaged the next spring, in March – almost at the same time came a crisis in my affairs which removed us from each other for most of a year.
The strain of double work was hurting my health considerably and also my money matters were getting into troublesome shape. I could not get enough from these little churches to support me entirely while I was in college. Almost exhausted I felt it necessary to drop out of college for a year. My friends of the N.E.S. Conference came to my relief and gave me an appointment better than I had ever had before but it was in the town of Norton, Mass. close by Attleboro, and a long, long way from Cromwell and Middletown. But all I could do was to take the work as I could get it.
The place where I spent that year is now called Chartley. Norton is the town now somewhat famous as the seat of Wheaton College. This was then Wheaton Female Seminary and was two or three miles from Chartley. I spent a pleasant year with that church, enjoying many things in spite of my lonesomeness. I went to Conn. three times during the year, taking some examinations at Wesleyan which helped to adjust some of my studies. Another pleasant thing was the summer visit made with my people in Rhode Island by my betrothed. In the spring of 1883 I went back to college, much better in health and a little better financially.
The second half of my college course was in various ways more pleasant than the first. There was a little embarrassment about the change of classes but gradually ’85 came to accept me as a loyal member. Of course I lost the old close touch with the men of ’84 but in later years I have felt almost as if I had two sets of classmates instead of one. I had been at a disadvantage in my entrance, both from the somewhat broken preparation and from the four years between Academy and college. But in the later years this had largely worn off and certain advantages began to appear. While I had some technical deficiencies in preparation on the other hand I was unusually widely read in miscellaneous lines. I found only one student in college who had read as much as I in general literature and history. That was Oscar Kuhns, later so well know as a teacher and author. He was greatly superior to me and his abilities approached genius. But my general information and even my law studies were of service to me in the second half of my course. I usually felt very lucky to get through some mathematical and scientific studies at all but in other lines I ranked among the ablest men in college.
But I was busier than ever. I was always doing regular church work as well as full college work. Also I was reading for special honors and as often as I could possibly do so I went up to Cromwell. It was pleasant to have those visits and to bring a girl I was proud of to some of the college functions. So the lift in its various forms went on for two years. In April 1884 I was “ordained deacon as a local preacher” as the technical phrase went. This was at New Bedford, Mass., at the session of the New England Southern Conference, Bishop Foster presiding and ordaining me and the other candidates. A year later the New York East Conference met at Hartford and three of my class mates and I went up to apply for admission to the regular conference work. We were all admitted and I was appointed to Bloomfield, a few miles out of Hartford.
The three following months were among the busiest of my life, which is saying considerable.
I spent a large part of my time at Bloomfield, looking after the church work, trying to get the parsonage in order and planting a garden, while I struggled with my final writing d studies for the end of my course at Wesleyan. I went back and for irregularly, the professors being very kind to me about adjusting my work and admitting me to the final examinations. About the middle of June my last paper was in and my last examination triumphantly passed and my graduation was sure. It is obvious that my college course was like that at the Academy – broken and struggling. Of course I should have enjoyed life much better and should have got more out of both courses if I could have taken them in a smooth and regular way. But I had to go without them or get them by a hard fight and I preferred the fight. The difficulties of my college course prevented me from winning general honors and Phi Beta Kappa rank, for which I have always been sorry. But the system of Special Honors was of much comfort to me. The one most highly prized was that of English Literature, for which a dozen men usually entered and perhaps tow got through. Kuhns and I were the only men in ’85 who won that honor. I also took and honor in History. The orators for special occasions were selected by their rank as speakers and writers. I had spoken at the Junior Exhibition and I was now appointed as one of the Commencement orators. Some men who took the general honors would have probably been glad to exchange with me.
I got an old pastor of my church to take my work for Commencement Sunday and I went down to Middletown at the close of the week before. I joined in the various performances of the next four days, finally on Thursday, June 25, Commencement itself arrived. I gave my oration and received my diploma. As the class went out of the church I passed some notes to special friends among them, then vanished. As soon as I could get the hack and driver I had engaged I started for Cromwell. Then, at the house I had visited so often for the last three years, a party was assembled. My bride was waiting for me and we were married by Rev. W.A. Richard, my classmate in 1884.
We drove back to Middletown and got a train for Hartford. At that station a carriage was waiting, driven by one of my new friends at Bloomfield. We drove out there, arriving at just about sunset. The parsonage was full of flowers and people and the day ended with the great reception of the church people to their pastor and his bride. This was certainly the greatest day of my life and it was a great milestone on my road. For 28 years I had lived a life of many changes and struggles – to say nothing of my blunders, failures and disappointments – but I had won a position in an honorable profession, a college diploma, a wife and a home.
Twelve Medium Years
The 12 years following my graduation and marriage were only moderately successful and had their full share of trials.
When I reached Bloomfield parsonage that night I was worn and weary with the long struggle through which I had passed and also I was financially poor. I entered college with a hundred dollars in my pocket. I came out about four hundred dollars in debt and I don’t think I had ten dollars in case when I reached the parsonage. But things were now so that I could rest more than I had been able to for a long time and by degrees I got my financial matters in shape. But various embarrassments and trials prevented my clearing off all of my debts until I got to Parkersburg.
Our first child, Grace Elizabeth, was born July 6, 1886. This was at Wilton, Conn., where I was pastor of Zion’s Hill church. She was a nervous and sickly child and dearly as we loved her she gave us much trial for some years. Our son, Arthur Sage, was born August 10, 1891, at Greenport, Long Island. He was much better in health and our home life was very happy then.
I was always considered a good preacher and a hard worker, so far as a man can learn his own reputation. But I did not advance in the conference as much as I had hoped to do and in my own opinion felt that I deserved to. Probably some reasons were in myself. I did not have the natural gift of popularity and I have no doubt that I made mistakes. But another class of reasons lay in the conditions of the New York East Conference. It was sought out by the ablest men in the church for transfer and the brightest young men in our schools for entrance. It had a large number of good churches but competition was almost fierce and not always brotherly. I made friends by degrees with the ablest men in the conference, who seemed to respect me very much in personal relations but that did not get me first class appointments. My happiest pastorate was a Greenport, where I stayed three years. It was a beautiful seaport town, whose surroundings and general conditions pleased me very much. I was successful in getting the church edifice built over into a practically new church and had many other pleasant things during those three years. But perhaps my best work was really done at St. Paul’s, Waterbury, Conn. That church had had a very unfortunate history and was dangerously near an utter collapse. Some people have thought that I saved the church and got it into such shape that it had had a very creditable career in all the years since then.
I began to make a little reputation as a writer and seemed to have some influence in conference matters and policies. This applied especially to Conference Examinations. I used to say, with a little bitterness, that I could do anything in the conference except get a good appointment.
At the Wesleyan Commencement of 1888 I took the degree of Master of Arts. It was not then customary to require a definite course of study and examinations but I have always felt that my actual studies were fully equivalent to most of the courses which were later established. I had to pass the regular four years conference examinations. I was admitted into full membership in the conference in 1887 but had to wait for elder’s ordination until 1889, so that it was almost ten years from my first sermon to full ministerial power and authority.
At times I though of trying for a transfer to some other conference, hoping that I might do better by taking a fresh start. I nearly had this arranged for going out into the western part of New York state but at the last moment the plan fell through.
In 1896 I was pastor at Milford, Conn. This was situated half way between New Haven and Bridgeport. The church building was the most beautiful one of all the churches where I have been pastor. It was not so very large but was built of brown stone, with windows which were a work of art, and everything in its appointments was of unusually fine character. The famous Chaplain McCabe, who came to lecture for us, told me he had never seen such a lighting system as we had. Also we had the largest and finest organ I have ever had anywhere. But I have always feared that the harmony and spiritual loveliness of people there did not correspond to some of these outward beauties.
My presiding elder, Crandall J. North, was a very good friend of mine. He had gone through some struggles similar to mine and seemed to have a very high regard for me. One day he told me had had an old college classmate at Parkersburg, W.Va., who wanted to come north again, and asked me if I thought I would like to go there. I thought not but agreed to correspond and look up the W.Va. conditions. The result was that a few weeks before the conference session my transfer to Parkersburg was all arranged but for various reasons the whole thing was kept secret among a very few people.
I went to conference with a perfect satisfaction with regard to my own situation. But for most men it was a very trying time. It was the longest session I ever knew and had the greatest trial about appointments I ever knew. I compared myself to a man standing on the wharf while men were drowning before his eyes and he could not help them. I was secretary of the Examiners and very busy during the session. The bishop, Walden, kept me in consultation beside him much of the time and there were sessions when it almost looked as if I was running the conference. The Examiners passed complimentary resolutions concerning me and Prof. Wm. North Rice moved that the conference concur in this action, which was warmly done. Then at the last session Dr. Buckley took the floor with a formal set of resolutions concerning me and moved their adoption. This was done by a great rising vote, while the men beside me were chaffing me to “get up and make it unanimous,” and I was really very much touched by the whole affair. It was the only time in my life when I knew a man to go out from a conference with two sets of complimentary resolutions. Then the bishop gave me my transfer to the best appointment I had ever had. I certainly went while the going was good.
This was on Thursday afternoon and the conference had been in actual session for eight days – and some of us had been at work two days before it began, looking after examinations and other business. I got home that night and we went on with packing which had begun before conference 0 and now we told people we were going. I went to New York for Sunday with the church to which the man from Parkersburg was coming and back to Milford on Monday. About noon on Wednesday we took train for new York, crossed the city, took south-bound train there, and at 1 o’clock on Thursday, April 22, 1897, we got off the cars in Parkersburg. A committee of my new church was waiting at the station and we were taken right to the parsonage, which had been arranged so that we could start our life there at once. So I came to another marked adjustment of my life and its work.
West Virginia
I was 40 years and 3 days old when I reached Parkersburg. I was accompanied not only by my wife and children but by my mother.
During the preceding year she had spent much of the time with me and had decided to accompany us on our southern trip. She stayed with us until in the summer of 1900 we made a trip north and she did not return from that. I think she had in many ways enjoyed her life with us but it seemed much better for her to pass the rest of her life near the greater part of her relatives and in her old associations.
I stayed three years and a half in Parkersburg. I was happier there than I had been in the north and have always been better satisfied with my life during my residence in West Virginia than I had been before. I felt that I was more in rank and position that were my due than I had been during a considerable part of my previous life and I was also better off financially. But of course I have had my trials and disappointments here as well as in my earlier associations. Our life in Parkersburg was pleasant in many ways and the church work was prosperous as a whole, though there were some unpleasant things mixed in with the good things. In the fall of 1899 I entertained the conference at Parkersburg, the attendance being the largest there had ever been at a session.
In 1900 the session was held at Clarksburg. I had told the Parkersburg people that I thought it best to move that fall and I was appointed to Buckhannon. This was more congenial to me than any other charge I have ever served in my ministry and we had a very good time for seven years. Grace graduate in the Musical Course of the “Seminary,” as it was called then, in 1905. She spent the new year in Boston at the New England Conservatory.
I was cordially invited back for the 8th year than I had been for any previous year at Buckhannon but I doubted the wisdom of returning. A new church was badly needed and I felt that I could not accomplish that. I also feared I could not continue to do pastoral work as I had been doing and also maintain the reputation as a preacher I had won in the previous years. So I went to conference with things in a somewhat doubtful condition.
The session was held at First Church, Huntington – a city I had never visited before. I came into the city early on the day before the conference formally assembled, as I was in charge of the examinations. When the session closed Monday night I was pastor of First Church, which has always seemed to me a somewhat dramatic occurrence. One reason for this was the attitude toward me of Bishop Spellmeyer, who held the conference. He did not know me but Dr. Kelley of the Methodist Review was a great friend of his and had told him about me. And the Bishop said to me, “Whatever Kelley says goes with me.” On Sunday night the local committee were in consultation with the bishop and accepted me as a pastor and the next day the appointment was made.
I spent three years in Huntington. The first and second were very good and we were happy. In June 1909 Grace was married to Forrest W. Stemple and the same week Arthur graduated Marshall College, as the State Normal School there was called. In the fall he entered Ohio Wesleyan University and my wife and I had to live alone most of the time.
The third year we two took a month’s trip north, the third we had taken since we came south – arrangements for my pulpit having been made before I left. We had a very good time and came back in good spirits to our work. But for some reason which I have never really understood things seemed to go wrong in the church work and in mid-winter matters were very depressing. But yet they changed so much later that I went to conference the next fall with a record of the best revival the church had had for 20 years and the largest collections of any year in its history, so I learned once more never to give up in despair.
At that session of 1910 I was appointed to Ronceverte District. Since then the districts have been reduced in number and boundaries have been much changed. My district then was more like Elkins District today than any other but some of its territory is in Charleston and some in Huntington District. We lived three and a half years in Ronceverte and a year and a half in Elkins during the five years I spent in district work. At the conference session of 1914 I was made a trustee of West Virginia Wesleyan College. At the commencement of 1915 I received the degree of Doctor of Divinity from that college.
I had not wanted a district but after passing five years on one I wanted to complete the term of six years, but this was not to be. The district had a very large territory, some of which was very rough and mountainous. Much horse-back riding was necessary and there were some very trying experiences in my travels. After my fifth winter I felt very much worn and took treatment from a doctor in order to keep going. He and two other doctors advices me to take lighter work and in the summer I told Bishop Cranston I must leave the district at conference time but asked him to keep the secret, which he did.
The session of 1915 was at Parkersburg and was a very trying one because of very bad elements at work among us. “Conference Politics” were in very bad shape and some very unchristian feelings were developed, especially about the elections to General Conference. I was elected to that body myself but I have never heard that any accusations of wrong-doing were made against me in the connection. Some construed my final election as a rebuke to the methods used by some others.
Appointments were very trying as well as elections but I did reasonably well in that respect, being sent to New Martinsville. We went there very cheerfully but trials awaited us. I was worn and nervous and had some trouble in getting into good shape again and before I had accomplished this my wife was very seriously ill. But by spring we had got into fair condition once more.
The General Conference met in may, at Saratoga Springs. I was present from beginning to end and greatly enjoyed the experience. New work and honor also came to me from the session, of which I will speak later.
The New Martinsville Church had many good elements but I went there at an unfortunate time. Local business was badly depressed and our finances suffered from this. And the church had been subjected to an inflation process by my predecessor, the consequences of this falling in some respects upon me. The man I refer to had been sent to my district but during the year he was accused of immorality and that also reflected upon church work. At conference he was tried and by a very curious twist I sat in the cabinet to represent my old district for the 6th year after all. Extreme guilt was not proved upon the accused man but the end of the affair was his leaving the conference later.
During our second year at N.M. we went in the early fall to Cleveland, Ohio, to attend the wedding of our son with Helen Shultz – a minister’s daughter by the way. At the session of 1917 I left New Martinsville and went to Zane St. Wheeling. This was a sort of “down-town church,” but its salary and other matters made it a very desirable place financially and I found some pleasant things in our stay there. But after two years I felt that a change was best, though the people would very gladly have had me stay.
In the fall of 1919 we went to Kingwood, where we stayed three years. The chief events in the work were the great revival of the second year and the starting of the building of the new chapel. This enterprise required very hard work and very good diplomacy. It was really about the stiffest proposition I had ever gone up against but we won out. Early in Sept. 1922 we laid the corner-stone and the money needed to finish was all paid or pledged and the plans for finishing arranged. I was invited back to the dedication the next June and covered with praises and congratulations even from some of the people who had fought the enterprise.
In 1922 I was 65 years old and had reached the age which by the church law then allowed a man to retire if he chose to do so. I did not want to retire but I was tired of some things in the pastorate and very uneasy about my wife’s health. There was to be a new secretary of our “Permanent Fund” for Conference Claimants and I decided I wanted that place. At the session I received that appointment and we decided to live in Buckhannon. So I entered upon a new line of work. This was a little like district work in requiring travel but this was not as hard as my district experiences. I seldom went into the country in winter and did not get on horse-back more than once a year. Sometimes I got very tired but did not have such experiences as had come to me in the other task.
Financial conditions were not very good for raising money and I was never satisfied with my work but in my six years on the job I saw the Fund increased by over $100,000 in its investments, so I felt I was not wholly a failure. When I entered the work I felt sure of three years but doubtful after that time. In 1924 I gave up all of my extra work except about the college and went on with Fund matters the best I could. Finally the session of 1928 I announced my retirement from the effective work. There were protests from some and great honors in various ways were shown to me during the session but I felt my time for rest had come. It was well toward 50 years since I preached my first sermon and I had spent 6 years as a “supply,” or student pastor, 52 years as regular conference pastor, 5 years as a district superintendent and 6 years as a special financial worker. I was glad to rest and have enjoyed my freedom since my retirement. Last fall I thought it best to resign as a college trustee so now I am free from all responsibility for anything except my home and myself. As farmboy teacher student and clergyman I have worked for about 65 years and I think one need not be called lazy if he wants the rest of his live to be a sort of vacation.
Conference Examinations
In 1816 a course of study was adopted for preachers in the Methodist Episcopal Church. It was merely a selection of books and students were supposed to be examined by the older preachers of a conference. Undoubtedly this did some good and the preachers as a class were intelligent and shrewd. But the Course of Study, in the opinion o many, finally became more a hindrance than a help to read education. Students got no teaching of any kind and often the examinations were a farce. Also students who had taken complete courses in school go no recognition for this and had to submit to years of waiting for ordination and go through the routine examinations year by year. I once saw the famous Prof. Mitchell sitting in a class with some uneducated men ad meekly submitting to examination from members of the conference who were doubtless far below him in all scholarly matters.
I was emphatically among the young men who thought things were unfair and that reforms were needed. While still in college I joined in a petition with some student in Boston and secured signatures from Wesleyan men. A few slight concessions were gained at that time. In 1892 I brought a resolution into the New York East Conference asking the General Conference to take this matter up.
I was opposed by no less a man than the great D. Buckley, who tried to smother the resolution by reference to a committee. I carried my point in spite of him and later he very good-naturedly admitted that I had beaten him in the fight. But the General Conference did not do much about the matter that year.
In 1895 I moved that our conference appoint a committee of five to consider the methods of examinations and try to devise plans for better work. When this committee was organized I was made chairman and Herbert Welch secretary. We were the youngest members of it and Welch said, “Kids in office!” During that year we had two meetings and much correspondence and other work. At the session of 1895 it fell to me to present the report and look after it on the floor. Buckley was mildly critical and considerable time was taken up in the debate. Finally the conference accepted my report with two amendments which were of little importance. Before we had got to the time for presenting this report, Dr. George E. Reed, then president of Dickinson College, asked me to take up the matter of giving students credit for their school work. I told him I wanted to but could not mix that matter up with the present affair and he agreed that I was right. But the joke was that after my report was adopted by the conference Buckley moved a memorial to the General Conference to give relief to the students and this passed with-out debate! So as far as my own conference was concerned both of my “causes” were triumphant. And a few weeks later the General Conference took our plan for examinations and, with a few little amendments, adopted it for the whole church. And also it gave to conferences the power to give students credit for their school work if they chose. Of course I was only one of various workers in the whole matter but I have always been glad I had a share in the work.
Many in the conference supposed that I would be the Chairman of the new Board of Examiners and I suppose I could have been had I just kept still. But I felt that the new plan ought to have a man of the highest standing in the conference at its head and I urged it so strongly up Prof. Wm. North Rice that he consented to accept if I would be Secretary and help him as much as I could. The general plan thus adopted is still the basis of the church law on the matter, though it has been somewhat modified by the changing conditions of the years. Prof. Rice always declared I was the father of the church’s examination methods.
In 1897 I worked hard to get the plans all in order and during the session I was very conspicuous in the conference. I have already spoken of the resolutions concerning me adopted at that time. Prof. Rice retained his office of Chairman until he was disabled by old age and took great pride in it.
At my first session of the W.Va. Conference I was put on the Board of Examiners and the secretary wanted to resign in my favor, which of course I would not allow. But three years later I was made Chairman and I held that office until I went on a district. At the General Conference of 1916 a plan was proposed for creating a Commission to look after the Courses of Study and all such matters for the whole church. I had nothing to do with the starting o this plan and not much at Saratoga, though I very heartily supported it. But when the Commission was appointed by the bishops I was one of its seven members and for four years I served on it. I did considerable work for it and defended the whole matter in the church press when attacks were made upon the Commission. I enjoyed the trips to the meetings, which a large part of the time were held in connection with the meetings of the bishops. The bishop of my own conference made Chairman again. I had refused to allow that when I was first returned because it seemed to me unfair to the man who was Chairman then.
One of the disappointments of my life was that I was not continued on the Commission in 1920. I suppose the primary reason for this was that I was not in the General Conference. My appointment had been the greatest honor of it kind W.Va. had ever received and if I had been elected to G.C. for 1920 I should probably have been continued in my office. But the politicians in my own conference defeated me and naturally I was dropped from the Commission.
I have believed however that my career in the form of church work was the cause of Wesleyan’s conferring upon me the D.D. I. received in 1921, which I count the greatest honor of my life. I did not know that I was under consideration for the degree until I got the president’s letter summoning me to the coming Commencement to receive my degree.
The management of Mountain Lake Park asked me to try and establish a summer school for young preachers there. I studied on it for 1921 but decided it was not feasible just then. But in 1922 I started there the Pittsburgh Are Summer School of Theology. I sometime think that possibly this was the best thing I have ever done for the Church. The school attracted much attention and among other things it caused the other conferences to look with new respect upon West Virginia. I was Dean of the school for three years, ending in 1924.
In the conference year 1923-24 I put on an intensive campaign for the Permanent Fund, looked after all of the examination work for my own conference and superintended the Summer School. I could not have done it if I had not had a stenographer in my office and even then I felt the strain severely. So I insisted that I must resign all offices except my regular appointment for the work of the Fund. There was much protest, from the conference, from Bishop McConnell and from MacRossie in New York, but of course I had my own way. Since then the examiners count me their “Chairman Emeritus” and welcome me into their meetings. MacRossie was in the N.Y. East Conference with Welch and me and was one of the first Examiners under the new system. For quite a number of years he has been the agent of the Commission, working especially for the Summer Schools. He came to this conference at the session of 1923. Welch and he and I had a reunion and when the diplomas were presented to the graduates for that year I was assigned a part in the exercises and was generally treated [kindly] which gave me much pleasure.
Among my dreams which have never been fulfilled was one of being a college professor sometime. But the conditions never came right for this and my feeling of late years has been that matters were providential and that my real educational work was to be the helping of the ministry of my church to better things than they had known before. During my service there has been a complete change for the better in such matters and I am glad to have had a part in the reformation. Of course the matter was already in the air when I began my work and able men became more and more interested in it. I am glad to have shared with them in this work and trust that the ministry of our church has been helped to higher ground in intellectual matters by some of the efforts I have made.
Literary Work
My father had very little education but he was of a strong natural intelligence and ha inclinations toward both writing and public speaking. Owing to lack of education and probably to some failures in judgment he never accomplished any thing in either of these ambitions but they have re-appeared in his sons. Will and I always had dreams of such things. We used to invent astonishing stories and tell them to each other. Of course these were imitations of the stories we read. Later on we were more than willing to write compositions at school and later still wrote as correspondents and contributors to the various papers off that region. We even wrote verse as well as prose! But I think that none of our sins in this respect have been preserved – though I do remember one or two attempts to be humorous which sometimes seem to me they might have had some real fun in them.
In his later life Will wrote a large number of articles for publication in the church papers and also published a novel entitled “Love and Liberty.” This was concerning the Anti-Slavery struggle and the Civil War. Will was quite an authority on them, which was natural, as our father was one of the old Abolitionists.
While I was still in college I had a few things published in papers. These included the only versus I have ever written that I think might possible be called poetry by a lenient critic. This is the poem called, “The Christ-Mass;” which I wrote for a Christmas family gathering in 1880. It has been printed a few times, one in Zion’s Herald, but has never attained any great fame and probably does not deserve it.
Of course I wrote for the school papers, both in the Academy and at college, and always had visions of really accomplishing something in a literary line. I was counted one of the particularly good writers in college but somehow when I went into a prize contest somebody else always got the prize!
A number of my articles were printed in the Christian Advocate and in 1896 I won my first place in real literary work with an article in the Methodist Review, of which Dr. Kelley was then editor. Since then I have had a number in that and other reviews and many in the weekly papers of the church. The Pittsburgh Christian Advocate has had more of these than any other publication. Local reasons naturally would bring this to pass. One thing is interesting to me at least if not ot others. That is that the Pittsburgh Advocate has printed everything I ever sent it, from little local notes and reports up to articles for which I was paid.
While in Buckhannon I wrote a novel of the Civil War in that region, which I called, “The Mountaineers.” This has had the honor to be declined by a number of publishers – though it has also been accepted by a number of others who wanted to publish it at my expense. That is a thing I have never been willing to do.
I tried a second novel, “Hugh Graham; A Tale of the Pioneers,” and this was published in 1916 by the Abingdon Press. It has never been anywhere near a best seller but has brought me some money from royalties. I tried to revise the other novel and get it published but did not succeed – even if in my opinion some worse ones do get printed. But perhaps their authors pay for that and I will not.
Of course the literary work I have done has always been done under difficulties and in the midst of all sorts of other cares. Real geniuses have often produced great things in spite of such interferences but ordinary mortals are not likely to do so. But my work of this sort has given me a great deal of pleasure in the doing and has brought me a little reputation and even a very little money. I have lately made n estimate that during the last fifty years I must have received for all of my writing somewhere about five hundred dollars! Of course this has been of use to me in my financial struggles but I cannot recommend authorship as a means of making a fortune unless some one has much greater ability for it than I have had. But it is pleasant to feel that at least it has not made me poorer even if it has no made me richer.
Summing Up
I have not intended to make this a complete record of everything in my life but on looking over what I have written I have thought of three things I wish to add.
One concerns my half-brother, David. When I wrote concerning him I did not have an exact record of some things about him. Since that writing I have heard from his daughter, Emma, the date of his death. He died April 18, 1912, being then 70 years old. He and I used to be great friends and during the later years of his life we had not seen each other and even our correspondence had ceased. This was not from any unkind feelings on either side but simply from the way in which even brothers who are separated so often drift apart.
Another matter I wish to mention is educational – my Chautauqua work and diploma. For three years in Parkersburg and four years in Buckhannon I conducted Chautauqua Circles. During most years the circle was a large one and one year I had over thirty students. My wife read the course for four years and then stopped. I read for the full seven years, doing this so as to keep in close touch with my classes. Our two diplomas were awarded in 1901 and I received extra seals for my additional years. We always wanted to go through the ceremonies of formal graduation but various things prevented this until 1919. That summer we spent two weeks at Chautauqua and “passed the arches” with all the forms. I enjoyed all of the Chautauqua work and consider it a real addition to my education. Its diploma makes six in all for my collection – beginning with that of the Academy in 1876 and ending with the D.D. diploma from Wesleyan University in 1921. I frankly acknowledge that I have had much gratification in these testimonials to my scholarship and my work for the church. As more parchments they amount to nothing but the hard work which came before them has meant a great deal in my life.
I want to pay a tribute to the honesty of the churches I have served as pastor. A great many pastors never have got the salaries which had been voted them and should have been paid. Twice in my supply work I ha a sort of failure but in one case circumstances caused me to feel it was best to relinquish a part of my claim. In the other the S.S. children finally took hold of the matter and raised and sent me the money due – which has made the whole affair one of the very pleasant memories of my life.
I served 32 years as a regular conference pastor. Every year I reported my salary paid in full and I told the truth. Not one of those churches owes me a single dollar. But in my district work I failed to get quite a little of the money I was entitled to, for in those days Superintendents in this region never got their whole claim. In my Permanent Fund work I was my own paymaster, taking my salary out of the case I handled and properly charging it on my books. It is needless to say that I had no deficiencies!
Anybody who may ever read this sketch of my life will probably note one thing – that I always had to struggle. I never had the gift of easy popularity and success. I have had some successes and honors and I am not ashamed of the record of my life but I have also had my failures and disappointments. Sometimes I have almost won a thing and just failed after all. This has led me at times to call myself an “almost man,” – one who has ability but does not have the peculiar magnetism, the easy touch, which makes cusses almost a certainty. Yet I have notices that most men after all seem to have some breaks in the current of successes.
I attribute my own failures to two things in my life. One is my natural disposition, which I inherited largely from my father. He was naturally intelligent and could almost do a lot of things but there was no one thing he could do really well. He was a very honest and industrious, as well as very moral and religious, but he lacked judgment about a great many things. Yet he managed to win a great deal of respect because of his good points. I was saved from being too much like him by inheriting a stronger strain from my mother. She had strong ambitions, which had always been foiled without fault of her own. She sent down to her children something of a resolute courage and determination which has enabled them to conquer a good many difficulties and win some successes in their lives.
The second trouble with me has been that I did not in youth have wise and skillful training. I got my education by an almost fierce determination, a stubborn resolution which simply would not yield. This has its virtues but it does not ten to make a man graceful and gracious. It tends to make him dogmatic, self-willed and stubborn. I often think that I would have done better in life had I found more of a gentle and quite influence to guide me when I needed it so very much.
But I have lived my life as best I could and I can bring from it to my children one great lesson. Do not give up easily but struggle on the best you can. If you do this you may be sure that some degree of success will come at last but if you play the weakling it will mean utter failure and sometimes even dishonor.
When I took the retired relation in my conference in 1928 I was 71 years old and had been entitled by the church rules to retire if I wished ever since I was 65. But I had various reasons for wishing to go on as long as I could. I have been glad during the year and a half since then to have freedom from responsibility and the rest I have had sol little of in all my life. I however tried to still help in the work of the church so far as conditions would allow me to do.
At my retirement I had my personal business matters so arranged that with my pension and my savings and investments I felt no anxiety about keeping comfortable in a quiet way as long as I lived, without troubling anybody else. But the failure of the People Bank in Feb. 1929 deprived me of quite a fraction of my savings. Since then however I have been able to get along and adjust my affairs so that my great anxiety is over. I shall have to calculate rather more closely than I had expected to do but do not expect any discomfort in my old age.
I am closing this little sketch on April 2, 1930. In a couple of weeks it will be just fifty years since I closed out all of my Rhode Island matters and went to Connecticut to enter upon my first pastoral charge and its work. The years between have been filled with much hard work but have also had their good and pleasant things. I can send my memory back almost 70 years now and cannot expect to have many more years to live. But I have the most perfect faith in the religion I have professed for sixty years and have preached for over fifty, so I have no fears about the future either in this or in the other world. I leave my record ot the mercy of my God and to the love of my children and others who may remember me in the coming years.
Frank S. Townsend
Besides the links within the autobiography I've also created these links:
1897-1900 Parkersburg, Wood County, WV
1900-1907 Buckhannon, Upshur County, WV
1907-1910 Huntington, Cabell County, WV
1910-1913 Ronceverte, Greenbrier County, WV
1913-1915 Elkins, Randolph County, WV
1915-1917 New Martinsville, Wetzel County, WV
1917-1919 Wheeling, Ohio County, WV
1919-1922 Kingwood, Preston County, WV
1922-1939 Buckhannon, Upshur County, WV
1939 Morgantown, Monongalia County, WV