REMINISCENCES--CONTINUED.
In May, 1867, my two-year-old brother, Ernest, was accidentally
scalded. He lingered a week, then death claimed the youngest of the
flock.
When the Central Branch Railroad was built the little town of
Farmington was laid out, a mile to the northwest of father's
house--Pardee being two miles to the southeast. Many of the original
members of the Pardee Church had helped to organize the Pleasant Grove
Church, six miles west. Father thought it would be wise to break up at
Pardee., and move church and village to the railroad town, but some
objected. Thinking that the rest would soon follow, he left Pardee,
and organized a church of twenty-three members at Farmington, October
6, 1867. Bro. McCleery held a successful meeting here the next
December, and preached once a month during the following year.
For several years much of father's time was given (gratuitously), in
caring for this church and Sunday-school, and the church soon numbered
a hundred members.
After the war many colored people came to Kansas, and a number of them
settled in the neighborhood. They had heard of father, as a friend to
the colored people, and some of them wanted to work for him. He
frequently employed them, and usually found them faithful and
efficient. They liked to work for him because he treated them as he
treated white men. As there were not enough of them in the country
places to form churches of their own, they attended our Sunday-schools
and meetings. We were much surprised to find that some of our brethren
objected to colored children being in the classes. One good old
colored man, who had been a member of the church in Missouri, was much
respected by the community. A white brother requested our deacon, W.
J. May, a son of Caleb May, to ask this colored brother to take a back
seat, and to pass the bread and wine to him last. Bro. May replied: "I
shall do no such thing; as long as I am deacon in this church there
shall be no respect of persons."
A colored man, who had been a servant in the family of one of the
governors of Virginia, presented himself for membership. He was a
neat, good-looking man, with pleasant manners, and had been a member
of Col. Shaw's colored regiment, when they so valiantly stormed Fort
Wagner. A white sister borrowed a pair of gloves, when she went up to
give him the hand of fellowship, so that she "wouldn't have to touch a
nigger's hand."
Father wanted to teach them, without giving undue offense, their
Christian duty to the colored people. He preached a sermon on the
parable of the Good Samaritan, telling how the Jews and Samaritans
hated each other, and how Jesus taught in that parable that even the
most despised of earth's races are our neighbors. He also told the
story of Peter's vision at the house of Simon, and how God taught him
not to call any man or nation of men common or unclean, but to carry
the gospel to all nations. The nearest that he came to modern times,
in that sermon, was the remark that the Jews despised the Samaritans
as much as the Americans despised the Africans. He left them to make
their own applications of the Bible teachings.
What an excitement it raised! Many said the colored people had to be
turned out of the Sunday-school, or they would leave; and some did
leave. In nearly all our churches father had to meet this prejudice,
but he remained firm in his position, that in church and Sunday-school
there should be neither white nor black, but all should have equal
rights.
In the spring of 1869 father sold his timber land in Missouri, and
paid the last of his debts. He had some money left, and the first
thing he did was to go into a book store, and spend forty dollars for
"Barnes' Notes," and "Motley's United Netherlands," and "History of
the Dutch Republic." He remarked as he did so, "I have felt the need
of these books for years, and this is the first money I could spare
for them."
Men who had seen father working with tireless energy on his farm, or
the plains, or "logging" in the timber, sometimes said: "He is craving
to get rich."
He has often been misunderstood, but in no point more than this. I
never knew a man who cared less for wealth than he. The one
all-absorbing object of his life was to preach the gospel. But he had
also resolved to have the means to pay his debts, and to have a home
for his family.
About that time he spoke to me, in substance, as follows: The one
great anxiety of my life has been to preach. I had intended to go to
Bethany, and devote my life entirely to preaching. My sore throat
caused me to give that up, but going to Iowa improved my health, and I
began to preach again. When I took my claim in Kansas it was with the
intention of holding on to the land, while I preached in Illinois,
until Kansas should be thickly enough settled to furnish me preaching
here. But you know how necessity has driven me, and how preaching for
a meager salary, and neglecting my farm, ran me in debt; and what a
hard necessity has been laid on me to pay those debts, and to improve
my farm, so that you and your mother and the boys can make a living
from it. You have no idea what a sore and bitter trial it has been to
me the last six or eight years to see the old churches going to pieces
before my eyes, and so many opportunities for planting new churches
being lost to us. There is only one thing more I must do, and then I
am determined to give myself wholly to preaching. As for myself, I
would live in a log house all my days before I would take from my
preaching the time necessary to earn and build a better house. But
Sybil has been a good and faithful wife, and has borne with
commendable patience all the trials of the hard life through which I
have led her; and it worries her to entertain so much company as we
have in her log house. With the lumber and saleable stock I have on
hand, I can build it without incurring any further debt. And then I
will be ready to preach without being dependent on any man.
The house was built; but before it was finished a series of
misfortunes befell him, that threw him in debt nearly as badly as
before. From snake-bites, disease, and accidents, he lost four or five
horses, and several head of cattle, and the cholera killed nearly a
thousand dollars' worth of his hogs.
He went to work again, but somewhat discouraged, for he saw that his
long-deferred hope of devoting his entire time to study and preaching,
could never be realized. He was nearly sixty, and had broken his
constitution by hard work, and could not much longer have endured the
incessant riding and preaching of a traveling evangelist, even could
he have been supported. The boys were then old enough to do much of
the farm work, and from that time he preached more constantly, but
spent more or less time at hard labor.
For several years he was employed, for a small salary, at monthly
preaching, by churches at Big Springs, Valley Falls, Round Prairie,
and other points.
In the fall of 1875 he concluded to visit once more the churches for
which he had preached before coming to Kansas, and bid farewell to his
old friends. He accordingly spent the following winter in a preaching
tour throughout Iowa and Illinois.
The State Meeting at Emporia, in 1877, in his absence, elected him
President of the Society. Unable to find a State evangelist who would
undertake the difficult task of reviving the old churches that had
perished--which he thought was the work most needed at that time--he
took the field himself. At the State meeting held at Yates Center the
next year, he made the following report: "Time spent, five months;
sermons preached, one hundred and fifty; churches organized, two;
compensation received, $186.36." He also revived many scattered
churches and Sunday-schools, and obtained regular preaching for some
of them. He was greatly worried over the churches of this part of the
State. They had been much weakened, and some of them nearly broken up
by the tide of emigration that set into the southern and western
counties. Attempts at co-operative State and district work were
impeded by conservative papers, which prejudiced the brethren against
missionary societies, and hireling pastors. He spent much time, both
with tongue and pen, in answering these sophistries, and teaching the
churches their duties. Many of the churches were really too poor to
support regular preaching, and many that were able, thought themselves
unable to do so. Yet someone must care for them, or they would perish.
He resolved for the rest of his life to preach, without remuneration,
where such preaching was most needed. And so the last eight or nine
years of his life were spent in preaching on Saturdays and Sundays for
weak churches, and the remainder of the time in working and writing.
If a church was building a meeting house, and felt unable to support a
preacher while doing so, he preached for it until it was built. If a
church had already built, and felt oppressed with debt, he preached
for it until the debt was paid. If, from any cause, a church was weak
or disorderly, he preached for it until it was again in good order.
Then he said to the brethren: "I have helped you on your feet, now
raise the money and hire some one else to preach for you, and let me
go and help some other needy church."
Mr. Hastings and I were married in 1870, and had settled at
Farmington. From that time Mr. Hastings had taken much of the care of
the Farmington church. The church at Pardee had revived, and had been
doing well under the care of Prof. N. Dunshee; and, later on, by the
assistance of Prof. J. M. Reid, and of Mr. Hastings. But, about six
years ago, being left without a leader, they begged father to take
charge of them, although they were unable to offer him much
remuneration. He told them that it would cost them nothing, so far as
he was concerned; but that, if he took charge of them, they must
promise to support the Sunday-school liberally, and to build a church.
He, and his family, therefore, changed their membership from
Farmington back to Pardee, where he was elected elder--for he believed
that every pastor of a church should be one of its elders--and he
preached for them five years. He not only gave largely of his means to
build the church, but spent the whole summer in collecting the money,
and overseeing the building of the house. He looked after the buying
of the materials, and sent his teams to do much of the hauling, and
never stopped until the building was furnished, the insurance paid,
and his own hands had put the stoves in place.
About a year before his death, however, owing to disagreements about
the manner of conducting the Sunday-school, father resigned his
eldership, and preached at other points until his death.
But his work for others was not confined to preaching, or church work.
He had never tried to make a large town of either Farmington or
Pardee. He knew too well the perils of the city. When he helped to lay
out Pardee he made it a part of the charter that if liquor should ever
be sold on any lot of the town the deed to that lot should be
forfeited. His idea was to have a small village, with a good church
and school, as the center of a moral and intelligent farming
community. He took great interest in schools, Sunday-schools, literary
societies, and temperance work; in everything, in fact, which tended
to the moral and intellectual improvement of the young, or to the
well-being of society in general.
He spent much time in writing and lecturing on temperance, both before
and after the passage of the Prohibitory Amendment. His articles in
the papers denouncing the violation of the prohibitory law as
rebellion against the Constitution, and all the sympathizers with the
law-breakers, as rebels, stirred up such an excitement that when he
went to Atchison he could scarcely walk the streets on account of the
people, both friends and opponents, who stopped him on every turn, to
talk of prohibition. The Germans all wanted to discuss the matter with
him; but one of the leading Germans said to him one day, "You must not
expect us old Germans, who have brought our habits from the old
country, to change; but go ahead, Mr. Butler! Go ahead! The young men
are with you."
Father was sometimes accused of "dabbling in politics." If that means
that he was an office-seeker, the charge is false. Though often urged
by his friends to run for office, he invariably refused, telling them
that he considered the office of a Christian preacher the highest
office on earth. But he did think it his duty to attend elections and
primary meetings, and work against the whisky ring. He often spent
much time, in the fall, speaking and writing to secure the election of
temperance men for county officers. The final effort by which he
succeeded in arousing a public sentiment strong enough to compel the
county officers to close the saloons, was a stirring speech he made at
a temperance meeting in Atchison, in the spring of 1885,
Some have thought that father was hard-hearted. Plain-spoken he
certainly was, and sometimes harsh in dealing with those whom he
thought to be doing wrong. He was so thoroughly in earnest that when
he thought a certain way right or wrong, it was hard for him to
understand that some other way might be equally right or wrong.
Naturally high-tempered, with a very excitable, nervous organization,
it was often a matter of wonder to me to see how much self-control he
exercised, under irritating circumstances. He sometimes lost his
self-control, and said things that would better have been left unsaid;
but when he saw that he had done so he was ready to beg pardon for the
offense. But he was kind-hearted and forgiving, and ready to forget
injuries done to him.
No matter how harshly he might speak of an opponent, or wrong-doer, he
would often turn right around and do him a kindness.
One of the men who helped to raft him wrote to him three or four years
ago, saying that he was writing an account of the Kansas troubles, and
asking him for some information on points that he had forgotten.
Father readily complied with his request, telling him that he freely
forgave him, and all the rest of his old-time enemies.
Father was always ready to help the poor, the oppressed, or
unfortunate. It was that spirit of sympathy for the weaker party that
led him to side with Horace Greely in 1872, because he thought the
Republicans were too hard on the conquered Southerners. But when he
heard of the widespread Ku-Klux outrages, he concluded that he had
been mistaken, and returned heartily to the Republican party.
I heard a neighbor say a few years ago: "If any one needs help,
just go to Bro. Butler. I never heard of him refusing to help anybody
that was in trouble, no matter how much time or trouble it cost him."
Another neighbor had his house burned. He was old and feeble, and
unable to rebuild. Other neighbors thought they had done their part
when they raised a subscription to build him a new house. But cold
weather was coming on, necessitating haste. Father, not content with
giving money, looked after buying materials, and putting up the
building; sent his teams to do the hauling; and, because the ground
was freezing up, worked until late at night, digging out sand to
plaster it. And this was but one of the many instances of his
practical kind-heartedness.
He attended the State Meeting at Hutchinson about a year before his
death, where he had been invited to deliver a historical address,
sketching his own life and work, and the history of our churches in
Kansas. He was urgently requested to publish it, and from that
circumstance came the publication, in the _Christian Standard_,
of his "Recollections."
Bro. F. M. Rains said of that address, "That was the grandest speech
ever delivered on Kansas soil."
The Hutchinson _Daily News_ spoke of it as follows:
"The address was a happy blending of church history, and
personal reminiscence, full of fact, humor and pathos,
and, most of all, devotion to freedom, morality,
temperance, and godliness. Few people of today are able to
appreciate the privations, and sacrifices, and dangers,
with which the pioneer was beset, and these dangers came
with special nearness to the man whose mission, courage
and conscience made him the open and avowed foe of all
sorts of wickedness. The house was packed with intense
listeners, and from beginning to end he held the great
audience in close attention, and when he finished, the
hope that grand old Pardee Butler might live a hundred
years was the unexpressed wish of all."
Father was always fluent in prayer, and his petitions earnest and
timely; but in the last year or two of his life his prayers seemed to
grow more fervent and impressive. Mrs. Hendryx, of Wichita, writing to
me since his death, speaks thus of a prayer offered by him at the
Hutchinson Convention: "Never, while consciousness shall last, will I
forget the ring of your father's voice in prayer, at Hutchinson. I
asked, 'Who is that aged veteran? he seems almost inspired.' And they
told me it was Pardee Butler."
The earnestness and appropriateness of his prayers were most
noticeable on several funeral occasions, and numbers spoke of being
affected by them, particularly at Bro. Locker's funeral.
He preached his last sermon at North Cedar, a week and a half before
his accident. The following Saturday, September 15, he attended Bro.
Locker's funeral. The next day he attended Bro. Parker's meeting at
Pleasant Grove, where he presided at the Lord's table.
He had several appointments ahead at the time he was hurt. One of
these was to preach the funeral of his old friend, Caleb May, who had
died in Florida, August 27. His children in Florida had sent a request
to his son, E. E. May, of Farmington, that father should preach a
memorial sermon at Pardee.
Father had not done any heavy work for two years, but he still did
much light work, and choring, although his health was gradually
failing, milking eight or ten cows a day, and driving a young team
from ten to twenty miles to his appointments, almost every Sunday,
seldom stopping for bad weather.
It was reported that he was thrown from a colt at the time he was
hurt. My brothers wish that report corrected. They think he never was
thrown from a horse in his life. They had seen him break many colts,
and had never seen him thrown. He had been using the most spirited
colt on the place for his riding horse all summer; but that day,
September 19, it was in a distant pasture, and finding my brother
Charley's colt in the stable, he thought he would ride it to the
post-office. It would not stand for him to mount, and he put the
halter around a post, holding the end in his hand. As he mounted the
saddle the colt jerked both halter and bridle from his hand and
trotted off. Unable to reach the bridle he hastily dismounted. As he
swung his right foot around to the ground the colt kicked it, crushing
the ankle joint. He quietly called mother; and Brother May, who
happened to be passing, helped him into the house, and sent for a
surgeon.
We feared no worse result at the first than a crippled ankle. He said
to Bro. White, who visited him a _few_ days after he was hurt, "Oh,
I will get up all right; a Butler never was conquered, you know. My
only concern is that I shall not become a permanent cripple."
The first week he was hopeful, though suffering much pain. The second
week he was delirious, with high fever. Then he was prostrated with a
severe nervous chill--his already over-wrought nervous system was
exhausted by pain. From that time he lay in an unconscious stupor the
greater part of the time. He passed quietly away at half-past three A.
M., October 19, 1888, at the age of seventy-two.
His funeral took place the following day in the church at Pardee. The
services were conducted by Elders John Boggs, of Clyde, and J. B.
McCleery, of Fort Leavenworth. The house was full, notwithstanding it
was a stormy day, raining continuously from morning until night. Word
had been sent to all the churches in this and adjacent counties, and
hundreds who were preparing to attend the funeral were disappointed by
the inclement weather.