Among those who fought in the second war against Great Britain was
one Adam Warner, who was born in Virginia, and whose father was
Christofel Warner. In this period of our national history a great
tide of emigration from the Atlantic States was spreading itself over
what is now the Middle West. Adam Warner seemed to catch the spirit
of the times, and accordingly, in 1815, he set out with his family
for the new country beyond the Alleghanies. He settled in Stark
County, Ohio, where, about the year 1845, he died, at ninety-three
years of age (a history of Williams County, Ohio, says ninety-eight,
and that he had a sister who lived to the advanced age of one hundred
and three). It is probable that before moving west Adam Warner lived
for a while in Frederick County, Md., for there is where his son
David was born, June 6, 1803.
David Warner, after moving to Stark County, was married, in 1823, to
Leah Dierdorf, who was born in York County, Pa., Feb. 6, 1805. In
1830 he moved to Wayne County, Ohio, and a little later to Portage
County, then back to Wayne County in 1836, to a place then called
Bristol, where he kept a tavern for eight years. Of the parentage
of David and Leah Warner, at their humble abode at Bristol, on June
25, 1842, amid the environment of tavern life, was born Daniel S.
Warner, destined to be one of the principal instruments in God's
hands to produce a shaking in the ranks of spiritual Israel, and to
lead the hosts of the Lord back to Zion from their wanderings in the
wilderness of denominationalism.
The children of David and Leah, in order, were as follows: Adam,
Lewis, Joseph, John, Daniel, and Samantha. John died at the age
of twenty, leaving but the five children. All are now deceased. A
granddaughter says that the family was Pennsylvania German. Evidently
the mother was. The father, as already noted, was a Virginian.
It was the misfortune of Daniel S. to be frail, sickly, and to a
great extent unappreciated, from his very birth. His lungs were weak
and he was denied that stock of vitality with which every child
has the right to begin life. Intoxicants were freely used in those
days, and David Warner had fallen an easy prey to intemperance.
If the affliction of this infant may not be ascribed to paternal
indiscreetness, possibly inebriety, it is not because such instances
were uncommon. Into how many homes has the demon of strong drink
entered to bring sorrow to the wife and mother and to curse the
unborn with the blight of its baneful effects! In this case, at any
rate, the father was rough, and inconsiderate of his offspring. While
he exercised toward his family a degree of temporal care, it seemed
that the very frailty of this child, which should have awakened
compassion, met only his frown and disfavor. In later years Daniel,
in reflecting on the circumstances attending his birth and childhood,
wrote the following lines, which are a part of his poem on Innocence:
Conceived in sin, to sorrow born,
Unwelcome here on earth,
The shadows of a life forlorn
Hung gloomy o'er my birth.
A mother's heart oppressed with grief,
A father's wicked spleen,
Who cursed my faint and gasping breath,
Combine to paint the scene.
But life held on its tender thread,
Days unexpected grew
To weeks, and still he lived--
Why, Heaven only knew.
He lived, though life was bitter gain,
His youth a flood of tears,
His body doomed to cruel pain,
His mind to nervous fears.
In contrast with this paternal attitude, however, was the constancy
of a true-hearted mother. Blessed with this and endowed with
indelible memories of a mother's devotion, what child growing up
to cope with life's obstacles may not, after all, hold a chance of
succeeding, however handicapped otherwise? If ever any planting bears
fruit in the human breast, or becomes a latent force tending to
guide one steadily through life's dangerous rapids, it is that of a
mother's love. Especially is this true of the love of a _Christian_
mother, coupled with her prayers.
Mrs. Warner was an excellent woman. Her patient and gentle bearing
under disturbing conditions, her disposition to make the best of
disappointment and discouragement, left an impress, not only upon the
family, but upon the neighborhood. Her kindness is referred to in two
other stanzas of the poem Innocence:
If angels blessed his thorny path,
It may be said in truth,
But two e'er showed their smiling face
In all his suffering youth.
One was his mother, ever kind,
A blessed providence;
The other, pure and lovely friend,
Was angel Innocence.
It has been true generally that great men have first had great
mothers. But what is a mother's greatness, after all, but simple,
unalloyed, Christian motherliness?
"I should have become an atheist but for one recollection, and that
was the memory of the time when my departed mother used to take my
little hand in hers and cause me on my knees to say, 'Our Father, who
art in heaven.'"--_John Randolph._
[Illustration: Parents of D. S. Warner. The father holds a
whisky-glass]
[Illustration: Mother of D. S. Warner]
"All I am, all I hope to be, I owe to my angel mother--blessings on
her memory! I remember my mother's prayers. They have always followed
me. They have clung to me all my life."--_Lincoln._
"If my mother could rise in the dead of the night and pray for
my recovery from sickness, my life must be worth something. I
then and there resolved to prove myself worthy of my mother's
prayers."--_Garfield._
"It is to my mother that I owe everything. If I am thy child, O my
God, it is because thou gavest me such a mother. If I prefer the
truth to all things, it is the fruit of my mother's teachings. If
I did not perish long ago in sin and misery, it is because of the
long and faithful years which she pleaded for me. What comparison is
there between the honor I paid her and her slavery for me?"--_St.
Augustine._
One more tribute. In his book Bible Proofs of the Second Work of
Grace, published in 1880, Daniel S. Warner places the following
dedicatory note: "To the sacred memory of my sainted mother, whose
tender affections were the only solace in my suffering childhood, and
whose never-failing love, and whose pure and innocent life were the
only stars that shone in the darkness of my youth, this volume is
respectfully dedicated by the author."
From Wayne County, David Warner brought his family, in 1843, to a
farm of 140 acres near New Washington, Crawford County, Ohio. The
house, built partly of logs, stood three fourths of a mile southwest
of the village. It was here that Daniel spent his childhood. Of this
period he writes:
It seemed the special pleasure of
Another certain one
To quite demolish everything
He set his heart upon;
To chafe his spirit and extort
The flow of bitter tears
Out of a soft and pensive heart,
Through all his tender years.
He never knew that "Father" was
A sweet, endearing name;
Its very mention was a dread,
His life's most deadly bane.
The demon of intemp'rance there
Infused the wrath of hell,
And most upon this sickly head
The storm of fury fell.
Like chickens when the mother bird
Gives signal of a foe,
The little peeps are quickly hushed,
All chicks are lying low,
So, when returning from the town,
The dreaded steps we heard,
All ran and quickly settled down,
And not a lip was stirred.
O horrors of the liquor fiend!
We've seen thy hell on earth.
Thy serpent coils around us twined,
The moment of our birth.
O Rum! thy red infernal flame--
I witness to the truth--
Filled all my mother's cup with pain,
And swallowed up my youth.
The Warner family, though clever, straightforward, and strictly
honest, were but a simple rural folk and not inclined to religion.
That such a bright spiritual light as was afterward exhibited
in Daniel could come from such a family, is one of the puzzling
questions of blood relation. Was it that in the family blood there
was latent quality which in his case only was near enough to the
surface to be called into action and developed by higher influence?
or should it be said that he represents a variation in the strain,
such as is sometimes seen in biological observation? If the latter,
the mystery remains; for why do such things occur? Aside from
natural phenomena, we believe that Brother Warner was a "chosen
vessel" unto the Lord. He possessed such a combination of qualities
as made him capable of high development in the divine graces. He was
a Christian than whom perhaps none other ever lived who was more
reverent, spiritual, and devoted; and God had a special work for him.