The American Baptist Publication Society chapel cars on the western frontier of faith.

Taylor, Norman Thomas

Although the American frontier is usually defined as the time of settlement preceding 1892, the frontier for the settlement of churches in the West could be extended after the turn of the century, into the 1920s and beyond.

After the completion of the transcontinental railroads in the 1880s, untold numbers of towns were left along the tracks lost in a spiritual wasteland. In these towns thousands of railroaders and others, bereft of the comfort and inspiration of a church, lived lives of desolation and even debauchery, endangering their mortal souls and the safety of the public riding the trains.

Men and women of faith traveled to those western towns, willing to suffer extreme hardships to bring the gospel, but the distances were too great, the rail boom too quick, the rowdy rail towns too vile, and the saloon power too strong. Facilities for organizing congregations were far too limited, and the support for building churches was sadly lacking. The farther west the preachers and padres rode the less evidence they found of Christianity, not just in the rail towns but also in the frontier settlements a day's ride from the depots. The common saying was, "There is no law west of Kansas City, and west of Fort Scott, no God."

But God was not ticketless as the rails stretched from coast-to-coast. From 1890 through two world wars, thirteen chapel cars--three Episcopal, three Catholic, and seven Baptist, equipped with chapel areas outfitted with pews, organs, and stained glass and adjoined by miniature parson-ages--were hauled across many of the same tracks that first carried hell-on-wheels towns. During the early years, those churches-on-rails were pulled with the invitation and expense of railroad companies that had learned from hard experience that a railroad, or a great nation, cannot be built on speeding iron wheels alone. (1)

The First Baptist Chapel Cat

The first Baptist group to build and make use of chapel cars was the American Baptist Publication Society. The publication society, which eventually butt seven chapel cars, developed the idea after Minnesota missionary Boston Smith, upset because his thriving Sunday Schools could find no place to meet, asked the Northern Pacific Railroad for the loan of a coach to use during the winter months.

Excited over the success, he shared his vision of a railroad church car with his pastor, Wayland Hoyt, who, in turn, shared his vision with his brother Colgate Hoyt, vice president of the Northern Pacific and of other railroads and a Northern Baptist layman. The Hoyts formed a syndicate of powerful friends, including John D. Rockefeller, Charles Colby, William Colgate, and E. G. Barney of the Barney & Smith Car Company, and the first Baptist chapel car, Evangel, was built and put into service in the spring of 1891.

Boston Smith's maiden journey on Evangel took him across the Northern Pacific line through Minnesota, North Dakota, and Montana. Since it was the publication society's mission to distribute gospel literature, he gave away tracts and Bibles, available in seventeen languages. One German boy at Livingston, Montana, ran home to tell his mother that she could get a Bible in their language at the car. He ran back, through the cold wind, barely able to gasp his request for a Bible. On receiving it, he clasped the Bible to his chest and sped away to his mother. Smith related, nit was a most touching sight." (2)

In 1895, 874,000 railroaders were employed in the United States. (3) No other evangelistic effort, with the exception of the Railroad YMCA in selected towns, focused with such success on the salvation of these railroad men and women than did the Baptist chapel cars. Starting with that maiden journey, Baptist chapel cars traveled to over four thousand towns in thirty-six states--from the Pacific tides to West Virginia's hills, through the Midwest plains into the windswept canyons of the Rockies and Tetons, to Arizona's copper towns, across the Land of the Five Tribes, and from the Texas Panhandle to the Canadian border. Thousands would hear the gospel and be baptized in rivers, streams, lakes, water barrels, holes dug in the ground, and even a grease pit of an abandoned garage.

The First Baptist Colporteurs

E. G. Wheeler and his wife were the first Baptist chapel car colporteurs. He said of the new venture, "If nothing is better than God, then nothing is too good for God. Why should we crawl like snails when we might better take to the rails?" (4) When the Wheelers, onboard Evangel, pulled into Everett, Washington, in the spring of 1892, several hundred houses existed on the city's fringes, but hundreds of men and women were sleeping in tents and crude shelters. Every hour of daylight, men labored to erect shipyards, factories, and mills, while others pounded spikes to lay rails to connect their city with Tacoma and Seattle. These people had no graveyard, no jail, no schools, and no church.

On April 11, 1892, Chapel Car Evangel made history as the first church to hold a service on the bay side of Everett. That first service occurred even before the saloons were running. On the night of the service, Wheeler baptized a young man from Philadelphia in the bay near the car and rejoiced, "It was a beautiful sight! It was the first baptism as far as we know, in that country." (5)

The Glad Tidings

Charles Rust, on the Baptist chapel car Glad Tidings in Minnesota and the Dakotas, handed out cards midday and midnight, saying, "Come just as you are." Bare-armed, dirty, and work-clothed, they came by the thousands. Rust stood at the door of the chapel car and grasped the hand of each man. About one man, he proclaimed,

 Look at this man who is reaching up now in some haste. He is the
 engineer of a stationary engine in the shop. He has been in the
 car each noon, but cannot stay to the entire service, as he is
 obliged to run to his engine to blow the whistle at 12:45. He
 hardly can part with the missionary, and says in parting: "God
 alone knows what the chapel car has meant to me. I have not been
 in church for years, but you have brought the church to me." (6)

Nine years later Glad Tidings experienced even more success in Wyoming. There, on January 18, 1910, the Shoshone dam project was completed, and the dry Wyoming land began to turn green. Homesteaders then flooded into the area. E. A. Spear, the missionary aboard Glad Tidings, described the events of July 10, 1910, a very special day for him and for the chapel car ministry. No matter the direction Spear's eye turned, majestic mountains, the loftiest peaks crowned with perpetual snow, range upon range, met his vision. In the chapel car, flowers topped the organ, and he preached a stirring sermon, followed by a basket dinner. In the afternoon, the Powell Valley Baptist Church was organized, and the crowning event was a baptismal service at the Shoshone River, attended by a crowd of over 150 people of all faiths or no faith. (7)

 The baptistery was the wild, beautiful Shoshone River, probably the
 first time its waters were ever used for this impressive, symbolic
 rite. In its hurling course from its mountain source to the thirsty,
 waiting plains below, it found time to linger in a sheltered spot,
 spreading into a quiet pool, overhung by great trees. The
 overlapping trees formed a green background to the scene; curtains
 were stretched for dressing rooms, and the assembled company
 numbered not less than one hundred and fifty. Seven candidates
 awaited the ordinance, and as the evangelist led them into the
 rippling waters and laid them beneath the waves, the hearts of
 parents and friends were thrilled with solemn joy. "Shall we gather
 at the river?" was sung from full hearts. (8)

Emmanuel

In 1896, after services at the old mining town of Gold Run, perched on the California side of the Sierra Nevadas, Emmanuel, the second Baptist chapel car, went down grade to Truckee. Aboard were the Baptist colporteurs, B. B. Jacques and his wife. The couple spent sixteen days in the town, visiting homes and saloons, distributing gospel tracts, and having meetings. They saw that in Truckee, an 1860s hell-on-wheels town, "sin of every kind abounds, and the majority of the people seem so fully given to Satan, yet we found some of the most kind hearted I ever met. We had great children's meetings, and Protestant and Catholic alike flocked to the car." (9)

Emmanuel then crossed the Donner Pass to Nevada. "At present we are at Verdi, about ten miles from Reno, which is a beautiful little spot, nestled among the mountains with a population of 300. As we looked over the place, we found three saloons, shops of every kind, a nice school house, but no church, and on inquiry learned that there was no religious service in the place at all, except a Catholic priest came in a few times a year." (10)

In 1907, Emmanuel and its colporteur, E. R. Hermiston, made a stop in an Oregon town. During one service, Hermiston noticed a saloon girl in the audience. Later she told him that she began her career in Kansas City, but her life was shattered when one night a cowboy made an advance toward her. Unable to fight him off, she pulled his gun from his holster and shot him. "From that time on I've just been traveling and from one place to another," she explained. Hermiston found her a place to stay, and she sang at chapel car services for a time. But after having lived the fast-paced life of a saloon girl, and despondent over her inability to make a respectable life for herself, she wrote to Hermiston explaining that she was sorry for all the bad things she had done. As she fled town, she was killed in a buggy accident, and Hermiston preached her funeral sermon, which drew crowds of people. (11)

Evangel

In the 1890s, the American Baptist chapel cars were invited to work in several southern states, including Arkansas, Louisiana, and Texas, and Evangel was sent to work in those states. John Thomas, a former Arkansas pastor, wrote from Evangel, "We are working among the whites and Negroes with great success and entirely without friction. The Negroes are nearly all Baptists here, and are getting on well in their work." (12) During August 1895, Thomas worked in northeastern Arkansas among the swamps and contracted malaria, but still he managed to resuscitate two nearly dead churches and organize a church at Earle on the "Cotton Belt Route." (13) In spite of "some disgusting failures," Arkansas Baptist churches were pleased with the work of Evangel.

In Louisiana, Evangel held one of its most profitable meetings at Olla, a sawmill town along the Natchez Trace. Thomas baptized several people in the Castor River in the presence of about a hundred onlookers, and one of the leading merchants of Olla, an educated man, commented that it was the first baptismal service he had ever seen. Thomas raised money to build a church, ordered literature, and launched a Sunday School, (14) and the brethren of the churches in Louisiana gave the chapel car hearty support and commendation. (15) Fifteen years later, the services of Evangel were appreciated in towns farther north.

In 1913, the Santa Fe Land Improvement Company filed for the townsite of Elkhart, Kansas, on April 28, at 2 p.m. The next day the first lots in the town were sold and tents put up, and ten days later, one hundred business lots plus several residential lots had been sold. Excited townspeople gathered to watch the first train come into town on June 16 and received an extra thrill. On the end of the train was Evangel with its missionaries, the John C. Killians, on the observation deck waving to the children along the tracks. On June 18, the Killians met with Elkhart residents and formed First Baptist Church, the first church in town. (16)

Good Will

In 1895, the Baptist General Convention of Texas, in perpetual turmoil with inner and outer strife, invited chapel car Good Will to help them reach the thousands of immigrants flooding the state. Good Will touched rail centers in Denison, visited little villages above the Canadian River, returned many times to help heal denominational rifts in the piney woods of Texas, ministered to San Antonio's poor, survived a Galveston storm, and ended its journey in 1903 searching for one Baptist in the once Baptist stronghold of LaGrange.

The E. S. Stuckers were the first chapel car missionaries in Texas. Stucker had passionately dedicated his life to the personal regeneration of railroad men. He knew about life "working on the railroad" from his years employed by the Chicago & North Western. The Struckers's first stop in the Texas & Pacific shops at Denison touched his heart. Stucker reported his experience at the shops with a pun: "The men seemed to realize that we were there with 'good will,' when we left our lodging in Denison and traveled back to the yards in mud and rain to hold the services in the car, in the midst of the activity of the rail yards."

That meeting resulted in over fifty professions of faith among the men, many of whom had not been in a religious service from five to fifteen years. Of his Denison experience, Stucker wrote, "It was not easy to leave these 'babes in Christ' who, because of having to work seven days each week, have little or no religious privileges." (17)

When the Stuckers left Good Will, Alberto J. Diaz became the chapel car's next missionary. Blackballed from practicing medicine in Cuba because of his preaching Baptist doctrine, Diaz came to the attention of the Southern Baptist mission board which called him "The Apostle of Cuba." Later, because of mismanagement of funds at his Cuban church, Diaz would cease to be a hero but an aggravation to the board. In November 1896, either because of lack of pertinent information about Diaz's difficulties or as an act of faith, the Cuban doctor became the missionary onboard Good Will.

Just a few weeks after Diaz's appointment to the chapel car, Boston Smith visited him in San Antonio and was surprised by what he found.

 Sidetracked in the most densely populated section of that quaint
 city, among the Spanish-speaking people, I found Good Will. As I
 entered the beautiful study, I found the bookcase, instead of
 containing a well-selected library, filled with surgical instruments
 of all kinds. Opposite the bookcase was an operating table. "Why,
 Doctor, what does this mean?" I asked. He told me in his broken but
 intensely interesting way, how from nine to eleven o'clock each
 morning he treated, free of charge, all the sick and afflicted who
 came to the car. This, he said, gave him entrance into the homes and
 hearts of the people. After lunch each day, he visited from house to
 house, reading the word of God, distributing Spanish tracts, and
 praying with the people. (18)

When Diaz returned to Cuba, newlyweds, E. G. Townsend, a Dallas pastor, and Hollie Harper Townsend, woman's editor of the Baptist Standard, took over the management of Good Will. Planning to stop for only a day in Tenaha in the heart of the piney wood, Townsend reported, "We began to preach four times a day. The people began to come for miles and miles around. They came to see that church on wheels-that wonder car, and a woman who was "a heap better talker than the man." (19)

Hollie's husband may have been proud of her effectiveness as a speaker, but that was not the case with the leaders of the Baptist General Convention of Texas who had strict views as to where and when and how women's voices could be heard in the church. (20) The Townsends, however, continued to draw large crowds to their services. Townsend wrote: "Twice we were forced to move, seeking a larger building. On the third Saturday, I say there were a thousand people present. We worked two weeks longer, baptizing in all forty-six and receiving into the church sixty-five, and some twenty joined neighboring country churches." (21)

Children, dressed in the custom of their settler or immigrant parents, were a delight to Hollie. "I wish you could look in sometimes on the car filled with a squirming mass of young humanity ... their heroic attempts to sing the new songs; their blank dismay when called upon for Scripture verses; and their pathetic apology, 'We ain't never been to no Sunday School to learn one,' or 'we ain't got no Bible at our house.'" (22)

In December 1897, after Hollie's death in childbirth, Townsend, with singer Thomas Moffett, traveled southwest to Comstock, hoping to help abate his grief. (23) Townsend reported to the Baptist Standard: "We are now on the southwestern border not only of Texas but also of the United States. Across the Rio Grande River in Mexico, the Santa Rosa Mountains lift their heads far above the clouds. This is the frontier of two republics.... There are not a dozen houses in sight yet from the ranches for twelve and twenty miles the people came and filled the car." (24) The mother of twelve children who had lived all of her life on a ranch told Townsend, "I have never heard anything about the gospel, because I have never had any chance to go to preaching. But this you preach about is just what I have been longing for these many years." (25)

Three years later, during the Galveston's Great Storm of September 1900, Good Will sat in Galveston's Sante Fe shop for renovation. Thus, the car was protected from destruction by its position between engines in the shop. The home of chapel car singer Vallie Hart, who was responsible for the car at that time, was destroyed, along with the chapel car's belongings. The Hart family barely escaped with their lives.

After the storm and Good Will's release from the shop, G. B. Rogers and Hart traveled to storm-ravaged towns across southern Texas. At Rosenberg, Rogers reported that so little was left of homes they were "pressed to live at all." The Baptist church was destroyed, along with other churches. Good Will was sided near the depot and became the temporary house of worship, not only for the Baptists but also for the town's discouraged citizens. Night after night for two weeks, storm-worn townspeople went to the chapel car. Outside in the streets and saloons, people could see the light from the oil lamps through the windows and hear the comforting strains of the Estey organ along with voices rising in the old hymns. (26)

When Rogers retired in 1903, the chapel car, with the "good will" of Texas Baptists, left the state for Colorado. The next missionary couple, the Fretzs, visited towns in Colorado around 1905 where faithful flocks had no houses of worship. Fretz wrote of their welcome there, "These good people, whose loyalty had been thoroughly tested in their efforts against hindering obstacles, are almost overjoyed to see a thoroughly equipped Baptist church come rolling in, with an evangelist aboard." He also wrote of his experience:

 We have to do with people from everywhere. In almost every
 western community you will find persons from almost every
 eastern state, as well as a liberal constituency of foreigners.
 Yet each community will have a local coloring of its own. In one
 community we found a colony from Kentucky; in another a colony
 from North Carolina; in another a great many Missourians, and
 wherever we find a sugar factory we find quite a number of Germans
 and Russians. We had a German woman in our audience last night
 who sang German words to our English tunes. I did not learn
 whether the book from which she sang was a copy of our book in
 German or not. (27)

Messenger of Peace

On March 4, 1902, Baptist chapel car Messenger of Peace was sidetracked in the mining community of Novinger, Missouri. Neither church nor school existed in the town and no religious organization except a kind of union Sunday School with a superintendent who did not even claim to be a Christian. At Novinger, a young miner came to the chapel car. Born in England to a troubled family but with a faithful mother, the young man had sworn off religion and sworn onto drink. He had not been in a house of worship for twelve years, and as he said, "If I had not been drinking and full of curiosity to see what this thing was I would not have heard one then. I came in here drunk. Oh, my friend, I believe you are my friend, I have drunk up two good homes and been in bar room brawls when beer glasses and bottles flew seemingly as thick as hailstones. Your first sermon, drunk as I was, made a deep impression and I have not missed a service since." (28)

In the 1920s and 30s, instead of starting and building churches, the chapel cars spent much time in rebuilding and recharging churches. During this period of rebuilding, Messenger of Peace missionary, C. W. Cutler along with his wife, an ordained minister, visited a Baptist church in a town a few miles from the Canadian line. This Baptist church was the only church in eighty miles in any direction, and Culter observed:

 It has had the usual ups and downs of pioneer Baptist churches.
 It has had good pastors, bad pastors, and just preachers. It has
 had its revivals. It has had its recessions. Right here we would
 stress a peculiar characteristic of Far Western Baptist Churches.
 They can be 'up and coming' one day, and 'down and out' the next.
 They may be a beehive of activity, energetic, praying, working,
 appealing to the crowds today and tomorrow nothing but an empty
 church building. (29)

Grace

On March 2, 1923, the front page of the Las Vegas, Nevada, Review announced the arrival of chapel car Grace, with the Hermistons now on board. The Hermistons previously had served onboard Emmanuel. Shortly after their arrival in Nevada, Hermiston died, and Grace stood empty until the A. C. Blinzingers resumed the work.

The Blinzingers, on Saturday nights, took an express car to the Union Pacific Depot, put the baby organ on it, and sang, played the organ, and gave a message in front of the worst gambling "hells." Twice a week they went to the Union Pacific shops and held services. Blinzinger explained, "Well, the fact is the people wouldn't come to the car very much, and so we took the message where the people were." (30) The Baptist church in Las Vegas, organized November 2, 1924, still witnesses to the gospel in that city.

Opposition to the Chapel Cars

Some people did not welcome the presence of a Baptist chapel car. The Charles Rusts, who lived on Glad Tidings for eleven years and had two daughters born on the car, recalled a disturbing incident. One morning, Rust went outside to fill his coal bucket and looked up to see in bright red paint the words "Cattle Car" scrawled over a thirty-foot area of the chapel car. The paint was still wet, and he was able to remove it with much scrubbing. (31) Another time, ruffians, hired by saloon owners in Greybull, Wyoming, threw eggs at Glad Tidings, but the missionary onboard, Mrs. Sangston, picked up the unbroken ones and scrambled them for breakfast. (32)

To some, the presence of a northern Baptist chapel car became a bone of contention. By 1900, the situation had soured between Arkansas and Louisiana Baptist leaders and the American Baptist Publication Society. As a result, John Thomas, the missionary on chapel car Evangel, was asked to leave, even though he had successful served over fifty churches in those states. (33)

The greatest damage to the chapel car program was wrought by the American Baptist Home Mission Society, under the directorship of Henry Morehouse. Morehouse declared the publication society cars to be the enemy. (34) The unique, exciting cars with all their conveniences for starting churches, were cutting into the popularity, purse, and power of the Home Mission Society. That society kept the chapel cars from getting passes on rail lines or sidings in towns; and bitter correspondence burned holes in lines of communication between the two societies. The battle was not won until the Home Mission Society shared management of the chapel cars; and as a result of the complexity of the conjoined agreement and other factors, the effectiveness of the cars began a decline.

A Changing World

The world in 1943 was very different from the world of 1891 when the first Baptist car, Evangel, was put into use. Towns were no longer so isolated, churches were more common, and in some ways, World War II was the only thing keeping the railroads in the center of the nation's transportation system. But chapel car Grace still had work to do. The gospel message needed to be shared in the Mormon-dominated southern Utah town of Orem. Orem's population was composed of a mixture of war plant employees, ranchers, Mexican farm workers, and non-Mormons.

The huge Geneva Steel Plant at Orem presented unique problems for Grace missionaries, Mary and Howard Parry. Their work was hampered by trailer camp life, long working hours for the plant employees, and the workers' hesitancy to be involved in church work because of the likelihood of the plant dosing. Yet the real problem, Parry wrote, was "the native Mormons frankly are antagonistic toward the defense workers as you can well understand in as much as this is ZION, their promised land." (35)

Parry kept a diary during his ministry, and on Tuesday, June 6, 1943, he printed in his diary in bold, foretelling letters "INVASION. LANDED 3:32 A.M. U.S. TIME. NORMANDY COAST." (36)

After the war, the Geneva Steel Plant dosed its operations, and hundreds of employees set out to find other jobs and other homes. Grace's pews were empty, and the Parrys knew that the frontier for the chapel car had faded. Only Messenger of Peace was still serving in a defense project in upper Washington State. Grace was retired to a place of honor at the American Baptist Assembly at Green Lake, Wisconsin, where it continues to serve as a memorial to the chapel car ministry. (37)

Conclusion

Paul Pearson, dean of the school of world missions at Fuller Theological Seminary, wrote in a Baptist Press article, December 1990, "In every age and era as societies change throughout history, God raises up new forms of the church, but there must be pioneer spirits who hear God's call, dream larger dreams--and step out in faith to answer that call." (38) In their beginning, the chapel cars were the fastest, most exciting, state-of-the-art, high-tech way "to go." Although the end of the line for the chapel cars came, thousands of railroad communities had received the gospel. (39)

Author's note: Wilma Rugh Taylor and Norman Thomas Taylor traveled over 30,000 miles following the routes of the chapel cars and conducting research for their book, This Train Is Bound for Glory: The Story of America's Chapel Cars (Valley Forge: Judson Press, 1999). In addition, Norman is restoring the last of the chapel cars, Grace, at Green Lake, Wisconsin.

(1.) For more information on the Episcopal and Catholic chapel cars, see Wilma Rugh Taylor and Norman Thomas Taylor, This Train Is Bound for Glory: The Story of America's chapel Cars (Valley Forge: Judson Press, 1999).

(2.) "The Chapel Car Evangel," Scrapbook, "Merry Christmas," The American Baptist Historical Society, Valley Forge, Pa., in Taylor, This Train Is Bound for Glory, 41.

(3.) "Anniversary of the American Baptist Publication Society, 1895," an address by Donald D. MacLaurin, American Baptist Publication Society, Philadelphia, 49, in ibid., 108.

(4.) "Report of the American Baptist Publication Society, 1892," 38, in ibid., 42.

(5.) "Baptist Church Organized," The Everett Times, 20 April 1992, in ibid., 45.

(6.) "Anniversary Report of the ABPS, 1901," Springfield, Mass., 48, in ibid.

(7.) Sophie Bronson, "A Day with Glad Tidings," Missions (January 1911): 23-25, in ibid., 118-19.

(8.) Ibid., 119.

(9.) Ibid., 81.

(10.) Pacific Baptist, 1 October 1896, 11, in ibid., 86.

(11.) "Saloon Girl's Death Ends Life of Tragedy," Hermiston Herald, 21 May 1964, in ibid., 86.

(12.) "Anniversary Report of ABPS, 1895," Saratgoga, N.Y., 47, in ibid., 48.

(13.) The Colporter, August 1895, 18, in ibid.

(14.) "Anniversary Report of the ABPS, 1898," Rochester, N.Y., 108-09, in ibid., 49.

(15.) Ibid.

(16.) Ibid., 53.

(17.) The Colporter July 1895. See also Sunday Gazette, Denison, Tex., 28 July 1895, 3.

(18.) Boston W. Smith, "Merry Christmas, 1831-1908 Scrapbook," American Baptist Historical Society, Valley Forge, Pa., in Taylor, 135.

(19.) "Anniversary Report of the ABPS, 1890," Rochester, N.Y., in ibid., 136.

(20.) A lengthy discussion of women's voices in Southern Baptist Churches can be found in Carolyn DeArmond Blevins, "Baptists and Women's Issues in the Twentieth Century," Baptist History and Heritage, 35, no. 2 (Summer/Fall, 2000): 53-66.

(21.) Taylor, 136.

(22.) Ibid., 136-37.

(23.) Ibid., 137. Townsend later married Elli Moore, his wife's dear friend and the originator of the Cottage program at Baylor Female College (now University of Mary Hardin-Baylor), became acting president of the college, and served as pastor of First Baptist Church of Belton.

(24.) Ibid.

(25.) The Colporter, March 1900, in ibid., 138.

(28.) Baptist standard, 4 April 1901, 8.

(27.) Taylor, 142-43.

(28.) Joe E Jacobs, "Remarkable Conversion of an Infidel in Chapel Car Messenger of Peace," a pamphlet, ABPS, Philadelphia, Pa., no date, in ibid., 165.

(29.) C. W. Cutler to John Killian, Okanogan, Wash., 27 January 1939, American Baptist History Society, Valley Forge, Pa., in ibid., 179.

(30.) A. C. Blinzinger to George L. White, Las Vegas, Nev., 12 September 1924, Blinzinger folder, American Baptist Historical Society, Valley Forge, Pa., in ibid., 291.

(31.) C. H. Rust, A Church on Wheels (Philadelphia: American Baptist Publication Society, 1905), 3, in ibid., 108.

(32.) Ibid., 120.

(33.) Ibid., 49.

(34.) Ibid., 121.

(35.) Howard Parry to Luther Wesley Smith, 18 October 1944, Howard Parry Collection, Box 2, American Baptism Historical Society, Valley Forge, Pa., in ibid., 296.

(36.) Diaries of Howard Parry, American Baptist Historical Society, Rochester, N.Y., in ibid.

(37.) Ibid., 298.

(38.) Baptist Press, 4 December 1990, 6.

(39.) Taylor 306.

Wilma Taylor is a retired journalism and English teacher, Morristown, Indiana. Norman Taylor is a retired railroad employee, Morristown, Indiana.