Page Contents:
Two articles appearing in the May/June 2006 issue of the UNIVERSALIST HERALD were
reprints from the St. Lawrence University magazine. They are:
“I Was Determined to Seek Ordination” Olympia Brown, Women’s Rights Pioneer by Neal
Burdick
and
Glimpse of a Visionary: Jeffrey Campbell by Steve Peraza
Additional Page Contents Below:
A Summer of Discovery
by Eloise Ward Phelps
THE MAKING OF THOMAS WHITTEMORE
by James Buckley
Clara Barton, Fervent Universalist
by Phyllis Rickter
CONNECTICUT TO TEXAS: THE UNIVERSALIST MINISTRY OF MARY WARD GRANNISS
WEBSTER BILLINGS
by Rev. Dr. Barbara Coeyman
EDWIN MARKHAM, UNIVERSALISM IN POETRY
by Neil Patrick Carrick
______________________________________________________
A Summer of Discovery
by Eloise Ward Phelps
Sometimes we don’t realize the significance of our actions or the influence of our religious
environment until long afterwards. In 1938 (at the age of 27) I accepted a job teaching the
summer session of the first library science classes at North Carolina College for Negroes (NCCN).
The significance of a white woman teaching at a Negro college during the years of segregation
was not foremost in my mind. My main focus was making some money over the summer for living
expenses and to help pay off my college loan.
This opportunity began with a telephone call from the Director of School Libraries in North
Carolina, asking me to teach library science courses to be offered for the first time at the college in
Durham (now North Carolina Central University - NCCU). A new state accreditation standard for
public school librarian training required the college to provide graduate classes for black teachers,
who were not allowed to take courses at segregated white state universities. After brief
consideration, I accepted.
I wish I could say my main motivation was to help strengthen the fragile civil rights movement of the
time, but the truth is I was broke and needed money to live on until fall. I had received my bachelor’
s degree in Library Science from the Women’s College of the University of North Carolina,
Greensboro in 1931, and had been working as a librarian and teacher since then. In 1938, as a
high school librarian, I would not be paid through the summer, and the alternative was to go home
and donate my time to the family farm (picking strawberries, working in tobacco, and helping with
whatever else came along).
Initially I did not consider the depth of the challenge I was facing. I grew up in rural North Carolina
during enforced segregation. I had never known an educated Negro because I had known only
those who worked for us on the farm. My parents, however, were very accepting of everyone,
regardless of race. For example, my father refused to join the Ku Klux Klan, even under pressure
from neighbors. He also went against the social pressures of the time by giving some Negroes who
lived near us a plot of land to build a church.
My father and grandfather had been instrumental in the founding of Red Hill Universalist Church
near Clinton, NC, and my family lived by the Universalist principle "The Supreme Worth of Every
Human Personality." My mother often sat and visited with the black woman who helped her with the
washing and housecleaning, and invited her to eat with us (but she always insisted on eating in the
kitchen). However I learned much about racial prejudice from my peers in the segregated one-
room school I attended. When I told my family about my summer job in 1938, they accepted my
decision without question, although I remember an aunt asking “How can you make yourself do
that?”
On the first day of classes, when I boarded the Fayetteville Street bus in Durham, I was the only
white person, except the driver. He looked at me in surprise and asked, "Are you sure you are on
the right bus?" When I explained where I was going, he shrugged his shoulders and said, “This is
the right bus, but I hope you know what you are doing.” As I sat down with trepidation in the first
seat, I read the sign in the front of the bus: “White people please load from the front and Negroes
from the rear.” At that moment I was not sure of very much except that I knew that sign bothered
me. When we reached my destination, the bus driver pointed to the college library and wished me
luck as I stepped off the bus.
I entered the classroom 20 minutes before the start of the first class. The students, teachers who
had been appointed librarians in their segregated schools, were all there - 23 women and one
man. That day was the students’ introduction to library science and my introduction to college-
educated African-Americans. I have never seen students work harder or accomplish more in a
short period of time. They seemed to be working not just for themselves, but for a greater purpose
– the improvement of their schools through broadening the education of the children.
Eventually, students began stopping by my desk to talk, first about assignments, but gradually
about their problems and their joys. It was wonderful to begin to feel as if we were truly breaking
down communication barriers and sharing our lives. [sentence moved]
When I was invited to teach the following summer, I immediately accepted. At the end of the
second summer, the college President personally gave me my paycheck and said “The future of
the black race is in the hands of people like you, who are willing to break the barriers.” That made
a big impression. Those two summers taught me that prejudice is the child of ignorance and I
hope I taught half as much as I learned.
From my first day, a young woman on the front row gave me encouragement. Her ability to cover
for me if I stammered over a difficult question from another student, and her ever-ready smile
made my life easier. A lasting friendship developed with Ann Jenkins, one of my best students. She
took classes both summers and we developed a close relationship. After that I saw her periodically
on trips to North Carolina to visit my family. She went on to earn a master’s degree in Library
Science, and then was on the North Carolina Central University (NCCU) faculty from 1946-1973. I
have kept her letters among my souvenirs. When she wrote in 1973 to tell me she had
scleroderma with little hope of recovery, I tried to think of ways to cheer her. I sent get-well letters,
cards, and flowers. One of my efforts was a poem to try to express my thoughts. Imagine my
surprise when I was browsing in The Tattered Cover Book Store in Denver, where I now live, and
found a book with the title The Black Librarian in the Southeast: Reminiscences, Activities,
Challenges (Annette L. Phinazee, ed., 1980). In it were a few pages devoted to the life and
memory of Ann Jenkins, and my poem.
To Ann
She has taught innumerable students
Not only how to run their libraries
But how to live their lives
She has also influenced many
Who were not her students.
She has, in fact, taught her teachers,
Both by example and precept,
To open their hearts
And love those who may be different.
Her influence will be felt
By posterity ad infinitum.
That kind of immortality
Is indeed a gift of God
And a gift to God
With gratitude for what is
And everlasting faith
That courage and medicine will win.
My life since 1939 has been immeasurably enriched by those experiences and personal
interactions. The Universalist principles which guided my life as a child and young woman in North
Carolina have continued to play a major role in my later life in Colorado as a wife, mother,
grandmother, teacher, librarian, counselor, and citizen.
Several years after my summers of teaching, I was invited back to NCCU for commencement.
Although I did not see any other white people in the auditorium, I did not feel different. I was very
comfortable, and felt a kinship for all of us as librarians working together on an equal basis. In
thinking back to the enthusiastic singing of “We Shall Overcome” during that assembly and my
summers teaching, I realize that, even though there is a long way to go, there has been progress
in school and societal integration. More and more people are realizing that cultural diversity is a
strength on which we must continue to build. Perhaps the needed attitude adjustments would
proceed more quickly if people truly lived by their religious principles, and if there were more
opportunities for people with differences to talk together on an equal basis and realize, as I did in
1938, that there are many more similarities than differences.
This article is exerpted from the book, MY LIFE FROM THE HORSE AND BUGGY TO THE
INTERNET, by Eloise Ward Phelps (Ed. by Kathryn Phelps Lovell).
THE MAKING OF THOMAS WHITTEMORE
by James Buckley
The story of Thomas Whittemore sounds like one of Horatio Alger's potboiler novels about a boy
who lives in rags and poverty and yet somehow rises above his desperate situation and
miraculously succeeds in life. But unlike Alger's writings, Whittemore's story is completely true.
Born in January of 1800, Thomas was one of ten children of a baker. His father's efforts to put
food on the table and to provide adequate clothing and shelter for his brood eventually took its toll.
When Thomas was 14 his father died.
Clearly it was up to Thomas and the rest of the boys in that family to earn money so that his
mother and his siblings would not starve and be thrown out on the street. Without any of the
agencies available today to help a family in such a situation, it was surely possible that in 1814 in
our young nation's history the Whittemore clan could have easily become a band of beggars. Fully
cognizant of that possibility, Mrs. Whittemore tried to secure apprenticeships for her sons that she
hoped would lead to jobs in secure trades. The other boys in the family cooperated with her.
Thomas did not. He enjoyed loitering on the streets of Boston and his mother's several attempts
over a period of years to get Thomas an apprenticeship failed miserably.
As a result, unlike his brothers, he reached the age of twenty without having successfully
completed any training and apparently was not upset about his lack of employment. Instead, he
spent some of his idle time writing poetry, an activity that in those days was considered to be a
flagrant waste of time. In despair his mother agreed that he should learn to be a boot-maker. It
was not an occupation she wanted for any of her sons but she gladly agreed to have Thomas try
his hand at that trade. But soon it became clear Thomas was once again not going to succeed.
And then happenstance intervened. An illustrious clergyman named Hosea Ballou went into the
shop where Thomas worked and shortly thereafter engaged Thomas in a conversation. No one
has recorded that conversation. But whatever was said, Thomas suddenly became enlivened and
fervently desired to acquire an education and become successful. Many adults living in 1820 would
have considered such a goal to be totally unrealistic. At age 20, Thomas had spent but a few
years in a common school and had taken exactly one course at a night school.
But taking advantage of his association with Ballou, Thomas asked if the clergyman would help him
improve his writing and especially his grammar. Ballou agreed and in order to encourage the
young man, he had one of Thomas' poems printed in a magazine of that day. Before long, Ballou
had convinced Thomas that he too could become a clergyman, an idea that had never before
occurred to the young bookmaker. The minister was able to solicit enough scholarship aid from
members of his own congregation so that Thomas could start studying to be a minister.
Ballou believed that one learned by doing. So after months of having Thomas observe and listen
to his mentor's sermons, he decided Thomas was ready to deliver a sermon. His first effort was a
disaster. Ballou said that the best parts of that sermon was when Thomas announced his topic
and then when the congregation said "Amen." But far from being discouraged about his new
pupil's progress, Ballou insisted that Whittemore go to Milford, Massachusetts, and become the
minister of the Universalist congregation there.
Happily, it was at Milford that he met Lovice Corbett of the then illustrious Corbett clan. It was soon
clear to the Milford congregation that Thomas was what was then called a "Boston Tough." whose
best features were his "frame of iron and his lungs of brass." But Lovice Corbett saw something in
Thomas that escaped most observers. She agreed to become his wife; eventually they became
the parents of nine children. Gradually, due in part to Lovice's moral support and Hosea Ballou's
determination and guidance, the tide of public opinion turned in favor of Thomas. Soon his
contemporaries were quoted as saying, "He has a ready wit, a never-failing flow of spirit and a
genial temperament that draws a host of friends to him."
Thomas Whittemore eventually became the most influential Universalist editor in the U.S. during
the nineteenth century. He wrote a large number of theological books as well as many about
Universalist history. Indeed, his History of Universalism, published in 1830,was considered one of
his most important books. His was indeed a meteoric rise. Only ten years elapsed between the time
he was struggling to keep an apprenticeship in 1820 and the beginnings of his successful writing
career in 1830. Indeed, Horatio Alger himself would have had difficulty persuading his publisher
to print such a far-fetched story. And yet, in another case of Truth being stranger than Fiction,
Thomas Whittemore's rise from rags to social and theological prominence is all true.
James J. Buckley is the author of over 1300 articles in the field of history, and also serves as
chairman of the Massachusetts Commission on Special Education.
Clara Barton, Fervent Universalist
by Phyllis Rickter
Carolyn Owen Towle, a retired minister from San Diego, speaking about our own religious
ancestors, said it well a few years ago. She wrote: “It is only when we truly pay homage to (our)
spiritual mothers and fathers who literally founded the faith we enjoy that we are to keep from
foundering as a religious community. Trees without sound root systems topple.”
+++++++
Clara Barton was born in 1821 in North Oxford, Massachusetts. She died at 91 in Glen Echo,
Maryland where her house is a National Historic Site.. It’s a big thrill to drive down the Washington
Beltway and turn off at the Clara Barton Parkway. Here in Massachusetts her birthplace is
preserved as a small museum in North Oxford, adjacent to her REAL memorial, the Clara Barton
Camp for Girls with Diabetes, founded by Universalist women over 70 years ago. This camp and
the institution surrounding it - the Barton Center for Diabetes Education - is a leader in this health
field. Each summer the Camp is filled with
young girls empowered to take control of their lives in spite of their disease.
Clara Barton grew up in the North Oxford area. She taught school there as a young woman and
later went to Washington, DC where she worked as an insriber of laws in the House of
Representatives. She always insisted on receiving the same pay as the male inscribers. At the
beginning of the Civil War there was a skirmish in Baltimore, and she heard that a regiment from
this area was involved and went there to see if any of her former students had been hurt. She
became an active worker in the war after that, not as a nurse, but as an administrator, procuring
supplies for she knew that if there was a battle, supplies of medicine, bandages, and beds had to
be close at hand.
After the war Abraham Lincoln hired her to find men listed as missing and return them to their
families if possible. She published lists of the missing men and circulated them all the way to the
Pacific, made cemetery records, used newspapers, and even sent occasional terse letters to men
telling them to contact their worried mothers. She
accomplished more almost singlehandedly than huge bureaucracies have done in our recent wars.
In need of rest she later went to Europe, met with people involved with the International Red Cross
and determined that a branch needed to be started here and it was organized with herself as
president.
The Park Rangers in her home at Glen Echo told me that there were two brothers who had made a
fortune manufacturing a spatterless egg beater. They bought land along the Potomac River,
thinking that if some famous person moved there, they could sell house lots and create a
chautaqua. Clara Barton - already perhaps the most famous woman in America - agreed to move
there if they would build her a house, which they did.
She has many biographers and there are many stories about her later life in that house. She was
a woman of courage and determination. In 1892 at age 71 she took relief supplies to alleviate the
Russian famine. At 75 she brought relief to the victims of the Armenian massacre in Turkey; and
at 77 she took supplies to Cuba during the
Spanish American War.. At 79 she went to the Galveston flood. By this time, tired and sick, she
returned to Glen Echo where she died in 1921. She was born on Christmas and died on Easter - a
fact well noted at the time.
Finally, I want to share with you part of a letter which Clara Barton wrote in 1905, actually on March
12, one hundred years ago. The letter was written to Mrs. Norman S Thrasher from Lakewood,
Ohio. This letter hung for many years in the Clara Barton Birthplace Museum. Since the sale of
the Camp property to the Barton Center, the letter is in the
hands of the UU Women’s Federation.
She wrote: “Your belief that I am a Universalist is as correct as your greater belief in being one
yourself, a belief in which we who are privileged to possess it, rejoice. In any case, it was a great
gift, for like St. Paul, I “was born free and saved the pain of reaching it through years of struggle
and doubt.”
She goes on to recall that her father was a leader in building the church in which Hosea Ballou
preached his first dedication sermon. She closed by saying that she has taken part on the
recontructions and remodeling (of the church) in the past and looks - and I quote -
“anxiously for a time in the near future when the busy world will let me once again become a living
part of its people.”
Another way that Clara Barton’s name and work live today is in the form of a endowed internship
for women’s health issues in the UUA’s Washington Office for Advocacy and Witness. The UU
Women’s Federation took $200,000 from the sale of the Clara Barton Camp to the Barton Center,
raised another $200,000 to complete the permanent endowment. The first Clara Barton intern -
Kierstin Homblette has finished her second year of service and moved into her future. The second
Clara Barton intern, Meredith Shonfield-Hicks, began this fall working on youth and young adult
issues, as well as monitoring the Violence Against Women Act.
Phyllis Rickter is Past President of the Unitarian Universalist Women's Federation.
Connecticut to Texas: The Universalist Ministry of
Mary Ward Granniss Webster Billings
by Rev. Dr. Barbara Coeyman, Austin, Texas
History matters to me. In 1998 when I started seminary a few years after arriving in Austin, I wanted
to learn more about early Unitarians and Universalists in Texas. I had learned that Universalists
settled in Texas as early as 1850, so I was surprised that I could find little about Texas in published
histories of our religious heritage. However, in scanning archival materials, the name 'Rev. Mary
Billings' kept popping out. Even from
the few details I was able to find, I began to feel some resonance with her: we both hailed from the
northeast and were transposed to Texas in mid-life, and we were both doing ministry in a region
culturally, socially, and geographically removed from what we had
grown up with. Mary succeeded well in Texas: in fact, she was the first woman ordained to
Universalist ministry in the state. One difference between us: Mary lived here over a century ago,
her ordination occurring in 1892, by the Texas Universalist Convention that she helped organize.
Even though separated by over a hundred years, I felt spiritual kinship from Mary that often kept
me going during my own ministerial formation. Knowing she succeeded as a minister here gave me
hope that I could too.
During her twenty years here in the Lone Star state, Mary and her new husband Rev. James
Billings, the Universalist missionary to Texas, did much to spread liberal religion. They established
the state Universalist church, All Souls, in the small town of Hico
(about fifty miles southwest of Dallas/Fort Worth) and played key roles in the Texas Universalist
Convention. Mary was also a prolific writer and was well networked with women Universalists and
writers in Texas and around the country. A kind, generous
woman, her entire life Mary was devoted to serving her Universalist faith.
I have been writing the story of Mary's life and ministry. She and countless other nineteenth-
century women of liberal faith who have been left out of the historical record can inspire UUs in the
early 21st century. Mary faced and overcame many challenges.
During the Billings' ministry, Universalism not only survived but thrived here in Texas. Mary had
much to teach me as I grew into ministry. For one, Mary represents the transition from the private
to the public sphere made by many women across the nineteenth century. Mary really was a
minister her entire life, but in the days before it was common for women to occupy the public pulpit
or produce theological tracts, Mary expressed herself theologically through her fiction and other
writing: short stories, poems, hymns, even travel logs. Furthermore, researching her life also
illustrates the importance of using historical methodology appropriate to women's history. For
example, initially I had a hard time finding much about Mary in surviving sources until I realized
that, having
been married three times, she appears with four different last names in documents recording her
life events. Once I had her timeline of name changes straight, the life events began to fall into
place.
Universalism as Mary and James introduced it to Texas was clearly influenced by their experiences
as Universalists in the north. James had ministered in New York state and the midwest, and Mary
lived her first sixty years in central Connecticut. That the structure of the Texas Universalist
Convention looked a lot like the Connecticut State Convention is not at all surprising. What Mary
learned and how she lived the first sixty years of her
life as a Universalist in Connecticut had much to do with how she developed this radical religion on
the Texas frontier during the final quarter of her life.
Mary Ward was born in Litchfield, Connecticut, in 1824, the fourteenth of sixteen children. The
fourth largest town in Connecticut during Mary's youth with a population around 4000, Litchfield
was located in one of the most culturally rich areas in the state. The country's first law school---
Tapping Reeve--- opened in 1784 and the Litchfield Female Academy opened in 1792. Girls were
nurtured well in Litchfield. After several
older siblings died young, Mary was pulled from school to learn on her own through reading great
literature and being allowed to 'roam free' in the beautiful countryside around Litchfield. Helping to
care for her large family, Mary also learned caregiving as a
way of life.
Although the Presbyterian church was the official church of Connecticut after the Revolution,
Mary's family were members of the Episcopal church, in which Mary's great-grandfather, Rev.
Solomon Palmer, was an influential minister in the mid-eighteenth century. Sometime around 1830
Mary and an older brother (probably Henry) were converted to Universalist ideas by Rev. Menzies
Rayner, minister at Hartford's Universalist church. There being no Universalist congregation in
Litchfield, the Wards practiced their new faith privately.
Mary's first marriage, in 1845, was to a wealthy silk merchant, Frederick Granniss, also of
Litchfield. They moved to Hartford, where they were active members of the Hartford Universalist
congregation. The couple lived a comfortably. Having no children, Mary had much time for writing.
Her first book, Emma Clermont, appeared in 1849; the Universalist periodical Ladies Repository
published her travel log of the Granniss' extended tour of Europe, 1859-60; and her hymns
appeared in many sources. Although
Mary's life as Granniss' wife was situated in the domestic sphere typical for women at mid-century,
she also developed strong ties to other women Universalists such as Caroline Soule. Mary's
domestic responsibilities were re-enforced by the need to care for
her ailing husband, who died in 1866.
In 1869 Mary married again, this time a Universalist minister, Rev. Charles Henry Webster, state
missionary in Connecticut. They lived in Rocky Hill, a village south of Hartford. During this marriage
as a minister's wife, Mary expanded her connections with other Universalists, especially women
ministers. Mary preached her first sermon as a lay minister in 1873 in the pulpit of Phoebe
Hanaford's church in New Haven. Mary was active in the Women's Centenary Association and the
Women's Ministerial Conference
started by Julia Ward Howe, and in the 1880s her biography was included in E. R. Hanson's Our
Women's Workers, and eleven of her hymns were published in Women in Sacred Song. Her
husband died in 1877.
Perhaps by joining James Billings in Texas, Mary took advantage of the opportunity to move into
public ministry. They married in Waco in 1885 and settled in Hico, then a fledging cotton town on
the westwardly expanding Texas Central Railway. Mary and
James made sound real estate investments in Hico on behalf of the church. They were personally
active in All Souls Church in Hico, with the children, women's groups, preaching, and care of the
building and parsonage. Together they also occupied most of
the offices in the Texas State Convention. Mary was particularly dedicated to the job of
corresponding secretary, taking full advantage of the potential of the post office to spread the
liberal gospel in a land as large as Texas. Indeed, there were many challenges in the southwest
beyond anything the Billings may have experienced in the north: stark weather, great distances
and cumbersome travel, unpredictable agrarian economy, and
religious conservatism perhaps as staunch as it is today. In spite of these challenges,
congregations grew in numbers and Universalist membership increased during their ministries.
Mary's death in 1904 six years after James died was in fact a death-knell for Texas Universalism,
as one writer of an obituary claimed. Universalism hung on in the state for another twenty-five
years, but never with the same focus or vigor as during the Billings' years. The final Texas
Universalist Convention was held in 1929. We owe the Billings much. Nearly a hundred years later,
Unitarian Universalists in Texas are still enjoying the benefits of the groundwork for liberal religion
laid down by Mary and James. Mary certainly inspired my journey to ordination, which I celebrated
in early March, 2005. I know that I did not take this journey to ministry alone.
BIO
Barbara Coeyman was recently ordained to Unitarian Universalist ministry. She graduated from
Austin Presbyterian Seminary in 2001, completed an intern ministry at First Unitarian Church of
Portland, Oregon, and currently serves as Chaplain of Planned
Parenthood of the Texas Capital Region and Consulting Minister of Community Unitarian
Universalist Church of San Antonio. Prior to ministry, Dr. Coeyman was professor of music history
at West Virginia University. One facet of her research on early Universalism in Texas is her current
book- in-progress on Mary Billings.
EDWIN MARKHAM, UNIVERSALISM IN POETRY
by Neil Patrick Carrick
I am the place where God shines through,
For He and I are one, not two, He wants me where, and as I am, I need not fret, nor fear, nor plan.
If I will be relaxed and free He'll carry out His work through me.
" Outwitted"
He drew a circle that shut me out-Heretic, a rebel, a thing to flout. But Love and I had the wit to win:
We drew a circle that took him in!
"Teach me Father"
Teach me, Father, how to go Softly as the grasses grow; Hush my soul to meet the shock Of the
wild world as a rock;
But my spirit, propt with power, Make as simple as a flower. Let the dry heart fill its cup, Like a
poppy looking up; Let life lightly wear her crown Like a poppy looking down, When its heart is filled
with dew, And its life begins anew.
Teach me, Father, how to be Kind and patient as a tree. Joyfully the crickets croon
Under the shady oak at noon; Beetle, on his mission bent, Tarries in that cooling tent. Let me,
also, cheer a spot, Hidden field or garden grot -Place where passing souls can rest On the way
and be their best.
Often in American history, an individual is able to influence across a wide spectrum of possible
audiences. Such a person was Charles Edwin Markham. Today many people can quote his poems
and yet they may know nothing of who he was, when he lived, or what influenced him.
In fact ask yourself if in today's world a teacher who was also a poet could make social
commentary critical of the negatives of the often capitalist American experience, and then be
asked to write on behalf of a Republican president?
Interestingly enough, Markham's poems are often used as inspiration in sermons, twelve step
meetings, prayer groups, and self help groups, theosophical societies, and by motivational
speakers. You will find him quoted by Evangelical Preachers, his writings are used in service
readings found in hymnals and published by the likes of the Theosophical Society, and many
Librarians in Christian Science rooms can quote a poem by him, not knowing he was the author.
Often his poems are used as prayers, and if you do an online search you will find many of his
works as prayers. Edwin Markham poems are often attributed to "unknown" or anonymous" on
many websites as a matter of habit. In a simple search I found his writings again and again as
prayers.
Markham's poems have been made into gift cards and prayer cards, very similar in the manner
that the prayer of Jabez and serenity prayer is published.
Charles Edwin Markham was born into a family of ranchers in Oregon City in the 1850s. His
parents would eventually divorce and he would almost never see his father. He himself would learn
the ways of manual labor and eventually escape to the world of teaching. He would remain a
teacher by trade and was often considered a popular and prominent individual in the communities
in which he taught.
He would struggle through two marriages eventually to be married a third time to Anna Catherine
Murphy, with whom he had a son. Anna became Markham's "collaborator and editor" until her
death in 1938.
Markham was very influenced by Thomas Lake Harris, who was described as a poet, socialist, and
charlatan. His influence can especially be seen in Markham's first pieces of poetry. This mystical
ideology would be a strong influence on the poem that would make Markham famous, The Man
with the Hoe, which would before his death be printed into dozens of languages.
Markham is also the author of Lincoln, the Man of the People, which he was asked to write
commemorating the Presidents birthday and which he would later be often asked to read, including
at the dedication of the Lincoln memorial.
While it is true that Markham was influenced by the mystic movements of the 19th century he was a
lifelong Universalist, a label he wore throughout his life and even in death.
He attended a Christian College in California, and spoke at St Lawrence Theology University
(Universalist) on occasions. It is important to keep in mind that this is prior to the merger of the
Unitarian and Universalist churches.
It is also important to note that Markham brought together art and social commentary. Markham's
influence is broad but somewhat forgotten; his words however still live on. Today it is often
considered to be a negative to be an individual who is spiritual, political, and artistic at the same
time. Charles Edwin Markham was such a man, and it his writings inspire and edify soldiers, the
down trodden, the believer, and even the preacher.
Neil Carrick is a Minister, and Entrepreneur residing in Murrels Inlet, South Carolina
Two articles appearing in the May/June 2006 issue of the UNIVERSALIST HERALD were
reprints from the St. Lawrence University magazine. They are:
“I Was Determined to Seek Ordination” Olympia Brown, Women’s Rights Pioneer by Neal
Burdick
and
Glimpse of a Visionary: Jeffrey Campbell by Steve Peraza
Additional Page Contents Below:
A Summer of Discovery
by Eloise Ward Phelps
THE MAKING OF THOMAS WHITTEMORE
by James Buckley
Clara Barton, Fervent Universalist
by Phyllis Rickter
CONNECTICUT TO TEXAS: THE UNIVERSALIST MINISTRY OF MARY WARD GRANNISS
WEBSTER BILLINGS
by Rev. Dr. Barbara Coeyman
EDWIN MARKHAM, UNIVERSALISM IN POETRY
by Neil Patrick Carrick
______________________________________________________
A Summer of Discovery
by Eloise Ward Phelps
Sometimes we don’t realize the significance of our actions or the influence of our religious
environment until long afterwards. In 1938 (at the age of 27) I accepted a job teaching the
summer session of the first library science classes at North Carolina College for Negroes (NCCN).
The significance of a white woman teaching at a Negro college during the years of segregation
was not foremost in my mind. My main focus was making some money over the summer for living
expenses and to help pay off my college loan.
This opportunity began with a telephone call from the Director of School Libraries in North
Carolina, asking me to teach library science courses to be offered for the first time at the college in
Durham (now North Carolina Central University - NCCU). A new state accreditation standard for
public school librarian training required the college to provide graduate classes for black teachers,
who were not allowed to take courses at segregated white state universities. After brief
consideration, I accepted.
I wish I could say my main motivation was to help strengthen the fragile civil rights movement of the
time, but the truth is I was broke and needed money to live on until fall. I had received my bachelor’
s degree in Library Science from the Women’s College of the University of North Carolina,
Greensboro in 1931, and had been working as a librarian and teacher since then. In 1938, as a
high school librarian, I would not be paid through the summer, and the alternative was to go home
and donate my time to the family farm (picking strawberries, working in tobacco, and helping with
whatever else came along).
Initially I did not consider the depth of the challenge I was facing. I grew up in rural North Carolina
during enforced segregation. I had never known an educated Negro because I had known only
those who worked for us on the farm. My parents, however, were very accepting of everyone,
regardless of race. For example, my father refused to join the Ku Klux Klan, even under pressure
from neighbors. He also went against the social pressures of the time by giving some Negroes who
lived near us a plot of land to build a church.
My father and grandfather had been instrumental in the founding of Red Hill Universalist Church
near Clinton, NC, and my family lived by the Universalist principle "The Supreme Worth of Every
Human Personality." My mother often sat and visited with the black woman who helped her with the
washing and housecleaning, and invited her to eat with us (but she always insisted on eating in the
kitchen). However I learned much about racial prejudice from my peers in the segregated one-
room school I attended. When I told my family about my summer job in 1938, they accepted my
decision without question, although I remember an aunt asking “How can you make yourself do
that?”
On the first day of classes, when I boarded the Fayetteville Street bus in Durham, I was the only
white person, except the driver. He looked at me in surprise and asked, "Are you sure you are on
the right bus?" When I explained where I was going, he shrugged his shoulders and said, “This is
the right bus, but I hope you know what you are doing.” As I sat down with trepidation in the first
seat, I read the sign in the front of the bus: “White people please load from the front and Negroes
from the rear.” At that moment I was not sure of very much except that I knew that sign bothered
me. When we reached my destination, the bus driver pointed to the college library and wished me
luck as I stepped off the bus.
I entered the classroom 20 minutes before the start of the first class. The students, teachers who
had been appointed librarians in their segregated schools, were all there - 23 women and one
man. That day was the students’ introduction to library science and my introduction to college-
educated African-Americans. I have never seen students work harder or accomplish more in a
short period of time. They seemed to be working not just for themselves, but for a greater purpose
– the improvement of their schools through broadening the education of the children.
Eventually, students began stopping by my desk to talk, first about assignments, but gradually
about their problems and their joys. It was wonderful to begin to feel as if we were truly breaking
down communication barriers and sharing our lives. [sentence moved]
When I was invited to teach the following summer, I immediately accepted. At the end of the
second summer, the college President personally gave me my paycheck and said “The future of
the black race is in the hands of people like you, who are willing to break the barriers.” That made
a big impression. Those two summers taught me that prejudice is the child of ignorance and I
hope I taught half as much as I learned.
From my first day, a young woman on the front row gave me encouragement. Her ability to cover
for me if I stammered over a difficult question from another student, and her ever-ready smile
made my life easier. A lasting friendship developed with Ann Jenkins, one of my best students. She
took classes both summers and we developed a close relationship. After that I saw her periodically
on trips to North Carolina to visit my family. She went on to earn a master’s degree in Library
Science, and then was on the North Carolina Central University (NCCU) faculty from 1946-1973. I
have kept her letters among my souvenirs. When she wrote in 1973 to tell me she had
scleroderma with little hope of recovery, I tried to think of ways to cheer her. I sent get-well letters,
cards, and flowers. One of my efforts was a poem to try to express my thoughts. Imagine my
surprise when I was browsing in The Tattered Cover Book Store in Denver, where I now live, and
found a book with the title The Black Librarian in the Southeast: Reminiscences, Activities,
Challenges (Annette L. Phinazee, ed., 1980). In it were a few pages devoted to the life and
memory of Ann Jenkins, and my poem.
To Ann
She has taught innumerable students
Not only how to run their libraries
But how to live their lives
She has also influenced many
Who were not her students.
She has, in fact, taught her teachers,
Both by example and precept,
To open their hearts
And love those who may be different.
Her influence will be felt
By posterity ad infinitum.
That kind of immortality
Is indeed a gift of God
And a gift to God
With gratitude for what is
And everlasting faith
That courage and medicine will win.
My life since 1939 has been immeasurably enriched by those experiences and personal
interactions. The Universalist principles which guided my life as a child and young woman in North
Carolina have continued to play a major role in my later life in Colorado as a wife, mother,
grandmother, teacher, librarian, counselor, and citizen.
Several years after my summers of teaching, I was invited back to NCCU for commencement.
Although I did not see any other white people in the auditorium, I did not feel different. I was very
comfortable, and felt a kinship for all of us as librarians working together on an equal basis. In
thinking back to the enthusiastic singing of “We Shall Overcome” during that assembly and my
summers teaching, I realize that, even though there is a long way to go, there has been progress
in school and societal integration. More and more people are realizing that cultural diversity is a
strength on which we must continue to build. Perhaps the needed attitude adjustments would
proceed more quickly if people truly lived by their religious principles, and if there were more
opportunities for people with differences to talk together on an equal basis and realize, as I did in
1938, that there are many more similarities than differences.
This article is exerpted from the book, MY LIFE FROM THE HORSE AND BUGGY TO THE
INTERNET, by Eloise Ward Phelps (Ed. by Kathryn Phelps Lovell).
THE MAKING OF THOMAS WHITTEMORE
by James Buckley
The story of Thomas Whittemore sounds like one of Horatio Alger's potboiler novels about a boy
who lives in rags and poverty and yet somehow rises above his desperate situation and
miraculously succeeds in life. But unlike Alger's writings, Whittemore's story is completely true.
Born in January of 1800, Thomas was one of ten children of a baker. His father's efforts to put
food on the table and to provide adequate clothing and shelter for his brood eventually took its toll.
When Thomas was 14 his father died.
Clearly it was up to Thomas and the rest of the boys in that family to earn money so that his
mother and his siblings would not starve and be thrown out on the street. Without any of the
agencies available today to help a family in such a situation, it was surely possible that in 1814 in
our young nation's history the Whittemore clan could have easily become a band of beggars. Fully
cognizant of that possibility, Mrs. Whittemore tried to secure apprenticeships for her sons that she
hoped would lead to jobs in secure trades. The other boys in the family cooperated with her.
Thomas did not. He enjoyed loitering on the streets of Boston and his mother's several attempts
over a period of years to get Thomas an apprenticeship failed miserably.
As a result, unlike his brothers, he reached the age of twenty without having successfully
completed any training and apparently was not upset about his lack of employment. Instead, he
spent some of his idle time writing poetry, an activity that in those days was considered to be a
flagrant waste of time. In despair his mother agreed that he should learn to be a boot-maker. It
was not an occupation she wanted for any of her sons but she gladly agreed to have Thomas try
his hand at that trade. But soon it became clear Thomas was once again not going to succeed.
And then happenstance intervened. An illustrious clergyman named Hosea Ballou went into the
shop where Thomas worked and shortly thereafter engaged Thomas in a conversation. No one
has recorded that conversation. But whatever was said, Thomas suddenly became enlivened and
fervently desired to acquire an education and become successful. Many adults living in 1820 would
have considered such a goal to be totally unrealistic. At age 20, Thomas had spent but a few
years in a common school and had taken exactly one course at a night school.
But taking advantage of his association with Ballou, Thomas asked if the clergyman would help him
improve his writing and especially his grammar. Ballou agreed and in order to encourage the
young man, he had one of Thomas' poems printed in a magazine of that day. Before long, Ballou
had convinced Thomas that he too could become a clergyman, an idea that had never before
occurred to the young bookmaker. The minister was able to solicit enough scholarship aid from
members of his own congregation so that Thomas could start studying to be a minister.
Ballou believed that one learned by doing. So after months of having Thomas observe and listen
to his mentor's sermons, he decided Thomas was ready to deliver a sermon. His first effort was a
disaster. Ballou said that the best parts of that sermon was when Thomas announced his topic
and then when the congregation said "Amen." But far from being discouraged about his new
pupil's progress, Ballou insisted that Whittemore go to Milford, Massachusetts, and become the
minister of the Universalist congregation there.
Happily, it was at Milford that he met Lovice Corbett of the then illustrious Corbett clan. It was soon
clear to the Milford congregation that Thomas was what was then called a "Boston Tough." whose
best features were his "frame of iron and his lungs of brass." But Lovice Corbett saw something in
Thomas that escaped most observers. She agreed to become his wife; eventually they became
the parents of nine children. Gradually, due in part to Lovice's moral support and Hosea Ballou's
determination and guidance, the tide of public opinion turned in favor of Thomas. Soon his
contemporaries were quoted as saying, "He has a ready wit, a never-failing flow of spirit and a
genial temperament that draws a host of friends to him."
Thomas Whittemore eventually became the most influential Universalist editor in the U.S. during
the nineteenth century. He wrote a large number of theological books as well as many about
Universalist history. Indeed, his History of Universalism, published in 1830,was considered one of
his most important books. His was indeed a meteoric rise. Only ten years elapsed between the time
he was struggling to keep an apprenticeship in 1820 and the beginnings of his successful writing
career in 1830. Indeed, Horatio Alger himself would have had difficulty persuading his publisher
to print such a far-fetched story. And yet, in another case of Truth being stranger than Fiction,
Thomas Whittemore's rise from rags to social and theological prominence is all true.
James J. Buckley is the author of over 1300 articles in the field of history, and also serves as
chairman of the Massachusetts Commission on Special Education.
Clara Barton, Fervent Universalist
by Phyllis Rickter
Carolyn Owen Towle, a retired minister from San Diego, speaking about our own religious
ancestors, said it well a few years ago. She wrote: “It is only when we truly pay homage to (our)
spiritual mothers and fathers who literally founded the faith we enjoy that we are to keep from
foundering as a religious community. Trees without sound root systems topple.”
+++++++
Clara Barton was born in 1821 in North Oxford, Massachusetts. She died at 91 in Glen Echo,
Maryland where her house is a National Historic Site.. It’s a big thrill to drive down the Washington
Beltway and turn off at the Clara Barton Parkway. Here in Massachusetts her birthplace is
preserved as a small museum in North Oxford, adjacent to her REAL memorial, the Clara Barton
Camp for Girls with Diabetes, founded by Universalist women over 70 years ago. This camp and
the institution surrounding it - the Barton Center for Diabetes Education - is a leader in this health
field. Each summer the Camp is filled with
young girls empowered to take control of their lives in spite of their disease.
Clara Barton grew up in the North Oxford area. She taught school there as a young woman and
later went to Washington, DC where she worked as an insriber of laws in the House of
Representatives. She always insisted on receiving the same pay as the male inscribers. At the
beginning of the Civil War there was a skirmish in Baltimore, and she heard that a regiment from
this area was involved and went there to see if any of her former students had been hurt. She
became an active worker in the war after that, not as a nurse, but as an administrator, procuring
supplies for she knew that if there was a battle, supplies of medicine, bandages, and beds had to
be close at hand.
After the war Abraham Lincoln hired her to find men listed as missing and return them to their
families if possible. She published lists of the missing men and circulated them all the way to the
Pacific, made cemetery records, used newspapers, and even sent occasional terse letters to men
telling them to contact their worried mothers. She
accomplished more almost singlehandedly than huge bureaucracies have done in our recent wars.
In need of rest she later went to Europe, met with people involved with the International Red Cross
and determined that a branch needed to be started here and it was organized with herself as
president.
The Park Rangers in her home at Glen Echo told me that there were two brothers who had made a
fortune manufacturing a spatterless egg beater. They bought land along the Potomac River,
thinking that if some famous person moved there, they could sell house lots and create a
chautaqua. Clara Barton - already perhaps the most famous woman in America - agreed to move
there if they would build her a house, which they did.
She has many biographers and there are many stories about her later life in that house. She was
a woman of courage and determination. In 1892 at age 71 she took relief supplies to alleviate the
Russian famine. At 75 she brought relief to the victims of the Armenian massacre in Turkey; and
at 77 she took supplies to Cuba during the
Spanish American War.. At 79 she went to the Galveston flood. By this time, tired and sick, she
returned to Glen Echo where she died in 1921. She was born on Christmas and died on Easter - a
fact well noted at the time.
Finally, I want to share with you part of a letter which Clara Barton wrote in 1905, actually on March
12, one hundred years ago. The letter was written to Mrs. Norman S Thrasher from Lakewood,
Ohio. This letter hung for many years in the Clara Barton Birthplace Museum. Since the sale of
the Camp property to the Barton Center, the letter is in the
hands of the UU Women’s Federation.
She wrote: “Your belief that I am a Universalist is as correct as your greater belief in being one
yourself, a belief in which we who are privileged to possess it, rejoice. In any case, it was a great
gift, for like St. Paul, I “was born free and saved the pain of reaching it through years of struggle
and doubt.”
She goes on to recall that her father was a leader in building the church in which Hosea Ballou
preached his first dedication sermon. She closed by saying that she has taken part on the
recontructions and remodeling (of the church) in the past and looks - and I quote -
“anxiously for a time in the near future when the busy world will let me once again become a living
part of its people.”
Another way that Clara Barton’s name and work live today is in the form of a endowed internship
for women’s health issues in the UUA’s Washington Office for Advocacy and Witness. The UU
Women’s Federation took $200,000 from the sale of the Clara Barton Camp to the Barton Center,
raised another $200,000 to complete the permanent endowment. The first Clara Barton intern -
Kierstin Homblette has finished her second year of service and moved into her future. The second
Clara Barton intern, Meredith Shonfield-Hicks, began this fall working on youth and young adult
issues, as well as monitoring the Violence Against Women Act.
Phyllis Rickter is Past President of the Unitarian Universalist Women's Federation.
Connecticut to Texas: The Universalist Ministry of
Mary Ward Granniss Webster Billings
by Rev. Dr. Barbara Coeyman, Austin, Texas
History matters to me. In 1998 when I started seminary a few years after arriving in Austin, I wanted
to learn more about early Unitarians and Universalists in Texas. I had learned that Universalists
settled in Texas as early as 1850, so I was surprised that I could find little about Texas in published
histories of our religious heritage. However, in scanning archival materials, the name 'Rev. Mary
Billings' kept popping out. Even from
the few details I was able to find, I began to feel some resonance with her: we both hailed from the
northeast and were transposed to Texas in mid-life, and we were both doing ministry in a region
culturally, socially, and geographically removed from what we had
grown up with. Mary succeeded well in Texas: in fact, she was the first woman ordained to
Universalist ministry in the state. One difference between us: Mary lived here over a century ago,
her ordination occurring in 1892, by the Texas Universalist Convention that she helped organize.
Even though separated by over a hundred years, I felt spiritual kinship from Mary that often kept
me going during my own ministerial formation. Knowing she succeeded as a minister here gave me
hope that I could too.
During her twenty years here in the Lone Star state, Mary and her new husband Rev. James
Billings, the Universalist missionary to Texas, did much to spread liberal religion. They established
the state Universalist church, All Souls, in the small town of Hico
(about fifty miles southwest of Dallas/Fort Worth) and played key roles in the Texas Universalist
Convention. Mary was also a prolific writer and was well networked with women Universalists and
writers in Texas and around the country. A kind, generous
woman, her entire life Mary was devoted to serving her Universalist faith.
I have been writing the story of Mary's life and ministry. She and countless other nineteenth-
century women of liberal faith who have been left out of the historical record can inspire UUs in the
early 21st century. Mary faced and overcame many challenges.
During the Billings' ministry, Universalism not only survived but thrived here in Texas. Mary had
much to teach me as I grew into ministry. For one, Mary represents the transition from the private
to the public sphere made by many women across the nineteenth century. Mary really was a
minister her entire life, but in the days before it was common for women to occupy the public pulpit
or produce theological tracts, Mary expressed herself theologically through her fiction and other
writing: short stories, poems, hymns, even travel logs. Furthermore, researching her life also
illustrates the importance of using historical methodology appropriate to women's history. For
example, initially I had a hard time finding much about Mary in surviving sources until I realized
that, having
been married three times, she appears with four different last names in documents recording her
life events. Once I had her timeline of name changes straight, the life events began to fall into
place.
Universalism as Mary and James introduced it to Texas was clearly influenced by their experiences
as Universalists in the north. James had ministered in New York state and the midwest, and Mary
lived her first sixty years in central Connecticut. That the structure of the Texas Universalist
Convention looked a lot like the Connecticut State Convention is not at all surprising. What Mary
learned and how she lived the first sixty years of her
life as a Universalist in Connecticut had much to do with how she developed this radical religion on
the Texas frontier during the final quarter of her life.
Mary Ward was born in Litchfield, Connecticut, in 1824, the fourteenth of sixteen children. The
fourth largest town in Connecticut during Mary's youth with a population around 4000, Litchfield
was located in one of the most culturally rich areas in the state. The country's first law school---
Tapping Reeve--- opened in 1784 and the Litchfield Female Academy opened in 1792. Girls were
nurtured well in Litchfield. After several
older siblings died young, Mary was pulled from school to learn on her own through reading great
literature and being allowed to 'roam free' in the beautiful countryside around Litchfield. Helping to
care for her large family, Mary also learned caregiving as a
way of life.
Although the Presbyterian church was the official church of Connecticut after the Revolution,
Mary's family were members of the Episcopal church, in which Mary's great-grandfather, Rev.
Solomon Palmer, was an influential minister in the mid-eighteenth century. Sometime around 1830
Mary and an older brother (probably Henry) were converted to Universalist ideas by Rev. Menzies
Rayner, minister at Hartford's Universalist church. There being no Universalist congregation in
Litchfield, the Wards practiced their new faith privately.
Mary's first marriage, in 1845, was to a wealthy silk merchant, Frederick Granniss, also of
Litchfield. They moved to Hartford, where they were active members of the Hartford Universalist
congregation. The couple lived a comfortably. Having no children, Mary had much time for writing.
Her first book, Emma Clermont, appeared in 1849; the Universalist periodical Ladies Repository
published her travel log of the Granniss' extended tour of Europe, 1859-60; and her hymns
appeared in many sources. Although
Mary's life as Granniss' wife was situated in the domestic sphere typical for women at mid-century,
she also developed strong ties to other women Universalists such as Caroline Soule. Mary's
domestic responsibilities were re-enforced by the need to care for
her ailing husband, who died in 1866.
In 1869 Mary married again, this time a Universalist minister, Rev. Charles Henry Webster, state
missionary in Connecticut. They lived in Rocky Hill, a village south of Hartford. During this marriage
as a minister's wife, Mary expanded her connections with other Universalists, especially women
ministers. Mary preached her first sermon as a lay minister in 1873 in the pulpit of Phoebe
Hanaford's church in New Haven. Mary was active in the Women's Centenary Association and the
Women's Ministerial Conference
started by Julia Ward Howe, and in the 1880s her biography was included in E. R. Hanson's Our
Women's Workers, and eleven of her hymns were published in Women in Sacred Song. Her
husband died in 1877.
Perhaps by joining James Billings in Texas, Mary took advantage of the opportunity to move into
public ministry. They married in Waco in 1885 and settled in Hico, then a fledging cotton town on
the westwardly expanding Texas Central Railway. Mary and
James made sound real estate investments in Hico on behalf of the church. They were personally
active in All Souls Church in Hico, with the children, women's groups, preaching, and care of the
building and parsonage. Together they also occupied most of
the offices in the Texas State Convention. Mary was particularly dedicated to the job of
corresponding secretary, taking full advantage of the potential of the post office to spread the
liberal gospel in a land as large as Texas. Indeed, there were many challenges in the southwest
beyond anything the Billings may have experienced in the north: stark weather, great distances
and cumbersome travel, unpredictable agrarian economy, and
religious conservatism perhaps as staunch as it is today. In spite of these challenges,
congregations grew in numbers and Universalist membership increased during their ministries.
Mary's death in 1904 six years after James died was in fact a death-knell for Texas Universalism,
as one writer of an obituary claimed. Universalism hung on in the state for another twenty-five
years, but never with the same focus or vigor as during the Billings' years. The final Texas
Universalist Convention was held in 1929. We owe the Billings much. Nearly a hundred years later,
Unitarian Universalists in Texas are still enjoying the benefits of the groundwork for liberal religion
laid down by Mary and James. Mary certainly inspired my journey to ordination, which I celebrated
in early March, 2005. I know that I did not take this journey to ministry alone.
BIO
Barbara Coeyman was recently ordained to Unitarian Universalist ministry. She graduated from
Austin Presbyterian Seminary in 2001, completed an intern ministry at First Unitarian Church of
Portland, Oregon, and currently serves as Chaplain of Planned
Parenthood of the Texas Capital Region and Consulting Minister of Community Unitarian
Universalist Church of San Antonio. Prior to ministry, Dr. Coeyman was professor of music history
at West Virginia University. One facet of her research on early Universalism in Texas is her current
book- in-progress on Mary Billings.
EDWIN MARKHAM, UNIVERSALISM IN POETRY
by Neil Patrick Carrick
I am the place where God shines through,
For He and I are one, not two, He wants me where, and as I am, I need not fret, nor fear, nor plan.
If I will be relaxed and free He'll carry out His work through me.
" Outwitted"
He drew a circle that shut me out-Heretic, a rebel, a thing to flout. But Love and I had the wit to win:
We drew a circle that took him in!
"Teach me Father"
Teach me, Father, how to go Softly as the grasses grow; Hush my soul to meet the shock Of the
wild world as a rock;
But my spirit, propt with power, Make as simple as a flower. Let the dry heart fill its cup, Like a
poppy looking up; Let life lightly wear her crown Like a poppy looking down, When its heart is filled
with dew, And its life begins anew.
Teach me, Father, how to be Kind and patient as a tree. Joyfully the crickets croon
Under the shady oak at noon; Beetle, on his mission bent, Tarries in that cooling tent. Let me,
also, cheer a spot, Hidden field or garden grot -Place where passing souls can rest On the way
and be their best.
Often in American history, an individual is able to influence across a wide spectrum of possible
audiences. Such a person was Charles Edwin Markham. Today many people can quote his poems
and yet they may know nothing of who he was, when he lived, or what influenced him.
In fact ask yourself if in today's world a teacher who was also a poet could make social
commentary critical of the negatives of the often capitalist American experience, and then be
asked to write on behalf of a Republican president?
Interestingly enough, Markham's poems are often used as inspiration in sermons, twelve step
meetings, prayer groups, and self help groups, theosophical societies, and by motivational
speakers. You will find him quoted by Evangelical Preachers, his writings are used in service
readings found in hymnals and published by the likes of the Theosophical Society, and many
Librarians in Christian Science rooms can quote a poem by him, not knowing he was the author.
Often his poems are used as prayers, and if you do an online search you will find many of his
works as prayers. Edwin Markham poems are often attributed to "unknown" or anonymous" on
many websites as a matter of habit. In a simple search I found his writings again and again as
prayers.
Markham's poems have been made into gift cards and prayer cards, very similar in the manner
that the prayer of Jabez and serenity prayer is published.
Charles Edwin Markham was born into a family of ranchers in Oregon City in the 1850s. His
parents would eventually divorce and he would almost never see his father. He himself would learn
the ways of manual labor and eventually escape to the world of teaching. He would remain a
teacher by trade and was often considered a popular and prominent individual in the communities
in which he taught.
He would struggle through two marriages eventually to be married a third time to Anna Catherine
Murphy, with whom he had a son. Anna became Markham's "collaborator and editor" until her
death in 1938.
Markham was very influenced by Thomas Lake Harris, who was described as a poet, socialist, and
charlatan. His influence can especially be seen in Markham's first pieces of poetry. This mystical
ideology would be a strong influence on the poem that would make Markham famous, The Man
with the Hoe, which would before his death be printed into dozens of languages.
Markham is also the author of Lincoln, the Man of the People, which he was asked to write
commemorating the Presidents birthday and which he would later be often asked to read, including
at the dedication of the Lincoln memorial.
While it is true that Markham was influenced by the mystic movements of the 19th century he was a
lifelong Universalist, a label he wore throughout his life and even in death.
He attended a Christian College in California, and spoke at St Lawrence Theology University
(Universalist) on occasions. It is important to keep in mind that this is prior to the merger of the
Unitarian and Universalist churches.
It is also important to note that Markham brought together art and social commentary. Markham's
influence is broad but somewhat forgotten; his words however still live on. Today it is often
considered to be a negative to be an individual who is spiritual, political, and artistic at the same
time. Charles Edwin Markham was such a man, and it his writings inspire and edify soldiers, the
down trodden, the believer, and even the preacher.
Neil Carrick is a Minister, and Entrepreneur residing in Murrels Inlet, South Carolina
Biography
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