THE HEROIC WOMEN

OF

Early Indiana Methodism.

AN ADDRESS DELIVERED BEFORE THE

Indiana Methodist Historical Society

—AT—

DE PAUW UNIVERSITY,

June 16, 1889,

—BY—

REV. T. A. GOODWIN, D. D.

INDIANAPOLIS, IND.:
Indianapolis Printing Company.
1889.

The Heroic Women of Early Indiana Methodism.

"Arms and the man, I sing," said the great Virgil, thousands of years ago, and all the little Virgils have been singing the man ever since. But who ever sings the woman? Occasionally a Debora or a Joan of Arc, a kind of a female monstrosity, comes to the front and receives recognition, but their conspicuousness is due more to the low level of their surroundings, than to their individual pre-eminence. They were out of their spheres in what gave them notoriety, and they have been so voted by universal consent through the ages. It was not specially to their credit that they successfully commanded armies, but it was to the unutterable shame of the men of their period that they had to, or let it go undone. No thanks to Betsey for killing the bear. She had to, or the bear would have killed the baby, but everlasting shame upon her worthless husband for making it necessary for her to do what he ought to have done. Betsey was out of her sphere when killing the bear, and so was the cowardly man when letting her do it.

The great Virgil graciously introduces a Dido into his song, but he does it apologetically, and only because it was necessary in order to make a love story out of it, and all the little Virgils—all the writers of love stories from that day to this—have treated her in literature as if she were indispensable to point a moral or to adorn a tale, and really fit for little else—that it was her mission to love and be loved, all of which was easy enough on her part; and that, having filled this mission, she ought to be happy and die contented, and to be held in everlasting remembrance. This outrage upon woman's rights and woman's worth has been carried so far that it has become common to assume that it is her prerogative to monopolize the love of the household—at least to possess and manage the greater part of it; and some women have heard this so often that they more than half believe it themselves, so that from away back men, and even some women, talk of a woman's love as being a little purer and a great deal stronger than a man's love. There is not a word of truth in it. It is one of the unfounded legends which have descended through the ages, transmitted from father to son, while the mothers and daughters, all unconscious of the great wrong they suffer by it, have never denied it. It is not only false, but it is absurd. How could it be true? A man is not lovable as a woman is. How can she love him as he loves her, who is the personification and incarnation of beauty and gentleness and sweetness? That is, some are, for it must be conceded that woman is like Jeremiah's figs, the good are very, very good, while the bad are very naughty—too bad for any use.

This wrong against woman has gone even farther than that. In the battles of life, however nobly she fights them, she receives no proper recognition. The man who fights well is a hero, but the woman who fights equally well, or even better, is only a heroine. I despise the word because I detest the discrimination it implies. We do not call the devout Christian woman a saintess, nor the eloquent woman an oratrix, but the woman who excels in endurance and bravery and in the virtues that constitute a man a hero, is only a heroine, as if heroism was a manly virtue, to which woman may lay no claim. I long ago expunged it from my vocabulary. It is entirely too feminine for me. Out upon such unjust discrimination!

This long and rather prosy introduction brings me to the theme of the evening—woman the greater hero in early Indiana Methodism.

You have often heard of the sacrifices and toils of the pioneer preachers. Those sacrifices and toils were great, yet many of them were of the character of those made by a young preacher in the Western Conference about the beginning of this century. In one of his journeys alone, over the Cumberland Mountains, Bishop Asbury lost his way, and night coming on, he was about to dismount and prepare to sleep out, when he was met by a young man, a hunter, who took the tired bishop to his father's cabin and extended to the stranger the best accommodations that home in the wilderness afforded. The bishop, true to his calling, preached to the family and left an appointment for the preacher on that circuit, who soon organized a class of mountaineers, with the bishop's guide as class leader. In a short time he became a local preacher, and soon after, he was admitted into the Western Conference. A few years later at a session of the Conference, he was guest at the same house with the bishop, and while the bishop was engaged in writing, he was engaged in telling the young lady of the house how many sacrifices the itinerant had to make for the church and for Christ. In spite of his powers of abstraction, the bishop heard the preacher's story, and turning from the table, he said: "Yes, Benjamin, I can testify to the sacrifices you have made for the church. There never was a more hospitable home in the Cumberland Mountains than that you left to become an itinerant. I never slept better in my life than I slept on that bed of bear skins in your father's cabin. It was such a contrast with the accommodations I was about to prepare for in the woods alone, that I have never forgotten it—and that corn bread baked in the ashes! And that venison! And, Benjamin, you have sacrificed all this for the church! You could not sacrifice more, for it was all you had to sacrifice—a home in the mountains, a good gun, and a hunter's life—all for the itineracy."

And such were the sacrifices that many of the heroes made, whose fame has come down to us. They never lived as well before, never dressed as well nor fed as well, and yet their fare was not always sumptuous, nor their garments of purple and fine linen, but both food and clothing were better than the average of those to whom they preached. The story of Allen Wiley is an oft told story. We have heard of his large circuits and of his districts, extending from the Ohio at Madison, to Fort Wayne, embracing all of the present North Indiana Conference and about one-half of the Southeast, requiring him to be absent from home three months at a time; and how he studied Latin and Greek and Hebrew on horseback, or by the light of the settler's fire, or of an improvised lamp made of a saucer or scraped turnip filled with hog's lard, and with a rag for a wick. But who was Allen Wiley to begin with? What sacrifices did he make for the opportunity to study Latin and Greek and Hebrew even under these difficulties? He was an average farmer on a quarter section of only medium land in Switzerland county, living in a cabin two miles from any neighbor. By the dint of hard work, chopping or plowing by day, and burning brush, or husking corn, or making splint brooms, or pounding hominy, by night, he was succeeding in feeding his wife and Five children, and in adding a few additional acres to his cleared land every year; studying English grammar by taking his book to the field when plowing, or to the woods when chopping; and preaching acceptably as a local preacher in his own cabin, or in some neighboring cabin, on Sundays. Did it