Pioneer Women by Joanna L. Stratton

Author:Joanna L. Stratton
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Touchstone

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I. Mark Hopkins (1802–87) was an American educator and moral philosopher. U.S. President James A. Garfield, his former student, was reputed to have said, “The ideal college is Mark Hopkins on one end of a log and a student on the other.”

CHAPTER TEN

The Frontier Church

“How grateful we are to God, who guided our steps to this wonderful country of the brave and the free, and who has helped and guided us through the struggles and vicissitudes of the pioneer days. May his rich blessings rest on the coming generations as it was rested on the pioneers.”

—C HRISTINE HOKANSON

FROM THE OUTSET, the settlers’ strong religious beliefs offered a spiritual respite from the daily hardships of wilderness living. With simple but unswerving faith, they turned to their ministers and to God for the strength and guidance to carry them through difficult times. “How [is it] the pioneers preserved their cheerfulness?” asked Lilla Day Monroe. “You cannot say that they imbibed it from each other, they were too far apart. You cannot lay it to the simple fact that they were acquiring homes, because, as compared to what they had left when they came to Kansas, the huts and dugouts had to be glorified by idealism if they were to be called real houses. No, there seems to be only one source of their cheerfulness, of the sublime courage, of their indomitable determination to conquer and to surmount all difficulties—and that was their simple faith in God. They were not bothered by creeds and dogmas. They took the solace of religion as they breathed the pure air of the prairies. They bothered not about the chemical properties of the air that invigorated them. They were not superstitious, not fanatical, but held fast to the promises of the Father, and their first efforts after getting located were to establish places of worship and schools for their children.”

Religion also served as a link with the traditions of their past lives. As we have seen, for most people the move westward brought abrupt and utter changes in every sphere of their lives. Yet their religious beliefs remained unchanged and provided them with a measure of reassurance in the new land. Moreover, the continuing spirit of faith became an important bond between generations, for, as one settler wrote, “We tried to teach our children to love God and his work. Husband and I have worked in different lines, always keeping our home as Godlike as we could.”

Even on their first evening in Kansas, the family of Nutter and Nancy Murphy gathered together for their nightly worship. As daughter Lydia recalled, they drove into Shawnee, Kansas, a town of one thousand, on October 21, 1859. “Father visited the parsonage the first place. The minister went with him to find a house, but not a vacant one was to be had. A large ramshackle place looked vacant, but was occupied in the back by its owner, an Arkansas man and family. The front rooms were filled with whiskey barrels.

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