The Underground Railroad in DeKalb County, Illinois by Nancy M. Beasley

Author:Nancy M. Beasley
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers
Published: 2013-02-26T00:00:00+00:00

Politics and the Church

In answer to Kellogg’s prayers, in July of 1841, the Rev. David I. Perry arrived in Sycamore unsolicited and unannounced. He carried with him “letters of commendation from the Presbytery of Bath in the State of New York directed to the Presbytery of Ottawa in the State of Illinois.”12 Because Ottawa was some 30 miles south of Sycamore, First Congregational Clerk Jesse Kellogg approached the American Home Missionary Society to grant financial support for Perry to become their new missionary in DeKalb County. Perry wrote that he “landed with my family consisting of ten souls in Chicago on the 23rd of June. My first object was to seek a field for ministerial usefulness.”13 He left his wife, children, and mother-in-law in Chicago while he scouted out the Northern Illinois area. He did not previously apply for support from the AHMS, apparently not wanting a pre-determined assignment, but hoped to discern where “the leadings of providence” would bring him.

For nine months, the Perry family suffered what to him were great physical sacrifices in terms of home and comfort, against “my own inclinations and even the wishes of my family for the sake of preaching the gospel.” He soon learned that the small group of Congregationalists had “overstated their ability” to build him a new house, the financial support from the AHMS was slow to arrive, and the congregants “were not only poor but seemed to know nothing of the business of taking care of a minister. In fact they all had as much as they could do to provide for their own comfort.” Perry decided, “It was a gloomy business when compared with that of preaching to the congregations which I had formerly served.”14

In his letter of April 1, 1842, to Milton Badger and Charles Hall of the AHMS, the earnest frontier minister discussed the spiritual mind of the church. The organizing body consisted of 12 souls, but according to Perry, by two years later he was preaching to about 100 people on Sunday mornings, although not all were tithing members of the church. Even so, at that point Perry was still discouraged. He “found no spirit of prayer in the church, and it was exceedingly difficult to converse with the people on the subject of their spiritual state.”15

But there was another discouraging circumstance which developed itself in the meantime; and which convinced me that unless the Lord should appear for us at the expiration of the present year the church would be left to support the gospel or to give it up. I became satisfied that a large proportion of the subscription [by the church members to financially support a new minister] had been made from motives that would cease to operate on some minds. There had been a long and somewhat bitter contest in regard to the location of the county seat, and when it was settled at this place the people felt that to prevent attempt to remove it everything that could be done must be done to give character and importance to Sycamore.

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