Personal Recollections of Pardee ButlerButler, Pardee
Religion
Personal Recollections of Pardee Butler
Butler, Pardee
Kansas -- History -- 1854-1861
When the Central Branch Railroad was built the little town of
Farmington was laid out, a mile to the northwest of father's
house--Pardee being two miles to the southeast. Many of the original
members of the Pardee Church had helped to organize the Pleasant Grove
Church, six miles west. Father thought it would be wise to break up at
Pardee., and move church and village to the railroad town, but some
objected. Thinking that the rest would soon follow, he left Pardee,
and organized a church of twenty-three members at Farmington, October
6, 1867. Bro. McCleery held a successful meeting here the next
December, and preached once a month during the following year.
For several years much of father's time was given (gratuitously), in
caring for this church and Sunday-school, and the church soon numbered
a hundred members.
After the war many colored people came to Kansas, and a number of them
settled in the neighborhood. They had heard of father, as a friend to
the colored people, and some of them wanted to work for him. He
frequently employed them, and usually found them faithful and
efficient. They liked to work for him because he treated them as he
treated white men. As there were not enough of them in the country
places to form churches of their own, they attended our Sunday-schools
and meetings. We were much surprised to find that some of our brethren
objected to colored children being in the classes. One good old
colored man, who had been a member of the church in Missouri, was much
respected by the community. A white brother requested our deacon, W.
J. May, a son of Caleb May, to ask this colored brother to take a back
seat, and to pass the bread and wine to him last. Bro. May replied: "I
shall do no such thing; as long as I am deacon in this church there
shall be no respect of persons."
A colored man, who had been a servant in the family of one of the
governors of Virginia, presented himself for membership. He was a
neat, good-looking man, with pleasant manners, and had been a member
of Col. Shaw's colored regiment, when they so valiantly stormed Fort
Wagner. A white sister borrowed a pair of gloves, when she went up to
give him the hand of fellowship, so that she "wouldn't have to touch a
nigger's hand."
Father wanted to teach them, without giving undue offense, their
Christian duty to the colored people. He preached a sermon on the
parable of the Good Samaritan, telling how the Jews and Samaritans
hated each other, and how Jesus taught in that parable that even the
most despised of earth's races are our neighbors. He also told the
story of Peter's vision at the house of Simon, and how God taught him
not to call any man or nation of men common or unclean, but to carry
the gospel to all nations. The nearest that he came to modern times,
in that sermon, was the remark that the Jews despised the Samaritans
as much as the Americans despised the Africans. He left them to make
their own applications of the Bible teachings.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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