Going to church in the 1870s
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[Editor’s note: In recognition of Mount Ayr’s sesquicentennial observance in September, the Record-News will run an occasional feature story recounting the early days of the city and county. Items are told in the vernacular of the day in which they were written, but some have been edited with discretion.]
Reminiscences of Pioneer Days in Ringgold County
by F.W. Johnson
(From the Mount Ayr Record-News,Thursday, July 9, 1924.)
In my last article I referred to the frame courthouse as one for the public buildings of the town. Since then, I have been asked if there were no other public buildings in the town. The pioneer Methodist minister had blazed the trail on horseback with his saddle bags and had planted seed of Methodism in Mount Ayr, and when I came here the old Methodist church stood on the same ground as is now occupied by the present handsome building. Judge I.W. Keller, who died a little over a year ago well into his nineties, was one of the organizers of the original church. Judge Keller also served as state senator, and I think at that time his district included Taylor County. He was afterwards elected county judge, but when the judicial districts were established the county judgeships were discontinued. The present Methodist church is the third new or rebuilt one that has been erected on this ground.
I will never forget the first Sunday I attended church in the old original building, The date was October 8, 1871, but the incidents connected with the scene are still as vivid in my mind as though it were yesterday. I was then a boy of eighteen and had arrived at the necktie age. Before leaving Ohio to come west my father bought me a new suit of clothes and an overcoat. The styles were different then than they are now. The trousers and vest were made of a different material than the coat. I also wore a paper collar with a little wing red necktie which was fastened to the collar button with a small rubber fastener. My hat was also in keeping with the rosin weed period, that when I looked around and sized up the rest of the boys I never felt so much out of place before in my life. All of the other boys were wearing blue jeans pants and were either bare foot or wore cowhide boots. They also sported home-made galluses and home-made haircuts. It would not have taken those boys long to strip for a fight and fighting was a good deal more common in those days than it is now. We have prize-fighters now-a-days and do most of our fighting by proxy. The girls, as I remember them, were dressed in calico gowns, and their hair was done up in two braids down the back. There was not a bobbed hair girl in the entire church, or not one that indicated that her face had been remodeled. But instead, there were freckles on their cheeks together with the blush of roses, and these simple adornments made them as wind some as any of the latter-day girls, even if red flannel petticoats and cotton stockings instead of silk hosiery as now worn were the best they could afford.
While I was probably the best dressed youth in the church, I felt very uncomfortable by reason of this fact, and I wished I had worn my old clothes so as to not incite envy and perhaps ridicule from the less fortunate. The sermon was preached by Rev. Smith a well-known Methodist divine of the old camp meeting type. He was a man who could not be easily disturbed while preaching. The mothers all brought their babies to church with them, but they were not allowed to cry long in those days. The mother could listen to a sermon and nourish their infants at the same time. The church was set on blocks quite a distance from the ground. We had no herd law and domestic animals were allowed to run at large. On this particular occasion an old sow with her litter of piglets had taken shelter under the church to escape the sun and flies. While the minister was in the midst of his sermon and was bringing home the telling force some great truth of the scripture, we all knew from the maternal grunts of the mother pig that it was mealtime for her hungry brood. But the good minister preached right on, and this incident caused not the slightest annoyance to either the minister or the members of the devout flock. I imagine, however that some pioneer lass must have cast a shy glance and smile about this time to some freckled face boy in blue jeans. I am quite sure of one thing that Rev. Smith did not become so rattled by this little trivial incident, that he neglected to ask the deacons to take up collection of the service. Taking up collection at a Methodist service was then as now an established institution.
