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CHAPTER 5. "Gospel in bread and butter and afternoon tea”: Benevolence Work and Ladies’ Aids
- Wilfrid Laurier University Press
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IN the early days of Methodism in Canada, old Methodists and new converts alike opened their dwellings to preaching and to the preachers who found in them their temporary homes. As circuits were established and societies grew, however, the very success of the movement spelled a change in the needs of the congregations. Jean Miller Schmidt has stated that the “vital partnership in ministry between laity and clergy—lay preachers and class leaders providing pastoral leadership at the local level while ordained traveling preachers made the rounds on their appointed circuits—changed dramatically when the circuit riders became professional, dismounted, and settled in the community.”1 The dynamics of the relationship changed, but need for the work of the laity, especially women, continued. The congregations needed larger accommodation, dedicated entirely to church purposes. Ministers married and wanted parsonages rather than rooms in other people’s houses. Preachers required salaries, and both churches and parsonages needed fuel, and furnishing, and repair. This change happened, of course, at different times in different places. While women on the shifting frontier were opening their homes to preachers on their occasional visits, those in more settled parts of the land were building churches and furnishing parsonages. Everywhere as the church developed, women recognized new needs and took on new responsibilities. The Needs of a Circuit As settlers established homes in the new land, they provided for their own needs to a large extent with the products of their farms and their household labours, and they frequently paid their accounts at the store with the tender of their farm and home production. To a considerable Notes to chapter 5 start on page 259 97 “Gospel in bread and butter and afternoon tea”: Benevolence Work and Ladies’ Aids CHAPTER 5 degree, they supported the early itinerant in the same way, with bed and meals, fodder for his horse, and care for his clothing. As Methodists organized circuits and classes, the people paid quarterage for the support of their ministers. To be sure, the quarterage was not always cash; one minister recalled that in 1821, “We took flax, wool, provisions, and whatever the people had, and felt disposed to give, as quarterage.”2 Cash payments, however, became more and more the norm, and many Methodist women and men took their duty very seriously. Class leaders like Kathleen Blaiklock Blight kept careful accounts of the quarterage they collected,3 and some members were equally scrupulous about making their payments. According to the obituary of Mary Wickett Allin, “In her last hours she said to her daughter, ‘This is the day of Quarterly Meeting; the “quarterage” must be paid; God’s cause must not suffer loss by my illness.’”4 Allin was reported to be “as liberal as her limited means permitted.” Although there were noteworthy exceptions, a large number of women had minimal access to cash. That, however, did not prevent some of them from making significant contributions to the payments that their ministers received, for one of the accepted roles for a women was as a collector on behalf of a worthy cause. Women solicited funds to be used directly for church and parsonage construction, and to be placed in the treasuries of ladies’ aids and missionary societies. Frequently, they also ensured that the minister received his salary. Eliza Everiss “not only furnished a home for at least one of the young ministers stationed there but collected his salary herself,”5 while Sarah Atkins Thompson “was practically the steward” in Stonebridge, “and personally collected the offerings of the people for the support of the ministry.”6 The congregations needed places of worship, and women contributed in a variety of ways to securing them. Mary Gilbert Cooper is reminiscent of those ministers of a later day who gained reputations as church builders. Living on a farm in York Township, she collected money for a church. “On its completion she went to Toronto to find preachers who would give them at least an occasional service, but none could be induced to come at such a moderate compensation as she could offer except the Methodists, and so it became a Methodist church.” Then she and her husband moved to Davenport, and “she again set to work to collect funds for the erection of a church there.”7 Though Cooper was exceptional in going through the process twice, women in many places were the driving force behind the construction of a church.8 98 THE ORGANIZING CHURCH [100.25.40.11] Project...