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2 St. Mark’s Hall, 1909–1917 Although Lillie Meekins and other city missionaries had lived in the neighborhood , if not the very building, where they served, the women of the MECS moved into an ambitious new phase of settlement work in New Orleans with the establishment of St. Mark’s Hall at 619–21 Esplanade Avenue and the assignment of deaconess Margaret Ragland as head resident. The women employed the Reverend Mr. Nicolas E. Joyner as superintendent . NOCA reported that Joyner had visited a district meeting of the Home Mission Society two years previously and impressed the women as an “enthusiastic missionary worker.”1 It did not report that Joyner had been a childhood friend of Elvira Carré’s son, Henry Beach Carré. Joyner’s father was disabled in an accident and unable to work for many years, so Joyner worked throughout his teen years to help support his family. He was licensed to preach at the Carondelet MECS (Elvira’s church) at the age of eighteen. Noting his great potential for ministry, “the Carré family” helped him attend Centenary with their son. Joyner graduated with highest honors. The young men attended seminary at Vanderbilt, where they were roommates until they graduated in 1896. Then, “the two devoted friends Carré and Joyner, like David and Jonathan had to separate. Carré was going to Europe for further graduate study. Again the faithful Carré family offered to finance Joyner’s going on to Europe with their son.” In fact, Elvira had been widowed since 1877, so “their” son is misleading language; it would have been Elvira who made the offer.2 However, Joyner went instead to serve as a missionary in Monterrey, Mexico . It was this experience that impressed the women of the WP&HMS when he spoke to their group, but no doubt the high regard the president of the city St. Mark’s Hall, 1909–1917 58 mission board, Elvira Carré, had for him also played a large role in the decision to hire him at St. Mark’s Hall. Once his employment was set, “local benefactors” and various church boards cooperated to send him to London so that he could study the work of Toynbee Hall, considered among the first, most successful, and most famous of all settlement houses.3 In February 1909, the New Orleans Christian Advocate (NOCA) pictured Joyner on its cover, and the accompanying text described him as the “Louisiana Conference Missionary Secretary and Superintendent of St. Mark’s Hall.” It also noted that he had just returned from a trip to study the work of institutional churches and city missions in the urban centers of the northern United States.4 This strategy of visiting and studying projects that were clearly manifestations of the Social Gospel provides evidence, should any more be needed, that the work of the MECS women was definitely Social Gospel–related. An article that Joyner prepared for the November issue of the MECS Board of Missions publication, Go Forward, is the best extant source of information about the earliest work at St. Mark’s. He wrote that 1909 had witnessed the beginning of “a new and a significant work” in the city. “It is new in that it introduces institutional and settlement methods, and significant because it indicates the turning of the attention of the entire Church to the magnificent field found in the metropolis of the South.” It was his opinion that New Orleans offered “the best specimen of the ‘city problem’” available to southern Methodism.5 Joyner explained that the location for St. Mark’s Hall had been chosen to put it “in direct touch with the Italian colony and the large French element of the city’s population.” Describing the structure which housed it as “an old-style, three-story double dwelling, with twenty-two rooms and an inclosed [sic] yard some thirty feet wide and fifty feet long,” he noted that it was so dilapidated that it took from January, when their lease began, until March for them to get it ready for occupancy.6 An MECS deaconess, Margaret Ragland, was named as the first head resident of the St. Mark’s settlement house. A second deaconess was also assigned, and the two deaconesses, along with a house mother and her assistant, moved in on the first day of March in 1909. However, they had to delay their planned work so that shower baths, items to be used in a health clinic, and playground equipment for the courtyard could...

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