This article is reprinted from the Minutes of the General Congregational Association of Southern California which covers the years from at least 1896 through 1898. The “minutes” were copies of speeches and reports delivered at the group’s annual conference.s
The 1898 conference naturally discussed the happenings of 1897, which is the year the actual townsite of Los Alamitos began to take shape. The Reverend James T. Ford, the Superintendent of the Church’s Home Missionary Society speaks with great pride about the construction of the brand new church in the new town of Los Alamitos, and singles out the Reverend Dexter D. Hill for his work to get the new church built. Other records in the book indicate the new building could hold 300 people. And the Los Alamitos Home Mission School had 36 members. Was this just Sunday School or did they help with the new local public school as well.
I included the text showing the struggles of other home mission sites because it further gives insight to the difficulties involved with starting a church in those days.
An 1898 report lists the Rev. John Fletcher Brown as the minister, and the church having 25 members, 10 male, 15 female. This was a tough year for the community and church as low rainfall severely impacted the beet growth and the availability of field or factory jobs. Consequently, the church roll lists 11 members absent, 6 removed and no new baptisms.
1899 was also a very tough year. An early frost nipped the buds of many fruit and subsequent droughts made field work hard to find. Many workers had to move to other localities to find work. 1899
It was digitized by Google Books and is available online here.
Interestingly, while the Congregational Church seemed to stuggle, other religious groups reported making inroads in the “Alamitos” community. The 1901 Official Minutes of the California Yearly Meeting of Friends Church (the Quakers) reports that they made good progress in Alamitos, while using the Congregational Church. Under the leadership of John Riley and his wife, they nurtured the Friends presence in the area, “holding meetings at Long Beach, Alamitos, El MOdena, New River, Ramona and San Diego. ” They held 52 Sabbath-morning meetings (weekly) and they reported 15 cottage prayer meetings, which was better than any other community.
But this community may have actually been located in Long Beach as witnessed by this report: [TO COME]
The presence of Quakers can be partially explained by some coinciding correspondence of the Alamitos Land Company from a few years previous, when I.W. Hellman and Jotham Bixby exchanged notes about making a sale to a colony of Quakers on their Alamitos Land Company land. One interesting comparison is that the Congregational Society only reported raising $4 for operations. The 1901 Quakers raised reported raising $49.
REPORT OF HOME MISSIONARY SUPERINTENDENT.
By Rev. James T. Ford, Superintendent.
The Work Done.
During the past year, our Home Missionary Society has aided in the support among us of thirty-seven different missionaries. Some have labored only a part of the year, but the whole have fulfilled thirty-one years of pastoral work. They have ministered to forty-seven churches, and not less than twenty-one out-stations.
We cannot number the increase in membership resulting from this work, for no accurate statistics have been gathered since January 1st. But in some of our mission fields there has been notable growth, especially in Escondido, Los Angeles Third, Nordhoff, Perris, Pico Heights, Redondo Beach, Rosedale, and Santa Ana. At Bethlehem, Los Angeles, growth is manifest in its reaching out into Spanish and Italian work, its added Sunday-School chapel, its active Rescue-Band, its social settlement and the increased numbers influenced by its varied departments of civilizing and evangelistic effort.
Three new churches have been organized—one at Hamlin school-house in Kern county, located on the line of the approaching Valley Railroad, and appearing to promise an important future; another at Los Alamitos, well known as the center of a growing beet-sugar industry; a third at La Canada, a foot-hill suburb of Pasadena. No home missionary has been commissioned for either of these points; but the churches were organized under Home Mission auspices in the hope that they might hereafter, if needful, be fostered by Home Mission aid.
The most manifest progress of the year has been in the line of church building. Three enterprises of this kind initiated last year—La Mesa, Norwalk and West End, Los Angeles—are now completed. The latter seemed at first a movement well nigh hopeless of successful issue; but with push, patience and perseverance on the part of Pastor Morris and his people, supplemented by the generous aid of the Church Building Society, the result is an attractive edifice capable of seating in its two parts— the old and the new—a congregation of four hundred hearers.
The moving, enlarging and rejuvenating of the church at Compton should be placed in this list, for the result is a house of worship new both in appearance and in practical usefulness. We must add to these the buildings begun this year and already finished, or nearly finished. These are the plain mission chapel of the Bethlehem church, the churches at Sherman and La Canada, and the church and parsonage at Los Alamitos—not to mention those built by self-supporting churches. While all these commend the courage, enterprise and self-denial of the builders, the work at Los Alamitos deserves more than a passing notice. It is a miracle of heroic energy which could scarcely have been wrought except our well-known Brother Hill had been in the forefront of the work. Starting with a lot and half the needed lumber—the gift of the capitalists interested in the settlement—with a congregation ready indeed to do what they could, but almost utterly destitute of money or even time to forward the work, with not a cent of salary during the time of building, he gave himself so unreservedly to the enterprise— heart, hand, brain and purse—as to secure within a few short months the building of a church and parsonage such as many a congregation after years of effort has sought in vain to provide.
Hindrances And Discouragements.
But there have been many drawbacks and discouragements to the forward movement of the year. The men at the front have been left without suitable support. Word came in January that on account of the reduced income of our Home Missionary Society and its accumulating debt, the amount apportioned for work in Southern California must be $2,400 less than last year. This meant that no evangelist could be employed for harvest work in home mission fields; that no general missionary could be sent forth to supply long-neglected destitutions in our more sparsely settled regions; that no successor could be sent in place of the missionary withdrawn last year from the desert stations along the Mojave river; that the aid hitherto doled out to certain needy enterprises must cease to be granted; that we must turn a deaf ear to calls for help in planting new churches, however promising the prospect; that no grant could be made for the self-sacrificing and successful work of Missionary Case among our Spanish-speaking neighbors; and especially that twenty per cent, must be deducted from the already diminished aid granted to our missionary pastors.
Our deprivation seemed too great to be borne. But when the accounts of the fiscal year were closed, April 1st, and it was found that the debt of our Society was more than $127,000, the wisdom of the reduction was manifest. It was none too great for the emergency, and had been made none too soon. It was, however, none the less ruinous to the work and distressing to the workers.
The anxiety at the mission-rooms appeared in repeated letters to Superintendents—one enjoining us to save to the Society as much as possible of the reduced apportionments already made to our districts; another admonishing us that on account of the enormous debt, money could not be borrowed at the banks to pay the stipends of the missionaries when due, and payment must be delayed till the tardy collections of the churches should furnish the means; and still another warning us that “the present condition of receipts might make it imperative before the close of the year to make a still further cut in the apportionment.” At the May meeting of the Executive Committee at New York, so critical was the condition felt to be that they dared not grant for the full time of twelve months the applications presented at that meeting. They granted them for six months, waiting for more light to warrant an extension to the end of the year.
Then followed the anticipated delay in remittances, the anxious waiting by the missionary till July for the quarterly payment due in May, and till September for the payment due in July; also the further anxiety lest at the end of the first six months the payments should entirely cease. Letters received from missionaries contain expressions like these: “Embarrassed beyond measure by the delay;” “Had promised to pay grocer when remittance was due; was ashamed to meet him without being able to fulfill my promise;” “My inconvenience was increased by diminished receipts from my people;” “Am not able to meet my rent-payments when due, and this brings reproach on the ministerial office;” “Am compelled to cut off books and literature; as for vacation, that is out of the question.” Most of them do not expect their people to make up the reduction in Home Mission aid. Only three, in answer to inquiry, say that their people have decided to do so. One of these doubts if they will be able to do it. The general feeling is averse to complaint. Some speak rather of the privations of their people than of their own. One writes: “Humanly speaking, we need double our present salary to carry on the work in this vineyard; but the Head Gardener knows best, and if he asks us to work on half-pay it is not ours to murmur or question, but to do and trust. Our blessings far outrun our trials, and among the greatest of these we count the privilege of work.”
REPORT ON THE WORK AND THE STATE OF THE CHURCHES.
By Rev. Charles S. Vaile.
The Field And The Force.
The General Association of Southern California includes nine counties and is divided into three district Associations which comprise in all some 77 churches, manned by 60 pastors, with 5 churches to be supplied.
The Los Angeles Association is the largest of the three, including six counties and comprising 43 churches in care of 40 ministers. Three pastors have two charges each—Bro. J. M. Schaefle ministering to Pico Heights and Hyde Park; Bro. Geo. H. De Kay to Norwalk and Buena Park, and Bro. F. J. Culver to Eagle Rock and La Cafiada.
The San Bernardino Association includes the county of this name, and Riverside county, comprising 18 churches with fifteen ministers—Rialto and Blootnington being yoked, also Moreno and Alessandro.
The San Diego Association comprises 16 churches in that county, which are ministered to by nine or ten pastors.
The churches now without pastors are Bakersfield, Corona (S. Riverside) and Chula Vista, with certain smaller churches among which are Halleck, Daggett, Oceanside and Encinitas, from which the reduced apportionment of Home Missionary money has made it necessary to withdraw support, at least for the present. One of these would seem to have only a “name to live”—verily a “Pilgrim” church. It reports “no property, no debts, no expenses and only 4 resident members—changes in population being adverse to the growth of Congregationalism.”
While thus a few churches seem in a moribund condition, two others have come into the sisterhood—La Canada, back of Pasadena, and Los Alamitos, near Long Beach. La Canada begins with 21 members and has just laid the corner-stone of a church to cost some $1,600, to be paid for as it is built. At Los Alamitos, not a church only, well-founded and having two rooms with seating capacity of 300, but also a parsonage and a barn have been hammered into being.
Death and life in churches—and some other things—call for changes in pastorates. The past year these changes have been fewer than usual.
We are glad to note that Bro. Culver has come into active work again. Plymouth, Los Angeles, calls Dr. Joseph Wild whose wit and wisdom crowd the house, while its former pastor, N. T. Edwards, is doing a noble work at Escondido.
We all mourn with the Corona church the departure of Bro. Jewell for the East.
The church at San Bernardino did not wish to spare Bro. Knodell, but they are responsive to the able ministry of Bro. J. C. Rollins, who brings with him the tonic of the Rockies.
Our ranks have won from the law Bro. C. P. Dorland, whose fresh and vigorous thought gained from the East Los Angeles Church a unanimous call.
In place of Bro. Hastings, called to lead the Lake Av. Church in Pasadena, Bro. Otto Anderson ministers at Rialto and Bloomington.
Vernondale is happy in the ministry of Rev. W. C. Hardy, on whom has fallen the mantle of the sainted Pindlay.
The work at San Luis Obispo has been undertaken with genuine heroism by Rev. H. N. Smith.
We give these six new pastors cordial greeting, and pray, “God speed their work.”
As we study religious conditions we find that the religious life of Israel repeats itself in the history of our churches today. As in Palestine the border tribes grew weak in faith and at length became alienated from the commonwealth of Israel and thus opened the way for heathen conquest, so the tendency to irreligion is greater and the power of the church less as the church is the further removed from the centers of Christian influence.
True, Jerusalem and the Temple—our larger central churches —must be conserved and nobly sustained: but would Christianity save itself in the world it must also strengthen its outworks. Not many weak defenses along the border, but a few strategic points well manned is the true policy for denominational life.
San Luis Obispo and Kern counties on the north are the Asher and Naphtali of our promised land. The first has three churches: San Miguel, Paso Robles, and San Luis Obispo. They are well manned with new captains at the helm, Bros. De Long, Weage and Smith. These far-away churches are not often able to bring us greetings, but we at least may bear them on our hearts.
Of the four churches in Kern county, Bro. A. K. Johnson is pastor of three—Poso, Rosedale and Hamlin. Bakersfield, which thought best, after Bro. Phillips left last April, to call no pastor till October, but rather to make some needed changes in the property, will doubtless soon show new vigor under the new administration of Rev. Edgar R. Fuller, lately of Michigan.
Membership.
The Minutes of latt year report a resident membership in our churches of 5,545—a gain of 434 over the preceding year. There were also reported 996 additions—385 of which were on confession. The removals were three-fifths as many as the additions. When we find that each year there is a change of nearly one-fifth of the constituency of our churches, we can appreciate some of the difficulties peculiar to churches with a membership so fluctuating.