Image: Library of Congress: Eastham, MA Camp Meeting, Prayer Meeting in a Tent.

When I left off on Friday, Benjamin Adams had made it to the Eastham Camp meeting and was getting into the spirit of things. On Friday, August 18, he made this notation: “Great meeting in the Bethel tent much the best I have found. Jesus reigned in my soul. A sister Southard of Boston exhorted tremendously - and a coloured man too. My soul was greatly filled.” This camp meeting did not prevent women or people of color from speaking. But note that he uses the term “exhorted,” rather than “preached.” Again, exhortation is a form of encouragement, while preaching goes beyond encouragement and into biblical interpretation. Preaching was the minister’s turf, while lay people were invited to exhort.
 
On Sunday, August 20, Adams reports that the camp meeting had a Love Feast or an Agape Meal. This ritual has its roots in a Moravian practice. (Moravians were German Protestants who accepted only the Bible as the basis of their faith. John Wesley, Methodism’s founder, had spent some time with the Moravians.) Among Methodist groups, a Love Feast originated in the U.S.A. when ordained clergy were not available to consecrate the bread and cup for the Lord’s Supper. Instead, the Love Feast involves the sharing of water, bread, and the Good News. According to Dale Patterson, “The Love Feast is relational. It is me sharing with others, with you, how God’s grace has been working in my life today….Christian life needs to be a shared life. It’s a life that, I live the spirit and I share with my friends and family in the community. It’s community building.” (“Methodist History”).
 
At this time I do not know the reason the leaders of the Eastham Camp Meeting chose to use the Love Feast over the Lord’s Supper, since ordained clergy were present. But I do know that the event as described by Adams was “a remarkable affair and was a time of amazing power from on high. Bro. Cushman of Lynn said it was the English language boiled down.” The high spiritual energy continued into the night with Adams making note of an all-night prayer meeting, complete with shouting, which was shorthand for loudly proclaimed agreement with the preacher and/or ecstatic verbalization.
 
On Monday, 21 August 1854, Adams rose at 3:30 a.m. to prepare his luggage so it could be put on the boat. “The farewell scene was very impressive indeed, not a few good things were said and thought and felt. It was a season worth living a long time.”
 
One final story: on the way back to Boston on the steamboat St. Lawrence, Adams was asked to preach. “My soul was blessed,” Adams writes, “but the boat soon was in the ground swell and I was getting sick and wound up my sermon to run to the forward deck where flat down I lay. Sea sick two hours and half.” So his old friend sea sickness returned. I have to admit I am impressed that he finished he sermon and did not toss his cookies in front of his audience. How did Adams do it? Total reliance upon God? Will of iron? We’ll never know, but It was an impressive feat, nonetheless.
 
On a personal note, thank you for visiting the Squeaking Pips website and my blog this past year. While 2019 will be another year of ups and downs – as years always are – I hope and pray that you, like Maggie Blaine Smith, will travel through it with the help of friends and family, no matter how they are defined.
 
May you have peace. May you have love.
 
Happy New Year to all!
 
 
Resources:
 
Benjamin Matthias Adams Papers, 1846-1902. United Methodist Archives and History Center, Drew University, Madison, NJ.
http://catalog.gcah.org:8080/exist/publicarchives/gcahcat.xql;jsessionid=1puymhj3fmnso?field1=ti&term1=benjamin+adams&mode1=contains
 
Massachusetts Historical Commission State Survey Team . Historical and Archaeological Resources of Cape Code & the Islands: A Framework for Preservation Decisions. (Massachusetts Historical Commission: 1986, PDF version 2007.)
 
“Methodist History: The What and Why of Love Feasts.” UMC.org. http://www.umc.org/who-we-are/methodist-history-the-what-and-why-of-love-feasts

Image from the Library of Congress: Religious revival meeting at Eastham, Mass., 1852: Landing at Eastham...
 
Note: I have taken the liberty of inserting punctuation into the material from Adams’ journals. He often did not use it and I suspect was hurriedly making notes late in the evening or early in the morning. Adams’ journals usually are jottings of impressions that do not include much in the way of explanation. While some journal writers were conscious that their work might be available for posterity, others wrote in the moment, jotting brief notes as references or memory-joggers. Adams was a jotter throughout most of his life, although as I said in a previous blog there are exceptions.
 
Now that we are past Christmas day - but still in the season of Christmas! - let's return to the information that I have gleaned about 1800s pastor Benjamin M. Adams and his love of camp meetings.

In my November 16 blog post, “Camp Meetings on Camp Cod,” I noted that the meeting in Eastham was held at a place called Millennium Grove and that the Grove was located near the Bay. In 1854, which is when Adams visited what I believe is the Eastham camp meeting, the main form of transportation to the site would have been by boat.
 
Once again, I made a mistake, as I was recalling what I had read. I thought Adams might have taken a train from Boston to the town nearest Eastham and then taken a boat. WRONG! And this is why it is good to have the actual source material on hand. Memory can and does fail.
 
In his journal entry for Monday, August 14, 1854, Adams notes that he “went to Boston.” Since he reports that he left the next day for camp meeting, he obviously took the fastest form of transportation from New York City, which would have been a train. On August 15, he writes, “Arose in good season and made preparation for camp meeting. 1200 passengers went off on the Steamer St. Laurens [sic: probably St. Lawrence].”
 
In 1854, transportation from Boston to Eastham in 1854 involved taking a steam boat. Traveling by road was rough and, although the railroad had reached all the way to Hyannis by 1854, it would not come near to Eastham until 1865 when it reached Orleans. (MA Historical Commission, 114.) Additionally, the camp meeting at Millennium Grove was still a going concern, as it had not been supplanted yet by camp meetings at Yarmouth and at Wesleyan Grove on Oak Bluffs (Martha’s Vineyard). (MA Historical Commission, 120.)
 
As far as I can surmise, the boat trip over was rough. Adams makes mention of a “sick woman” and that he did “light preaching." Apparently, he was suffering from motion sickness, and could not lay a heavy sermon on his listeners, observing that the experience was “God tried in the fire.” He also makes note that it was a “windy afternoon” and that they had a “Heavy landing. Very wet.” This is not the first time we hear of a conflict between Adams' stomach and a boat ride.
 
At first, Adams seemed to be having trouble getting into the spirit of the camp meeting until he made his way to the preaching stand for a prayer meeting, where he told the group of listeners about his own spiritual experience and listened to others exhort. He finally wandered into another prayer meeting in the “Roxbury tent” where “Bro. Laysdell had a good time in preaching about the gold tried in the fire.”
 
Most of Adams’ camp meeting journal entries are filled with details about how many times he spoke or exhorted in prayer meetings and preached. He also makes references to the scripture passages on which his fellow clergymen preached and whether the sermon was “good.” “Good” seems to indicate that the sermon moved him and the other congregants. Here is an example from his August 17, 1854 entry: “Bro Gorham exhorted and it was good - His theme was This man receiveth sinners and eateth with them.” He does not describe, however, what the sermon meant to him. It may be that Adams understood the sermon to be a confirmation that he was to be present with those who needed spiritual healing and conversion. But since he does not elaborate, it is difficult to be certain.

​
On Monday I'll report on the remainder of Adams' time at the Eastham Camp Meeting.

 
Resources:
 
Benjamin Matthias Adams Papers, 1846-1902. United Methodist Archives and History Center, Drew University, Madison, NJ.
http://catalog.gcah.org:8080/exist/publicarchives/gcahcat.xql;jsessionid=1puymhj3fmnso?field1=ti&term1=benjamin+adams&mode1=contains
 
Massachusetts Historical Commission State Survey Team . Historical and Archaeological Resources of Cape Code & the Islands: A Framework for Preservation Decisions. (Massachusetts Historical Commission: 1986, PDF version 2007.)
 

Image from http://clipart-library.com/clipart/826094.htm, for personal use

​Christmas and the four weeks of Advent that precede it are a bit different for me, since I serve as an assistant minister at a United Methodist church. They are usually a blur of vocational activity, into which I try to squeeze some basic personal activity. This year I helped decorate the church (it’s like putting up decorations at home, only on a BIG scale), sang with the choir in a service of Bible readings and music, taught a four-week study related to Advent, planned and organized the annual Christmas pageant, went on a youth outing to New York City, and assisted the pastor with two Christmas Eve services.
 
I missed hearing one of my grandsons sing a solo, both at a special musical performance and Christmas Eve at his grandfather’s church. Thank goodness for cell phones and social media, because I was able to enjoy “Gordy” singing “Away in a Manger.”
 
I also missed having Christmas Eve dinner, since the church I serve is about 15 miles away and I don’t have the time between services to run over, eat dinner, and return to the church. I wasn’t alone, though. There were a few folks who volunteer at the church in various capacities who stayed between the services and did not have dinner with their families, either. Hmm… now that I’ve put this on paper, maybe next year we’ll have a little meal together. Food for thought!
 
All of the above is a far cry from the Christmases I grew up with. But a calling to serve in a congregation relocates one’s understanding of both religious and secular celebrations.
 
So, since we are in the season of Christmas – which does not end until January 6, at least in liturgical tradition – I’m putting up an excerpt from Saint Maggie that highlights what an “old fashioned Christmas” looked like for her.
 
In the excerpt, Maggie is in the midst of a crisis. She has walked out of her beloved Methodist church over a disagreement. Notice who helps her solve the immediate problem of where to worship on Christmas day. Notice what is familiar: the dinner and the giving of gifts. There also are some things that might be familiar to some and unfamiliar to others: worshiping on Christmas morning rather than Christmas Eve and spending part of Christmas day in service to someone else. By the way, "A.M.E." is shorthand for "African Methodist Episcopal."
 
Of course, how Christmas was observed would have differed from family to family, just as it does today. And Maggie’s world of 1860 was far less commercialized than it is today. In fact, 1860 sits on the cusp of the commercialization of Christmas, something that was to start in the mid-to-late 1800s and accelerate throughout the 1900s and into the 2000s.
 
Enjoy the excerpt!
 
Merry Christmas, if you celebrate.
 
And to all reading this: Happy Holidays, Season’s Greetings, and Love and Peace in the coming year!

​Image: The Old Brewery, Five Points


​In my December 5 post, I asked, “did famous revivalist Phoebe Palmer have a hand in Adams’ appointment to the Hedding Mission in New York’s Five Points?” I suggested that such a thing was possible, based on timing that goes something like this:

• Adams was ordained as an elder in 1852.
• Palmer, discouraged because the New York Conference had not yet replaced departed missionary Rev. Louis Pease, took things into her own hands and, at a dinner party, suggested a candidate to a couple of visiting bishops.
• A new building for the Hedding Mission was constructed on the site of the Old Brewery and opened on June 17, 1853.
• Adams was appointed to serve at the Hedding Mission in July of 1853.

 
However, as compelling as the information may have seemed at the time, I left the door open, noting that “it is also possible that she [Palmer] suggested another minister to the two bishops at her little dinner party and that he served until July 1853, at which time Adams became the new missionary.”
 
While doing a little online research the other day, I came across a note in a blog. It stated that Lewis Pease “was succeeded by Rev. J Luckey a replacement selected by the Ladies Home Missionary Society.” (Pentecost)
 
My next stop was to find the minutes of the New York Annual Conference for 1852. Fortunately for me, they easy to find, as they were contained in a larger volume of the minutes of all conferences held in the Methodist Episcopal Church during the years 1852-1855.
 
I located an online copy of the book, scrolled down to the 1852 volume, and then further down to the information for the New York Annual Conference, and finally to the statistics for the New York District. And there it was. The the pastoral appointment to Five Points Mission was indeed John Luckey.

Image: The Five Points Mission, Hedding Methodist Episcopal Church

​
My hedge was correct. The candidate of Palmer’s choice (and by extension, the choice of the Ladies Home Missionary Society with whom she was closely aligned) was the Rev. John Luckey.
 
And mystery solved! 
 
My next post, scheduled for Monday, will settle (in my mind, at least) whether the camp meeting Adams attended on Cape Cod was the one in Eastham. For some reason I thought Adams had written that he had “taken the cars to Eastham.” But I misremembered his entry. My notes from his journal reveal that he took the train (cars) to Boston and then took a boat to Cape Cod.
 
I love research! It is very much like solving a mystery. Even though no one else may give “two dead flies” (as my Dad used to say) about one’s subject matter, it’s all good because it matters to you.  The glory of having a Ph.D. and being a history geek is that I have the tools to dig up all sorts of interesting stories. And since I just happen to write historical fiction, I never know when I might fictionalize something I have learned – something that, in turn, just might spark someone else’s interest in history.

But I'd love to write a non-fiction book about Benjamin Adams. He exhibits a genuine desire to be "sanctified," or to live a life that is pleasing to God. To that effect, his early years are ripe with spiritual struggle. This is followed by a desire to share the power and love of Christ by entering pastoral ministry, attending and preaching at numerous camp meetings, and eventually being a minor player in the establishment of the Ocean Grove Camp Meeting in New Jersey. Yet, in counterbalance to what many of us might call his extreme piety, the journal entries written in his older years also contain whimsical little drawings. What comes across to me is a picture of a real human being who had been called into ministry. I have yet to dig fully into the entries written during his time at the Five Points mission, but what I have seen tells me that it was a difficult experience for him. Interestingly, his mission journal is written in the form of vignettes, rather than his usual brief jotting down of duties, events, and impressions.

When I was in the planning stages of my dissertation, I floated the idea of doing focusing on Adams to my adviser, but he re-directed me to work within the my vocational field: Christian education (or faith formation or spiritual development, as it is known today). My dissertation is on the Vacation Bible School Movement within the peninsula area of Virginia, from Richmond to Virginia Beach, during the late 1800s to 1960. 
 
We'll see where this all goes.
​ 
 
Later, dear readers.
 
 
Sources
 
Neil Pentecost, “New York City Looking Back: The Old Brewery,” 11 April 2011
http://newyorklookingback.blogspot.com/2011/04/old-brewery.html
 
 
Minutes of the Annual Conferences of the Methodist Episcopal Church for the Years 1851-1855, Volume 5. (New York: Carlton & Porter, ), Minutes for 1855, p. 41.