Not Ancient History

Not Ancient History: How the first workers in North America touched my life
11/12/2013 - Craig Parish

The date? September the 14th, 1903. How long ago? 110 years ago this Fall. Long, long ago, and far away. Right?
Sometimes I have succumbed to the tendency within my frail human framework to think that events that pre-date my own lifetime are just so much history. They seem such a long, long time ago and seem to have little or no bearing on my own life. Recently I found out just how inaccurate this kind of thinking is.
For me, the special significance of this date began in 2002. About a year after the attacks on the World Trade Center, I went to Fishkill, NY to fill in for a work colleague who was in training. My wife, Rene’, and I took a few extra days to do some touring; neither of us had been to that part of the US before. One day we rode the train into New York City. One thing I wanted to do was to see the Statue of Liberty. The tour also included a stop at Ellis Island.
When we stepped off the tour boat and entered the Great Hall on Ellis Island, I sat on one of the old benches listening to the guide tell about immigrants passing through that room. I remembered a report I heard on NPR some time before that. It mentioned that the records from Ellis Island were now available on-line. I knew that a number of workers who came to this country arrived at Ellis Island. So, to sit in that room, on those benches, and thinking of those early workers kind of made the hair on the back of my neck stand up.
The guide told us that those entering the country eventually came to a row of desks at one end of the hall. Each person was asked various questions. That information was recorded in an Immigration Manifest. Once a person completed that task, they were directed to a stairway headed downstairs out of the hall. The stairway was divided into three sections: one section was for those going to New York City, the next section was for those going to New Jersey and points West, and the third section was for those being deported back to their country of origin due to health or other issues. We exited the hall down those stairs. I think I felt some of the same apprehension that those who came through there long ago must have felt.
Sometime later, I went to the web site and attempted to look up some of those early workers. I knew that George Walker had come through there, so I began with a search for that name. However, that didn’t work very well. There are nearly 400 people by that name who immigrated through Ellis Island.
Then I remembered that I have some notes of George telling about that experience. In those notes I found the date I needed to use in my search: September 14, 1903. When I searched using that date, I found George’s name, along with two other workers who came at the same time. In fact, these were the very first three workers to land on the North American continent. There before my eyes on the screen was a copy of the original handwritten manifest. It lists their ages (George was 26), their “Calling or Occupation” (all are listed as “Preacher”), whether they could read or write, their nationality, how much
money they had ($40.00 each), their sponsor, if they were Polygamists or Anarchists (both were legitimate concerns of the US government at that time), and 3 simple questions about their health. The three men were William Irvine, George Walker, and Irvine Weir.
On the day they disembarked from Steerage Class on the ship Columbia, there was not a single Sunday morning meeting, Wednesday night meeting, Gospel meeting or Convention in existence in North America. They were met by a man who had relatives in Great Britain who were part of this Fellowship. He took them to his home in Brooklyn.
They didn’t stay in that home very long because the reason they came to this country was to “go preach”, as Jesus had said. They had committed themselves to literally follow the pattern for the Ministry. For one of those men, Irvine Weir, this meant that he continued his journey westward.
Not long after Irvine arrived on the West Coast of the United States, he was in San Pedro Park near the L.A. harbor just west of Long Beach, California. He met a young couple who were getting ready to embark to China as missionaries. They listened to what he told them, believed him, and decided not to go to China. This couple, the Brownlee’s, had a son named Harry who gave his life in the work.
In the Fall of 1969, Harry left Colorado, the state he had labored in for many years, and travelled to Idaho to labor. Within days of meeting his new companion, Ron Johnson, they drove across the East Idaho desert to a little town called Arco. To their dismay, the people they had been asked to contact no longer lived there, but they decided to have some Gospel meetings anyway.
It was my mother who first saw the advertisement in the local newspaper. She showed it to my father, the local Baptist minister. He didn’t know what this was but found out where Harry and Ron were renting a motel room and was introduced to them that same day by the Baptist lady who owned the motel.
And, as they say, the rest is history. However, I’ve learned now that none of it is ancient at all. Those first workers who arrived just over 110 years ago feel nearer to me now than ever before. Although I never had the privilege to meet Irvine Weir, I now feel much closer to those first men who brought the Gospel to this country. I feel in awe to know that the son of one of the first converts brought to my family the same message, following the same pattern and controlled by the same Spirit that launched those first Apostles in the 1st Century. It’s been a great inspiration to me to meditate on this story.