El Meta and the Church of Christ at Minco in 1919

In 1919, the newspapers in Minco were mostly quiet about El Meta Bond College. The local school system and business colleges in the area appeared to be in full swing. At the end of August, for example, the Minco Herald reported that local public schools would open on September 2 and that the teachers for the coming term had all been employed. The next page of the paper contained an advertisement for the Chickasha Business College, which had been operating for sixteen years.[1] In nearby El Reno, Oklahoma, there was another business school, apparently with wild aspirations. In a city of 8,000, it was called Metropolitan Commercial College.[2]

Finally, on September 19, a notice appeared in the Minco Herald: "Thirtieth Re-Union El Meta Bond College." That night, the college would host a community gathering at which the grounds would be "lighted and decorated." The faculty and students would provide entertainment. Locals were encouraged to "come and welcome the old students back, and to let the new ones know that you are glad to have them in your community." The notice concluded with a nod towards the near future: "This might be your last opportunity to attend such an occasion as no one can tell what a year will bring forth."[3] Meta would soon complete three decades of nearly non-stop work in Oklahoma, and it seems the Sagers were already thinking about closing the school the following spring.

Meanwhile, Minco public schools started the year with 229 students. Superintendent J. W. Morgan warned parents that a new law made it "compulsory for all children between ages eight and sixteen to attend school six months," and he was determined to enforce that law.[4]

Both the Methodist and Baptist churches in Minco held revivals at the end of the summer.[5] But the papers made no mention of the congregation that met on Sundays at El Meta Bond College.

Notes

[1] "Schools Opens September 2," Minco Herald, August 29, 1919, 4, 5.

[2] Minco Herald, September 5, 1919, 3.

[3] "Thirtieth Re-Union El Meta Bond College," Minco Herald, September 19, 1919, 1.

[4] J.W. Morgan, "The Minco Schools," Minco Herald, October 10, 1919, 1.

[5] "Baptist Revival to Begin Sunday," Minco Herald, September 12, 1919, 1; "Revival Meeting at the Methodist Church," Minco Herald, September 19, 1919, 1.

Meta Chestnutt Sager's Letter to Eva Heiliger, February 11,1945 (3)

Next, Sager cites another passage from the Book of Acts, the episode in which the evangelist Philip teaches the gospel to a eunuch, an official in the government of "Ethiopia." According to the story, the eunuch had gone to Jerusalem to worship, and was now returning (Acts 8:27-28).[1] As he traveled, the eunuch was reading the Book of Isaiah, specifically Chapter 53, one of the Church's favorite messianic texts ever since: "He was led as a sheep to the slaughter; and like a lamb dumb before his shearer, so opened he not his mouth: In his humiliation his judgment was taken away: and who shall declare his generation? for his life is taken from the earth" (Acts 8:32-33). At this point in her letter, Meta picks up the story:

You will note in the 35th verse that Phillip [sic] "began at the same scripture and preached unto him Jesus. And as they went on their way they came unto a certain water: and the eunuch said, See, here is water; what doth hinder me to be baptized? And Phillip said, If thou believest with all thine heart, thou mayest. And he answered and said, I believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God. And he commanded the chariot to stand still: and they went down both into the water, both Phillip and the eunuch; and he baptized him.[2]

Two features of this part of Meta's letter suggest she was writing out the biblical passage from memory. First, while she quotes the eunuch confessing, "I believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God," the King James Version, which she no doubt read and from which she memorized Scripture, reads: "I believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God." Second, she misspells Philip's three times as "Phillip." On the other hand, the placement and specific type of punctuation are perfect in Meta's transcription of the passage, suggests use of the printed text.[3]

Notes

[1] I. Howard Marshall, The Acts of the Apostles (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1980), 162, states that the man "came from the country now known as Sudan (rather than modern Ethiopia)." Likewise, Ben Witherington, III, The Acts of the Apostles: A Socio-Rhetorical Commentary (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1998), 295, writes: "The geographical location Luke has in mind is the Nubian kingdom whose capital is Meroe, south of Egypt, which is part of Sudan." If not a proselyte, the eunuch was one of the gentile admirers of Judaism, like the centurion Cornelius of Acts 10:1-2, described as "one that feared God with all his house." The Book of Acts contains several more references to this category of people, virtuous Gentiles. See Acts 13:16, 26, 43; 16:14; 17:4, 17; 18:7. The existence of these people in the Greco-Roman world has been established by, among others, John G. Gager, "Jews, Gentiles, and Synagogues in the Book of Acts," Harvard Theological Review 79, no. 1-3 (1986): 91-99; and Louis H. Feldman, "The Omnipresence of the God-Fearers," Biblical Archaeology Review 12, no. 5 (1986): 58-63. See also the good discussion in Craig S. Keener, Acts: An Exegetical Commentary (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2013), 2:1566-67.

[2] Meta Chestnutt Sager to Eva Heiliger, February 11, 1945, Meta Chestnutt Sager Collection, Oklahoma History Center, Oklahoma City.

[3] Ibid.

Meta Chestnutt Sager's Letter to Eva Heiliger, February 11,1945 (2)

One of the more remarkable notes found in the letter comes at the very beginning, where Sager speaks of her "salary," and refers to the financial struggles of "us school people." Apparently, at the age of eighty-one, she was still working at the Oklahoma College for Women in Chickasha. The campus of the college, now the University of Science and Arts of Oklahoma, is less than a mile from the house where she lived at 1528 South 7th Street. It seems likely that Sager, very much a woman of the nineteenth century, never drove an automobile. Most days she would have walked to and from her workplace, each time passing by the Rose Hill Cemetery where her husband lay buried.[1]

In response to what must have been Eva Heiliger's questions or challenges regarding baptism, Sager denies that her position detracts from the essentiality of faith. (Again, today the Church of the Nazarene asserts that the Lord grants salvation "to all who believe on Jesus Christ and receive Him as Lord and Savior"). At the same time, paraphrasing part of James 2:20, she adds that "faith without works is dead." This marks an opening salvo in an argument according to which Meta will insist that just as the New Testament connects faith to salvation, it also connects repentance, confession, and baptism to salvation. Coming to faith is not the end, but is rather the beginning of a process by which a person becomes a Christian, a series of steps culminating with the immersion of the penitent believer who has confessed his faith in Jesus as the Christ, the Son of God. And, "[j]ust as you must come every step of the way into the house, so you must come every step of the way into the Church of the living God."[2] On this point, she notes Acts 2:36-38, where the Apostle Peter did not tell people who had just concluded Jesus was the Messiah that they should believe. "It would have been silly to tell them to believe, for that they had already shown." Yet, neither did Peter suggest that their faith was sufficient for salvation. Instead, when they asked what they should do, Peter "told them to do what they had not done, repent and be baptized."[3]

Notes

[1] Meta Chestnutt Sager to Eva Heiliger, February 11, 1945, Meta Chestnutt Sager Collection, Oklahoma History Center, Oklahoma City. The author has made several visits to Chickasha, Oklahoma, researching the life of Meta Chestnutt Sager.

[2] Ibid.

[3] Ibid.

Meta Chestnutt in 1894

Previous posts have taken up the the story of the crisis and resolution that unfolded in Minco, Indian Territory in 1894. What follows here is a bit of interpretation. Why would at least some church and school leaders in Minco and Chickasha be motivated to more or less take over the school that Meta Chestnutt had established some five years earlier?

A young, unmarried woman, Meta Chestnutt was highly unusual for her time. As historian Richard White describes the U.S. during the Gilded Age, "single women who left their paternal homes to work were considered women adrift, moving outside of the usual and accepted cultural categories, and their conditions very often were unenviable."[1] Miss Meta had successfully defied the norms. She had earned a professional degree in Nashville. Later, she had left behind the comfort and security of her home in North Carolina and traveled halfway across America by herself in order to establish a school in Indian Territory. Just five years later, that school would soon be adding college-level courses in a brand new three-story building. Meta Chestnutt sometimes made it clear that she had come to I.T. "neither land hunting, nor man hunting." If she was merely looking for a man, she said, "there were plenty of them where I had come from."[2] For the moment, she was resolutely single, enjoying high status and a stable livelihood. She would have been the first to say that her life was far from glamorous. But to many people at the time, her social prominence and entrepreneurial success seemed more suitable for a man, especially a married man with a household to support.

Notes

[1] Richard White, The Republic for Which It Stands: The United States during Reconstruction and the Gilded Age, 1865-1896 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2017), 239.

[2] Meta Chestnutt Sager to Eva Heiliger, September 3, 1944, box 1, folder 10, Meta Chestnutt Sager Collection, Oklahoma History Center, Oklahoma City. In her letter, Mrs. Sager underlined "man hunting."

S. E. Kennedy's Designs on Meta Chestnutt's Christian School at Minco, Chickasaw Nation, Indian Territory, 1894

In some previous posts here at Frankly Speaking, I've discussed the two main characters in the story that follows here: Meta Chestnutt and Silas Kennedy. To read more of their stories, use the search window at the top left of this blog. Especially during these days of COVID-19, may you be healthy and happy. --Frank Bellizzi

Apparently, sometime during the year 1894, Disciples minister Silas Kennedy developed a plan to gain control of Meta Chestnutt's school, to seize what she had built up over the previous five years. In a report on the Indian Territory dated March 10, 1894, Kennedy commended Chestnutt as "the tall sycamore of North Carolina and the giant teacher and true missionary of the West."[1] At the time, Kennedy and his family were new arrivals, having come to Indian Territory from New Mexico just three months prior.[2] And Meta Chestnutt made a favorable impression. She was a well-educated, articulate, and attractive daughter of the South, thirty years old and at least six feet tall. Even in dusty Indian Territory, though never showy, she always managed to dress immaculately. Yet this would be the last time Kennedy would say anything in print about Chestnutt, the founder of the school he later sought to promote and lead.

One can only imagine what Kennedy's motives and justifications might have been. Perhaps he simply reasoned that this was his moment, that taking Meta Chestnutt's school to the next level was a task for which he was specially qualified. Kennedy was born in 1849, in Wetumpka, Alabama, the third son of a blacksmith.[3] At age twelve, he was drafted into the Confederate Army. He soon saw action, and just a few weeks beyond his thirteenth birthday was wounded at the Battle of Shiloh in southwest Tennessee, April 6-7, 1862.[4]

In 1866, the year he turned seventeen, he moved to Fannin County, Texas, where he met Charlcy Dockary, who was also from Alabama. The two were married in Texas in 1868 and soon started a family. According to the federal census of 1880, the couple had three sons, all born in Texas, and Silas worked as an "itinerant minister."[5] But in 1885, for financial reasons and for the sake of his family, he "quit the regular work of the ministry and went to merchandising." Two years later, in 1887, he moved his family to New Mexico where he "engaged extensively in the mercantile business." In 1893, looking back on his previous eight years, Kennedy said that he regretted how going into business meant that he had to "harden" himself and "partake of the ways of the world." His never-ending desire to preach, and what he perceived as his loss of sympathy for others, brought him to a life-changing decision:

On the fifth day of last December I cut loose from all my business relations with the full determination and with a vow to Almighty God to devote the reminder of my life to building up the cause of Christ. I have selected the Chickasaw Indian Nation, which is now rapidly settling up with white people from every state in the Union. I got here, at Chickasha, on December 8, 1893.[6]

Having lived the previous twenty-five years in Texas and New Mexico, Kennedy had come to Indian Territory looking for a new start. He found it. In the spring of 1894, when he reported to J. H. Garrison, editor of the Christian-Evangelist, Kennedy sounded like a promotional agent for the future State of Oklahoma. The potential of the place was nearly boundless. Indian Territory was, he wrote,

situated almost in the very geographical center of the United States, embracing the five civilized tribes of Indians, with the Kiowa, Comanche, Osage, Kickapoo, Cheyenne and other small tribes as well as that of Oklahoma, a scope of country larger than three of the average States of the Union, with soil, water, climate, timber, grass and many other advantages equal if not superior to any spot on earth, . . . [7]

Kennedy had found more than that in Indian Territory. He had also found at Minco, just eighteen miles north of his new home in Chickasha, a growing school, a five year old Christian academy poised to become a college. It was true that in Meta Chestnutt the school had an adequate leader. But the designs Kennedy had for the school--which were really no different than what Miss Chestnutt had in mind--would require his leadership. He was different. As tall as Meta Chestnutt was, Kennedy, who stood about six feet, five inches, was even taller.[8] And, he was fourteen years older. But most importantly by far, he was a man, a preacher, and not merely "a Bible teacher," the phrase Chestnutt was most likely to use when referring to her role in the Sunny South Christian Church at Minco. By contrast, Kennedy explicitly led congregations, baptized new believers, and published articles in brotherhood journals. And he dreamed of making more of Meta Chestnutt's school at Minco. Why have a local Christian school, when you could have a regional Christian college? So it was that by the early fall of 1894, Kennedy sent word to the Christian-Evangelist:

We are now building a college at Minco . . . I have raised up to date $6,400 in the Territory alone, nearly all of which is a clear gain of wealth to our church, as five-sixths of it has been raised from parties who are not members of the church. Of the above mentioned $6,400, $3,600 has been raised at Minco to build the college. . . . I promised the people of Minco that . . . I would undertake the building of a ten thousand dollar college. I further told them that I would have rooms open and ready to accommodate one hundred children by Oct. 1, 1894, and that by Jan. 1, 1895, I would try to have it ready to accomodate [sic] three hundred pupils. I began this work July 1, and on Oct 1, we will open this school.[9]

Kennedy's report nowhere mentions Meta Chestnutt, or that five years earlier, in 1889, she had arrived in I.T. and started the school that had been thriving ever since. Judging from what Kennedy published in the second half of 1894, one would never guess that Minco already had a Christian academy still led by its founding teacher. The stage was set for a struggle.

Notes

[1] S. E. Kennedy, "Letter from the Indian Territory," Gospel Advocate (April 26, 1894), 253.

[2] Ibid.

[3] "Gone to His Reward. Rev. S. E. Kennedy," Davis  (Oklahoma) News (April 25, 1918); 1850 U.S. Census, Coosa County, Alabama, population schedule, 1st Ward City of Wetumpka, p. 4 (stamped), dwelling 59, family 59, Aotho and Jane Kennedy, digital image, Ancestry.com, accessed March 21, 2020, http://ancestry.com.

[4] Jay S. Hoar, Callow, Brave and True: A Gospel of Civil War Youth (Gettysburg, PA: Thomas Publications, 1999), 230. On June 2, 2018, the writer visited Silas E. Kennedy's grave in the Greenhill Cemetery, in Davis, Oklahoma, and found the C.S.A. Cross of Honor attached to the gravestone.

[5] 1880 U.S. Census, Bell County, Texas, population schedule, Enumeration District No. 7, p. 8, dwelling 58, family 58, Silas and Charlsy [sic] Kenedy [sic], digital image, Ancestry.com, accessed March 22, 2020, http://ancestry.com.

[6] Kennedy, "Letter from the Indian Territory."

[7] S. E. Kennedy, "The Indian Territory," Christian-Evangelist (June 14, 1894), 381.

[8] Note how Kennedy is taller than every other person, including Meta Chestnutt, in Photo 23196.2, Photograph Box 1, Meta Chestnutt Sager Collection, Special Collections, Oklahoma History Center, Oklahoma City, Okla. To see the photo online, click on the link that follows here. Then, click on Archives Catalog. In the search window, type "Meta Chestnutt Rev. Kennedy."  http://okhistory.cuadra.com/star/public.html

[9] S. E. Kennedy, "A College in the Indian Territory," Christian-Evangelist (October 4, 1894), 636.

Mrs. Sager on Modern Translations of the Bible

On Sunday night, April 28, 1935, Meta Chestnutt Sager wrote to her sister-in-law, Clara Dixon Chestnutt, and complained about preachers and the modern translations of the Bible she heard in the Christian Church at Chickasha, Oklahoma:

 . . . the New Testaments the preachers read from, that is when they do read a little squib, they have so much of their own stuff to say the Bible has little place, that these new translations do not sound like the Bible. Tonight, I tried not to listen, the blessed words had been so garbled into modern language that I just despise to hear it. When I do listen I say it over to myself in the old New Testament language. The Bible as it was translated by the old masters is beautiful and charming in its old form, but these modern smart "alicks" have made a mess of that wonderfully beautiful book.[1]

Note

[1] Meta C. Sager to Clara, April 28, 1935, box 3, folder 26, Meta Chestnutt Sager Collection, Oklahoma Historical Society. One notes that Mrs. Sager placed alicks in scare quotes and also underlined the word, suggesting that she perhaps thought and wanted to say something else instead.

Meta Chestnutt Sager on the Christian Church's Neglect of the Poor and the Social Sources of Denominationalism

The long, rambling letters that Meta Chestnutt Sager sent to her sister-in-law, Clara Dixon Chestnutt, include reflections on religion in America during the Depression era. Here, a bit of context will help. In a 1929 book entitled The Social Sources of Denominationalism, H. Richard Niebuhr wrote at length about "churches of the disinherited." These Christian sects emerged partly because they provided religious homes for people whose poor grammar and shabby clothes didn't fit in at the established, middle-class denominations.[1]

Along this line, in a letter to Clara dated April 28, 1935, Meta wrote about the Christian Church in Chickasha, Oklahoma, where she attended:

I tell you the church does not care for the downright poor and uneducated. I'm glad there is a Holiness Methodist Church, a Nazarene Church and other little squads of poor people who worship God in some way. I'm sorry that Christian people have made it necessary for such to exist, but they have so much society doings in the churches that the poor and uneducated have no place in their midst, they are lost, and seldom go long, even if they start. The church is just so many cold storage stations. The most they think of is what they can have next. I tell you I get more joy out of going down to the jail and trying to lead those poor despised skeletons of humanity upon higher ground than I do at all the church services except the Communion service.[2]

According to Niebuhr the academic, and Meta Sager the keen observer, new sects in American did not strike out on their own because they were following some new doctrinal aberration or false teaching. It is tempting to conclude that heresy was not a source, so much as a consequence, of the proliferation of various Christian groups in the U.S.

Notes

[1] H. Richard Niebuhr, The Social Sources of Denominationalism (New York: H. Holt and Company, 1929).

[2] Meta C. Sager to Clara, April 28, 1935, box 3, folder 26, Meta Chestnutt Sager Collection, Oklahoma Historical Society.

A Day in the Western History Collections at OU

I spent Thursday, March 19, 2015 in the Western History Collections, which is a part of the library system at the University of Oklahoma. It was rainy in Norman that day. Students were gone for Spring Break.  The Collections are held on the third floor of the beautiful old School of Law building, Monnet Hall.

Anyone who knows anything about college football knows that the Sooners are a perennial powerhouse. So I wasn't surprised, but was amused to see the note about the hours of operation on game days!

A plaque at the entrance to the building.  . . .

The central reading room for the Western History Collections, an inspiring place to study! . . .

Among the one-of-a-kind items I examined was this 1907 photograph of the First Christian Church in Chickasha, Indian Territory. The photo was taken about eight months before statehood.  . . .

Meta Chestnutt Sager, Notification of Selection for the Oklahoma Hall of Fame

The following is (1) a transcript of a letter sent from Scott P. Squyres, Secretary of the Oklahoma Memorial Association to Meta Chestnutt Sager. Dated Aug. 1, 1939, the letter notifies her that, later that year, she would be inducted in the Oklahoma Hall of Fame. (2) Sager then responded with a hand-written letter dated Oct. 5, 1939.

If have transcribed these two letters "as is," with typographical errors, misspellings, etc. as they appear in the original. The photo above pictures Meta, at right, and a friend.  --Frank Bellizzi
___________________________________________

Aug. 1, 1939

Mrs. Minta Sager,
Chickasha, Okla.

My dear Mrs. Sager:

It is my happy privilege to inform you that the Oklahoma Memorial Association has chosen you as an Oklahoman whose outstanding service and achievements in helping to build Oklahoma and advance humanity entitles you to a place in Oklahomas' Hall of Fame.  The Oklahoma Memorial Association sponsors this selection to Oklahomas' Hall of Fame each year for Statehood Day on November 16.

This honor comes to but few.  Please acknowledge receipt of this message and your acceptance to be honored.  We are inviting you to be our guest at the Statehood Day Banquet on Thursday November 16, 7:30 P.M. at the Oklahoma Builtmore Hotel, Oklahoma City, Oklahoma.  During the evening through impressive and proper ceremony you will be inducted into the Oklahoma's Hall of Fame.

Your immediate reply will be very much appreciated, together with a Thumbnail Biography Sketch of your life activities together with a picture for publication in the press.  Also please advise us just how you desire your name to appear upon the certificate to be presented to you at this ceremony.

May we caution you not to give out for publication, or to anyone, any information that you have been chosen. We make this request for the reason that we want to give this information to all the papers throughout the State at once, then they will all publish it at one time, while if your local paper gives it out the other papers will likely not publish the story.

Please be sure to state if you can be present for this ceremony because we want to make proper plans.

May I congratulate you upon this honor.  We will expect an early reply.  With kind good wishes, I am

Most sincerely,

Scott P. Squyres,
Secretary.

SPS:am

___________________________________________

1528 South 7th St.
Chickasha, Okla.
Oct. 5, 1939

Scott P. Squyres,
Secretary,
1202 Ramsey Tower
Oklahoma City, Okla.

Dear Sir:

Yours of Aug. 1st is received. I assure you that its unexpected offer to bestow upon me such an honor fairly shocked me.

I have tried never to bring reproach upon my father's name, nor upon the name of my adopted state. I have sought no renown, but always considered the reward to be in the dowing.

Most assuredly I will gratefully accept such a royal honor from such an august body.

Most respectfully,
Mrs. M. C. Sager

P.S. I had to write longhand. I have been in bed ill since July 4th. Still in bed but sit up in bed and do some little things. Improving rapidly now.

I'll be 76 Sept. 8, 1939

Been waiting on the photographer to find a negative. If he cant find a recent negative can you make a reduced size to suit your purpose? I have the picture I would like you to use, it is 3 yrs. old, but a perfect likeness.
Mrs. Sager.

P.S  could send that right away