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Montana Deaconess School to Intermountain Montana Deaconess School to Intermountain In 2009, Intermountain Patty Williams posed for her eighth-grade graduation picture in 1932 wearing a celebrates its one- lovely dress, grown-up stockings, and new shoes. Even as she did so, Patty harbored hundredth anniversary mixed feelings about the event, for it meant that she would be saying good-bye to the of caring for children. Founded in 1909 as the school that had been her home since she was eight years old. Her mother had died Montana Deaconess when she was very young, and when she was in the second or perhaps the third grade, School by the Reverend her father put her on the train at the Great Falls station, bound for Helena and the William Wesley Van Orsdel and Methodist women, the Montana Deaconess School. Her only companion was her doll. school has guided genera- tions of children to better lives. Here the school’s harmonica band, including Patty Williams (third row, second from left), poses with volunteer A. I. “Daddy” Reeves (left) and school principal Helen C. Piper (right) in 1929. L. H. Jorud, photographer, Intermountain, Helena A Centennial of Restoring Hope for Children, by Ellen Baumler 1909–2009 23 23-41Spr09.indd 23 3/12/2009 9:58:37 AM MHS Reverend Van Orsdel, better known as Brother Van, Pho tog rap arrived in Montana in 1872 and became a mis- h A rc hiv sionary in the territory. He is pictured on the es , H left with fellow Methodist ministers Rev- el en a , erend Thomas C. Iliff, center, and Rev- P A c erend Francis A. Riggin in 1874. 8 3 - 1 2 2 At the school, Patty settled into the routine and The Reverend William Wesley Van Orsdel— grew into a capable young lady. At every step, her “Brother Van,” Montana’s pioneering Methodist teachers watched and encouraged her, as they had minister—became one of the first champions of the hundreds of other boys and girls before her. Helen Montana Deaconess School. The twenty-four-year- Piper, longtime teacher and superintendent, com- old, self-taught evangelist from Pennsylvania arrived memorated Patty’s graduation with a heartfelt note: at Fort Benton on the steamer Far West in 1872. Soon thereafter, he set out for Helena to present himself Patty dear—What a little girl you were the day you to Reverend J. A. Van Anda, presiding elder of the first came to us with your doll in your arms. This Methodist Episcopal Church in Montana Territory is the way you greeted me: “I came all by myself.” and pastor of St. Paul’s, the only Methodist church in And now you are leaving us, we hope better pre- the territory at the time. En route, Brother Van aban- pared to meet the High School world than had you doned travel by wagon and adopted a horse he named not been with us. Remember we are interested [in Jonathan. In Helena, Reverend Van Anda appointed you] now and will always wish for you the very best the young man missionary-at-large for the territory, in life.1 and over the next eighteen years Brother Van, and Jonathan, traveled extensively across the territory “to For Patty, like hundreds of other children across preach, to sing, and encourage people to be good.”2 the Northwest in the early twentieth century, the Mon- In 1890, Brother Van stabled his horse and took tana Deaconess School provided a strong and well- up a new post as the presiding elder of the church’s rounded education. Beyond that, the Helena-based Great Falls District. By this time, Montana had a school was part of a larger movement. The founding number of hospitals and schools staffed largely by of the school, the only Protestant boarding school Catholic priests and sisters. Methodists, Presby- between Chicago and the West Coast, was one impor- terians, and Episcopalians recognized an imbalance tant outcome in the national effort to further the cause and began work toward providing their own form of of Protestantism in the United States. As the school, health care and education for the state’s population. now known as Intermountain, celebrates its centennial Their earliest efforts were rewarded when Montana’s in 2009, it honors its heritage as well as its evolution first college, the Montana Collegiate Institute at Deer into one of the nation’s leading treatment centers for Lodge, privately endowed in 1878, affiliated itself children under severe emotional distress. with the Presbyterian Church a few years later. Then, 24 M O N T A N A T HE MAGAZINE OF WESTERN H ISTORY 23-41Spr09.indd 24 3/12/2009 9:58:37 AM in 1883, the Episcopalians of Helena established St. the state. Just as importantly, he was the principal Peter’s Hospital, and in 1890 the Methodists opened player in bringing a national Protestant movement Montana Wesleyan University in the Pricky Pear Val- to the state. In 1896, when he assumed chairman- ley near Helena.3 ship of a committee charged with investigating the Other nondenominational, Protestant-based social possibility of establishing a Methodist hospital, he service institutions sprang up in Montana’s capital turned immediately to Chicago and the leaders of the city in the late 1890s. The Florence Crittenton Home, Deaconess Movement. This endeavor, which rose founded circa 1897, was part of the national Florence from within the Methodist, Lutheran, Episcopal, Crittenton Mission, whose original aim was to provide and other Protestant churches, sought to incorporate housing and medical care to young women in need. Its professional women in ministerial duties. By the end services complemented those of the Catholic House of the nineteenth century, various Protestant groups of the Good Shepherd for “wayward” women and actively trained deaconess sisters to serve as medical girls. The Montana Children’s Home, also founded and social service missionaries in the United States.5 in 1897, was a Protestant orphanage that evolved The model dated back to the beginnings of into today’s Shodair Children’s Hospital. It was the Christianity when women had an important place in first Protestant alternative to St. Joseph’s Home for the ministry of the early church. It lived on through the Orphans in Helena. These early institutions, both centuries in the religious orders of women, particu- Catholic and Protestant, fulfilled real needs not only larly within the Catholic tradition. Now the Deacon- for the community but also for a much wider, regional ess Movement sought to provide single Protestant population.4 women of the Victorian era with similar educational In the meantime, Brother Van was personally and career opportunities. Unlike Catholic sisters, seeing to the building of scores of churches across deaconesses took no perpetual vows. A woman could Bain News Service photo, Library of Congress, LC-DIG-ggbain-15754 The Deaconess Movement, supported by the Methodist, Episcopal, Lutheran, and other Protestant churches, trained professional women to serve in medical and social service ministerial duties. The procession of deaconesses and candidates above was photographed on May 7, 1914, probably in New York. E L L E N B A U M LER | S P R I N G 2 0 0 9 25 23-41Spr09.indd 25 3/12/2009 9:58:39 AM leave at any time, but if she chose to remain a dea- opened in Havre, Billings, Bozeman, Butte, Sidney, coness and single, she was assured of care in times and Glasgow over the next three decades.8 of illness and in old age. These dedicated women Although the largest Protestant groups in Montana earned no salaries but, rather, worked in exchange at the turn of the twentieth century were Methodists, for their living expenses and the small stipends sup- Presbyterians, Episcopalians, and Lutherans, their plied by their institutional boards. By the late 1880s, combined numbers fell far short of the number of Lutherans, Episcopalians, Methodists, and others Roman Catholics. A federal census of religions taken were collaborating on interdenominational projects in 1906 found that 74 percent of those practicing a through the Deaconess Movement.6 religion in the state were Catholic, By 1895, there were five hundred twice the national percentage. The Methodist Episcopal deaconesses statistic caught the attention of in the United States. However, their Brother Van and his colleagues, who work was not widely understood. lamented the fact that while there Many people perceived deacon- were fifteen Catholic schools in esses as well-intentioned women Montana at the time, there was not a who climbed the back stairs, pat- single Protestant boarding school in ted children on the head, and then the entire Northwest. Looking to the went home to write reports. At the Chaddock Boys School at Quincy, eighth annual conference of Meth- Intermountain, Helena Illinois, which operated under dea- odist Episcopal Deaconesses in New coness management, Brother Van felt York City that year, the church’s men that Methodist deaconesses might Louise Stork, from the and women came together to assess Chicago Training School, came solve the need for such a school in contributions and challenges. There to Montana in 1905 to assist the region, especially one dedicated was no doubt that deaconesses Brother Van with an expansion to the education of children whose of the Montana Protestant “sometimes do good where minis- Hospital in Great Falls and parents, for whatever reason, could ters are shut out,” but they had not stayed to help him establish not provide a nurturing home. He the Montana Deaconess yet achieved the status of the Catho- School as a Protestant now bent his efforts to establishing lic sisters, who enjoyed a “glorious boarding school.
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