DAVID MORTON: a BIOGRAPHY ^Z^U DAVID MORTON
Total Page：16
File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb
DAVID MORTON: A BIOGRAPHY ^z^U DAVID MORTON A BIOGRAPHY By BISHOP ELIJAH EMBREE HOSS OF THE METHODIST EPISCOPAL CHURCH, SOUTH NASHVILLE, TENN. PUBLISHING HOUSE OF THE METHODIST EPISCOPAL CHURCH, SOUTH SMITH & LAMAR, AGENTS 1916 Copyright, 1916 BY Hannah W. Morton All Rights Reserved THIS BOOK IS PUBLISHED BY THE FAMILY OF DAVID MORTON AND THE EDITION PRESENTED TO THE BOARD OF CHURCH EX- TENSION OF THE METHODIST EPISCOPAL CHURCH, SOUTH CONTENTS. CHAPTER I. Page. Heredity and Environment i CHAPTER II. Feeling after God and Finding Him 21 CHAPTER III. Called to Preach and Answering the Call 29 CHAPTER IV. The Itinerant Preacher 36 CHAPTER V. Taking a Turn with the Schools 78 CHAPTER VI. In the General Conference 91 CHAPTER VII. Presiding Elder—East and West 116 CHAPTER VIII. Church Extension Secretary 143 CHAPTER IX. Closing His Career 193 vii ILLUSTRATIONS. Face Page David Morton (Frontispiece) Title Marmaduke Beckwith Morton as a Young Man 6 Marmaduke Beckwith Morton, 1796-1887 12 Mrs. Marmaduke Beckwith Morton 18 Old Courthouse, Russellville, Kentucky 26 David Morton and His Brothers in Boyhood 32 The Knob, Near Russellville, Kentucky 40 Thomas Bottomley 48 Mrs. Thomas Bottomley , 54 In the Days of Their Youth—David Morton and Hannah Bottomley 62 David Morton's Credentials as a Minister 68 The First Family Group 74 Russellville Female Academy 82 Logan College, Russellville, Kentucky, about 1874 88 Logan College, Russellville, Kentucky, in 1915 96 Vanderbilt Training School, Elkton, Kentucky 104 Eminent Methodists no Old Whitehall, Montana 118 Pioneer Montana Southern Methodists 130 First Ecumenical Conference 136 The First Office of the Board of Church Extension 144 We Were Boys Together 150 ix DAVID MORTON Face Page The First Church Aided by the Board of Church Exten- sion 158 Bishops McTyeire and Kavanaugh 164 The First Home Owned by the Board of Church Exten- sion 172 The New Home of the Board of Church Extension 178 Three Thousand Eight Hundred and Seventeen Meth- odist Churches 186 David Morton's Desk 196 E'en Down to Old Age—David Morton and Mrs. David Morton 202 Morton Memorial Church, Monteagle, Tennessee 210 The Ancestry of David Morton 214 x CHAPTER I. Heredity and Environment. HE Church of Christ has no richer inheritance than T the memory of her great and good men. She could better afford to demolish her proudest cathedrals and to give up all her material possessions than to oblit- erate or to forget the record of her seers and saints. Out of pure gratitude, if for no other reason, she ought to preserve their names and to magnify the work that they have wrought in the earth ; and by all considerations of practical wisdom she is bound to do the same thing. For from the recurring contempla- tion of their deeds she gathers fresh inspiration for the achievement of her own tasks, and by passing on the quickening story of their heroisms to future gen- erations she furnishes the most effective means for perpetuating and maintaining, alive and vigorous, the great pieties of the world. It is with these thoughts in my mind that I have consented, in the midst of many and exacting duties, to prepare a brief biography of my dear and honored friend, David Morton, who now for more than six- teen years has been at home with God. What I shall say about him will come straight from my i DAVID MORTON heart. In the ears of those who had no intimate acquaintance with him my words may sound some- what too eulogistic, but it is my honest intention to set down nothing save the simple and unvarnished truth. That, I am sure, is just what he would wish me to do. In the course of a long life I have met no man more sincere and unostentatious than this great- hearted Methodist itinerant and none less likely to be pleased with the poor tribute of flattering speech. If he could speak out of the blessed abode into which he has gone, he would bid me keep strictly to the facts and paint him precisely as he was. Moreover, the bare truth about him is good enough. Of undue praise, there is no slightest need. David Morton began his life under the most favor- able conditions. He was born June 4, 1833, in the fine old town of Russellville, Logan County, Kentucky, and bore the authentic stamp of the community upon his character to the end of his days. The country round about is fertile and beautiful, a fit seat for a great civili- zation. The original settlers were nearly all Virginians of an excellent type, not rude and uncultured frontiers- men, but intelligent, industrious, honest, patriotic, and religious citizens. For the sake of the better opportu- nities which it offered to themselves and their children they had moved into what was then counted the far West; but they had brought with them the traditions DAVID MORTON and ideals of their old homes and had never let them slip. While more or less affected in superficial ways by their new surroundings, they yet remained un- touched in all their essential characteristics. It would not be amiss to speak of them as "Virginians of the Wilderness." Among them were the Broadnaxes, the Butlers, the Hises, the Lewises, the Stewarts, the Bibbs, the Mooreheads, the Caldwells, the Bowlings, the Walkers, the Blakeys, the Barclays, the Breathitts, the Edwardses, the Crittendens, and many others of like standing. From these families in succeeding gen- erations have come many men distinguished in every walk of life—governors, senators, judges, soldiers, doctors, and divines. It is said, in fact, that Russell- ville has produced more men of marked individuality than any other town in the State. In this fair land of high-minded and honorable people David Morton's family stood among the best, being so entirely respectable that it was never at any time necessary for them to consider the question of their social position, nor to put on pretentious airs of any sort. His* father, Marmaduke Beckwith Morton, was born in Louisa County, Virginia, September 13, 1796, and had a most honorable ancestry running back on both sides of the house to the early days of the colony. He was the son of William Jordan Morton, the grandson of Joseph Morton, and the great-grand- 3 DAVID MORTON son of Captain John Morton, Jr., of Richmond County, who in turn was the son of John Morton. His Chris- tian name came to him from a maternal forefather, Sir Marmaduke Beckwith, a Yorkshire baronet, who crossed the sea in the latter part of the seventeenth century and speedily became a leading citizen and officeholder in Richmond County. Among Marma- duke Morton's connections and those that he made by marriage were the Astons, the Beckwiths, the Cockes, the Caldwells, the Cooks, the Davises, the Dinwiddies, the Du Boises, the Eltons, the Hawkinses, the Hites, the Lanes, the Meanses, the Mountjoys, the Perrins, the Pryors, the Thorntons, the Van Meters, and the Woodses. The number of his descent cousins, near and remote, must have run into the thousands, for it was a prolific folk that took possession of the first English settlement in America. While Marmaduke Morton was anything but boastful, he was fully aware of the range and quality of his kinships and probably derived a good deal of quiet satisfaction from it. As a usual thing, the only people who profess utter indifference to matters of heredity are those who are able to get no great comfort from the backward look. In 1815, just after the close of our second war with Great Britain, Marmaduke Morton, being then nine- teen years of age, emigrated with his father's family to Logan County, Kentucky, and in that home of his 4 DAVID MORTON adoption he lived for the next seventy-two years. From the first he fitted himself into its peculiar con- ditions and had never any desire to leave it. When he died, in 1887, Dr. Gross Alexander, speaking at his funeral, exclaimed: "Ninety-one years old and dead without a stain on him !" And there was nobody who thought that the statement was an exaggeration, From his first manhood he was an active citizen, taking a lively interest in everything that pertained to the public welfare and gradually building up for himself an unassailable reputation for capacity, probity, and kind- liness. By instinct and preference he was a farmer. In the run of time he became also a justice of the peace, clerk of the county and circuit courts, and cashier of the Southern Bank of Kentucky, all of which places he filled with strict integrity and with perfect satisfaction to his fellow citizens. Because of his large common sense and his known straightforwardness, he was in- creasingly consulted by his friends and neighbors in regard to their business concerns and was intrusted with the settlement of many estates. His own affairs he managed with judicious wisdom and succeeded in amassing for himself what was then regarded as a comfortable fortune. But he never made a dollar by the use of questionable methods. All the property that he gained was the reward of patient industry and hon- 5 DAVID MORTON est accumulation. He would have scorned to handle an unclean penny. His comfortable home, The Knob, was the center of a generous and unstinted hospitality. Thither the poorest of his neighbors, sure of a cordial welcome, came at their own pleasure; and many famous men of Church and State, who felt themselves honored by the privilege, were accustomed to turn in for days or weeks.