University of Puget Sound Sound Ideas University Historical Texts University Historical Collections 1-1-2010 An Itinerant’s Career: Dedicated to the Historical Society of the Puget Sound Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church David Goruch LeSourd D.D. Follow this and additional works at: http://soundideas.pugetsound.edu/pugetsoundhistoricaltext Recommended Citation LeSourd, David Goruch D.D., "An Itinerant’s Career: Dedicated to the Historical Society of the Puget Sound Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church" (2010). University Historical Texts. Book 1. http://soundideas.pugetsound.edu/pugetsoundhistoricaltext/1 This Book is brought to you for free and open access by the University Historical Collections at Sound Ideas. It has been accepted for inclusion in University Historical Texts by an authorized administrator of Sound Ideas. For more information, please contact [email protected]. An Itinerant’s Career Dedicated to the Historical Society of the Puget Sound Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church by David Gorsuch LeSourd, D.D. 1917 Copyright 2010 Published at the University of Puget Sound Tacoma, Washington ISBN 978-0-615-36428-5 Printed in the United States of America 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 Cover: Mt. Rainier from Vashon Island, 1901 (detail), Abby Williams Hill, oil on canvas 18”x14.5”, University of Puget Sound collection Notes Rev. LeSourd originally dictated his autobiography to his first wife, Maggie, who wrote it down in longhand. It was later typed from the original by Charlotte Riemer, secretary to then University of Puget Sound President Edward H. Todd. The handwritten manu- script is lost; this text was created from the typed version, two cop- ies of which are housed in the University of Puget Sound Archives at Collins Memorial Library (Library of Congress call number BX8495 .L67; OCLC 444904904). In editing the text I verified names and dates to the degree pos- sible, corrected spellings, and applied consistent style and punctua- tion, but I did not interfere with LeSourd’s voice or recollection of events. In several instances LeSourd expresses opinions or describes scenes in a way that would be considered insensitive today. Since these passages help us understand LeSourd’s time and place in his- tory, they appear as written. In a very few other cases the typescript was missing a line or skipped a phrase. When absent words could not be inferred, the text skips to the next full line. My extreme gratitude to University of Puget Sound student Lestraundra Alfred, who spent a good part of her sophomore year, between her studies, rekeying the manuscript for digital reproduc- tion, and to Jim Walker, archives and history chair for the Pacific Northwest United Methodist Conference, and Dick Seber, of the Methodist Church, for their assistance. Thanks also to Pat Mallin- son for reading the manuscript and for her usual sharp eye. Chuck Luce Tacoma, Washington, April 2010 An Itinerant’s Career Chapter I Indiana Boyhood and Civil War Service was born on Oct. 4, 1841, near Rossville, Clinton County, Ind., and was the 10th child of a family that later consisted of father, mother, and 12 children. IMy grandfather, John Peter LeSourd, came to this country from France, a corporal in one of four regiments that landed at Newport, R.I., during the American Revolution. He was with his regiment at the siege of Yorktown when Cornwallis surrendered. After the war, he, like most of the French soldiers, remained in this country, married a Miss Curtis of Virginia, and settled about 20 miles north of Baltimore, Md. In this neighborhood both my father and mother were born. My mother’s maiden name was Ann Gorsuch, and her father was doubtless a descendant of Charles Gorsuch, a Quaker who in 1662 received a patent for 50 acres on Whetstone Point, now embraced in the city of Baltimore. Grandfather LeSourd was a small farmer, a great reader, a staunch Protestant. Although reared a Catholic he became an ardent Methodist. My mother’s early home was near the Gorsuch Mill, owned by her honored father. There she was married to my father, Benjamin LeSourd, in 1824. They lived on the old LeSourd farm for a decade or more. There, the most of my brothers and sisters were born, but about 1836, Father and his family followed most of their relatives to the Miami Valley in the state of Ohio, where Father conducted a small 1 D.G. LeSourd mercantile business until 1841. A few months before I was born, they migrated to Indiana and settled temporarily in Clinton County but in the following February moved on to a pre-emption in the big woods of Howard County, then known as the Miami Reserve. As I was only an infant I do not remember when our folks went into the first log cabin, which later became a double log house with puncheon floors, stick chimneys, and broad fireplaces. There, in three years, I came to a limited consciousness of my surroundings. I remember the little, cleared fields, the “log rollings,” the “big log heaps,” the “pulling of the flax,” how it was “broken,” “scutched,” “hackled,” and spun on the little or big wheel into thread and then woven on the loom into cloth. I recall the day I got into my linsey-woolsey pants, also the fact that I had a horror of school, believing that teachers almost skinned their puppies alive. Well I remember how my sisters hired me to go to school and remain all of one day. This I did, although I screamed with fright when the teacher threatened to put two of the boys into the hole under the puncheon floor. In time I attended several of these short-term schools, sat on rude seats at narrow rails with no support for our backs and often no rest for our feet that hung limp three or four inches from the floor. My only textbook was the elementary spelling book. The monotony of these schooldays did not prevent me from learning to spell well for one of my years. The little I ever knew about spelling I learned in these backwoods schools. The County of Howard was organized about the time Father moved into it, and for several years he served as probate judge. When Father would come home after court week I often heard him speak of Murray and Lindsey, two county attorneys, and I had no idea there were any other lawyers in the world. The first town I ever saw was Kokomo, now quite a city, but at that time consisting chiefly of 15 or 20 log cabins. Crude as was 2 An Itinerant’s Career the little world in which we lived, we were greatly blessed. First, in the fact that we had good Christian parents who taught us children the fear of the Lord. And, second, that the itinerant Methodist preacher came statedly [sic] into our neighborhood and often made our home his. Nor can I overestimate the influence those devoted preachers had on the expanding lives of us children. Not only did they preach the Gospel but inspired us with an ardent desire to learn and thus become as good and great as we thought they were. Hence every one of my brothers and sisters as well as myself were in due time converted to God and became devoted and intelligent Methodists. When I was 9 years of age my father, owing to an unfortunate financial venture in building a mill which never paid, sold his property and moved west to the prairies in Jasper County. After living two years on a rented farm he began to build a home in the southern part of the county on a beautiful tract of prairie which he expected soon to enter. But on going to the land office he found that this land had been taken up by speculators, as had all the good land in that part of the state. Nor would these land-grabbers sell one foot of the land on which our folks had made improvements. This was very disheartening, the more so because Father was in very poor health. Hence, for several years after this we lived most of the time on farms in White County [Ind.], which we cultivated on shares. In the meantime, from 1850 to 1857, there were no public schools where we could attend, save one held during a very cold winter. There I began the study of arithmetic and reveled in it as I did in the higher mathematics in later years. Finally Father and my oldest brother, Curtis, bought a small farm 3 miles east of Brookston in White County. Here, those of us who were at home worked hard and lived in comfort if not in luxury. We had preaching every two or three weeks, a district school which we attended each winter. But all told I hardly had more 3 D.G. LeSourd than 20 months of school until after I attained my majority. In the meantime, as I ripened in years, there had grown in me an ardent desire for an education. I knew little of colleges, and what little I knew gave me no hope that I could ever attend one. But I would have given the world for the privilege. Sister Martha and I often studied our lessons at night after the family had gone to bed until Father would order us to go, too. Long before this, in 1856, when I was 15 years of age, I had become greatly interested in the political contest between Fremont and Buchanan for the presidency. All my folks were strong anti-slavery and supported Fremont and the Republican Party.