A STEEPLE
AMONG THE OAKS
A CENTENNIAL
HISTORY OF THE
FIRST
METHODIST CHURCH
1862-1962
By
ALBERT E. NORMAN
PREFACE
THE AUTHOR OF THIS
BOOK does not want you to consider this as a
complete history of the First Methodist Church of Oakland, the principal
subject of this effort; or of the City of Oakland.
Many years ago, I began the
collection of photographs, depicting Oakland in its early days, which of
course, included many of the First Methodist Church. Over the years, I, have
collected in excess of four thousand photographs and many books and articles
that have been written about this fair city and of Alameda County, of which
this city is a part. It is hoped that you will enjoy the few photographs shown
within these pages.
While I served as Secretary
of the Sunday School of the First Methodist Church from 1912 to 1947 much
information about the church and its Sunday School was collected.
The work is not free from
error and claims no literary merit; the details of such an undertaking as this
are many and difficult, but much painstaking labor and the time has been given
to guard as far as possible against inaccuracy and to make it not only
interesting but reliable.
I give thanks to the many individuals
who chronicled our city’s history and to many who have come and gone through
the portals of the First Methodist Church.
I dedicated this book to my
mother Mabel Hammond Norman, who came to Oakland in 1872, who taught me the
habit of attending Sunday School and church; also to my wife Lena Virginia
Norman, who sacrificed many years of her time to assist me in bringing to you
this history.
ALBERT E. NORMAN
How happy I am to be able to
congratulate you on 100 years of continuous and meritorious service in Oakland.
Many changes have come about in this century and which First Church, like all
down-town churches, has had its share of vicissitudes, riding the crest of the
wave and back again in the trough, but through it all maintaining a fine
loyalty and devotion to the cause of Christ. You have had some of the best
ministers in our conference and, for that matter, in America, as your leaders
and nowhere have we had more outstanding laymen than in Oakland First.
It is my hope that as you
move out on your second century that you will be more effective during days
ahead even than you have been in the best days that are gone. My prayers and
best wishes will continue with you.
Faithfully yours,
DONALD HARVEY TIPPETT
Bishop The Methodist
Church
San Francisco Area
What a glorious heritage you
commemorate in this moment of time! I have known of your church for twenty
years of your hundred. During this span I have been personally blessed by both
ministers and lay persons who have served in your fellowship. How grateful I am
to you.
As you renew acquaintance in
memory with those who have gone before may you find vision and strength for the
years stretching out ahead. I have every confidence that under your present
leadership the decades just before you shall be just as brightly studded with
landmarks of service to Him who is our Strength and Life.
May the next hundred be the
best years of your life.
Sincerely yours,
ARTHUR V. THURMAN
District Superintendent
As Oakland’s First Methodist
Church faces its second one hundred years, it is confronted with what some call
problems, and others speak of as possibilities. Actually they are the one and
the same situations, viewed in one case with pessimism, in the other with
faith.
To name just a few: We are a
downtown church, a fact that to many people spells “impossibility” to begin
with. Then, we are uniquely “one church-two locations,” Wesley Center and
Broadway Center. The Wesley Center portion of our parish is a redevelopment
area with an integrated population. Oakland is growing and changing.
My first year as your Pastor
has shown me clearly that the basic needs and possibilities of people and
church here are those of people and church everywhere. Together we’ve started
to work in this light. And we are doing it in the recognition that while with
men many things are impossible, with God all things are possible. Problems
become possibilities when seen in the light of this faith. May it be ours in
this second one hundred years!
Affectionately,
CHARLES EDWIN LORD
Your Pastor
The year 1962 finds the First
Methodist Church with a wide and varied program. Operating as “one church - two
locations,” we recognize that worship, fellowship, study and service are vital
aspects of a Christian church.
The day begins on Sunday
with a service of worship at 9:30 a.m. at Wesley Center and with church schools
at both locations. Worship is held at Broadway Center at 11 a.m.
The Wesley Center Church
School provides classes from nursery through the 8th grade, while that
at Broadway Center has classes from nursery through senior citizens. An
extended session of the church school for nursery through 4th grade
is held at Broadway Center during the 11 o’clock service except on the first
Sunday of the month, which is “Family Sunday in Church.”
During the last year a
coffee fellowship immediately following the 11 o’clock service has provided a
real time of meeting and getting acquainted, particularly with newcomers to the
church and community. A coffee fellowship is also held at Wesley Center
following the service on the second Sunday of each month.
A full program for the
youth and adults is carried on each Sunday evening, beginning with Youth Choir
at 5:30 o’clock. Youth groups for junior high and senior high school students
and college age youth adults follow. On most of the fall and winter Sunday
evenings special programs and studies are being held for adults.
Every Monday, Wednesday
and Friday from 9 to 12 noon finds the Broadway Nursery School in session: This
nursery school provides a recreational and educational program for children
between the ages 3 and 5, a part of the Christian Nurture program of the First
Methodist Church. It is designed to lay a foundation for religious growth
through the child’s everyday relationships with parents, contact with Christian
teachers, children his age, and with his whole new world.
Glenn Daun became our
Minister of Music May 1, 1962. The Chancel Choir has sung all summer at good
strength, and Mr. Daun has worked with junior high and high school young people
in the music portion of a Tuesday evening youth might at Wesley Center. This
program has also included recreation, study and fellowship. Projected in the
fall music program is a youth choir, a children’s choir, and some bell choirs.
Starting this fall several
prayer study groups will be meeting, one in the early morning, one mid-morning
and one in the evening. It is our hope that more such groups can be started.
Our Woman’s Society of
Christian Service is a most active organization of 261 members divided into
thirteen circles. There are also four Wesleyan Service Guilds for women
gainfully employed outside the home. The society and guilds and each of the
circles hold a monthly meeting.
Both the Emanuel Class,
which is in its 49th year, and the Auditorium Bible Class (ABC
Class) hold monthly socials. The Fireside Forum and Christian Research groups
meet monthly for study and fellowship activities, as do the Merriweds, a group
of married young adults. Several more fellowship groups are projected for this
fall including one for newly married young adults.
The church is operating on
the philosophy that each person who unites with the church should have the
opportunity to enjoy a smaller fellowship group on an age or interest basis, as
well as entering the larger fellowship of the total church.
Sincerely yours,
DONALD SMITH
Assistant Pastor
Beloved counsellor (sic) and
friend to First Church, the Reverend William P. Rankin has served as honorary
pastor here since July 27, 1960, when he celebrated his 60th
anniversary as a Methodist preacher. He began his career at Fall River Mills,
about 75 miles northeast of Redding, California, in the spring of 1900. The
youthful Mr. Rankin agreed to take a church and also prepare for the ministry
while preaching. With this small beginning he later served at Gardnerville,
Nevada, at Big Pine, Bishop, Kennett, Redding, Sebastopol, Watsonville, Napa,
Lodi, Modesto and Fresno. He also served as Superintendent of the Redwood
Shasta District, and as Conference Treasurer, retiring in 1949.
FIRST
METHODIST CHURCH STAFF --- 1962
Charles Edwin
Lord, D.D., senior pastor, and staff members;
(Left to
right) Florence Sutcliffe, church secretary; Donald Smith, associate pastor;
Glenn Daun,,
minister of music; Eva Maxwell, minister of education; Claris Miller,
receptionist-secretary.
24th
and Broadway, Oakland.
Dedicated
more than 48 years ago,
Oakland’s
First Methodist Church is still admired as an outstanding example of Italian
Renaissance architecture.
Bishop Edwin
H. Hughes conducted the dedicatory rites Sunday, January 18, 1914.
Rev. George
W. White was pastor at the time.
PAGE
1
FIRST METHODIST CHURCH
THE RISE OF the First
Methodist Church in Oakland is a story of struggle and endeavor winning over
complacency and indifference so inherent in men seeking gold rather than God.
For it was gold most men were seeking in the race to California back in those
hectic days of ‘49 and on through the conflicting ‘50’s into the war-torn and
expanding 1860s.
It is also a story of
trail blazing, gale-swept seas, and seemingly endless marching across deserts,
of high beaver hats, big cigars, sideburns and flashy dressers, as well as a
story of gingham and homeliness.
In 1847, when William
Roberts arrived in San Francisco to establish Methodism in California, Oakland
was but a forest of oak trees dotted with meadows of wild grain where cattle
grazed. Redwood trees towered sentinel-like atop the hills and in the canyons
of this sprawling Contra Costa land.
Five years were to elapse
before the town of Oakland was established, and another 10 years would roll by
before the First Methodist Church would bow here in 1862.
The Rev. Roberts was a New
Jersey minister of more than ordinary education and ability. Beside him, abroad
the little bark Whitton when she sailed into San Francisco Bay on April
24, 1847, stood James H. Wilbur, a pioneer preacher destined to make Methodist
history in Oregon and Washington, although there had been missionaries in the
Oregon Territory since 1834.
The tiny settlement in the
cove leeward of where the Whitton anchored on arrival has been known as
Yerba Buena up until six weeks prior. It was only on March 10, 1847, that the
town’s name was changed to San Francisco.
First night ashore for
Roberts and Wilbur was of the spring variety. They strolled about the village
endeavoring to shake off their sea legs, and halted now and then to listen to
news and gossip from Fort Sutter up in the Sacramento Valley. Talk was about
men who had struggled all winter to reach and rescue the snowbound Donner
Party. The task was completed just three weeks ago, they learned. Needless to
say they were saddened to hear that nearly half of the 90 members in the Donner
Party had perished in the Sierra Nevada blizzards.
Rev. Roberts was the first
legally authorized disciple of John Wesley to organize Methodism in California,
but he was by no means the first Methodist to visit here. Jedidiah (sic) Smith,
a Bible-totin’ Methodist fur trapper, was at Mission San Jose as early as 1827.
In October of 1846, while the Donner Party was stalled in the Sierra Nevada by
early snow, an emigrant party of 15 wagons and 57 persons arrived in the
Sacramento Valley. Adna A. Hecox and family were in that 1846 group. Hecox and
his wife were Methodists, and he had a license to exhort. Arriving as he did in
October of 1846 put him in California six months ahead of Rev. Roberts.
These were the men and
women who were the first California disciples of Methodism, established by John
Wesley in 1739. That year Wesley had gathered a small group together into a
society he chose to call Methodism.
Now the march of Methodism
was moving westward across America.
Methodist meetings had
been held in America as early as 1760. In 1774 Frances Asbury arrived from
England to spread Wesley’s teachings in the colonies along the Atlantic
seaboard. That was a year of war preparation. The Revolutionary War was just in
the offing. History tells us it was not until the American Colonies won
independence 10 years later that Thomas Coke arrived in America for a
conference with Asbury. They met on Christmas Day in 1784. That date marks the
birth of the American Methodist Church.
Asa White reached San
Francisco on May 10, 1849. He pitched a tent on the very ground afterward used
for the Powell Street Methodist Church. White’s “blue tent” became a Bethel.
There Rev. White preached the gospel.
First regular preachers among these pioneers
to be sent to California by authority of the Methodist Church on the Atlantic
Coast were the Rev. William Taylor and the Rev. Isaac Owen.
William Taylor arrived in
San Francisco September 21, 1849. Like Rev. Roberts before him, he came by sea.
His family was with him aboard the Baltimore clipper Andalusia when it
anchored off San Francisco’s north beach. By early October he was in the Contra
Costa hills cutting redwood to build a home for his family in San Francisco.
This sawmill
in San Antonio Redwoods was at junction of Palo Seco and Sausal Creeks (about
where Warren Freeway passes under Park Boulevard today.)
Built in 1846
it operated until 1856. One owner was Volney D. Moody, Oakland banker.
Rev. William
Taylor knew the mill; preached to woodsmen at a similar mill near Redwood Peak.
Mrs. Henry C.
Smith, whose husband had been called “father of Alameda County,” presented him
with a daughter,
Julia, in a
tiny cabin to the right of Moody’s mill.
Julia Smith
was the first Anglo-American child born in what is now Oakland on April 9,
1848.
Page 3
The following are the words
from Taylor’s own pen:
“Brother Asa White and his sons-in-law,
John Barto and Alfred Love, and his two youngest sons, had a shanty in the
redwoods where they spent much time getting out lumber and hauling it to the
embarcadero at San Antonio, a big name, but no town. It was arranged that I go
to the woods and get out lumber on my own account, and ‘ranch’ with Brother
White. Brother A. Hatler kindly proposed to go with me and assist.
“On October 10, 1849, we
crossed the bay in a whaleboat to San Antonio carrying our blankets, provisions
and working tools. We walked up the mountain five miles to Brother White’s
shanty. Brother Hatler and I put our provisions into the mess and were admitted
as guests, with the privilege of wrapping ourselves in our blankets and
sleeping on the ground under the common shelter.
Page 4
“After supper we were
entertained with Brother White’s historic reminiscences, til (sic) bedtime,
then after a hallelujah season of family worship we retired.
“We wrought til Friday
afternoon, October 12, but spent our strength for naught in trying to split
unsplitable (sic) timber, and returned that afternoon to San Antonio landing.
We there lay on the ground to sleep, but spent most of the night in looking at
the stars, listening to the wierd (sic) howlings of the coyotes and babble of
thousands of wild geese.
“Sabbath, October 14, was my
fourth Sabbath in San Francisco and second in our new Chapel, which was crowded
with attention hearers.
“I returned to the redwoods
on Monday, the 15th, but Brother Hatler could not leave his business
to return with me; so I had to depend on my own unaided mind and muscle, led by
the good Providence of Him who had called me to meet such emergencies. I
provided for my pulpit the Sabbath following, so as to give me two unbroken
weeks in the redwoods, and on the Sabbath I preached under the shade of a large
redwood tree to 25 woodsmen.”
Rev. William Taylor’s sermon
in the redwoods was the first Protestant preaching on the Contra Costa side of
San Francisco Bay, according to best available evidence.
Rev. Taylor has more to tell:
“During this trip to the
woods, covering a period of nearly two weeks, I procured the lumber needed for
my house. Hauling my stuff from the redwoods to San Antonio landing cost $25
per thousand feet. The regular price for transport thence to San Francisco was
$40 per thousand feet, but by hiring a boat and working with my own hands I got
the work done for less than half that price.
“I bought a lot, for $1,250,
kindly lent me without interest by Brother Hatler, which I paid back in due
time. Brother Hatler, being a carpenter, gave me instructions in the business
of house building. In digging the foundation for it I turned up the stakes of
Rev. White’s ‘blue tent’ and found that I occupied the site of the tabernacle
in which the first Methodist class meeting of the spring of 1849 had been held.
The cost of my house was $1,491.25.”
Page 5
In six weeks time, after
leaving the ship Andalusia, the Taylor family was in their own home.
Redwood trees had been cut in
the Oakland hills as early as 1797, the first timbers being used for building
Mission San Jose. When John Sutter built his fort in the Sacramento Valley at
the forks of the American and Sacramento Rivers he, too, turned to these Contra
Costa redwoods for timber.
There were scores of others
to profit from the redwoods. The trees stood on land that was public domain,
surrounded by the vast ranchos of the Peralta brothers, Antonio, Vicente, Jose
Domingo and Ygnacio, and the holdings of Joaquin Moraga, the Pachecos, Juan
Jose Castro, Guillermo Castro, Joaquin Estudillo, Ygnacio Martinez, and
Francisco Soto.
This was the country that the
Methodist circuit riders would invade in 1856. But there were other imigrants
(sic) to precede them. Moses Chase pitched his tent on Peralta land in the
winter of 1849-50 that was to be known as Clinton. Next to come were the Patton
brothers: Edward, William and Robert F. They found Chase ill in his tent and
nursed him back to health. These were the first Anglo-Americans. More were to
follow: Colonel Fitch, Colonel Whitney, Edson Adams, Andrew J. Moon, and Horace
W. Carpentier. A settlement was forming, and by November 1851 a post office was
established and called Contra Costa. Six months later, May 1852, the town of
Oakland was incorporated.
Meanwhile, elsewhere in
California other men of Methodist leaning joined with the Rev. Taylor. A
Mission Conference had been held here as early as 1848, and now there were
small classes gathering in many places: San Jose, Santa Cruz, San Francisco,
Alameda, Stockton, and all through the Mother Lode and Northern Mines district.
A second session of the
Mission Conference was held in 1850, and from then on annual Conference were
held. By 1856 Oakland was being visited by Methodist preachers of the Alameda
Circuit. This was the year (1856) that the Rev. W. S. Urmy conducted Methodist
services in a schoolhouse on East 14th Street near 10th
Avenue in Clinton, later called Brooklyn, now East Oakland.
Page 6
ALAMEDA COUNTY AGRICULTURAL SOCIETY'S PAVILION
This building stood on the west side of
Broadway between Fourth and Fifth Streets and was the pride of Oakland in 1857.
The County Courthouse later occupied the
site. Methodist Circuit Riders Alfred Higbie and C. V. Anthony preached at the
pavilion.
About this same time Rev.
Carter, a Methodist, opened a Sunday School in a room at the rear of a drug
store at Third and Broadway in Oakland. Henry Maloon, who as a boy lived at
Second and Broadway, recalled attending Rev. Carter’s classes. Maloon was in
his declining years (1928) when he recounted his experiences to this writer.
There were many demands on
preachers in those early days, and the Alameda Circuit necessarily became a somewhat
irregular undertaking. Preachers came and went. Among the pioneer circuit
riders to visit Oakland to conduct services were the Rev. Alfred Higbie, Rev.
William Grove Deal, Rev. James E. Wickes, and Rev. Charles V. Anthony. Only
Rev. Anthony returned to serve Oakland after it became a separate charge.
They were a hardy lot, those
early day circuit riders. Here in Oakland they held services in any kind of
shelter they could find. First it was in tents, then at the Alameda County
Agricultural Pavilion (the old Courthouse site on the west side of Broadway at
Fourth Street) and in the town’s first public schoolhouse.
Page 7
Among these early circuit
riders who first came to Oakland was the Rev. Alfred Higbie. It is the Rev.
Higbie who is credited with preaching the first Methodist sermon west of Lake
Merritt in what became downtown Oakland.
Higbie organized a class of
14 members here and rented a lot on Washington Street. But he found it next to
impossible to hold the real estate. His membership didn’t grow fast enough, and
funds were insufficient. Unfortunately, too, Higbie’s health failed before the
close of the year (1858) and he was obliged to give up preaching.
The Rev. W. Grove Deal was
Higbie’s successor. On his visits to Oakland he found interest extremely dull.
Soon he made no further effort to keep up the Oakland station. The class
scattered and the land released. That was in the year 1859.
It must have been
discouraging to the Methodist leaders directing the Alameda Circuit. Now they
were looking forward to the arrival in California of the Rev. E. W. Kirkham, a
transfer from the Ohio Conference. He would be just the man for the job in
Oakland, they concluded. But they waited in vain. Kirkham never did arrive in
California.
In haste they named the Rev.
H. B. Sheldon to do the Oakland preaching. Sheldon lost his voice and was
unable to continue.
The next man expected to
supply Oakland was a Rev. J. A. Brooks. Whether he shied at the bleak outlook
due to the experiences of the Rev. Higbie and the Rev. Deal we don’t know.
There is no record of his service in Oakland.
By the time the 1861
Conference was held not a vestige remained of anything like organization in
Oakland, and Methodism was represented here only by a few individuals who held
membership in San Francisco.
Nevertheless, in the fall of
1861 the Rev. Charles V. Anthony and Rev. James E. Wickes were appointed to the
Alameda Circuit, which still embraced Oakland. Under their labor preaching was
revived in Oakland and services were held every Sabbath for some months in the
Alameda County Agricultural Pavilion on Broadway between Fourth and Fifth
Streets.
In the spring of 1862 the
Rev. Mr. Walsworth, pastor of the Presbyterian Church in Oakland, tendered the
society the use of his edifice. The offer was accepted, but the change did not
prove advantageous: especially later when the hour of service was changed to
evenings by request.
Page 8
The hotel was on the southwest corner of
Broadway and First Street.
A.
W. Burrell built it in 1851 for A. D. Eames.
B.
It was Pullen’s Temperance Hotel when the Rev. Charles
E. Rich used the lobby for a Sunday School in 1862.
At that time the Methodist
class numbered 15 members. While the faithful were less than a dozen and a half,
the struggle for attention continued. Oakland was a growing community. The
Presbyterians, Congregationalists, Baptists and Episcopalians, who were here
ahead of the Methodists, were faring better.
When the town was first
incorporated in 1852 Horace W. Carpentier, A. W. Burrell, Andrew J. Moon, Edson
Adams, Sr., Amadee Marier and Francis K. Shattuck were named trustees. The
following year, 1853, Alameda County was established from part of Contra Costa
County and a small portion of Santa Clara County. One year later, March 1854,
Oakland was incorporated into a city and Horace W. Carpentier named mayor.
It must be noted that A. W.
Burrell built Oakland’s first hotel for A. D. Eames in 1851 at what is now
First Street and Broadway. By 1862 this was Pullen’s Temperance Hotel, and the
Rev. C. E. Rich, the man who established Oakland’s First Methodist Church,
conducted a Sunday School in the hotel.
Page 9
The church was erected at Sixth and
Harrison Streets in 1853.
Dr. Samuel B. Bell’s manse is on the
right. Rev. Charles E. Rich used the church for Methodist service on several
occasions at the invitation of the Presbyterians.
The Rev. Rich was assigned to
Oakland by the Methodist Conference in 1862 and first preached in the one-room
public schoolhouse built for Oakland by Horace W. Carpentier. The school at
that time stood at Fourth and Clay Streets.
By December of 1862 the Rev.
Rich had acquired the southwest corner of Sixth and Washington Streets.
Meanwhile two new public schools had been built and Rich bought the old
Carpentier school, moving it to the Sixth and Washington Street lot. There he
transformed it into a permanent church.
By this time Oakland had already
admired a parade of six mayors and now George M. Blake was the city’s chief
executive. Among the six mayors had been Andrew Williams, stepfather of Bret
Harte, a youth who was to take up the pen and become world famous as a teller
of western tales.
The Williams’ home where Bret
Harte lived was but a few blocks from where Rev. Rich established the First
Methodist Church. Harte didn’t stay in Oakland long. He arrived in 1854 and by
1856 he left to make his own way. He departed Oakland the same year Dr. Carter
began teaching Sunday School in the rear room of his drug store on Broadway at
Third Street.
In 1862 when the Rev. Rich
established the First Methodist Church at Sixth and Washington Streets,
Oakland’s population was a mere 1,450 residents. But the growing community
boasted that it was No. 31 on the list of California’s biggest towns.
Communities that were larger than Oakland that year included Downieville, Dutch
Flat, Placerville, Nevada City and Mokelumne Hill.
Page 10
Oakland traded Horace W. Carpentier its
waterfront for this one-room schoolhouse.
It stood at the northeast corner of
Fourth and Clay Streets when the Methodists bought it in 1862 and moved it to
Sixth and Washington Streets, where it became their First Church.
Compare it today with the massive
edifice on Broadway at 24th and Webster Streets.
Town talk centered on the
coming of railroads and street cars. The San Francisco & Oakland Railroad
Company had been granted a right of way along Railroad Avenue (Seventh Street)
from the eastern boundary to the western boundary in November, 1861. The choice
of a lot for his church just a block from the proposed railroad gives some idea
of the Rev. Rich’s business acumen.
The Rev. Rich was 29 when he came
to Oakland. He was born in Boston on October 1, 1833, and had been in
California in 1854 when he was but 21 years old, but returned to Boston to
study at Harvard under Louis Agassiz. He was also a pupil and protégé of the
Rev. Edward Everett Hale. Before coming to California the second time Rev. Rich
was a licensed preacher. He joined the California Conference in 1858.
After paying $225 for the
Oakland lot on which to build the church Rev. Rich next negotiated the purchase
of the old Carpentier schoolhouse and had it removed to his new possession. The
cost of fitting up the new church was a reported $525. It was incorporated
October 21, 1862, and was dedicated December 14, 1862, by the Rev. M. C. Briggs
and the Rev. J. D. Blain.
Transcribed
by: Jeanne Sturgis Taylor.
Source: Norman, Albert E., “A Steeple Among The
Oaks, A Centennial History of the First Methodist Church, Oakland, CA,
1862-1962. Oakland, California. 1962.
© 2010 Jeanne Sturgis Taylor.
GOLDEN NUGGET LIBRARY'S
ALAMEDA COUNTY DATABASES
