The Choctaw Freedmen | Page 9

They lived together in a little cabin near it. In the summer evenings they would often sit at the door of the cabin and sing their favorite plantation songs, learned in Mississippi in their early youth.
In 1871, when the Jubilee singers first visited Newark, New Jersey, Rev. Alexander Reid happened to be there and heard them. The work of the Jubilee singers was new in the North and attracted considerable and very favorable attention. But when Prof. White, who had charge of them, announced several concerts to be given in different churches of the city he added,
"We will have to repeat the Jubilee songs as we have no other."
When Mr. Reid was asked how he liked them he remarked, "Very well, but I have heard better ones."
When he had committed to writing a half dozen of the plantation songs he had heard "Wallace and Minerva" sing with so much delight at old Spencer Academy, he met Mr. White and his company in Brooklyn, New York, and spent an entire day rehearsing them. These new songs included,
"Steal away to Jesus." "The Angels are Coming," "I'm a Rolling," and "Swing Low."
"Steal Away to Jesus" became very popular and was sung before Queen Victoria.
The Hutchinson family later used several of them in their concerts, rendering "I'm a Rolling," with a trumpet accompaniment to the words:
"The trumpet sounds in my soul, I haint got long to stay here."
These songs have now been sung around the world.
When one thinks of the two old slaves singing happily together at the door of their humble cabin, amid the dreary solitudes of Indian Territory, and the widely extended results that followed, he cannot help perceiving in these incidents a practical illustration of the way in which our Heavenly Father uses "things that are weak," for the accomplishment of his gracious purposes. They also serve to show how little we know of the future use God will make of the lowly service any of us may now be rendering.
These two slaves giving expression to their devotional feelings in simple native songs, unconsciously exerted a happy influence, that was felt even in distant lands; an influence that served to attract attention and financial support to an important institution, established for the education of the Freedmen.
NEW SPENCER ACADEMY
In the fall of 1881 the Presbyterian Board of Foreign Missions re-established Spencer Academy in a new location where the postoffice was called, Nelson, ten miles southwest of Antlers and twenty miles west of old Spencer, now called Spencerville.
=Rev. Oliver P. Stark=, the first superintendent of this institution, died there at the age of 61, March 2, 1884. He was a native of Goshen, New York, and a graduate of the college and Theological Seminary at Princeton, N. J. In 1851, he was ordained by the Presbytery of Indian which, as early as 1840, had been organized to include the missions of the American Board.
As early as 1849, while he was yet a licentiate, he was commissioned as a missionary to the Choctaws, and, locating at Goodland, remained in charge of the work in that section until 1866, a period of seventeen years. During the next thirteen years he served as principal of the Lamar Female Seminary at Paris, Texas. His next and last work was the development of the mission school for the Choctaws at Nelson, which had formed a part of his early and long pastorate.
=Rev. Harvey R. Schermerhorn=, became the immediate successor of Mr. Stark as superintendent of the new Spencer Academy and continued to serve in that capacity until 1890, when the mission work among the Indians was transferred from the Foreign to the care of the Home Mission Board. The school was then discontinued and he became pastor of the Presbyterian church at Macalester. After a long and very useful career he is now living in retirement at Hartshorne.
These incidents, relating to the work of the Presbyterian church among the Indians, especially the Choctaws, have been narrated, because the men who had charge of these two educational institutions at Wheelock and Spencer Academies, were very helpful in effecting the organization of Presbyterian churches, the establishment of Oak Hill Academy and a number of neighborhood schools among the Freedmen in the south part of the Choctaw Nation.
DOAKSVILLE AND FORT TOWSON
Rev. Cyrus Kingsbury, an early Presbyterian missionary to the Choctaws, was located at Doaksville near old Fort Towson. He secured the erection of an ample church building and rendered many years of faithful service. He died and was buried in the cemetery at that place in 1870.
Doaksville, though no longer entitled to a place on the map, is the name of an important pioneer Indian village. Here the once proud and powerful Choctaws established themselves during the later twenties, and were regarded as happy and prosperous before the Civil War.
Fort Towson