09 Sep On This Day in UB History: September 9 (Stan Peters)

Dr. C. Stanley Peters

On September 9, 1959, the name “C. Stanley Peters” first appeared on the masthead as editor of the United Brethren magazine. And there it remained for 22 years, until December 1981, as he oversaw publication of 491 issues of the magazine.

Stan, as everyone knew him, grew up as a UB preacher’s kid. His father, J. Clair Peters, was managing a furniture plant in Hagerstown, Md., but resigned that position in 1926 to prepare for the ministry. He bundled up the family—wife and three children, Stan being the oldest—and moved to Indiana that year to attend Huntington College. Eighteen years later, Stan himself headed off to Huntington College, graduating in 1944 with majors in math and science. He then taught junior high and high school for two years.

In June 1945, Stan married Lola Lee Stites, whom he had met at college. Later that summer, Stan received his quarterly conference license to preach from the North Avenue UB church in Baltimore, Md. He received a Master of Divinity degree from Huntington College’s seminary in 1949, and was ordained in 1950 by Bishop A.M. Johnson. In 1974, Huntington College awarded him an honorary Doctor of Divinity degree.

In 1948, while still a seminary student, Stan began three years as pastor of Third Street UB church in Fort Wayne, Ind. (now it’s called Anchor Community Church). The congregation, which had been meeting in a basement, erected its present sanctuary during that time. Next, he served the St. Paul-Winchester circuit of Monroe, Ind., 1951-53, and then spent a year on the Berne circuit of Monroe and Geneva.

In 1954, Stan and Lola Lee began an exciting five years starting a new church in Kettering, Ohio. Stan visited hundreds of homes in the area, forming a prospect list of over 200 names on whom he concentrated. The congregation grew steadily. In 1959, a Christian education unit was completed under Stan’s leadership.

After 10 years in the pastorate, Stan Peters accepted the editorship of the United Brethren publishing house in 1959.

Over the years, Stan had accumulated a variety of experience in many aspects of the printing business. While in high school, he worked for a local newspaper, gaining experience in nearly every aspect of the operation. He ran his own small printshop during his senior year of high school, using a small letterpress in the upper story of a bank back of their property to crank out letterhead, envelopes, calling cards, and other printing jobs. As a college student, he worked in the college printshop and later in the denominational printshop. He even worked as a pressman in Berne, Ind., while in the pastorate. So he had been around the business.

As editor, Peters wrote, edited, and designed the various publications, including the United Brethren magazine and the Sunday school materials for adults and youth. He also worked on special publications, such as the UB Discipline and the UB hymnal. He traveled throughout the US and Ontario promoting the magazine and Sunday school literature, and helped oversee construction of the new UB headquarters building in 1976.

Stan served the church with dedication and humility. He passed away at age 91 on June 9, 2014.

06 Sep On This Day in UB History: September 6 (Joseph Gomer)

Joseph and Mary Gomer

Joseph Gomer passed away on September 6, 1892. At that point, he and his wife, Mary, had served under the United Brethren mission board in Sierra Leone for 22 years, superintending our work there the entire time. They were very, very good years. “Within United Brethren mission history,” wrote David Datema in 2016 for a college paper, “the Gomers stand out as elite missionaries.”

We established mission work in Sierra Leone in 1857, but our early efforts were frustrating and virtually fruitless. When the Gomers arrived in January 1871, we had been without missionaries for two years and had almost pulled out altogether. But almost immediately after the Gomers arrived, the work took off. Later that first year came the conversion of the powerful local chief, Thomas Stephen Caulker, who had been a thorn in the side to missionaries. Caulker and others told the Gomers, “We now see that Christianity isn’t just a white man’s religion.”

You see, the Gomers were black–the first black United Brethren missionaries.

Joseph Gomer grew up on a farm near Battle Creek, Mich., and despite the prejudice of white classmates, managed to get some schooling. He served as a cook during the Civil War. After being honorably discharged in 1865, he boarded a riverboat headed for Dayton, Ohio. On board he met a widow named Mary Green, who was also a gifted singer. After reaching Dayton, they were married. Joseph found work as a carpet layer, and later worked as a foreman in a mercantile house. He and Mary became leaders in Third United Brethren Church, a predominantly black congregation in Dayton which Miami Conference had started in 1858 as a mission project.

The Gomers applied for missionary service, but were initially rejected. Historian and former bishop William Hanby implied that their race had something to do with it, but it may have been more a case of Gomer not being a minister and lacking in education. Whatever the case, the Mission board was urged to reconsider the Gomers.

Joseph Gomer was perfect. He was a diplomat, a teacher, a peacemaker among the warring tribes. He became highly respected, and umpired many disputes among the Africans. He taught farming methods, which were applied on the mission’s 40-acre farm (produce, over 5000 coffee and cocoa trees, plus some animals). In 1875, he organized the first United Brethren church in Sierra Leone.

History writers note their abilities, their dedication to the work, and their spiritual fervor. But they also cite the Gomers’ skin color as a crucial difference-maker.

According to David Datema, the Gomers went to Africa during a window of time in the 1800s during which white Christians were open to sending blacks as missionaries–but a window which didn’t stay open long. Datema wrote, “For black Americans serving under white mission boards, signs of racism were prevalent and included lower pay, longer terms, shorter and less frequent furloughs, less promotion, and less educational benefits offered to their children.” Eventually, American mission boards reverted to preferring white missionaries.

Datema noted that the longest term served during that period by a white UB missionary was 3.5 years, compared to terms of six, six, and ten years for the Gomers. Two other African-American UB missionaries appointed during this time were sent for at least five-year terms. So there’s something there. But the Gomers’ longevity in superintending the field–over 20 years–does speak to the confidence placed in them by the UB Mission board.

By 1892, Joseph Gomer’s health was failing and he was planning to retire as mission superintendent. He and Mary had gone to Freetown with a couple who were sailing back to America. At the end of the day, wrote historian J. S. Mills, “in less than an hour Mr. Gomer was seized with apoplexy, and before medical help arrived, though delayed but a few minutes, the soul of the good man had gone to God.”

Mary Gomer stayed in Sierra Leone until 1894, and then returned to the States, where she died on December 1, 1896.

David Datema wrote of Joseph Gomer, “He was without doubt the one missionary that rescued the United Brethren mission from almost certain failure….It is doubtful whether the United Brethren have since produced a better missionary….Today in Sierra Leone, the signature work of the Gomers lives on in thousands of lives who have never heard of them.”

04 Sep On This Day in UB History: September 4 (The Hazzards)

Rev. B. O. and Margaret Hazzard

Rev. B. O. Hazzard was born around 1872, and felt God calling him to Africa. He originally served in the Congo, but repeated malaria attacks forced him to return to America. There, he met and married Margaret Muirhead, a Scottish-born woman whose parents had immigrated in 1880 and started a farm in Ohio. They were married on August 15, 1900, in Portage, Ohio.

Both B. O. and Margaret felt God calling them to missionary service. They ended up going with the United Brethren in Christ, sailing from New York on September 31 (just six weeks after their wedding) and arriving in Sierra Leone on November 14. His job was to build a girls’ home at the Danville station in Gbangbaia for the Women’s Missionary Association–what would eventually become the Minnie Mull School for Girls. Margaret would care for the children residing there.

Mission director Daniel Flickinger wrote, “Mr. Hazzard did well in managing business matters and in holding meetings and getting the people aroused to a sense of duty. Some were converted and brought into the service of the Master through his labors.”

Margaret became paralyzed in July 1901 and, a few weeks later, was taken to Freetown. Since the hospital couldn’t treat her, Rev. Hazzard put her on a steamship bound for England. They had been married just 11 months. It was the last time they would see each other.

Margaret arrived in Liverpool on September 4 and was soon diagnosed with berri berri, which affects the nerves. She began nearly two years of hospitalization. Meanwhile Rev. Hazzard kept working. The school was ready for occupancy in December 1901. The plan was for him to eventually travel to Scotland to be reunited with his wife. But that never happened. He was stricken with blackwater fever, and died in Gbangbaia in July 1902.

According to George Fleming, Margaret spent a total of 21 months hospitalized, until the spring of 1903, followed by six months of continued recuperation with relatives in Scotland. Of the little we know of Margaret after that, it doesn’t include Sierra Leone. She apparently returned to Ohio and, in 1930, at age 56, married a Missouri farmer named Thomas Grubb. It appears that she died in Ohio on August 12, 1957, and was buried in Cuyahoga County, Ohio; census data lists her husband, Thomas Grubb, as a carpenter in building construction.

Although the Hazzards’ time in Sierra Leone was very short, it lives on through the Minnie Mull School, which over the years has touched the lives of thousands of Sierra Leonean girls.