05 May On This Day in UB History: May 5 (Bishop Edwards)

David Edwards, Bishop 1849-1876

On May 5, 1816, David Edwards was born in Wales. He would become one of our longest-serving bishops–27 years, 1849-1876–and one of the most influential. During that time, he played a role in starting our first college, a seminary, our missionary society, and our denominational publication and publishing house. A fellow bishop remarked, “I have looked upon Bishop Edwards on every side. He is the best man this Church has ever yet had. It has never seen his like; it will be years before it finds his equal.”

Edwards’ family came to America when he was five years old, lived two years in Baltimore, and in 1823 moved into Ohio. He was converted at age 18 in a United Brethren meeting, and a year later, in 1835, he was licensed to preach. They didn’t dilly dally back then.

Edwards was assigned to the Brush Creek circuit, which included 28 appointments spread over five counties; he traveled 360 miles making one round. For the next several years, he was assigned to a different circuit each year. In 1839 he married Lucretia Hibbard, whose father was both a lawyer and a United Brethren minister; her brother was also a UB minister, and a sister married a UB minister.

Like many ministers back then, Edwards had very little formal education but was an avid self-learner, constantly reading on horseback and wherever he found to stop for the night. He began to be noticed as a young preacher of tremendous potential, described as studious, a powerful preacher, prudent, methodical, and fearless.

The 1845 General Conference elected him as editor of The Religious Telescope, the denominational publication. During the next four years, he put the Telescope on solid financial footing, and took it from semi-monthly to weekly. As editor, he strongly defended the church’s stands against slavery, alcohol, and Freemasonry.

Edwards was also a zealous advocate of entire sanctification; holiness of heart and life became a central theme throughout the rest of his ministry. Wrote biographer Henry Adams Thompson doubted that anyone else could explain entire sanctification “more clearly, more profoundly, and in a way less liable to objection.” He said many other “best minds in the church” embraced the doctrine.

Historian John Lawrence said Edwards tended to come across as “unnecessarily rigid” because of his stern adherence to his convictions, and that the “set of his teeth” seemed to say, “You can neither coax nor drive me from what I believe to be right.”

In 1849, at age 33, Edwards was elected bishop, and continued in that role until age 60. During his last term, he suffered much from illness–cancer, probably, which advanced quickly and painfully. He died June 6, 1876, with one year left in his seventh term.

Thompson wrote, “However much good men may have differed with him in their views, none doubted the purity of his motives or the uprightness of his character. As a preacher he had few, if any, superiors in the church….He knew how to live and walk by faith….He would not only urge the ministry to try to do more and better work for the Master, but he led them by precept and example in the doing of it.”

04 May On This Day in UB History: May 4 (Old Otterbein Church)

Old Otterbein Church in Baltimore, Md.

On May 4, 1774, William Otterbein became pastor of the Howard’s Hill church in Baltimore, Md. He remained there for 39 years, until his death in 1813. All that time, he also provided leadership to the United Brethren movement he and Martin Boehm had launched in 1767.

Otterbein was coming into a messy situation, and he knew it. The German Reformed church in Baltimore had gone through a nasty split, with various accusations flying around. The church’s more evangelical element split off, bought property, and built their own church, which became known as Howard’s Hill.

In 1773, Otterbein was asked, at least twice, to come pastor the church. The first time, he said no. The second time, he said he would go IF the German Reformed synod approved; they didn’t.

Francis Asbury, a young Methodist leader who had been in America for three years, was asked to write a letter to Otterbein, asking him to come pastor Howard’s Hill. Asbury hadn’t yet met Otterbein, but had heard a lot about him. How much the letter helped, we don’t know. But three months later, Otterbein became the pastor (despite the synod’s continuing disapproval). And he and Asbury became close friends.

Howard’s Hill was essentially a independent church which maintained nominal ties to the German Reformed denomination (which had little or no authority). Otterbein himself kept his German Reformed credentials, but was not considered a minister in good standing. He had other things on his agenda. Most ministers were assigned from the United Brethren ranks.

In 1949, the church united with the Pennsylvania Conference of the Evangelical United Brethren Church. That denomination, in 1968, merged into today’s United Methodist Church.

Today, that church is called Old Otterbein Church. Their website says, “Old Otterbein Church is the mother church of the United Brethren in Christ and the oldest church edifice in continuous use in the city of Baltimore.” Otterbein is buried in the church yard.

03 May On This Day in UB History: May 3 (Turmoil in Sierra Leone)

Mary Mullen (upper left) and the five missionaries murdered at Rotufunk. Top: Isaac and Mary Cain. Bottom (l-r): Dr. Henrietta Hatfield, Dr. Mary Archer, and Ella Schenk.

May 3–two days, 94 years apart, both set amidst national upheaval in Sierra Leone. A day of tragedy for missionaries, and a day of rescue.

On May 3, 1898, five missionaries with the “liberal” United Brethren church were massacred in Sierra Leone. Two more were soon murdered elsewhere. Just like that, seven of the eight missionaries supported by the Women’s Missionary Association were dead. Killed in the Hut Tax War, which was sparked by grievances against the British government.

Although our denominations had split nine years earlier, the ties ran deep, and our goal was the same–to evangelize the people of Sierra Leone.

None of our own missionaries perished. Mary Mullen, who had arrived six months before, served by herself at Momaligi. She found herself at the hands of five young men brandishing blood-stained clubs and swords, which they had used to massacre people in another village. As she sat in her house awaiting her fate, a boat carrying five well-armed policemen pulled up to the wharf. She ran to the boat, and they quickly pushed off. Before long, Mullen was on a ship to England.

UB missionaries Daniel and Elizabeth Wilberforce, along with their four children, fled into the bush as a war party approached Gbangbaia. They hid for several days as warriors passed closely by. The mission buildings at both Momaligi and Gbangbaia were destroyed.

The five Americans at Rotufunk fled into the bush, but were caught. As the rebels surrounded them, Rev. Isaac Cain, standing next to his wife, reportedly held a revolver in his hand. He threw it aside and stated, “I will not have any man’s blood on my hands.”

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30 Apr On This Day in UB History: May 1 (Orville Merillat)

Orville and Ruth Merillat

On May 1, 1916, Orville Merillat was born on a farm in Tedrow, Ohio, the seventh of 15 children.

In 1946, after returning from ship-board service in the Pacific during World War II, Orville and his wife, Ruth, opened a small wood-working shop in their garage in Adrian, Mich. It eventually grew into Merillat Industries, the world’s largest maker of cabinets, with a dozen plants around the country. About his revolutionary innovations, Orville humbly deadpanned, “I’ve been blessed with some good ideas.”

Orville and Ruth, members of Trentons Hills UB church in Adrian, Mich., sold the company in 1985 and started the Merillat Foundation. With their personal involvement in the company decreasing, they focused on giving money away. Their philanthropic generosity included Focus on the Family, World Vision, Youth for Christ, and many other colleges and ministries.

Within the United Brethren church, there were many beneficiaries — local churches, camps, missions work, church planting, and the national office and its ministries. But no entity benefited more than Huntington College.

Their first gift to Huntington College, in 1968, was cabinets for a house the college owned. In 1972 they led the campaign for a new athletic complex. During the 1980s and 1990s, nearly every new building and campus improvement received funding from the Merillat Foundation. Several major buildings bear their name — the Merillat Centre for the Arts, the Merillat Physical Education Complex, and the RichLyn library (named after their two children, Richard and Lynette).

Orville’s office at the Christian Family Centre in Adrian was adorned with items bearing the Huntington College name and logo. He and Ruth wanted Huntington College to prosper — not only because it was their denomination’s college, but because they believed in its mission.

Having completed just six months of high school, yet becoming a multi-millionaire, Orville could easily have said, “Who needs college? You can succeed without a college degree. I did.” But you heard nothing of the sort from him. Rather, he said, “I have seen the value of higher education in people who have worked for us.” Some of them were Huntington College products.

Ruth added, “We want to help our country, and we can only do it through young people. Our vision is Christian young people.”

Orville nodded in agreement. “They are the future.”

In 1987, Orville Merillat gave the Commencement address at Huntington College. He concluded with this:

You will find that people are unreasonable, illogical, and self-centered. But let God love them through you anyway.
If you do good, people will accuse you of ulterior motives. Do your best anyway.
If you are successful, you may win false friends and true enemies. Succeed anyway.
Honesty and frankness make you vulnerable. Be honest and frank anyway.
The good you do today will be forgotten tomorrow. Do good anyway. It’ll let you sleep at night.
The leaders of the biggest dreams can be shot down by those with the smallest minds. Think big anyway.
What you spend years building may be destroyed overnight. Build anyway.
Give the world the best you’ve got, and you may get kicked in the teeth. Give the world the best you’ve got, anyway.
In short, dare to be different from a lot of people you’ll run into.
If you do something worthy of remembrance, it’ll be remembered.

Orville Merillat passed away January 15, 1999.

30 Apr On This Day in UB History: April 30 (Pelley Murders)

From upper left: Jeff Pelley in 2006; the Pelley family (the four victims are in front); the Olive Branch parsonage.

On April 30, 1989, Pastor Robert Pelley didn’t show up for church at Olive Branch UB in Lakeville, Ind. (just south of South Bend). Eventually, two men went next door to the parsonage. They knocked several times, but got no response. The blinds were tightly drawn.

The found a spare key, entered the house…and discovered a grisly scene. Robert Pelley (38), lay dead in the upstairs hallway, killed with two deer slugs. In the basement were wife Dawn (32) and her two youngest daughters from a previous marriage, Janel (8) and Jolene (6). All had been shot in the head. Three children were not at home: Robert’s son Jeff and his sister Jacqueline, from a previous marriage, and Dawn’s daughter Jessica, 9. (Both Robert and Dawn were widows.)

Jeff Pelley, a 17-year-old high school senior, was always the leading suspect, but wasn’t arrested or charged. There just wasn’t sufficient evidence. He moved to Florida, developed a good career, married, had a child, and was teaching Sunday school.

Thirteen years passed. Then a Cold Case squad reopened the investigation. Jeff Pelley was arrested in August 2002 and charged with the four murders. In July 2006, he went on trial.

The evidence was very circumstantial. No murder weapon was ever found (Bob’s 20 gauge Mossberg was never located). No fingerprints linked Pelley to the crime itself. Rather, the prosecution relied on a carefully constructed timeline which put Jeff Pelley at the parsonage during a particular 20-minute period, during which he did a whole bunch of things (commit the murders, change clothes, load the washing machine, take a shower, locate and pick up the shell casings, draw the blinds, lock the doors, get rid of the gun and casings, and more).

Investigators said he was angry at his father for grounding him from attending pre- and post-prom activities, and from driving his car. After the killings, they said, he cleaned up, went to the prom with his girlfriend, stayed overnight with friends, and the next day went with friends to the Great America theme park in Chicago, where he was located on Sunday.

During the trial, Jeff Pelley’s attorneys insisted there wasn’t enough time for him to kill his family, do everything they claimed he did, and still make it to the prom, and that after committing an act like that, nobody would act normal, which is how friends testified that he acted during the prom events.

After a six-day trial which included nearly 40 witnesses, jurors deliberated for 34 hours and returned a guilty verdict. Pelley, now 34 years old, was sentenced to 160 years in prison (four consecutive 40-year sentences). A Court of Appeals reversed the conviction in 2008, but in 2009 the Indiana Supreme Court upheld the conviction. He is now incarcerated at the Wabash Correctional Facility near Terra Haute, Ind.

A book about the case, The Prom Night Murders, was published in 2009. A lengthy article appears here.