The 1954
year was momentous for our family, even if we did not know all the implications
at the time. It was my first year as a Mennonite, well sort of becoming a
Mennonite, and my last year as an Amish child, again sort of leaving the Amish.
Later in life, I’ve often been fascinated by why this change occurs that people
make the fairly radical shift of changing churches—especially if it is a close
church community such as the Amish. In retrospect the change was probably
inevitable, a mix of my father’s religious and cultural aspirations. I’ll note
several events that year, none of which is the sole explanation.
This year I
entered the fifth grade and the teacher was Ida Rumbaugh, Nellie Siegenthaler’s
sister and was equally strict and good. One morning she showed new library
books, pointing out one which may be of special interest. This small book had
two Amish boys on the cover, and I had earlier seen it in my father’s bookstore
Goodwill Book Exchange. It was Amish Life
(1952) by John A. Hostetler, and I did not expect to see one of my father’s
books in the school library. And I also knew the author because John A. Hostetler had visited our home. At recess I
went up to the table and looked at the book and its photos and drawings in a
new way. It was also the first time I was aware of anyone being interested in
the Amish, except of course God and the Amish themselves.
Anyway, there
were occasional Parent Teacher Association (PTA) meetings in the evenings, and
my parents would go. Both parents attended off and on, but I remember
especially Andrew at those meetings; he visited with Roy Stallman, our principal;
Ida Rumbaugh, my teacher; and Dale Stutzman, (my brother Paul’s Mennonite teacher).
Both parents respected our teachers, but Andrew seemed to consider them his peers,
perhaps thinking back of his favorite teacher Clarence Zuercher.
About this
same time, I went with Andrew to Millersburg to see the attorney Elmo M. Estill
who was also the Holmes County common pleas judge from 1937 to 1955. My father
showed the attorney his tax forms, and the farm generally showed very little net
income, but it was good work for us boys and fed our growing family. Judge
Estill reviewed the tax form page for a few minutes, and handed it back to
Andrew. “That looks about right, Andy.”
It was never
clear to me whether my father really wanted information from Judge Estill or whether
he mainly wanted to show his sons that attorneys are important. The same was
true when my father cultivated friendships with professionals such as the
editor Paul Erb, the physician Charles Hart, the banker Alvin Ruess and the merchant
Lewis Beech. With most of these people, there was an explicit Christian bond,
but what was also clear was that Andrew admired people who were professional
leaders. It was as though he considered them his peers, had he had the
opportunity for more formal schooling. The implicit message to his children was
that we should achieve such education and professions.
Even an
intellectual hermit could count for this relationship. One day we went to Berlin,
and my Father stopped in to visit James H. Miller (1884-1964) who had a clock
and watch repair business, but what interested my father was that James
Miller’s house was full of books and magazines of natural history. James Miller
patiently showed us some of his arrow heads and stacks and stacks of books and magazines.
When we left, it was clear that the visit was for our (boys’) benefit as Andrew
confided to us that James Miller was one of the best educated people in Holmes
County. I later learned that Miller had studied at the College of Wooster and
had earlier been a teacher and superintendent in the Eastern Holmes County
school district. I don’t think our father ever came right out and said it, but
the message was repeated many times in my childhood. Andrew and Mattie wanted
their children to have more formal schooling than they had and to enter the
professions.
Andrew also preferred
cars and tractors to horses; this may seem strange to his grandchildren who
remember when Andrew as their elderly grandfather who had a pony and would
often take them for rides in his cart. Perhaps by the 1980s a pony was a hobby
for Andrew, but in 1954 my father was eager to exchange horses for a 1948
Ford-Ferguson tractor and a 1949 Plymouth automobile. This was the last year of
our draft horse team of geldings Bob and Dick and our road mare Bess, so we’ll
honor their memory. Our draft horses were studies in contrast. Dick was a good
natured, reddish-colored Belgian, and we boys could pull his mane or ride him
and he never bit or bucked. Even though he was a large draft horse, he seemed be
able to do anything whether pulling a garden cultivator, pulling our surrey
with the high step of a Standardbred on Sundays or putting up with Bob during
the week.
Dick was
generally teamed with Bob, but even to call them a team was a stretch, because
if Dick was a Hebrew and a Christian, Bob was a Philistine and a pagan. Bob was
known for kicking, biting, overworking (and then trembling), and being
generally unpredictable. He looked like a wannabe Percheron from Hades. Finally
there was Bess, our sure-footed little trotter who pulled the surrey and buggy,
without incident and accident, causing little David to quip: “Bess net lip.” (Bess does not slip). Whatever
good feelings the horses engendered from Mattie and us boys, I always thought
Andrew saw them as a burden, more than as beasts of burden.
During this transition
time we boys were ready for the car and tractor, and drove at every
opportunity. Andrew and Mattie purchased our Plymouth in April and on Sunday afternoons
when our parents went to fellowship meetings, they sometimes combined transportation
with Homer Dotson, a seeking soul from Columbiana County. We took the
opportunity to take whichever car was left behind (Dotson’s old Chevrolet or the
family Plymouth) for rides around the countryside. Paul at the ripe age of 13 would
put cushions on the seat to see over the steering wheel (I don’t remember how
he managed the pedals), and we would all get in and make a round trip up the
Fredricksburg Road to Arthur E. Parrots, then head south up over the hill
circling back down to the Benton Road and home. It was quite a ride and all
went okay, until one Sunday, Paul lost his nerve
on the first curve and we ended up in the ditch.
We quickly
went up to the barn and harnessed Dick and Bob who rescued us, pulling the car
out of the ditch. The car had little damage except tearing off the chrome at
the bottom of the passenger door which we put back on as best we could. Paul
drove the car back and parked it, and we returned the Dick and Bob to the barn.
Neighbor John M. Miller came by and dutifully reported the accident to our
parents. Nothing much came out of it except guilty consciences by little boys and
some smoldering resentment toward our neighbor (who we now called Mountain Lion)
for what we thought was too eagerly reporting on us.
The Plymouth
soon had lots of use. By summer my parents, Paul, and baby Rhoda (nine months
old) were on their way to Harrison, Arkansas, to visit a voluntary service unit
which the Mission Interests Committee had set up at Hillcrest Home, a county
old people’s home. But the trip and the stories which came out of it became
important in our family lore not for the Harrison destination but the trip
itself. We were regaled with stories of their singing as they crossed the
rivers (the big Ohio, Mississippi, Missouri and some smaller ones). They would
sing gospel river songs, and I imagined the big broad rivers with a little
Plymouth of singing Millers.
And they
reported of their memorable visit to an eccentric and short-lived Amish
settlement in Hohenwald, Tennessee. Here in the Tennessee hills (high forests)
lived the Rudolph (Rudy) and Susie Wickey family and the Paul Martin family.
Andrew and Mattie used to call him “flee to the hills Wickey” based on Wickey’s
interpretation of the Luke 21:21 verse which says that in the latter days,
those in Judea should flee to the hills. Even though Wickey wanted to flee from
the apparently degenerate Wayne County in 1947, he drew considerable attention
when he and wife Susie and five little children left Wooster with an overloaded
homemade covered wagon with two horses pulling, and a buggy and pony hitched
behind.
By the time
the unusual caravan reached Millersburg and good-natured neighbors and
passersby had helped to push the wagon up the steep hills for the outmatched
horses, the Holmes County sheriff and probate judge were waiting for Wickey.
The county officials tried to convince him that he was endangering his family
as well as his horses, and even tried to get the local Amish ministers to
mediate but to no avail. Finally, they convinced Wickey to send Susie and the children
by train along with some of the heavy household items, and then he could
continue. Rudy then continued on his 550-mile trip alone, arousing newspaper coverage
all along the way, and when he reached Tennessee, the Associated Press picked
up the story announcing to the nation that Wickey had arrived to the Tennessee
hills.
Our family reports had the Wickeys all barefoot, and that the doors of
old refrigerators served as paneling for the inside walls of their house. They
raised some chickens for food and eggs, and the children had to check for eggs
on the hour in order to get them before the black snakes ate them. Mattie especially
with her practical instincts described the Wickeys and Martins as “poor as mice”
and saw them as a cautionary story of religious extremism. John R. Martin
of Old Order Mennonite background was of a literary bent like Andrew and had just
published a booklet called Der Schmale
Weg (The Narrow Road). Our family had visited just in time because the
settlement was finished by the next year 1955 when everyone moved away. The
John R. Martin family’s next stop of the narrow way was in Mexico.
But the
biggest impulse in my father in life was always religious, and he gave full reign
to it by publishing his own periodical and buying land for his own church.
Within six months after discontinuing the printing of Witnessing, Andrew was writing and publishing his own about
bi-weekly publication, a small four-page mimeographed piece called Christian Fellowship Review. On the
masthead, he published its mission: “Christian
Fellowship Review is published in the interest of the Full Gospel, as
taught and practiced by Christ, the Apostles, and early Christians; the
spreading of its message, and the benefits of its precepts.” The early issues
give some sense for where Andrew was now giving his religious energy, at home.
Several
themes stand out from the 21 issues of the Review
which were issued that first year. First it was a personal call for Christians to work at home
and with what is near at hand, an “everyday life of love and humble service one
to another.” An issue began with “A Kitchen Prayer” with rhyming lines: “Pray,
let me serve by getting meals and washing up the plates,/ By scouring pots and
pans and things from early until late.” And ends with this couplet: “Thou who
didst love to give men food, in room or by the sea, /Accept this service that I
do… as unto Thee.” Although Andrew’s publication honored domestic and household
duties, he himself kept the traditional gender roles and never helped in the
kitchen.
But a
direction was clear.
Andrew says that mission boards and international relief
efforts have their place and acknowledges an “Elijah or a Paul, or a more
modern Moody or Menno Simons.” But still, he says, “our point is that everyday
unnoticed service becometh every child of God.” (All quotes and underlining
here are from the April 4, 1954, issue.) Throughout rest of the year, this
theme runs through the issues, noting Andrew’s shift to working locally in Holmes
County rather than with the North American Mission Interests Committee and with
a national publication such as Witnessing
or Herald der Wahrheit.
A second
part of this personal and local focus is quite literal; Andrew is the now the publisher,
editor, writer and printer of the publication. He does it all and no one
controls him. Even when others write for the publication, he inserts comments or
additions at will. When B.Y. of Virginia in “Review Readers Write” (May 16,
1954, page 3) says that we can be redeemed by Jesus and “We do have much
evidence of His power yet today.” Andrew inserts ”(Yes, ‘Jesus is the same
yesterday, today, and forever,’ the Bible says, Ed.)” He regularly helps his writers
by inserting an “Ed” and parenthesis. For example, his fellow-Holmes County
mission interests friend Yost H. Miller writes an article (May 23, 1954, pages
1-4) on where we stand before God and asks: “Have I honestly accepted Christ as
my offering for sin (and Lord of my life, Ed.) and therefore my only hope of
salvation?”
Theologically,
Andrew is now combining a historic Anabaptist emphasis with a twentieth century
Pentecostalism. References to the Martyrs
Mirror, persecution, and separation continue, and the key verse on the
front page is 1 John 1:7: “If we walk in the Light as he is in the Light we
have fellowship with one another and the blood of Jesus Christ cleanseth us
from all sin.” But many references to the Pentecostal language of full Gospel, always
capped Full Gospel also appear. On the November 21 issue’s front page, Andrew
would insert: “Published in the interest of the Full Gospel from an unsectarian
and impartial viewpoint.” Favorite texts came from the first several chapters
of Acts on the early New Testament Church.
Finally by
the end of the year, Christian Fellowship
Review became a voice for the local congregation Andrew began: Maple Grove
Mission. In the summer of 1954, Andrew and Mattie purchased three acres and an
abandoned school house west of Millersburg near Paint Valley. By August they
were holding services at the building with people who had attended the earlier
Sunday afternoon Fellowship Meetings and neighbors such as Lorie C. Gooding. Andrew
and Mattie transferred their church membership to the Pleasant View
Conservative Mennonite Church near Berlin with the understanding that they work
at the Maple Grove Mission.
By December
19, when Andrew issued the last Christian
Fellowship Review of the year, he had produced 21 numbers, sending out
about 300 copies per issue. In his year-end note, Andrew thanked the faithful
contributors who shared about half of the expense of mailings. He noted that
the cost is about one dollar per name per year and that “Less than that
threatens its discontinuation or fewer issues.”
By the end
of the year, Andrew also sent a resignation letter to the Amish Mission
Interest Committee, noting that the reasons are “numerous and too lengthy to
discuss here. They are largely circumstantial developments locally which we
have accepted as the Lord’s supreme will.” The full-page letter continues “My
wife and I with some others are laboring and associated with the work at Maple
Grove Gospel Mission [and] have been publically accepted and recognized as in
full fellowship with the Conservative Mennonite Church.” Andrew says their
decision has given them “unspeakable happiness and joy in the Lord,” but he has
continued interest in the committee’s work, wishing the members well, thanking
them for their kindness and cooperation, and finally asking for mutual
forgiveness and forbearance where their views had differed.
Still the
farewell had to be bitter sweet for Andrew, knowing that he had become a
liability to the committee similar to Russell Manaiaci who a year earlier
Andrew had helped to remove. A week before Andrew had sent the letter, the
committee had met in Chicago and had already accepted his resignation de facto by his absence. At this point
the committee’s intention was to work within an Amish framework, not to
serve as a vehicle to transfer to the Mennonites or much less to begin one’s
own church. Andrew confided to Gertrude Enders Huntington that when he “was put
under the ban for joining the Conservative Church,” members of the [Witnessing] staff severed all connection
with him. His articles were not published, and his subscription to Witnessing stopped abruptly. Enders
Huntington concludes: “He commented with considerable feeling that they no
longer wanted to have anything to do with him.”
Perhaps
Andrew’s transition was summarized best by his friend and Indiana confidante Harvey
Graber who wrote two years later: “Andrew A. Miller was lost to the new
movement because he found it impossible to labor on under the control of the
Amish church. He was very active in the mission movement before he left the
church in the spring of 1954.” Mattie and family members and the Mennonite
bishop Harry Stutzman might have added that Andrew found it impossible to labor
under the control of any organization, whether church or otherwise. Andrew may not
have agreed with Henry David Thoreau’s theology, but every instinct in him led
him to live Thoreau’s philosophy: "If a man loses pace with his
companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to
the music which he hears, however measured, or far away. "
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