LAWRENCE J. GUTTER Collection of Chicogoono THE UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS AT CHICAGO The University Library JOSEPH EDWIN ROY Digitized by tine Internet Arcliive in 2010 witli funding from CARLI: Consortium of Academic and Researcli Libraries in Illinois http://www.archive.org/details/josephedwinroy1800bart DSKI'II KDWIX It(»Y. JOSEPH EDWIN ROY 1827-1908 A FAITHFUL SERVANT OF GOD AND OF HIS OWN GENERATION A BRIEF BIOGRAPHY BY WILLIAM E. BARTON. D. D, WITH TRIBUTES FROM SOME OF THOSE WHO KNEW HIM PURITAN PRESS OAK PARK. ILL. 1908 CONTENTS. A SKETCH OF THE LIFE OF JOSEPH E. KOY, D. D. CHAPTER PAGE I. His Eaely Life 7 n. The Pilgrim Pastor 12 IIL With the American Missionary Association 22 IV. A Man of Vision 35 V. The Golden Wedding 38 VI. The Sunset and the Afterglow 43 ADDRESSES AT THE FUNEEAL. VII. An American Without Guile 49 Rev. Frank N. White, D. D. VIII. As His College Remembers Him 59 Pres. Thomas McClelland, President of Knox College. IX. A Friend of Humanity 54 Rev. Charles A. Ryder, D. D., Secretary of the A. M. A. X. A Servant of God and of His Generation 61 Rev. William E. Barton, D. D. TRIBUTES TO THE MEMORY OF DR. ROY. XI. As A Man and a Minister 68 Rev. F. A. Noble, D. D., at Chicago Ministers' Union. HI. As the Churches Knew Him 76 Rev. Simeon Gilbert, D. D., at Chicago Congre- gational Association. 5 6 CONTENTS. CHAPTER PAGE XIII. As A Man Among his Fellowmen 84 Eev. A. N. Hitchcock, D. D., at Chicago Con- gregational Club. XIV. As Home Missionary Superintendent 87 Eev. George T. MeCoUum, for the Illinois Home Missionary Society, XV. A Patriot and the Son of Patriots 89 The Illinois Society Sons of the American Eevolution. XVI, A Tribute from the Southland 94 XVII. Other Tributes 96 JOSEPH EDWIN ROY, D. D. A SKETCH OF HIS LIFE. I. HIS EAELY LIFE. Joseph Edwin Roy was born in Martinsburg, Ohio, February 7, 1827, and died in Oak Park, 111., March 4, 1908. He was the son of John Roy, a man of strong character, who later became a pioneer merchant in the Rock River town of Lyn- don. The family was of Huguenot descent and sprang from Joseph Roy, who fled from persecu- tion and came to Boston in 1711, and afterward lived in New Jersey. With this first Joseph came a young son John, who became an influential citi- zen in New Jersey, and was known as "Judge Roy.** He was a magistrate in colonial days, and more than one of his five sons, among them Jo- seph, the great-grandfather of Joseph Edwin, fought in the Revolution. On his mother's side also, Dr. Roy was of Revolutionary descent, being a great-grandson of Joseph Davis, a soldier from 7 8 JOSEPH EDWIN HOY Connecticut Farms, New York. The family was marked by enterprise, patriotism, religions earn- estness and stability of purpose. John Roy lived an active life at Lyndon, and his son Joseph shared with him in the vicissitudes and varieties of pioneer experience on the prair- ies. The father was not only a merchant but hotel keeper and county clerk. He was active in public affairs, and, even in that early day, was a temperance man and an abolitionist. He had been a school teacher, and his children inherited a love of learning. He had been a Presbyterian, but the church at Lyndon was Congregational, and he and his wife joined it, and there the son Joseph had his nurture in the Christian life. It was late in the fall of 1841 that he consciously entered the Christian life. He was then a boy of fourteen years, and was a clerk in his father's store, at Lyndon. His mother, whose maiden name was Elvira Davis, died in his early child- hood ; and his father married, in 1839, Martha J. Foster. She was of New England descent, and had been a school teacher; and she proved a good mother to her husband's children. It was a time of great agitations. The temperance movement was rising over the land, and the anti-slavery meetings were popular, and religious revivals fol- lowing the panic of 1837 swept through the new settlements. Dr. Eoy looked back upon his boy- JOSEPH EDWIN EOY 9 hood life in that frontier village, and said: ''I have often thought it a great Providential favor that I was taken out of the highly conservative atmosphere in Ohio, and set down in a place where the air was charged with revival and reform ideas.*' In the summer of 1840, he was much moved in a revival meeting conducted by an evangelist named Gallagher; and the following summer, learning that a session of the presbytery, which was to be held with the Congregational church at Lyndon, was to be followed by protracted meetings, he agreed with himself in advance to make that the time to become a Christian, but let the time go by. Some weeks of struggle fol- lowed, during which the step-mother and an aunt pleaded with him — the father being then absent on a journey to Ohio — and at length, by his own fireside, he confessed his faith in Christ, in a covenant which lasted through the years. The next night, in a young people's meeting, he made his public confession; and at the January com- munion of the Lyndon church, in 1842, he entered into fellowship with the Church. Almost immediately he decided to go into the ministry. The thought was suggested to him by his aunt, whom he looked upon as his spiritual mother. His father concurred in the plan, and Mr. Hazard, the pastor of the church, encouraged 10 JOSEPH EDWIN KOY it ; and, almost before the boy knew it, a boarding place had been secured for him in the academy at Geneseo, Illinois. He attended that school nine months, working for his board, sawing wood, milking cows, taking care of the horses, and in the summer time caring for the garden. He hauled lumber and worked as a carpenter, and mingled adventures of labor and travel with his lessons in Latin and Greek. He broke down in his first public declamation, but continued to practice speaking in public; and, on the Fourth of July, 1844, at a public celebration, he read the Declaration of Independence. On the very next day he started on horseback to Galesburg, to enter college. He forded the Green river on his way, and entered Galesburg in mud so deep that he had to leave the road and go through a field. Knox College was in its infancy. He boarded in a club, in which each boy furnished his share of the provisions, and the matron charged them 25 cents a week for cooking and serving. In the latter part of his college course he secured board at the rate of $1 a week in cash, or $1.12 if he paid in provisions. He worked through his vaca- tions in the hay field or the wagon shop, and in term time he sawed wood, hoed in gardens, and performed manual labor with the other young men of the school. Such work was common to JOSEPH EDWIN EOY 11 boys getting an education in those days, and it made strong men. While in college he was a charter member of the Adelphi Society and practiced public speak- ing. He records of himself that he was a "quiet, retiring youth, little given to social life, ' ' though already he had formed his acquaintance with Emily Stearns Hatch, whom later he was to marry. He playfully records that he could not have been lower down in his class than number four, as there were only three other members in the class. Following his graduation, he returned to his boyhood home in Lyndon, where he taught a public school. It was a large school, and most of the time he required an assistant. He had a few pupils in Latin and in Greek as well as those in the common branches, and occasionally he preached in some of the settlements not far from his boyhood home. He considered for a time the question of devoting his life to teaching, but held to his purpose to enter the ministry, and saved his money for a course of study in the theological seminary. On the one hundredth anniversary of the birth of his father, July 31, 1898, Dr. Roy published a memorial booklet entitled, ''Honor Thy Father." In it he told the story of his childhood home, and of the sturdy and honest pioneer who made that 12 JOSEPH EDWIN EOY home on the Illinois prairies. He also paid a warm tribute to the mother of his childhood, and to the step-mother, whom also he loved. In this he took occasion to rebuke the unjust and cruel sentiment that allows step-mothers to be made the butt of mirth and reproach. He said: ''I have made quite a close study of this mat- ter, and the mass of foster-mothers, as I have observed them, have been noble, self-forgetting, faithful and loving." It is good to know that in that home no bitter- ness came with the second mother; that the two sets of children grew up as one family; and that lifelong memories which he cherished were happy and inspiring. II. THE PILGRIM PASTOR. In September, 1850, Joseph E. Eoy took the stage from his father's door for Chicago. At St. Charles, the western terminus, he transferred to the Northwestern railroad and traveled on it to the city. It was his first sight of a locomotive. From Chicago he crossed the lake by steamer, and, partly by rail and partly by the Hudson, he made his exhilarating journey to New York. During his seminary course he preached at times in the prison at BlackwelPs Island, and also occasionally in the almshouse, and during the last six months for a colored Presbyterian church in JOSEPH EDWIN BOY 13 Brooklyn. He was graduated from college at the age of twenty-one, but on account of his two years' teaching was twenty-five when he left the theological seminary and returned to work in his native State. His Eastern experience had done much for him; it had broadened his outlook; had enabled him to hear eminent preachers, among the rest, Henry Ward Beecher ; had brought him into touch with large national movements, and sent him back to his own State well equipped for service. Already the lines of his life work were laid down, and he was being led in many ways whose desti- nation he knew not. The week of his graduation from Union Theo- logical Seminary in June, 1853, was a strenuous one. He delivered his graduating address in New York, and hastened to Chicago, where on the fol- lowing Sunday he preached in the First and Plymouth Churches. The frame building of the First Church burned down that night and he barely saved his sermon, and that with some scorching of its edges. Plymouth heard him with an interest which was not satisfied till two years later he became its pastor. Turning from the smoking embers of First Church on Monday he went by train to La Salle; thence by steamer to Peoria ; then by carriage to Farmington, where he married Miss Emily Stearns Hatch, whom he had 14 JOSEPH EDWIN ROY known in Knox College. The two hurried across to Galesburg, where he delivered his master's oration, and rolled up his new diploma, Master of Arts with his marriage certificate. Then the young couple drove seventy-five miles to the old home at Lyndon, which they reached within little more than a week after his graduation in New York. That was fast time for those days, and it was a pace which Dr. and Mrs. Roy kept up for many years. For fifty-five years these two servants of God wrought together. Often she "tarried with the stuff" while he went to and fro, performing the varied duties that fell to him as pioneer pastor, and later as secretary. And she survives him, serene in the faith which they shared so long, the faith in which he lived and died. Dr. Roy's marriage was celebrated June 21, 1853. The year was full of dates recorded in a book which he left for his children and grand- children. He was licensed by the New York and Brooklyn Association April 6, 1853, and he was one of six who were chosen out of a class of twenty-six to speak at his graduation on June 15. His subject was "Christianity — Progressive and Conservative." He recorded that it "made the faculty squirm a little," for it was somewhat advanced in doctrine and contained some of his views against slavery. His first pastorate was REV. JOSEPH E. ROY, AGED 58. JOSEPH EDWIN EOY 15 in Brimfield, 111., where he began work September 1, 1853, in a church then under the care of the American Missionary Association, a pastorate prophetic of his life work. There he completed a church building and tested the theories which he had formed, among the rest his anti-slavery theories ; for on Sunday, April 11, 1854, he prayed publicly for the wanderer and the outcast, and that night a fugitive slave wakened him with a plea for shelter. He kept the fugitive, and next night took him on his way in his own buggy. He had frequent occasion to do like acts in later years. At the end of two years he accepted a call to the pastorate of Plymouth Church, Chicago. We are fortunate in knowing what he preached; for a year after his installation he delivered a sermon on the text, **Now of the things which we have spoken this is the sum," in which he reviewed the preaching of the year; and it was a year of strong and clear theology of what was then new school, and a year of instruction in love for hu- manity; for he taught his people to vote for abo- lition, and rejoiced that in the year 1856 Chicago had gone on record in favor of freedom. In summing up the effects of his work he drew his pen through a line that spoke of the influence of his sermons **at the ballot-box," but the spirit of it was diffused in the sermon. 16 JOSEPH EDWIN EOY More than that of any other man, excepting possibly his friend, Bev. G. S. F. Savage, the life of Eev. Dr. Joseph E. Eoy was identified with the whole work of the Congregational Churches in Illinois and adjacent states. Dr. Eoy's life since 1839 has been closely related to the life of this state; for it was in that year that he came, a child of twelve, to the new home established by his father at Lyndon, on Rock River. Entering the ministry here in 1853, when Chicago Associa- tion was only a year old, he shared the whole of the development of our church life from that early time to the larger achievements of these later years. All of this he saw, and a part of it he was. Early in his travels in the ministry, for from the first he was a traveler. Dr. Roy began his "Pilgrim Letters," which, more than any other agency in their day, interpreted the progress of the churches of the interior to the centers of de- nominational strength in the East. A stalwart Puritan, and a staunch believer in democracy, he loved the name ** Pilgrim,*' and his life work became a pilgrimage. In order to understand the Congregational movement in Illinois at that period, it is neces- sary to remember something of national events, and the relation of these to church life. In 1801 the Congregational Churches of Connecticut en- JOSEPH EDWIN EOT 17 tered into a Plan of Union with the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church for work in the new settlements. It was a plan conceived in the most generous spirit on both sides, but each side had ample occasion to repent of it. As for the Presbyterians, it cost them much of trial through the ''New School" theology, to which the Congregationalists generally adhered; and the Congregationalists remember it as having lost to them a large number of churches, many of which are now strong, which through affiliation with Presbytery became Presbyterian. Two sets of causes tended to the final abroga- tion of this plan. One was the demand for more liberty of doctrine on the part of the New School. The other was the growing protest against com- plicity with slave holding churches. While Joseph E. Eoy was a student in theology in New York, these relations approached a crisis. It was the renaissance of Congregationalism, find- ing its new birth in its love of freedom. Dr. Eoy has written of this period: **In 1852, October 5-8, as a student from Union Seminary, at Albany, N. Y., I attended a general convention of Congregationalists which has en- tered into our church nomenclature as 'The Albany Convention,' which numbered 469 mem- bers from all parts of the east and west. This Convention had for its procuring cause the ques- 18 JOSEPH EDWIN ROY tion whether eastern Congregationalists would fellowship with those of the west. The Plan of Union was completely annulled. When the east- ern people came to confer with their western brethren they warmed up on finding they were of their own sort. And so James, Cephas and John, who seemed to be pillars, gave to the men of the west the right hand of fellowship. ** About this time there came up another in- fluence that worked strongly toward the reaction in favor of the Congregational way. It was the rising tide of anti-slavery sentiment which called for opportunity to bear organic witness against complicity with the iniquities of slave holding. The Presbyterian Church was conservative and could not speak out either in individual churches or minor ecclesiastical bodies until the great wheel of the General Assembly should come around in its revolution. But with the Congre- gational system local churches and minor asso- ciations, conferences and conventions could act at once without waiting for any other logy body to take the lead or to fall in. In this way the more pronounced anti-slaveryism of the Congre- gational Churches could get in its testimony and secure a church life that would be effective at once in its bearing upon the monster national crime. By this characteristic constitutional dif- ference the Congregational Churches found them- JOSEPH EDWIN ROY 19 selves on the slavery issue far out of the woods a long time before the Presbyterian got through. Such had been the leavening influence upon that issue in our scattered local churches that when they came together in our Ecumenical Council, the Albany Convention, in 1852, on the subject of missionary aid to churches in slave-holding states, the action of 469 delegates brought to- gether in this orderly way was absolutely unani- mous, as follows: " 'Resolved, that in the opinion of this Con- vention, it is the tendency of the Gospel, wher- ever it is preached in its purity, to correct all social evils, and to destroy sin in all its forms; and that it is the duty of Missionary Societies to grant aid to churches in slave-holding states, in the support of such ministers only as shall so preach the Gospel and inculcate the principles and application of Gospel discipline that with the blessing of God it shall have its full effect in awakening and enlightening the moral sense in regard to slavery, and in bringing to pass the speedy abolition of that stupendous wrong; and that, wherever a minister is not permitted so to preach, he should, in accordance with the direc- tions of Christ in such cases, depart out of that city.' "So the rise of Congregationalism in Chicago, as well as in many other parts of our country, 20 JOSEPH EDWIN ROT was found to synchronize with these two confluent forces — the passing of the Plan of Union and the rise of the anti-slavery tide. On the Fourth of July the First Church was accustomed to hold a prayer meeting for emancipation which we of the Plymouth loved to attend. The Plymouth Church on the night of the day of John Brown's execution, held a memorial service in the inter- ests of emancipation in which Eobert Collyer participated and also John Wentworth. It was these two churches that took the lead in calling that memorable Chicago convention in Bryan Hall to memorialize President Lincoln m the interest of a proclamation. Dr. Patton wrote and I had the honor of circulating the call for all who would favor such a proclamation. I found it a delight to see the ready appreciation of the thing by the most influential business men. The ministers of all Protestant denominations ap- proved it in their meetings, except the Presby- terians. They claimed not to be ready to ask directly for such a proclamation, but preferred to discuss the question, and so they were not in that mighty outpouring of the people which made Judge Otis president and other such men his associates, and which appointed Dr. Dempster of Evanston and Dr. Patton to carry the memo- rial to the President of the United States. As JOSEPH EDWIN ROY 21 they came home Dr. Patton set his people to praying at morning service and while they were praying the proclamation came. Not long after, Joseph Medill, of The Tribune, told me that recently in Washington as he met Secretary Stanton, that majestic war magnate said to him, 'You tell those doctors in Chicago that their mis- sion did the business, that Mr, Lincoln had been wavering up to that time, but after it he was all right/ ''And so this Chicago Association, in its Dec- laration of Principles, at the start, April, 1853, set forth: *' *We believe that slave-holding, or holding our fellow beings as property, is an immorality in practice, and the defense of it is heresy in doctrine, either of which ought to be regarded as a disqualification for church fellowship.' " It was in this time of upheaval, this period in which new doctrines were being forged in the furnace of a mighty national struggle, that Joseph E. Eoy served as pastor of a growing church in the central city of America. He came to the kingdom for such a time as that was, and bore his testimony like a brave man in an hour that had need of strong men with wide vision, sympathetic hearts, and fearless purpose. 22 JOSEPH EDWIN ROY III. WITH THE AMERICAN MISSIONARY ASSOCIATION. After a pastorate of five years in Plymouth Church, Dr. Roy accepted a call by the American Missionary Association to a district secretary- ship in the same city, but in a year and a half, by a change in national affairs, it was mutually agreed that he should accept a transfer to the Home Missionary Society, in which service he continued for eighteen years. In 1878 — by mutual arrangement again — Dr. Roy was reappointed to the American Missionary Association as its field superintendent, and under his supervision of seven years some fifty churches were organized. In 1885 Dr. Roy was asked for the second time to take the office of district secretary at Chicago, which he did, holding it with great usefulness until 1903, when, at the age of seventy-six years, he was made secretary emeritus. He continued, however, as his strength would allow, to serve the association until his very last year, when he was practically laid aside by the infirmities of age. It was this work for the colored people that became truly his life-work; and it is important that we trace the steps by which he was led to it. For it was no accident of propinquity or adven- titious opportunity that made him the friend of the black man, but a providential call whose prophetic warnings had long before been uttered. JOSEPH EDWIN ROY 23 The first conscious influence that turned his mind toward the claims of the colored people was a series of addresses delivered by Rev. Wilham T. Allen, in Mount Gilead, Ohio, when the family of John Roy lived in that village, just prior to their removal to Illinois. It was in the year 1834, and he was about seven years of age. Rev. William T. Allen was a son of the Pres- byterian pastor in Huntsville, Alabama, who, with his brother James, came to Lane Seminary, Cincinnati, while it yet had a literary course. There they became abolitionists, for which the father, being a slave-holder, disinherited them. The father was connected with the one General Assembly before the South broke off. These brothers went from Lane to Oberlin in connection with the rebellion at the former place, as they could not enjoy their liberty, the trustees of Lane having arbitrarily forbidden the students to dis- cuss the question of slavery. William T. Allen came to Mt. Gilead in a winter vacation, lecturing upon the anti-slavery cause. He was entertained at the home of John Roy. He taught nothing radical, aiming mainly to appeal to the sympa- thies of the people in behalf of the slave. The boy Joseph heard and ever remembered some- what of the story which he told. He was a very eloquent man, and produced a profound impres- 24 JOSEPH EDWIN EOY sion. On the third night of the lectures in the Presbyterian church a mob assembled to break him up. With squibs of powder, with musical instruments and hooting they broke up the lec- ture. On the way home from that lecture Mrs. Eoy was walking between Mr. Allen and the boy, Joseph being then a lad of but seven years. The mob pursued them and threw egg shells filled with tar. When they arrived at their home they noticed the strong smell of tar, and soon found the occasion in the besmirching of the garments of Mrs. Eoy and of Mr. Allen. Being on the farther side, the boy was not hit. The mob, sup- posing that the lecturer had gone to the home of an uncle, whose wife was John Koy's sister, in the course of the night displayed their sentiments by filling an earthen jar with filth and throwing it at the door. The cloak worn by Mrs. Eoy was kept until a daughter, Ann, Mrs. Fearnside, started to Ejiox College with Joseph, whereupon the step-mother cut it over, leaving out the tarred parts, and fitted it up for her to wear to college. When the family removed to Lyndon, Illinois, a settlement then but three years old, the first on the north side of the Eock river, they fell in among a community of abolitionists. Mr. Eoy and his son were borne along by that tide of sen- timent, John Eoy as an old Whig adhering to Henry Clay as long as he could, finally came out REV. JOSEPH E. ROY, 1853. MRS, .TOSEI'IT R. ROY. ISr,: JOSEPH EDWIN ROY 25 on the liberty party side, a party antedating the Free Soil and the Eepublican parties. In the vil- lage shoe shop the father of Eev. S. F. Millikan had placards around the walls such as this from Thomas Jetferson, "When I remember that God is just, I tremble for my country/' refer- ring to the matter of slavery. The boys of Lyn- don drank in that spirit. When Joseph went to Geneseo to prepare for college he fell in with another little abolition colony which had come to plant education and religion in the west ; and then when he went to Galesburg for college he was in the midst of the abolition flame. The Missionary Association was organized at Albany, New York, in 1846, as the result of the rising tide of abolitionism, complaint being made that the old societies having more or less of complicity with slave-holding in receiving slave-holders to churches ministered to by their missionaries at home and abroad. The organi- zation was a protest against all of that complicity. In Union Seminary Mr. Eoy and his college mate, C. F. Martin, finding that all the other missionary magazines were received and dis- tributed around at the doors of the rooms, but that **The American Missionary" was not thus handled, took it upon themselves to procure that journal every month and carry it around sepa- rately. 26 JOSEPH EDWIN ROY Leaving the Seminary, from which he grad- uated with an anti-slavery address, he took a commission from the A. M. A. to labor with the little new church at Brimfield, Illinois, the salary being $450, $200 of which came from the A. M. A. While in that pastorate of two years, as the political party in power was moving to annul the Missouri Compromises which had fixed the northern boundary of slavery beyond Mis- souri by the southern line of that state, he preached a sermon from the text, "Cursed be he that removeth his neighbor's landmark," i. e.. The Landmark of Freedom, the Missouri Com- promise. Other such sermons were preached on that line as Kansas and Nebraska were in the throes of rebellion against the slave power which was throttling the liberty of those two territories. Also in that time he received the black man to his home in the night, as he rapped at the door, and in his buggy carried him along to the next station. In the fall of 1855 he was called to the Plym- outh Church in Chicago, which two years before had been organized on the anti-slavery basis. Dr. Eoy said: "Their testimony had been incorporated into their organic law. It did not hurt us to be called the 'nigger' church and the pastor the 'nigger' preacher. During that pas- torate of five years in the heart of the anti- JOSEPH EDWIN EOY 27 slavery conflict I preached against the Dred Scott decision upon the perpetuity of fredom in Kan- sas, notwithstanding the atrocities which had been enacted there. The fire of the discourse came from the burning embers of the city of Lawrence, of Ossawattomie and many private homes." Just before this Mr. Roy had made a tour of the territory of Kansas, traveling with Governor Robinson for a couple of weeks, he making the political speeches and Roy the abolition. The first "Pilgrim" letter was written from Kansas at this time. On the tour, as Governor Robinson and his secretary were making their way toward Fort Scott for an appointment, learning that the border ruffians were in force there, they were obliged to turn aside and in doing so got lost. Wandering about until late in the evening, they were guided into a grove by the cackling of geese and the barking of dogs. There they begged the privilege of the settler to lie down upon the hearth of his one-roomed cabin with their feet to the fire, and their supper consisted of flap- jacks and pork. By daylight they were up and Mr. T. J. Marsh, treasurer of the Emigrant Aid Society, and also of the State of Massachusetts, handed out a five dollar gold piece to the mistress of the cabin. Coming to their destination for the Sabbath appointment, they told where they 28 JOSEPH EDWIN ROY had spent the night and were informed that that was the home of one of the worst border ruffians in the country, and that if he had known the big- ness of the game he had in his house he would have routed the neighbors and taken his guests prisoners. But they had escaped out of the snare of the fowler and they quoted for their delecta- tion the words of the Psalmist, ' * Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine ene- mies." As Mr. Roy and the Massachusetts officials returned from their campaign they had a public reception in the city of Lawrence. Senator James Lane presided, and introduced Dr. Roy as "The fighting preacher — the sort we love." In 1857 he participated in a Fourth of July celebration in Chicago, when the cornerstone was laid of the original Chicago University. The speaker was Stephen A. Douglas. Dr. Roy pro- tested against accepting an invitation to offer prayer in connection with an address by Senator Douglas, but being pressed to accept, and having warned those who invited him what might be the scope of his prayer, he prayed as his heart and convictions prompted him to do. He prayed that the time might come when the slave would rejoice in the blessing of freedom and share in the cele- bration of America's Independence Day. Senator Douglas already knew young Roy and had de- JOSEPH EDWIN ROY 29 nounced certain statements wMch the young preacher had made in a Kansas sermon. But the prayer troubled him more than the sermon had done and he cut short his address that day, with the excuse that his throat was sore. The Chi- cago papers commented upon the speech the next day and said ''Roy's prayer gave Douglas bronchitis." On the night of the day when John Brown was hung, Dr. Roy held a rousing public meet- ing in Plymouth Church, addressed by John Wentworth and Robert Collier, and on evory occasion when the slavery question was promi- nent he was a leading figure. When colored men, making their way to Canada, were pursued in Chicago, he was called into counsel and protected them and helped them on. During this time he met John Brown in one of his journeys through the city, and all his life he honored that heroic zealot. When President Lincoln was holding back the emancipation proclamation. Dr. Roy and Dr. Patton organized a meeting, and Dr. Roy circulated a petition which Dr. Patton took to Washington. It was while a meeting for prayer was in progress, after Dr. Patton returned, that the news came that the emancipation proclama- tion was made public, and the two young Chicago pastors were given reason to believe that their effort had had weight with Mr. Lincoln. 30 JOSEPH EDWIN ROY When, therefore, the war was over, and the American Missionary Association looked for a field agent who could care for the little cluster of churches it had organized in the west and centering about Chicago, there was no man better trained for the work required than Joseph E. Eoy. And when, later, he was needed for a great and growing work in the South, he accepted the call as one for which his whole life had been a providential preparation. And yet those years in the South were years of trial. They involved ostracism, petty perse- cution, and real sacrifice. It was one thing to preach in favor of the negro in Chicago, and quite another thing to live with his family in the midst of people who but lately had been slaves and to encounter scorn and ostracism from their former masters. Yet this the proud-spirited man bore, not only uncomplainingly, but with a cheerful optimism which was characteristic of his whole life. Under the fostering care of the American Mis- sionary Society rose not only common schools, but colleges and universities for the education of the freedmen. One of these, Atlanta University, was in the city where he made his southern home. The colored students of Atlanta leveled off the breastworks thrown up by the army of the Con- federates and dug down through the relics of JOSEPH EDWIN ROY 31 war to lay the foundations of the institution whose mission was one of peace and righteous- ness. At Nashville, Tennessee, Fisk University came into being through the same agency, and its colored singers made the slave melodies of the South a part of the world's heritage of sacred song. Straight University, Tillotson Institute, Tougaloo University, and other institutions of higher learning planned the permanent work of the Association in the Gulf States, and send their students out as a leavening force throughout the whole South. It is almost impossible to exag- gerate the influence of the graduates of these institutions for good. Some of the large schools for colored people which have since grown up in the South, like Tuskegee, drew their trained lead- ers, in great measure, from the graduates of these institutions. The teachers and preachers and faithful guides of a new generation of black people were trained in the schools of the A. M. A. Dr. Eoy entered into this expanding work with broad vision and profound sympathy ; and when, later, the American Missionary Association ex- tended its work to Hawaii on the west, and to Porto Eico on the east, the expansion was not too great for his patriotic spirit. The work never grew tame or commonplace to him. To the end of his life he was re-writing his lectures, collecting new material, telling the story of the growing 32 JOSEPH EDWIN ROT work of the Society which he so loved, and telling it always with patriotic fervor and profound religious sympathy. In view of a work so varied as Dr. Roy suc- cessfully accomplished, one must be impressed with the dignity and value of a single life. The high regard in which Dr. Roy was held by the colored people of the South testifies to his sacri- ficial devotion to their interests. He was among the last of those truly large, broad-minded, wide- visioned men who espoused an unpopular cause in its beginnings and consecrated themselves in full- hearted sincerity and without question to the op- pressed and to their uplifting. Dr. Roy was sim- ply revered among the colored people of the South. He not only had their absolute confidence, but the abundant wealth of their affection. His friendship for these needy, persecuted people began at the very start of his career, continued throughout his life of abundant service, and the gratitude of these humble people is a halo round his memory. Dr. Roy's friendship for the colored man had been put to the test in the very beginning of his ministry, and it stood that test then and ever afterward. The courage and devotion of his wife were one with his in all those experiences. Dr. and Mrs. Roy spent the winter of 1860-1 at the JOSEPH EDWIN ROY 33 Orient Hotel, on State street, Chicago. The cook was a colored man who had bought his freedom, and then had assisted his wife to escape from slavery. She was a comely, virtuous mulatto woman, who worked in the hotel laundry. One day in February, 1861, a United States marshal came to the hotel, accompanied by a literal blood- hound, and demanded the surrender of the woman. The proprietor of the hotel was a Democrat, and far from being an abolitionist, but the thought of surrending a woman to be returned to slavery was one he could not endure. Detaining the mar- shal for a few moments, he sent the laundress to Mrs. Eoy's room. She hurried the fugitive into a large closet, moved a tall secretary against the closet door, and hung a picture above the desk. Soon the bloodhound tracked the woman to the room, and to the desk, where he pawed and growled, but the marshal saw no place where she could be hidden. Mrs. Roy sat calmly sewing, and met all inquiries with permission to search as much as they liked. The bloodhound returned after an interval, and as before paid special atten- tion to the secretary, but the officer did not cause it to be moved. Forty-eight hours the woman hid in the closet, and was released when the officer and the dog were well out of Chicago. It is said to have been the last time that a bloodhound was brought to Chicago to track a fugitive slave. 34 JOSEPH EDWIN EOY Dr. Eoy's work for the freedmen is an open book, known and read of all men. From the out- set he favored industrial education among the colored people, and his vision of their future was as discriminating as it was full of hope. He had faith in the improvability of men, and was ever the friend of those whose need was greatest. Dr. Eoy was one of the first to favor the en- trance of the American Missionary Association into the mountains of Kentucky and Tennessee. Friend as he was of the black man, he was an ardent lover of his own race as well; and his heart kindled when he expressed his large faith in those stalwart, loyal men and women of the American highlands. These, no less than the freedmen, the Indians, the Chinamen and the men of Hawaii and Porto Rico, owe a debt of grati- tude to Dr. Eoy. Those who knew Dr. Eoy in his southern work know with what unreserved devotion he threw himself into every portion of it. He was unspar- ing of effort and unfailing iu resource. His sym- pathy was as ready as his judgment was true. It is impossible to speak of the work he performed in other than superlative terms, or to characterize in any ordinary phraseology the love which he inspired. JOSEPH EDWIN BOY 35 IV. THE MAN OF PROPHETIC VISION. Dr. Roy has left to us an unusual quantity of material by which his opinions may be judged at various stages of his career. He spoke much and he wrote much, and what he wrote he preserved. His Pilgrim Letters number over seven hundred and cover more than thirty years of a very active life. Beside these, he printed many occasional addresses and historical reviews, and these he collected and bound into volumes, making a con- siderable library. There is nothing of the theorist in these papers. From first to last they are practical. They were called forth by definite issues, and in almost every case were prepared for specific occasions. He wrote no books or pamphlets from mere pride of authorship. Several of his essays were gath- ered by him and bound in manuscript and in newspaper clippings into a volume which he en- titled ' ' The Footsteps of the Pilgrims Across the Continent," but he never published it as a work of literature. His writings all were prepared because there was a specific occasion for them. But while these show that Dr. Roy was no visionary, they show him as a man of vision. While he was still a young pastor, the Atlantic cable was laid. August 6, 1858, was the date of the first message, and his sermon of August 8 36 JOSEPH EDWIN ROY was preached on '* Christianity, the end of all Progress in Science, ' ' with the cable as its leading illustration, and the prediction that such discov- eries must bring the world into closer federation till the reign of peace is established. Before this, in 1856, he preached a sermon which was printed, on ^ 4^ansas ; Her Struggle and Her Defense," declaring that freedom must come, but would come through a great upheaval. His text was, ''And at the time of the end shall the king of the South push at him, and the king of the North shall come against him like a whirlwind, with chariots and with horsemen, and with many ships, and shall enter into the countries, and shall overflow and pass over." Some of the passages in this sermon burn with prophetic fervor, and show a wonderful comprehension of the conditions of that day, which were to make the conditions of the terrible and glorious years that followed, when out of the strife came peace and freedom. In 1867 he printed a pamphlet entitled, ''Tal- ladega: the First Industrial School Among the Negroes," in which he set forth the then new doctrine that the Negro to be trained for citizen- ship must be educated in body and mind, the hand and the soul receiving discipline together. When it was proposed that the higher branches be eliminated from the A. M. A. schools in the mountains, he withstood the movement, which JOSEPH EDWIN BOY 37 was pressed by a number of ^'practical" business men, Dr. Roy declaring that the mountain youth needed a leadership that was worthy of the best. In 1893, at the World's Columbian Exposition, he was made president of the African Congress. His opening address was a noble utterance, in- terpreting the congress in its moral influence. He said; "We have no votes to cast, no authority to wield, no diplomacy to exploit. But we have the means of generating moral sentiment, and that is the power behind the throne." He then proceeded to tell what the Christian world might do, through its moral influence alone, to better conditions of trade and moral uplift in Africa, in the obliteration of the slave trade, the prohibition of the sale of rum to natives, and the securing of justice in matters of trade with Af- rican races. He who reads these publications and the manu- script addresses that were never published is im- pressed with the sanity and vision of their author. He was never carried away by his enthusiasms. He was always the practical man, with his feet on the solid earth ; but he walked erect, and looked straight on, and from the elevation of his prac- tical experience and his confident trust in God and his fellow men, he saw the future in the light 38 JOSEPH EDWIN ROY of that faith which is the substance of things hoped for. As his years increased, he became more and more an authority on the periods of history which he had known and studied. He contributed a valuable chapter to Dr. Dunning 's History of Congregationalism; he delivered ihistorical ad- dresses before the Illinois General Association and other bodies. But his life was in the pres- ent and his hope was for the future. The back- ward look along the way which God had led him and the world but steadied the vision with which he looked forward to better things to come. V. THE GOLDEN WEDDING. In 1871 Dr. Eoy removed to Oak Park, making his home at 8 Elizabeth Court. He united with the First Church, which he had helped to organize, and of that church he remained a member for thirty-seven years. He was an enthusiastic mem- ber and a loyal supporter of the church he so dearly loved, and his love for it was returned abundantly. During the last nine years of his life the pastor of the church was one who had begun his ministry in the southern mountains while Dr. Eoy was field superintendent, and with whom he had enjoyed happy relations throughout a period of years. In this church Dr. Roy had repeated evidence of the love of the community. JOSEPH EDWIN ROY 39 At the time of his golden wedding, June 21, 1903, Dr. Roy preached a sermon in the First Church from the text, ''And ye shall hallow the fiftieth year" (Lev. xxv, 10), which was heard with ap- preciation by a large congregation. At the time of his retirement from active service in the American Missionary Association, the church held a reception in honor of Dr. and Mrs. Roy and presented them a fine set of books which he loved to read so long as he was able to read at all. Dr. Roy was not permitted to doubt the affec- tion which his neighbors and co-workers sustained for him. One of the last of many pleasant occa- sions which he shared was his eightieth birthday, when a company of workers in the American Mis- sionary Association called, with other friends, and presented him a fine steel engraving of Abra- ham Lincoln. The gift was as acceptable to him as the spirit which prompted it was delightful, and he enjoyed the memories of the occasion to the end of his life. The golden wedding sermon was full of tender reminiscences and pervaded by a thoroughly characteristic hopefulness. In it he said: ''We are taught to pray: 'Our Father who art in heaven. ' If He is our Father we are His chil- dren. There can be no higher honor than to be named the children of such a Father. As His children we are made in His image of reason, of 40 JOSEPH EDWIN EOY feeling, of will, by which we can have communion with Him. Not only the individual member of the household is so related, but the family has Him for Father just as much. Then there is the breath of such a family. *I bow my knees unto the Father, from whom every family in heaven and every family on earth is named.' a