The Little Preacher from Troy: Chapter 6

After the convention in Kansas, we went back to Denver. We attended the Englewood Free Methodist Church while we lived there. Miss Persis Phelps, one of our well-known foreign missionaries, had returned to her home and had a large class of ladies in the Sunday School. Her sister, with whom she stayed, became quite ill so Miss Phelps had to give up her class and care for her. From then on, I taught the class until I returned East. While there, I did as I do at any church I attend, try to fill in any place where I may be needed. I played the organ, sometimes the piano, and even preached at a Sunday night service. Louise was also involved very often in the music program and in other ways, also Everette. Since I gave myself to the Lord I have always felt it was only right to make myself available and do what little I could do to spread the kingdom of God in the earth. When Everette finished his work at Denver University, he decided to take a teaching position in California. Awhile before, I had received word that Genevieve had broken her arm and as she had two babies, Bobby and Tommy, and also duties as a preacher’s wife, I decided I was needed in their home. I came back to New York State and to their home at Ebenezer, New York. After she was over her trouble, I came back to Caledonia, where Dee’s folks now lived. George was employed there. They attended church at Perry, New York. I was just in time to be asked to bring a message there on Sunday, at the Mother’s Day services. After being with Dee’s family awhile, I went to Boston to visit my eldest sister Ida and her family. This was not my first trip there, for in my early teens I had been there and spent several weeks in the summer. Then, I had seen many historical places and had been in the ocean waters at Revere Beach. I went to Boston several times over a period of years. In some of my other trips there I had attended Tremont Temple on Easter Sunday and heard the great choir sing and Rev. Cortland Myers, preach a wonderful sermon on “The Resurrection of Chirst.” At other times, I visited Harvard Museum, had gone through the State Capitol, visited Longfellow’s home, had seen the locale of the Boston Massacre, visited the Old Cemetery where so many of the founders of our country are buried, such as Benjamin Franklin’s grave and others. Nearby was the Old Park Street Church and many other historic sites. Afterward, I returned to Dee’s home at Caledonia, but it wasn’t long before I went to visit my relatives, the Lesters, still living there in Washington County, New York. One reason for going there was because this was where my father’s ancestors had lived and he had lived when a small boy. Over the years I had learned enough about my father’s ancestry to want to make it a study. Before this time I was always so busy with the family and otherwise that I never seemed to find time to do it. I had visited up there as a child and had stayed in the lovely home of the Charles Tilfords. This was the house which was first built by my great grandfather, George Lester. Ada Tilford was my father’s cousin. The house had been modernized and there were large barns and it is still a large, productive farm. It was built in the late 1700’s before there was what is now called “New York State.” Though some things were changed, the same old spring is flowing down through the farm. While there, I learned that another cousin of my father’s, Grace Wilmarth, had also become interested in this same Lester history. Her home was in Washington, D.C., but she had come up to Argyle some time before and had uncovered a lot of history. From records and other means she had found that the family had formerly lived first in

England and were of the family of the Earl of Leicester. Our ancestors had left England and had gone to live on large estates in the north of Ireland, which had been granted to them for distinguished military service. Here they had become involved in the Presbyterian Church and they were supplied with pastors from the Presbyterian Synot at Stirling, Scotland. My great grandmother had come to Ireland from Scotland. There were some practices allowed in the Church in Ireland, to which they could not adhere, so a large group, led by a Rev. Thomas Clark, broke away from the regular church. As a result they were bitterly persecuted; their pastor was jailed for a time. The babies were brought to the jail to be baptized, the young couples to be married. After awhile he was released. It was then a large group decided to move their church and its adherents to America, which was just being settled. They were granted the land around Lake George, Argyle, Ft. Edward; in fact what is now included in Washington County. There is a book called “The Salem Book” in the Washington County Courthouse which gives the history of this group. Some of the descendants are still living on some of the farms that have been in the family since 1764. This was a very interesting pastime for me. I had a great desire to learn all I could about the (Leicester, Lester, Lister, Leyster) family because I wanted to put it all in a book for future Lesters to read. When I returned to Caledonia, I did a lot more searching. In the town library I learned that one of the preachers of that early time in Washington County had come to Caledonia at the call of several families, who had come to settle in that area from Scotland. The records tell that he organized what was the old stone church – The United Presbyterian Church in Caledonia. Many very old graves were in the cemetery back of that church. The group, who came to America from around Belfast, Ireland became The United Presbyterian Church of America. Now they are all united again and are called The United Presbyterian Church. Having arranged my materials, I didn’t know what to do next to have them printed in book form. While I was in the East, Louise and Everette had moved to California after he finished at Denver, to the desert area north of Los Angeles, about six miles from Edwards Air Force Base. They had invited me to go out there and stay with them. So on the last day of the year, I took a train from Buffalo to Chicago arriving there New Year’s Eve about 6:00 P.M. Later I boarded a train for Los Angeles. It was another two nights on the train. Many soldiers and sailors rode on that train going to the West Coast. During the evening, they met together and many of them had liquor with them. They went to the dining car before midnight, where they had a celebration. I didn’t have a roomette, as I can’t sleep on trains anyway, so I sat in my seat and looked out the window. Two young men had sat across the aisle from me; one in uniform, the other, a college student from Santa Barbara, California. I had overheard some of their conversation before they attended the midnight party. One had a briefcase (the officer). In it he had some sandwiches; I also saw him show a gun to the other fellow. They were well-behaved before they went to the midnight party, but after “boozing”, I didn’t know what they might do with that gun. The lights in the car were dimmed and everyone seemed to be snoozing, but I couldn’t sleep. Long after midnight they came unsteadily down the aisle to find their seats. After they were seated, the college student stood up and said to the other one, “Oh, say, we forgot what we decided out at the party. Don’t you remember, we decided that we had a right to kiss any woman or girl on the train on New Year’s Eve”? I was

the nearest woman to them. I thought, “Mister, you just start anything like that and you’ll suffer for it.” Well, the other fellow by that time had lost interest in such things and had settled down to “sleep it off,” so he seemed to give up too and sat down and was heard from no more. I felt the Lord had protected me, because guns and booze are a very dangerous mixture and one can never tell what may happen. I arrived in Los Angeles the morning after New Year’s Day, and Louise and Everette were there to meet me. I was just a day late for the Rose Bowl Parade. They had come to Los Angeles the night before the parade and had seen it. As I remember, we drove about sixty miles, first over the Angeles Crest from where may be seen miles of cities. Then we drove down into the Mohave Desert where the sand is deep and everywhere; where the odd-looking Joshua trees were growing. They looked like crippled, bent-over old men. Other unusual flowers were seen. After the long ride, we reached Rosamond, almost close enough to Edwards Air Force Base to see it. This was the home of the famous X15 rocket, about six miles to the east of us. Here everything was new and different. There was no green carpet covering the ground. In yards fenced around, dirt was spread and grass and flowers flourished, but outside the fence was sand, sand, sand. The lights of Lancaster could be seen at night, ten miles away. In the far distance, we could see high mountains covered with snow, while the temperature where we were might be 106. Everette was teaching school at Rosamond, while Louise did some teaching and library work over at Lancaster. I was alone during the day but usually found things to do. Dr. and Mrs. Davis, who were at Roberts Wesleyan College at North Chili for a time, were now in L.A. and teaching. Often on weekends, we went down to L.A. and were entertained in their home. They had a nice piano and I enjoyed playing it. We attended the Hermon Church with them. There were some people I had known well during my days in evangelistic work, who also attended that church. I attended a surprise party given in honor of Mrs. Evangeline Thuline, whom I had known when she was Evangeline Crockett. We had held meetings in her father’s church in Binghamton, New York when she was attending Greenville College and later I had known her when she was at the Bandworkers’ Training Home at Weedsport, New York. This was when Miss Collier and I were pastors of the Free Methodist Church at North Chittenango, New York. It seems strange how old friends meet in such far away places. While at Rosamond, Mrs. Davis’s brother and wife were also living near the Air Base. He had something to do with planes and rockets. Their real home was in Whittier, California. I had become well acquainted with the brother’s wife while living on the desert, so when they returned to Whittier, they invited me to visit them, so I was at Whittier for about a week. While at Rosamond, we attended the Nazarene Church at Lancaster about twelve miles away. I taught a large adult Bible Class part of the time, sang with the choir, played the piano sometimes or the organ when needed and preached one Sunday night. Louise also conducted the choir there. Around 1960, we went to see many interesting places while there, such as Marine Land of the Pacific, Knotts Berry Farm, Disneyland, Hollywood, Whittier, Bakersfield, Lancaster and others. My nephew, Louis Lester, lived near Los Angeles. One night he came up to Louise’s house to supper. When he saw my manuscript of the Lester family history, he was quite excited and offered to have it printed by their own machines in his plant. I was very glad to find a way to preserve what I had found, so I gladly accepted his offer. One week later, when we returned, after being away, I found one hundred copies of

the book with the Lester Coat-of-Arms in color on the cover of the book. One trip we made while in the West was one we took from where Louise lived in the desert in California to Phoenix, Arizona. It was a long distance to go over the desert sands, through the little towns. We received a warm welcome in more ways than one. We were entertained in the home of Bob and Melva Hendricks for several days. While there we saw many interesting things and places. But it was hot! Oh, so hot! Wherever you were, whether at home or church, there was air conditioning. It was around the 30th of May, with temperatures around 106. A wind from an air conditioner was blowing on you, whether awake or asleep. By the time we went home, I had a cold or sore throat or something. I had to lie on the back seat of the car, I was so miserable. We drove from around 4:00 in the afternoon, until the next morning to reach home. We attended the Free Methodist Church in Phoenix while there on Sunday and enjoyed meeting friends. At the close of the school year, we headed back for New York State, where Everette would be teaching at Roberts Wesleyan College and Louise would be Dorm Mother. Their goods came by truck from California to the college here in New York State. Our journey back from the West was very enjoyable. We drove north from Rosamond to Needles, California, the hottest place in the United States. It was late evening when we stopped at a restaurant there for a little rest and refreshment. When ready to leave, as we opened the door to leave, it seemed as if the heat was so solid, you felt something that seemed like a slap in the face. We drove all night and reached Grand Canyon about the time the visitors and tourists were getting out for breakfast. We stopped there for our morning meal, visited all the interesting views of the Canyon, then drove on. Most of the places we passed through were hardly more than hitching posts. In the evening, we stopped at a motel in Utah for the night. As we often find copies of the Holy Bible in the motel rooms when traveling, here we found copies of the Book of Mormon instead. I had bought a copy of that book while in California, read it and discussed it with some people there. I was interested in it because the whole system had started not far from where I lived, in Ontario County, New York. The next day we continued on our journey. When we came to the Rocky Mountain country, I was so glad and excited to see the beautiful tall trees with their luxuriant foliage, I felt I would like to get out of that car and embrace those majestic trees. On the desert, the trees were such dwarfs, they gave no shade. But these trees! They were like the trees I had been brought up with “way down East” in the Hudson Valley and Adirondack region. I thought of my childhood days, when the sap began to run in the maple trees, how we kids would get most any kind of a bottle and pound a nail into the tree to make the sap run. There we would stand from after school till dark and time to go for supper with the bottle in one hand and a straw poked into the hole in the tree and the other end in the bottle and wait for the sap to drip, drip drip into the bottle. It was still cold weather, our hands and feet would be nearly frozen. We endured with patience, just to have our mothers explain, when we insisted on her boiling it down to syrup and sugar, that there was just not enough to do this. All our work was in vain, but we did love those old trees. That was why I had these wonderful feelings as we headed through the Rockies to Denver, which would be our next stop. We reached Denver late in the afternoon. The Olsons were expecting us and entertained us royally for two or three days. Our next stop was at Jeffersonville, Missouri, where we stayed overnight in a very nice large hotel. In my postcard collection, I have one, a picture of the old house where Jesse James was killed and one of the old brick buildings which were the stables where they kept the ponies of the “Pony Express” of early western days. This was

where they began and finished their trips. The hotel where we stayed was called “The Pony Express Hotel.” By noon the next day we were at Hannibal, Missouri, which was where Mark Twain had lived. We ate at a very nice restaurant. From there I made a long distance call to Winona Lake, Indiana. The 1960 General Conference of the Free Methodist Church was in session there. I wanted to arrange for a place to stay when we would reach there as I was planning on stopping there for a few days. That afternoon we reached Springfield, Illinois, the home town of Abraham Lincoln. We visited the place which was once his home and what impressed me most was the way everything was arranged so it seemed as if he might have been sitting at that desk writing only yesterday. There were the old style eyeglasses lying on his desk as if he had just laid them down when he was called to dinner. In the front hall, on a rack hung his tall silk hat. Upstairs was the bedroom with a little rocking chair beside the mother’s chair. Perhaps she had told bed-time stories from that chair. It seemed as if our yesterdays and todays were all of one piece. We saw several other places about town where our President had lived and worked. We still had quite a stretch of road to cover between there and Winona Lake. It was 1:00 A.M. when we reached the Administration Building. On the phone, we had been told to come to that building when we arrived and we would learn where I was to stay. But! The place was all dark and no other place seemed to be open either. Everette went up the walk to the door and there was a note telling me to go to the Bauer home. We found it and were received graciously, even if it was almost the middle of the night. Then Louise and Everette left me, as they had planned to continue driving all night. While at breakfast the next morning I discovered they had stayed at the Inn the rest of the night. Later that day they left for Rochester. I was there until Conference closed, July, 1960. Then a preacher from Genesee Conference who had a large station wagon allowed several of us to ride back to New York State with him. It was late in the evening on a Monday early in July when I reached the home of my son, Eldon, who lived just west of Batavia. I stopped there for a few days, then went on to Dee’s in Caledonia where I stayed for awhile. They attended the Free Methodist Church in Perry, New York at that time. Their Sunday School picnic was held in a beautiful park there. I was asked to bring the scriptural meditation after the supper. About that time, after traveling and going here and there, I decided I would like to settle somewhere in an apartment at North Chili, New York where I could have my books, music and other treasured things where I could use them. At first, from spring until fall of 1961, I shared an apartment with Celeste Smith, upstairs on the corner of Buffalo Road and Union Street in North Chili. We shared the housework and cooking and cost of meals. Finally she decided to give up the place in September. I was fortunate to find another of my own. It was owned by the O’Brien sisters, Mildred and Lois. There were four rooms partly furnished with bed, dresser, dining furniture, folding couch-bed in the living room, electric range to cook on and a refrigerator. I had to wait awhile before I could go there. However, I had become a member of the Womans’ Christian Temperance Union and was chosen as delegate to represent Monroe County at the State Convention at Jamestown, New York. I went and when I returned, the apartment was ready for me to move in. This was about October 15, 1961. How happy I was! The situation was perfect for me. The church I would attend was on the corner from my home, the Post Office was on the same block, the shopping plaza was nearby. I bought a desk, bookcase, had an electric sewing machine. I have an electric organ, bought by my children. After living here about twelve years, I have all I could wish for.

Before I come to the end of this conglomerate history, I want to add two other important trips I haven’t mentioned and I don’t think they should be left out. I spent two winters in Alabama with Genevieve and her family. The first time I went down, I went from Rochester, New York to Cincinnati, Ohio, then took another train to Birmingham and Mobile. There Genevieve’s husband, Keith Graham, met us and we drove to their home north of Mobile, at Leroy. He was pastor of the Methodist Church there. They had a very pleasant parsonage and served two churches. While there I went to Montgomery, went through the State Capitol and saw many other interesting things. We also visited the Bellingrath Gardens. It seemed they must be almost as beautiful as Eden. I was there at the time azalias were in full bloom. Words fail me to describe their beauty. They were everywhere abloom in the city of Mobile also at that time. One day we took a trip north from Leroy, then west into Mississippi to Jackson, and from there south to the Gulf of Mexico and the towns of Gulfport and Biloxi. Then we turned east to Mobile and north from there back to Leroy. A regional convention of the Gideons’ organization was held in Mobile at a beautiful motel. I had the privilege of attending it with some friends and my daughter and husband. I also attended a great gathering of Methodist youth groups from all over the Southland which was also at Mobile. Genevieve was teaching school at Jackson, Alabama. Keith was pastor of the Methodist Church at Leroy. When spring came, like the birds, I headed back North. The next year I went down there again, but by a different route. I took a bus from Rochester to Philadelphia, stayed overnight with friends at Gloucester, then rode all day and night by auto from Gloucester, arriving at Pensacola, Florida, early Sunday morning. I stayed with Keith’s folks over Sunday and Keith came on Monday and took me back to their home in Leroy. That time, when I returned North, I took a different route again. Keith drove from Leroy to Birmingham, where I took the train in late afternoon to Washington, D.C., arriving the next morning. Lynette lived there. Bill met me at the train and I was with them for a few days. I returned by train to Buffalo, where my son Eldon met me and took me to his home in West Batavia. Later, he brought me back to my home in North Chili. Both these trips were taken after I had moved to North Chili. My children have been wonderfully kind and thoughtful of my needs and even my wants. I have all I could ask for. They have given me many gifts — I have a nice Zenith TV, an electric toaster, which I use daily; I have a radio, an electric organ, a GE casette. A camera was another gift, and an electric hair dryer. I have a Royal typewriter on which I typed my story herein related. I have several lovely lamps, some handcrafted that my children have given me. What more could I ask? I am quite content with my lot. “Godliness with contentment is great gain.” It seems each one has contributed to make my life happy, contented and eventful. I am a very busy person. Each week I have so much scheduled, I have to list my activities and appointments so I don’t forget them. At the time of this writing, I will be having my 81st birthday on July 10, 1974, about three months hence. When people, in my presence, talk about me as one of the “old folks,” I keep thinking they must be talking about someone else, not me. I am interested and involved in so many things, I just don’t have time to be “old.” At present, I am a member of the Pearce Memorial Church at North Chili and attend both morning and evening services on Sunday, also Sunday School. On Wednesday night I play the piano for the mid-week prayer service. Once a month I attend the Official Board Meeting on Tuesday night. Being a member of the Senior Citizen’s group, I have attended their luncheons, have sung with a quartette and played piano duets on their programs. I

have also gone on one of the trips offered, to Southern New York, also Gerry Home, New York. Then there is my large family, with eight children married, and eight in-laws (no out-laws), and twenty grandchildren. Vernon and Eula have two children: James, who is married to Anne Seiler; and Daniel. Dee and George have three children: Margaret, who is married to Robert Merkle; Glen, and Janet. Eldon and Zina have two children: Laura and Nathan. Genevieve and Keith have three children: Robert, Thomas, and James. Lawrence and Leva have four children: David, Stephen, Diane, and Richard. Louise and Everette have one daughter, Bonnie. Lester and Mary Jane have four children: Stephen, Douglas, Kevin, and Cheryl. Lynette and Bill have one daughter, Susan. This all adds up to enough to keep me occupied most of the time. Since moving to North Chili, I have been active in the W.C.T.U. For a number of years I have been president of our local union, second vice president of Monroe County, also public relations director for the County. With meetings to plan for each month such as programs, committees and other duties, it takes much time and effort. I have attended New York State Conventions each year for a number of years. They have taken me to places such as Jamestown, Massena, Rochester National Convention, Syracuse twice, Utica, Cobleskill, Canandaigua, Poughkeepsie, Salamanca and some other places. Usually tours are promoted at these places, like the Seaway at Massena, Franklin Roosevelt Mansion and many other places. This year is the 100th Anniversary of the W.C.T.U. The National Convention is to be held at Cleveland, Ohio, and New York State at Jamestown, New York where it was first organized in 1864. A book of songs is to be used, with songs chosen from the contestants in New York State. A song which I wrote is to be included in the book. I also have a seven-page instrumental number which I wrote and had copyrighted but never had it published. The Lord has been good to me. He has shown His love and care over me and mine. I can do nothing else but give Him the praise for all His benefits and mercies.