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I Thursday, September 20, 1956 THE CLINTON CHRONICLE 7 P»*e Seven OA Hpm 3s Burn/® n BONNER The Church In The Wildwood A young school teacher goes courting in the West "fo New York state'* young school teacher and singing-master. William Savage Pitts, the Cedar Valley country of Iowa held a greater attraction than tall cedars and towering red oaks. The lady’* name was Ann Eliza Warren. On a "bright afternoon of a day in June, W57." as he put it, Pitts swung down from a stage coath at the frontier town of Bradford in the heart of the Cedar Valley country. One of the first things that struck him was a grove of cedars which, to his thinking, presented a perfect setting for a church. There was, of course, no building there but, as Pitts put it, “the spot was there waiting for it" What William S. Pitts didn’t know was that the very spot had been donated by Citizen Joseph Bird for a church building. < Two years earlier the Rev. A. O. Littlefield had organized a Congregational Church and his successor, the Rev. John K. Nut ting, was planning to put a building in the grove so he could move his congregation out of an aban doned store building “with doors and window* gone." Prof. Pitts married Miss Warren and settled down in Rock County, Wis., where he had lived since moving from Orleans County, N. Y., 10 years' earlier. But the grov^ over in Iowa lingered )n his mind. So, at his home in Wisconsin, the 27-year- old singer-teacher worte a song about an Imaginary Church and called it 'The Little Brown Church In the Vale." The Job done, he put the manuscript away and forgot it. That was in 1857. Back in Bradford, a Mr. Watson donated timber and sawmill owners Elmore and Walter Smith cut the 50-foot red oaks free of charge. A group of men dug rocks from the hills and laid the founda- A There's a church In the volley by the wildwood. No lovelier spot In the .dale; No place is so dear to my childhood - As the little brown church in the vole r Oh, come to the church In the wildwood. To the trees where the wild flowers b: Where the porting hymn will be chanted, W* will wop by the side of the tomb. fw sweet on o dear Sabbath morning, To, list to the dear ringing bell; tion. Newton Palmer led a force of volunteers In putting up the framing. Siding was donated and hauled 80 miles by wagon from McGregor. Sunday School children of-w church in Massachusetts sent $140, for hardware. A foundry in Troy, N. V cast a bell. Due to the Civil War, and for lack ol funds, progress was slow but the structure wa« finally finished and enough money was scraped together to buy a keg of inexpensive “mill end” paint The color was brown. That was 1864. To be near his wife’s people. Prof. Pitts moved to Fredericksburg, 16 miles east of Bradford The folks at Bradford organized a singing class and Pitts went over to teach it It was then that he saw, for the first time, the church in the grove. And, to his amazement it was painted brown. He dug out his manuscript and sang bis song for the first time in public in the little, brown church. It became so popular that a Chicago publisher bought it and. with the proceeds, Pitts finished medical school and practiced in the Cedar Valley country until 1906. That’s why the hymn books list the author as “Dr Wm. S. Pitts." In 1868 the railroad was built through Nashua, two miles away, and Bradford faded from the map. But the little brown church is still there in the grove There are only 112 members on the roll, but an estimated 60,000 tourists stop there every year. The Rev. Nutting lived until 1917 and Dr. Pitts K ised on a year later The present pastor, the v. Glenn L. Utterback, estimates an average of more than 1000 weddings in the little church every year. And it all started nearly a century ago when a Yankee school teacher went courting in the West and wrote this song: Its tones so sweetly ora colling. Oh, come to the church in the vole. From the church in the volley by the wildwood. When doy fades away Into night, v I would foin from this spot of my childhood ‘ Wing my woy to the mansion* of light. (Chorus) Com* to the church In the wildwood. Oh, come to fh# church in the vole; No spot is so door to my childhood As the little brown church In the vole. By SPECTATOR .t COMMENTS on MEN AND THINGS This is J. K. Breedin, now re newing his admiration for our neighbors to the North, the stur dy, steadfast Canadians, whose vast country, the queen’s price less Dominion, comprises every thing, from the rugged mountain peaks, to the sublimity of the great St. Lawrence River. * I am quite prepared to stand in wondermont at all that I see. In my early days in Peru I lived high in the Andes, traveling horseback from the rail head to, and over, the cumbre, the back bone of the Andes, thirteen thousand feet up. Then I was in frequent touch with the vast Amazon River, which rises ’ in Peru. Ocean steamers came from Liverpool direct to Iquitos—2T00 miles up the great river. Canada has more grandeur in her mighty St. Lawrence than Peru has in the Amazon; and Canada has a splendor of land scape transcending the jungles of the Amazon. The Canadian cities are English and Scotch, strongly flavored with Yankee customs, we citi zens of the United States—all of us—being the Yankees. In other countries we are all known as Yankees. If I were in Russia or China, spying out the land, as I’m doing in Canada, the police would put me in jail, but Canada is English, or British, with Britain’s easy- going manner of accepting strangers. * ' Of course the City of Quebec is still strongly, robustly, and un- unchangeably French. When I speak of Quebec, does it carry you back to your school days? Champlain, the great explorer, established a trading post on a rocky cliff overlooking the ma jestic St. Lawrence and named it Quebec. You may recall that the Colonies of Massachusetts and New York were bent on destroy ing Quebec because of Indian ravages inspired by the Governor of Canada. Frontenac. That In dian war lasted, off and on, seventy years. To us, you recall, the most memorable happening of Que bec was the storming of the fort ress on the heights and plains of Abraham and the death of the il lustrious General Wolfe in the moment of victory. Does that refresh your memory? Here I am at Quebec. The city is on a promontory in an angle made by the junction of the Saint Charles River with the Saint Lawrence. On a plateau about seven miles from Quebec the renowned French General Montcalm stood with his army of French, Canadians and In dians;, not far away the British and Continentals under General Wolfe scaled the supposed in accessible heights of Abraham, which had been left unguarded, and fell upon Montcalm. General \yolfe wasi; killed, and in his last breath said, "Now God be praised, I shall die in peace." General Montcalm also was a casualty and his last words were: “So much the better; I am happy that I chall not live to see the surrender of Quebec.” Generals in that day were out in front on horseback. You may recall the story of an American soldier in the First World War; he was being carried far back to a hospital and asked, "Am I as far back as G. H. Q ? Well, then, Tm safe now.” The body of the French general rests beneath the floor of the Ursuline Convent, in a grave par- | tially made by a bursting shell, i Montcalm is regarded by some historians as the greatest French man ever to set foot on American soil. The battle of Quebec was one of the most important fought in America in any war. All that struggle between Eng land and France for mastery in the 'new world ended by bloody and expensive warfare; and the results were confirmed by the Treaty of Pans, in 1763. That treaty stands out virtually alone and pre-eminent for the magni tude of its land transfers. Eng land, having taken Cuba and the Philippines from Spain because Spain had aided France, now, un der the Treaty of Paris, ceded Cuba and the Philippines back to Spain, and received Florida in exchange. France ceded New Orleans and Louisiana to Spain for the loss of Florida—all that vast territory west of the Miss issippi River, later bought by Thom* Jefferson for the United States—that magnificent domain, known as the Louisiana Purchase. As you recall, we bought it from Napoleon, Emperor of the French. (About 828,001) square miles of land). France surrendered to Great Britain, under the Treaty of Paris, all the rest of her North American possessions, consisting of Canada, the Ohio Valley, Cape Breton .and all her islands except two. The British are a wonderful people, but Quebec remains French in language, thought and habit, though under the supreme control of the government of Her Majesty’s Dominion of Canada. Since Canada is British I am reminded of the steady dependa bility of the British, as I knew of them in South America. I have been to England and Scot land, but far away from Europe the British can be "sized up” by two expressions: "Hora Inglesa,” and "Palabra Inglesa.” When a South American wishes to speak solemnly, with exact regard for the "sober truth,” he says “Palabra Inglesa”—English word; and if he means to set a precise time he says "Hora In glesa”—English hour. I was impressed by the confi dence in the British when I found that Hacendados* of the Andean area invested their sur plus or savings in British gold Most of our people have for gotten that an American’ army, under General Richard Mont gomery, pressed Northward in 1775 into Canada and captured Montreal, the biggest city of I Canada, which I am now visit- | ing. ^ ' i We planned that year anoth- uipment Step up the efficiency of your office with the newest and best ideas in equipment. y SEVERAL WALNUT DESKS —- er attack on Canada and in the second campaign this one against Quebec. Benedict Arnold was commander and Aaron Burr was of the expedition. That ended disastrously. Those two campaigns were be fore the Declaration of Inde pendence. Riding along the placid routes of travel today one forgets the strife, struggle, battle, sacrifice and bloodshed which paid the price for the peace and prosper ity pf both the United States and the Dominion of Canada. It is said that General Wolfe repeated the sweet, moving lines of Gray’s Elegy in a Country church yard the night before his victory and his death, and de clared that he would rather be the author of "The Elegy” than the Conqueror of Quebec. "The paths of glory lead but to the grave,” he repeated. Some foreigners don’t like us Americans; in the first place, all nations of North, Central, and South A m e r i c a are just as American as we are. So we ap pear a bit presumptions in call ing ourselves "Americans,” as though Canadians were not "Americans.” Of course Canadians are not "foreigners”; they are neighbors who speak English, though not always as we speak it. Quebec, I repeat, speaks French. I crossed Lake Ontario on the way to Toronto; and on ship board I had a taste of the scorn of some Canadians for us. While far out in the deep our ship rescued several people whose little’ cruiser had wallow ed in the lake for. a day and night, with a dead engine. The rescued people w^re taken to the bar and served with lots of hot coffee. I asked for a cup of cof- coffee. “Coffee”? asked the man at the counter. “Yes, coffee,” I replied. "Why you people don’t drink coffee in the States; you drink chicory.” Well, now; I didn’t know the difference; i learned the difference ir\. New- Orleans. Do you recall that thc^English had coffee houses ’many years ago and coffee became' quite a fad? Someone introduced a bill in Parliament, or started quite a movement, to prohibit the drinking of coffee Well, the rea son given was that coffee is so stimulating that it makes every one quick witted, bright, you know. My remembered friend and critic, Colonel H. Gordon Kenna, will cut me off the air and ex claim in disgust, “That’s a cal umny; no such ridiculous thing was ever e o n s i d e r e ,d. True, though. : TWO AND FOUR DRAWE R META L FILES ONE TYPING TABLE OFFICE CHAIRS if' ONE MAHOGANY WITH LEATHERETTE CUSHION. SEVERAL FOAM RUBBER CUSH IONED TYPING CHAIRS. 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