Reverend Samuel Ferry Crowther
Reverend Samuel Ferry Crowther was the first minister to serve Fairhaven United Methodist Church. He was born in Bellefonte, Centre County, Pennsylvania on August 20, 1834, the eldest of six children born to James and Ellen Baum Crowther. In 1850, Reverend Crowther lived with his family in Oakland Township, Venango County, Pennsylvania. His father was enumerated as a farmer that year.
Reverend Crowther went to the Western Reserve College in Ohio and then attended the Allegheny Theological Seminary. He was a pastor for the Evangelical Pittsburgh Association from 1857 to 1865. During this time, he married Chrissie Mahaffey of Cherrytree in 1860. That year, the census enumerated him as a clergyman and he and his wife lived with the Lehauer family in Green Township, Summit County, Ohio.
In 1862, Chrissie Mahaffey Crowther gave birth to the first of the couple’s two children and in 1865, Crowther transferred to the Western Pennsylvania Methodist Protestant Conference. His assignments were short and many. First was the Second Methodist Protestant Church on Rebecca Street in Allegheny City, now Pittsburgh’s North Side, from 1865 to 1868; Fifth Avenue Methodist Protestant Church at New Brighton, Beaver County 1868-1869; New Brighton and Beaver Falls Central 1869-1870; Brownsville 1870-1872; and the Cherrytree Circuit/Cookport from 1872 to 1879. When Crowther was assigned his next position, the Trustees of the Cherrytree Methodist Protestant Church published this statement and resolution in their local newspaper.
“During his pastorate, one good church has been erected, and another one is now being built. The members have been trebled. Though, like all public men who do their duty faithfully, he has some enemies, yet the estimate placed upon him by the good people of that section is represented by the following action of the Quarterly Conference, handed us by Mr. Hazlett. Whereas, our pastor, Rev. S F. Crowther has labored among us on the Cherrytree Circuit with great acceptance for seven successive years, and is now about to close his labors among us and remove to another field of labor … Resolved, that we heartily recommend him to the churches were he may go as an efficient, faithful, and zealous worker for the Master, who can look back upon his labors among us with satisfaction of having discharged his duty to us and to God. Resolved, that we will ever welcome Rev. S. F. Crowther to our homes and pulpits when he may see fit to visit us … the above was passed by a unanimous vote at a full meeting.”
After the Cherrytree Circuit, Crowther was assigned to the First Methodist Protestant Church in Allegheny City from 1879 to 1881. During his time at the First MP Church, he lived at 175 North Avenue on the North Side. After leaving Allegheny City, he went to the Union Avenue Methodist Protestant Church at Kittanning from 1881 to 1883. He then arrived at the Fairhaven Methodist Protestant Mission in 1883.
He was able to get the Fairhaven Mission recognized by the Western Pennsylvania Methodist Protestant Conference as a church in 1884 and, in addition to this church, he was assigned to the Knoxville Methodist Protestant Church. The names of his sermons during his first few months at Fairhaven were: “How To Pray So As To Be Answered,” ”Christian Perseverance,” ”Obligations To God and Men,” “The Work of the Holy Spirit In Connection With Our Salvation,” and “Gods Overruling and Even Utilizing Human Opposition.” Clearly an astute man, Crowther must have noticed that his sermons were not connecting with Fairhaven and Knoxville’s members in the way that he desired. Crowther’s subtly changed the topics of his sermons, so they were more in tune with the working-class people of these two villages and draw them toward Crowther’s message of Christian redemption. The sermon’s titles now explicitly contained key words with which the church’s members could identify. The words referred to work and labor like: “Christ’s Invitation to the Laboring Burdened Souls,” “Laboring for the God of Others,” “Spiritual Work and Wages,” and “Working for Jesus.”
After Crowther left Fairhaven, he continued in the ways of itinerate preachers of old and was assigned to Uniontown in 1886 then Mount Washington from 1889-1894. During his time at Mount Washington, Crowther’s beloved wife died on February 23, 1891 at the age of fifty. After staying at that church for another three years, Crowther was assigned to the Springdale Methodist Protestant Church from 1894-1895; the Turnersville Methodist Protestant Church from 1896-1897; for a second time, the Kittanning Methodist Protestant Church on Union Street from 1897 to 1899; and lastly to the Youngstown Methodist Protestant Church from 1889 to 1901. At the time of the 1900 census, Crowther was enumerated with the Hoar family in Youngstown.
Reverend Crowther retired in 1901 and died nine years later after a six-day illness on February 25, 1910 at the age of seventy-six at his daughter’s home at 318 South Saint Clair Street in the Highland Park section of Pittsburgh. The headline in the Pittsburgh Daily Post said, “Dies on Anniversary Of His Wife’s Death. Rev. Samuel F. Crowther, Aged Minister, Called After Short Illness.” This was not really true, Crowther died two days after the anniversary of his wife’s death, nevertheless, it had a nice ring to it. Two days after his death, Crowther was buried at Homewood Cemetery next to his wife.
Reverend George Washington Morris
Reverend George Washington Morris was Fairhaven’s second pastor. Morris was born at Morris Crossroads, Fayette County, Pennsylvania on February 22, 1853, the fifth of eight children born to John Jarrett and Eliza Ann Hall Morris. John Jarrett Morris was a native of Virginia who relocated to the north as a young man. He was enumerated as a farmer at Fayette County in 1850. Between 1850 and 1860, Morris clearly received a call and was moved to help the poor. The 1860 Census, 1870 Census, and Morris’ 1863 Civil War draft registration recorded his profession as Alms House Steward/Steward of the Poor. He was exempted from military service during the Civil War because of his age and because of his work. In 1860 there were over 70 individuals living in the Alms House that the Morris family operated. Reverend Morris was enumerated in his parents’ household in 1860 and 1870, they appeared to have lived in the Alms House. The future Reverend Morris learned duty, obligation, and ministering to the poor from a young age.
In 1880, the census enumerated Reverend Morris as a clerk in a dry good store in George Township, Fayette County. Presumably, Morris attended school during this period as he was admitted to the Western Pennsylvania Methodist Protestant Conference in 1886. His first position was the joint assignment of the Fairhaven and Knoxville United Methodist Protestant Churches. There are no records in the Church Archive that date to the 1880s and there are no contemporary newspaper accounts of his ministry during this period, what is clear is that Reverend Morris dedicated his time, throughout his ministry, to the Young Peoples’ Society of Christian Endeavor, the Methodist Protestant youth group. After Morris left Fairhaven, he took a year off before accepting an assignment as pastor to the Bradford Methodist Protestant Church where he served until 1893.
He was next assigned to the Springdale Methodist Protestant Church for one year before being awarded the prestigious position of pastor at Pittsburgh’s Fourth Methodist Protestant Church on South 18th Street on the South Side of Pittsburgh. He spent four years there and dedicated even more effort into educating youth, organizing youth rallies, and the bi-annual conventions for the Christian Endeavor Society.
In 1898, he was assigned a position in his hometown of Connellsville, Fayette County. During his time in Connellsville. In 1899 he became an Elder in the Methodist Church. In 1900, Reverend Morris lived humbly, he was enumerated as a lodger with the Sexton family at 129 Chamber Place at Connellsville.
Morris left the Connellsville Methodist Protestant Church in July 1902, then he was assigned to Trinity Methodist Church for three months before he withdrew from further appointments. The death of his father in 1900 in Morgantown and the health of his mother created a dilemma for Morris. He transferred to the West Virginia Methodist Protestant Conference in 1905 and was assigned pastor at the Methodist Protestant Church in Morgantown, probably to be closer to his aged mother. In 1910, Morris was enumerated with her at 479 Price Street in Morgantown. He continued to serve the Morgantown Methodist Protestant Church until his death on October 11, 1917 at the age of sixty-four. He was buried with his family at Oak Grove Cemetery in Morgantown. Reverend Morris’ mother, Eliza Ann Hall Morris, died the following year at the age of 93.
Reverend Doctor Thomas Wilmer Colhouer
The Reverend Doctor Thomas Wilmer Colhouer was the third pastor to serve Fairhaven Methodist Church. He arrived at this church four years before his father’s tenure which was from 1893-1898. Colhouer the younger was born August 17, 1860 in Camden, New Jersey. Like his father, he attended Adrian College in Michigan where he received his Doctor of Divinity degree. He was admitted to the Western Pennsylvania Methodist Conference in 1882 and was elevated to the status of Elder in 1884.
Like his father, he was a shining example of a circuit minister in the classic Methodist mold. His first appointment was to both the Bakerstown and Saxonburg Methodist Churches, followed by a tenure at the Uniontown and Amity Methodist Churches. During his first appointment, he married Martha Craft on September 7, 1886. He arrived as pastor to the joint Knoxville and Fairhaven Methodist Missions in 1888 and served one year. During Colhouer’s tenure at Fairhaven Church, the congregation still met at the Baldwin Township Grade School on the corner of Maytide Street and Saw Mill Run located where the former Firehall is now located.
He took a year-long sabbatical after his time at Fairhaven and, perhaps, visited his parents who were serving as missionaries in Yokohama, Japan at that time. He returned to the ministry in 1890 and was assigned to the Cherry Tree Methodist Church.
He took time away from the ministry again during his father’s final illness, but ultimately served in many churches: Houtzdale MP, Rogersville MP, Mount Olive, the joint Rogersville and Morrisville Mission, and the Morrisville Mission by itself, the joint Eldersville and Bethel Mission, the Bradford and Hopwood Mission, and, finally, at Uniontown Calvary where he served for fifteen years. In September 1929, Reverend Colhouer ran for, and was elected to, the Fayette County Poor Board at a time when activism was in great need, the beginning of the Great Depression.
He worked as an assistant to the Bishop from 1931 through 1933 and then retired, but he returned as a delegate for the Pittsburgh Methodist Conference in 1939.
Reverend Colhouer died in Uniontown on May 19, 1945 at the age of 80.
Reverend Henry Francis Siviter
Reverend Henry Francis Siviter was born February 7, 1826 at Dudley, Worcestershire, England. He was the youngest of three children born to James and Elizabeth Smart Siviter. He was baptized at Saint Thomas Church, Dudley on March 5, 1826. He married Sarah Jane Boden at the same church on January 30, 1853. They had five children.
The future Reverend Henry Siviter was enumerated at the time of 1851 and 1861 English Censuses as a coal miner, in Dudley, Worcestershire, England. The family emigrated to the United States after the end of the Civil War. The Pastoral Records for the Methodist Church recorded that he was a member of the New Connection Methodist Church in England. No records have been found to document when he became a minister. He was admitted to the itinerant Methodist Protestant Circuit and made a Methodist Protestant Elder in 1869.
Siviter worked the Buckhannon Circuit from 1869-1871; Johnstown 1871; Fairmont, West Virginia 1871-1872; Allegheny City Circuit 1872-1873; Pittsburgh’s Second Methodist Protestant Church 1873-1875; Bakerstown, 1875-1877; Brownsville 1877; Cassville Circuit 1877-1880; Waynesburg, Washington Street/Morrisville 1880-1881; Cherrytree/Salem 1881-1882; and Houtzdale/Ocean Mine 1882-1884.
When Siviter was in Houtzdale, he made his Last Will and Testament. The handwritten document is in Siviter’s own words. “ … I commend my soul into the hands of its Maker and my body to the tomb, to await the resurrection. As my personal estate is ample for the expenses of my funeral, and as no debts are standing against me. I direct that no inventory of said personal estate be made to be filed at the Register’s Office …” After Houtzdale, Siviter was assigned to the Methodist Protestant Churches in Elizabeth/Bellevue 1884-1885; and Brownsville 1885-1889.
The final assignment of Siviter’s career was that of both the Knoxville and Fairhaven Churches. He served as Fairhaven’s fourth pastor. Siviter was the first pastor to preach in the new Fairhaven Church building on Glenbury Street that was dedicated in 1890. Both churches kept Siviter busy for a man of almost seventy year. The week of February 9, 1890, Siviter’s schedule was: 7am Sunday services at Fairhaven, 9:30am Sunday School at Knoxville, 3pm Sunday School prayer meeting at Fairhaven, a 6:45pm Sunday School meeting at Knoxville, and then, a 7:30pm Sunday sermon at Knoxville. He did not repeat his sermons. His morning sermon that Sunday was entitled Night, and his evening sermon was Human Will. Wednesday nights he held a 7:45pm Prayer Meeting at Knoxville and on Thursday evenings held a 7:45pm Prayer Meeting at Fairhaven.
Siviter was notable for his illustrious family connections. Siviter’s son was William Henry Siviter, the Editor of the daily newspaper the Pittsburgh Chronicle. Reverend Siviter’s daughter-in-law was Anna Pierpont, the daughter of Francis Pierpont, the first Governor of West Virginia. Reverend Siviter performed the couple’s marriage ceremony on June 24, 1886 in Fairmont, West Virginia.
Siviter died January 14, 1893 at his home on Federal Street on the North Side of Pittsburgh. He was buried at Allegheny Cemetery with his wife. My friend Ben Lighthall and I went to Allegheny Cemetery to find Siviter’s grave. The cemetery said that both Siviter and his wife had headstones. Despite a long search, we could not find them and had to return a second time. After much search, Ben found a place where the headstones might be. After over one hundred years, they both laid on their backs and were buried under two inches of dirt and sod. He dug them out, poured water on them, and cleaned them off. Reverend Siviter’s headstone was cracked but still readable. Sarah Jane Boden Siviter’s headstone was relatively pristine. I took photographs of them and posted them on Findagrave.com and described the locations so if anyone wants to find them again they will be able to do so. The long-forgotten headstones are probably buried under grass clippings and dirt already, waiting to be rediscovered.
Reverend William West
Reverend William West served as Fairhaven Methodist Protestant Church’s fifth minister. He was born in Kingston, Somerset, England August 24, 1823, the eldest of five children born to Thomas and Ann West. When he was three years old, his family moved across Bristol Channel and settled in Bedwelty, Monmouthshire, Wales. He was married to Elizabeth Williamson on October 16, 1854 at Abersychan, Monmouthshire. They had six children. The 1861 Wales Census enumerated West as an “iron man.” The 1871 Wales Census enumerated him as a coal miner.
West, his wife, and youngest daughter, Ada, immigrated to the United States circa 1870. He was admitted into the Methodist Protestant Conference in 1872 and made an Elder the same year. It is not clear what credentials West possessed to be a minister, nevertheless, he was given his first assignment at Pittston where he served until 1873.
After he left Pittston, West was assigned to Morgantown from 1873-1875, the Lewis Circuit 1875-1876, the Brookville Circuit from 1875-1879. Reverend West was pastor at Stahltown from 1879 to 1881. The 1800 census found the family living in Cook, Westmoreland County. He continued to serve in coal mining villages to men who worked in coal mines as he had in Wales. He was sent to the Dudley Methodist Protestant Mission for two months at the end of 1881 and the Houtzdale/Ocean Mine mission outpost for one year, before he was sent to the Susquehanna Circuit from 1882-1883, Youngstown from 1883-1885, Elizabeth/Coal bluff 1885- 1887, the Turnersville Circuit 1887-1889, Brownville 1889-1891.
Reverend West’s last assignment was the Idlewood/Mansfield/Fairhaven circuit which involved travelling great distances from 1891 to 1892. After this assignment, West took a year sabbatical and then retired in 1893. He came out of retirement for four months to help out at the Turnersville Methodist Protestant Church in 1898. At the time of the 1900 Census, West lived Fifth Avenue in Sheridan Borough, Allegheny County, Pennsylvania. He died there on May 30, 1901 and was buried at Hollywood Memorial Park in Sheridan. His wife died in 1926 at the age of 95.
Reverend George Bolton Deakin
Reverend George Bolton Deakin was Fairhaven’s sixth pastor. He served this church from 1892-1893. Deakin was the eldest of what would ultimately be nine children born to David Deakin, a native of Weedon Box, Derbyshire, England, who arrived in the United States in 1854 and Mary Ann Jones who was from Michaelchurch, Hereford, England. Deakin and Jones married at Pittsburgh in 1855. Their eldest child, the future Reverend George Bolton Deakin, was born on the South Side of Pittsburgh, then the city of Birmingham, on April 12, 1856.
The family moved to East Liverpool, Ohio the following year and resided there at the time of the 1860 census where David Deakin worked as a potter, a craft he probably learned in his native Derbyshire which Is renown for its fine pottery and china. At the start of the Civil War in 1862, the Deakin family returned to Pittsburgh’s South Side where Reverend Deakin’s father worked in one of the many glass factories that lined the Monongahela River.
In 1870, the David Deakin bought the house where he and his wife resided for the remainder of their lives, 127 South Twentieth Street, South Side. Reverend Deakin was fourteen years old in 1870 and worked in a glass factory in East Birmingham. The 1880 census recorded Reverend Deakin’s profession as a photographer. This probably referred to transferring imagery onto glass in the factory, rather than an actual photographer in the sense that we understand today. Deakin began the journey in his ministerial career at the age of twenty-five when he entered the School of Theology at Adrian College in Adrian, Michigan in 1881. In Adrian he met his future wife Florence Adelle Raymond.
There are no online records in regard to Deakin’s graduation from Adrian College, but he was accepted into the Western Pennsylvania Methodist Protestant Conference in 1884 and was assigned to the Wellsburg Methodist Protestant Church that same year. He was elevated to Methodist Protestant Elder in 1885. He was next assigned to Cherrytree Methodist Protestant Church in 1885, then to the Trumbull Methodist Protestant Church in 1886. On the first day of his official assignment at Trumbull, July 1, 1886, he returned to Adrian, Michigan to marry Florence Raymond.
Deakin stayed at the Trumbull Methodist Protestant Church until June 30, 1887 when he went on sabbatical in anticipation of the birth of his first child, Merrill Raymond Deakin, on October 8, 1887. On December 1, 1887, Deakin was assigned to the Monongahela Methodist Protestant Circuit and continued there until July 1, 1889 when he was assigned to the Castle Shannon Methodist Protestant Church. The couple’s daughter, Gail Olive Deakin, was born in the church parsonage on November 6, 1889. On April 14, 1892, their third child, Helen Genevieve Deakin, was born there. Reverend Deakin baptized both of his daughters at the Castle Shannon Church.
In July 1892, after the abrupt departure of Reverend William Ward West from Fairhaven Methodist Church, Reverend Deakin was given Fairhaven in addition to Castle Shannon Church. He served as Fairhaven Church’s sixth pastor. He worked at both churches until the following year when he was assigned to the New Brighton Methodist Protestant Church. He remained at New Brighton until 1895 when he was assigned to the Braddock Methodist Protestant Church. The following year he became involved in a controversy with Braddock residents about a leap year party that the community had planned. The Sunday after the party’s announcement, Deakin, and other local ministers, preached about the sin of dancing which the community interpreted as criticism of the event. The April 13, 1896 issue of the Pittsburgh Press quoted Deakin, “The modern dance is a constant temptation to the young to depart from paths of virtue.”
Deakin left Braddock the following year and transferred to the North Illinois Methodist Protestant Conference in 1897. Deakin’s itineracy continued during this time. In 1900, Deakin and his family lived at Concord, Illinois. In 1905 they lived at Corydon, Wayne, Iowa, and in 1910 the family lived at 139 Piles Avenue in Ames, Iowa. In 1920, Deakin served at the Congregational Church in Charles City, Iowa and in 1925, he lived at 514 Seventh Avenue in Shenandoah, Iowa where he was enumerated as a “Minister of the Gospel.”
He retired before the 1930 census at which time he was 74. He was enumerated that year as a watchman in a local stockyard. He and his wife lived at 758 Summit Street in Shenandoah with their divorced daughter, Helen Gough, and her three children. Reverend Deakin’s wife died in Iowa in 1938 and Deakin moved to Denver, Colorado where he can be found at the time of the 1940 Census at 915 South York Street with this son Merrill, his daughter-in-law, and grandson. Deakin’s son died April 1, 1946. Reverend Deakin died eight months later on January 4, 1947 at the age of 90. He was buried at Rose Hill Cemetery, Shenandoah, Iowa with his wife.
Reverend Doctor Thomas Henry Colhouer
Let’s start off with a trivia question. Has Fairhaven Methodist Church’s ministerial post ever been served by a father and a son? If you answered yes, you would be correct. First, is Reverend Doctor Thomas Henry Colhouer. In the next issue, there will be a profile of his son, Reverend Doctor Thomas Wilmer Colhouer.
Colhouer was born June 8, 1829 in Maryland. He attended Adrian College where he attained his Doctor of Divinity degree in 1854. He moved to New Jersey after his graduation and was admitted to the New Jersey Methodist Protestant Conference in 1855. In 1856, he met his future wife, Mary Brown; they were married the following year.
Colhouer took the Methodist tenet of taking God’s Word to the people very seriously. He was posted to more positions than almost any other minister who has served Fairhaven Church. His resume of ministerial posts includes: Trumbull Circuit; New Brighton; Sharpsburg; Birmingham First; Birmingham Fourth; Brownsville; Allegheny; he was President of the Methodist Protestant Conference and Editor of the Methodist Recorder from 1875-1878; Pittsburgh Fourth and Castle Shannon Circuit; Pittsburgh Fourth; and the Manchester and New Cumberland Circuit. At the time of the 1880 census, he, his wife, and four children lived at 301 Walnut Street in Shadyside.
The topics of Colhouer’s sermons ran the gamut from what one would expect, “Preparing The Way,” to the syntactically tortured, “The Hard Life of Transgressors, Here and Hereafter,“ the surprisingly progressive, “The Reciprocal Duties of Parents and Children,” to the bizarre, “The Unwisdom of Sinners.” One can imagine falling victim to the same problem after giving thousands of sermons as Colhouer did. He was also a firm advocate in the need for a revival of the church in the United States. The foundation for Revival of the church could be found, he believed, in Matthew III, and that the means of securing a revival was prayer.
In 1881, Colhouer joined with several local ministers and Methodist believers, and founded the Arlington Camp Meeting Ground in Castle Shannon, out of which the Fairhaven Methodist Church was organized. He and his wife bought a house, Number 35, at the camp grounds.
In 1887, at the age of fifty-nine, after thirty years of travelling from post to post in the Western Pennsylvania, he and his wife travelled to Yokohama, Japan where they lived for five years. Colhouer’s position was that of “Missionary to Japan.” Before leaving, he preached a farewell sermon on April 18, 1887 at the South 18th Street Methodist Protestant Church on Pittsburgh’s South Side, before travelling to the west coast and sailing from there.
During the next five years in Japan, Colhouer helped to build the first Methodist Protestant Church in Yokohama, served as President of the Methodist Foreign Mission, and supervised the building of the Women’s Mission Home in Yokohama. Colhouer also wrote two books: “Non-Episcopal Methodism” and “Sketches of the Founders of the Methodist Protestant Church” which are considered to be seminal readings in the Methodist Protestant doctrine.
He and his wife returned from Japan in 1892 and quickly rejoined the ministerial circuit of the Western Pennsylvania Methodist Protestant Conference. His first post was the Fairhaven/Knoxville Circuit, a position he held for seven years.
His position to these two churches would have been grueling for anyone, let alone a man of almost sixty-five. The week began with a 7am Sunday service at Fairhaven, then a 9:30am Sunday School Meeting at Knoxville. Next, was a 3pm Sunday School Prayer Meeting at Fairhaven. The day ended with a 6:45pm Sunday School Prayer Meeting at Knoxville and, a 7:30pm Sunday sermon at Knoxville.
Every Wednesday night, Colhouer held a 7:45pm Prayer Meeting at Knoxville and every Thursday evening, a 7:45pm Prayer Meeting at Fairhaven. Archival notes from Colhouer’s tenure as pastor to the Fairhaven and Knoxville Churches stated that during his tenure, “one-hundred-thirty-four converts” joined both churches. During these years, he was also in high demand as a preacher on the emerging Methodist Revival circuit.
At his Farewell Sermon April 18, 1899, he said, “The present life is one of meetings and partings. There is always a tenderness in the word farewell that does not belong to any other word from its connection with the separation implied. Finally, Brethren, Farewell. Be perfect, be of good comfort, be of one mind; live in peace: and the God of Love and peace shall be with you. ”
At the age of seventy, he said that he had missed only sixteen Sabbaths, due to illness.
He and his wife went to live at their home at the Arlington Camp Meeting Ground and on December 29, 1900, Reverend and Mrs. Colhouer celebrated their Fiftieth Wedding Anniversary as well as the Fiftieth Anniversary of Colhouer’s ordination. The event was held at their daughter’s home in Knoxville and was attended by hundreds of friends. He died at his home at the Arlington Camp Grounds on March 23, 1903 and was buried at Homewood Cemetery.
His wife, Mary Colhouer, continued their good work and established a scholarship fund at Adrian College. She died Christmas Eve 1918 in their home at Arlington Camp Grounds at the age of 85. Reverend Doctor Thomas and Mrs. Mary Colhouer, Lives Well Lived.
Reverend Doctor William Brayman Anthony
Reverend Doctor William Brayman Anthony Parents George Anthony was the eighth minister to serve the Fairhaven Methodist Church, albeit very briefly. He was born at Le Ray, Jefferson County, New York on February 16, 1854 to George and Mary Lucinda Locke Anthony. His father died between 1860 and 1870. The 1870 census enumerated Reverend Anthony with his grandparents and widowed mother and brother in Conquest, New York. In 1876, Anthony was enrolled as a student at Adrian College. He was married to Frances DeLameter at Red Creek, New York August 12, I879.
Anthony graduated from Adrian College in I880 with a Doctor of Philosophy degree. He entered the ministry of the Methodist Protestant Church September I, 1877 in the South Illinois Methodist Protestant Conference. His first assignment was the North Wolcott, Illinois Methodist Protestant Church from I880 to I882; Paine's Hollow, Illinois I885-I888; and Paris, Illinois I888-I890. Brayman entered the Western Pennsylvania Methodist Protestant Conference in 1891.
His first assignment in western Pennsylvania was at the Springdale Methodist Protestant Church from 1890 to 1893. The Western Pennsylvania Methodist Conference’s Pastoral Records 1784-2010 stated that his next assignment was the Castle Shannon/Fairhaven post from 1893 to 1904, but this was not correct. Brayman served as Fairhaven Church for five months in 1898. He did continue at Methodist Protestant Church of Castle Shannon until 1904. In 1900, Brayman was given the additional assignment of the Sheridan Terrace Methodist Protestant Church in the West End of Pittsburgh.
On March 31, 1904, Reverend Brayman, “was elected to the presidency of Adrian College … He received the degree of Doctor of Divinity from Kansas City University in I901, and by the same institution, in I909 he was given the degree of Doctor of Laws. When Dr. Anthony accepted the presidency of Adrian College he was confronted by a debt of about $50,000, which had been hanging over his alma mater for many years … received a small bequest from Andrew Carnegie, has improved its buildings and grounds, and it has enlarged and improved its faculty and its educational facilities in every way.”
At the time of 1910 Census, Brayman lived on Madison Street in Adrian Michigan. He retired as President of Adrian College in 1919. In 1920, Brayman lived on Detroit Street in Detroit with his wife and daughter Ruth. His wife died in 1922. On January 11, 1926, he underwent an operation and was discovered to have bladder cancer. He died while visiting his stepson in McKeesport, Pennsylvania on March 13, 1926 at the age of 72. He was buried at Adrian, Michigan at the Oakland Cemetery.
Reverend Samuel Clarence Benninger
Reverend Samuel Clarence Benninger served as Fairhaven Methodist Church’s ninth pastor. He was born May 12, 1872 in Toby, Clarion County, Pennsylvania. He was the second son of James and Matilda Parks Benninger. He married Daisey Fink at Allegheny County on November 29, 1895. They had five daughters, Onilee, Alphea, Lilah, Virginia, and Ruth. Fairhaven Methodist Church was Reverend Benninger’s first assignment. He arrived in 1898 and stayed until December 22, 1899.
Reverend Benninger wanted to the church to stand on its own and not be part of a multiple church circuit. The disappointment with Reverend Benninger’s short stay at Fairhaven Church was stated clearly by Trustee Cordelia Greiner Fulton when she wrote the history of Fairhaven Church for the “Burning of the Mortgage” celebration in 1946. Fulton wrote that Benninger wanted Fairhaven Church, “To go on its own, apparently came too soon and ‘Brother’ Benninger, our minister, gave up.” Financial records from 1898-1899 show that Benninger, like Reverend West and Reverend Sanders, tithed 10% of his salary back to the church. His salary for fiscal year 1898-1899 was a little under $300.
Benninger was admitted to the Western Pennsylvania Methodist Protestant Conference in 1901 and served the Monroe Circuit that included Brownfield, Hopwood, and Fairchance Methodist Protestant Churches from 1901-1902. He was then given the assignment of a single church, which was his goal, at Hopwood from 1902 to 1905.
He was next assigned to the ministry of Eldersville/Bethel post and as supply pastor to the Paterson’s Mills Methodist Protestant Mission in 1905-1907. Benninger was assigned to the Board of Missions from 1907 through 1915. The 1910 census found Reverend Benninger living in Seattle, Washington with his family at 6511 16th Street NW. He returned to the Western Pennsylvania Conference in 1915 and was assigned for the second time to the Eldersville/Bethel churches until 1916. Benninger’s last charge in the Western Pennsylvania Methodist Protestant Conference was the Squirrel Hill Methodist Protestant Church from 1916 to 1917.
The 1920 census found Benninger working as a clergyman in Keokuk, Lee County, Iowa. Sometime between 1918 and 1920, Reverend Benninger and Daisey divorced. Daisey stayed in Seattle with their daughters. Reverend Benninger met Mildred Holladay. They married in Kansas City, Kansas in 1921 and their son, William was born in that city in 1923.
In 1930 and 1940, Reverend Benninger lived in Pulaski, Illinois at 513 Third Street where he worked as a minister of the Constitutional Church. Benninger’s second wife, Mildred, died in 1953 in Grand Chain, Illinois. Daisey Benninger remarried and died in Seattle in 1955. Reverend Benninger died July 19, 1957 in Grand Chain, Pulaski County, Illinois and was buried with second wife Mildred in the Grand Chain Masonic Cemetery at Grand Chain, Pulaski County, Illinois.
Reverend Doctor Frank Norman Foster
Fairhaven United Methodist Church’s tenth pastor was the Reverend Doctor Frank Norman Foster. He was born in the village of Greece in Monroe County, New York on September 22, 1853. Doctor Foster was the fifth child of Ozias Eli Foster and Josephine Davidson. This poor farming family experienced much hardship, four of their children died under the age of five. Additionally, when Doctor Foster was eight years-old, his eldest brother, Charles, was conscripted into the Union Army. Charles was involved in the bloody fighting at the Little Round Top at Gettysburg on July 3, 1863. He survived that battle, but died three months later from typhoid. Beside the death of his big brother, thirty-four other young men from Foster’s village died during the Civil War. The enormous hardship that Foster witnessed was, perhaps, his motivation to enter the ministry.
Doctor Foster left home in 1879 and, like many Methodist ministers of the day, travelled to Adrian College to study for the ministry. On the way to Michigan, Foster stopped in Ohio and met his future wife, Lillie Jane Arnold. They married on Christmas Eve 1879 in Lenawee, Michigan. The couple lived there until 1888 when Foster attained his Doctor of Divinity Degree. Their two children, Eli Norman Foster, MD and Julia Mar Foster Smith, were born during those years.
Doctor Foster’s first assignment after leaving Adrian College was the First Methodist Church in Connellsville, Pennsylvania. In 1890, he was assigned to the First Methodist Church on Pittsburgh’s South Side. He stayed there until 1898 when he was loaned to the Methodist church in Rockville Center, New York in order to be closer to his dying father.
After his father’s death in 1899, he returned to Allegheny County and was given the assignment of being pastor to two different churches that were on the same circuit, the Fairhaven and Knoxville Methodist Churches. Neither church had a parsonage, so the Fosters rented a house located at 117 Zara Street in Knoxville. Some of the titles or Fosters’ sermons at this time were: “The Common People Hear Him Gladly,” “The Destruction of Jerusalem,” and “The Barn and the Bar of God.”
The Methodist Conference moved Fairhaven Church from the Knoxville Circuit to the Idlewood Circuit in 1903 and Foster stayed as pastor of the Knoxville Church. In 1905, he was assigned the most prestigious of the Methodist Churches in the Conference, the Fourth Methodist Church. During his years there, Foster purchased a home in the area that became known later as Brentwood Borough. The house’s present address is 2800 Pyramid Street.
After nine years at the Fourth Methodist Church, Foster was assigned to the Sheridan Methodist Church where he stayed until his short-lived retirement in 1923. He died the following year, on August 7, 1924 and was buried at South Side Cemetery on Brownsville Road.
Reverend Charles Sumner Sanders
Charles Sumner Sanders was an early and influential pastor of Fairhaven Methodist Church. He was born February 11, 1861 in West Deer Township, Pennsylvania, the fifth of twelve children born to Thomas Ross Sanders and Kezia Langdon. His future as a pastor appeared to be predestined, as his name, Charles Sumner, was derived from the great orator and politician, Charles Sumner, whose antislavery oratories were legendary throughout the northern United States and reviled by those states south of the Mason-Dixon Line.
In 1883, Sumner married neighbor, Elizabeth Harper Garraux, and the first of their five children, only three of whom lived to adulthood, was born in 1885. Sanders probably attended seminary at Adrian College in Michigan, as both of his daughters worked at the college in the 1920s and 1930s. He was admitted to the Western Pennsylvania Methodist Protestant Conference in 1896 and became an Elder the following year.
Sanders first assignment was at the Idlewood Methodist Church, near Crafton, where he served from 1896 to 1903. In 1903, he was given the additional assignment of Fairhaven Methodist Church. He served both churches for just one year. In 1904, Idlewood was assigned to another minister and Sanders’ sole charge became Fairhaven Church. Throughout his life, Sanders lived in the community of Etna. He commuted to Fairhaven every week as the church did not have a parsonage.
Sanders was such a powerful and charismatic minister that his sermons brought many people to Fairhaven Church, then located in a small building on Glenbury Street. In 1905, it was decided by the Church Trustees, and under Sanders’ influence, that a new church building was needed. While founding member, Hannah Hibbs, acquired the property from Orlando Horning and the Building Committee raised money for the church’s construction, Sanders’ mission was to recruit new members to Fairhaven Church, thus increasing the amount of money that would be pledged.
In order to achieve this goal, Sanders approached the large population of German immigrants in the Fairhaven community. In 1907 alone, over sixty individuals resigned their membership at the German United Evangelical Church of Christ (Rooster Church) on the South Side and became members of Fairhaven Methodist Church. The cornerstone for the present church building was laid on June 30, 1907 and, five months later, on December 8, the building was dedicated.
Reverend Sander’s wife died from pneumonia at the age of 55 in 1910. Sanders took a short leave of absence after his wife’s death, but, In order to celebrate Sanders’ ninth year at Fairhaven, the church held a reception in his honor. According to the Pittsburgh Press, Fairhaven Church member and legendary boxer known as ‘The Fairhaven Terror,’ William Wimler, “… rendered selections on the zither and addresses were made by Reverend Fletcher, Reverend Reiter, and Reverend Sanders. During the pastorate of Reverend Sanders, the church has erected a fine edifice and the membership has increased 200 percent.”
Sanders stayed at Fairhaven until 1912. He was then assigned to the Fox Chapel-Springdale Circuit for one year until Springdale was assigned to another pastor, at which time the Fox Chapel Methodist Church became his sole charge. During that year, he met and married Esther Blick of Carnegie. Sanders stayed at Fox Chapel until 1922, when he retired due to poor health. His illness lasted three years, until his death from heart failure on November 3, 1925 at his home at 110 Locust Street in Etna. He was buried in the Methodist Cemetery in Bakerstown, Pennsylvania, located along Route 8, between Pittsburgh and Butler.
As evidence to his influence, fifty years after Sanders left Fairhaven Church, in 1963 when the church parsonage was converted into Sunday School classrooms. The building was christened “Sanders’ House” in memory of him and in honor of his contributions and hard work for Fairhaven Church.
