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About Cottage Grove sentinel. (Cottage Grove, Or.) 1909-current | View Entire Issue (Jan. 30, 2019)
COTTAGE GROVE SENTINEL • JANUARY 30, 2019 • 7A Off beat Oregon: ‘Uncle Joab’ Powell was West’s most famous pioneer preacher er and steeple rising from the front. Simple, but welcoming. It’s old, but it’s not the original Providence Pioneer Church. Th at structure was built of logs back in 1854, and according to legendary Oregon pop historian Ralph Friedman, it “had an air of vigilant righteousness, as though erected by Jeremiah and maintained by avenging angels.” And, as Friedman goes on to note, that’s not far from the actual truth. Th ere will surely never be a second Jeremiah. But the man who led the congregation of Missionary Baptists who built Providence Church may have been the closest the world has come to producing one. Joab Powell, better known as Uncle Joab, stood over six feet tall, with a great barrel By Finn J.D. John for The Sentinel (Note: Th is is part 1 of a 2-part series on pioneer preacher Uncle Joab Powell) A bout halfway be- tween Crabtree and Lacomb, tucked into the side of a gentle hill, stands an old and somewhat aus- tere-looking little white build- ing known as Providence Pio- neer Church. Th e “pioneer” part of the name is somewhat superfl u- ous. Just one look at it suffi ces to tell it’s an old-style church of the kind built 150 years ago by people who’d come to Ore- gon in covered wagons. Th ere is no stained glass, no icons or statuary — just four simple sash windows along each side, a steep roof, a simple belltow- Bring or mention this ad for 30% off clothes! C l ot he s Games C andy Anime (541) 946-3132 538 e. Main St., Cottage Grove www.delightinthegrove.com Imagine The Difference You Can Make DONATE YOUR CAR 1-844-533-9173 FREE TOWING TAX DEDUCTIBLE chest enclosing a pair of lungs whose capacity was already legendary when he arrived in the state via covered wagon in 1852. Uncle Joab is probably best known in Oregon today for a sequence of political “fi rsts,” not all of which would have met with his approval. Th e main ones are these: He was the fi rst chaplain in the state Legislature, in the year Or- egon became a state; and, of course, he led the lawmakers in off ering up the Legislature’s fi rst prayer. But interesting as these lit- tle factoids may or may not be, they’re far from the most interesting part of Uncle Joab’s story. J oab Powell was born in 1799 in the hills of Ten- nessee — Claiborne County, north of Knoxville, close to the Kentucky state line. His was a Quaker family, and he was brought up in the classic manner of the plain-dress- ing, plain-speaking Society of Friends, bitterly opposed on Biblical grounds to the institution of slavery, the con- sumption of alcohol, and the treatment of black people and Indians as something other than fellow men and women. Th ese moral characteristics seem to have soaked deep into his bones, for when he left the Quakers and became a Mis- sionary Baptist, he brought them with him — except for the plain-speaking part, the 1600s-style use of “thee” and “thou,” which in the mid- 1800s was already starting to look a bit like an aff ectation. In 1817, he married Anna Beeler; and the two of them got started building a family that would, by the time they were fi nished, number 14 members. Anna was a critical and usu- ally-forgotten part of the Un- cle Joab story. For one thing, Joab Powell was illiterate: he had no formal schooling at all. But he had an uncanny ability to absorb and remem- ber information. So Anna would read to the family from the Bible; he would absorb and memorize whole books of it; and, at Sunday services, out it would come — somewhat imperfect word-for-word, but spot-on in spirit and intent, and deliv- ered with enthusiasm and fi re. Not surprisingly, he was promptly called into the min- istry. He had been preaching in Tennessee for six years when, in 1830, the family moved to Missouri — which was pretty much the frontier at that time — and took a 640-acre land claim, which he started in farming as a sort of side hus- Your Family Deserves The BEST Help Prevent Blindness Get A Vision Screening Annually Ask About A FREE 3 Day Vacation Voucher To Over 20 Destinations!!! Technology... Value... TV!... Add High Speed Internet /mo. Save with Frontier Internet Bundles 190 Channels America’s Top 120 Pay one price for two great services: high-speed Internet Serious speed! CALL TODAY Save 20%! and a full-featured home phone Bundle and save today BROADBAND ULTRA + PHONE + SECURE 19 Per Month With Qualifying Phone Service 6 Mbps + Free Wi-Fi Router + 1 Year Price Lock Call today and pay less 1-866-373-9175 Offer ends 7/10/19. Savings with 2 year price guarantee with AT120 starting at $69.99 compared to everyday price. 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Acceptance guaranteed for one insurance policy/certificate of this type. Contact us for complete details about this insurance solicitation. This specific offer is not available in CO, NY; call 1-800-969-4781 or respond for similar offer. Certificate C250A (ID: C250E; PA: C250Q); Insurance Policy P150 (GA: P150GA; NY: P150NY; OK: P150OK; TN: P150TN) 6096E-0917 MB17-NM008Ec TURNING 65 AND NEED HELP WITH YOUR MEDICARE CHOICES? Call Paul to help simplify the complicated. 541-517-7362 SOUTH LANE COUNTY FIRE & RESCUE The Only Emergency Medical Transport Service in South Lane County Call 541-942-4493 for info. FOR EMERGENCY DIAL 911 Serving South Lane County. www.southlanefi re.org Paul Henrichs ~ Local Independent Agent coverage4oregon@gmail.com tle. His real avocation in Mis- souri was, of course, as a cir- cuit preacher, riding all over the frontier to hold services. Anna essentially fi nanced this avocation by managing their farm with the help of their growing brood of chil- dren. Twenty years passed. Th en the Oregon Trail opened, and the Powells, living right there in Missouri, were per- fectly positioned to join the throng. Th ey promptly did so, crossing the plains in the ap- proved Oregon Trail fashion and taking up a land claim at the forks of the Santiam Riv- er — where Anna set up her farming operation anew with the help of her now-mostly- grown children and, in sever- al cases, their spouses. Immediately upon arriv- ing, Uncle Joab joined several other members of the party — Missionary Baptists all, of course — to establish Prov- idence Church. Th en, onto his long-suff ering horse he hopped, and set out into the wilderness to obey the Great Commission. I t took a stunningly short amount of time for Uncle Joab Powell to become the most famous preacher in the West. He had, as you will no doubt have gathered, that magical combination of fero- cious passion and brotherly love that good Baptist preach- ers are known for — and he seemed to have more of both than anyone else alive. To that, add his prodigious lung capacity — it was said, only half in jest, that when he was preaching a sermon in Scio it could be heard in downtown Jeff erson, ten miles away — and you can imagine what the Forces of Evil found them- selves up against. He would start off by sing- ing a hymn — or, perhaps it would be more accurate to say, roaring one. His pitch, several sources say, was not as good as his memory; but he made up for any such de- fi ciency with volume. Nor did he care: He was there to save souls, not to land a spot on Team Christina. Next he would start into a sermon, and hold the congre- gation spellbound. His im- perfectly remembered Bible verses would come out “trans- lated” into frontier English — which the homesteaders always related to better than they would have the original King James text. “When he went on a preaching trip he always took one of the brethren with him,” recalled his granddaughter, Rachel Arminta Peterson, in a 1939 interview with a Works Progress Administration writer. “Th ey went two by two just as the early disciples did at Jesus’ command. In many of the places where they went Customer Engagement 24/7 Web Design & Development Ask us how we can help grow your business. S entinel C ottage G rove there was no church building, so they preached in log cab- ins, in schoolhouses, in court houses or out of doors under the trees. At Lebanon he oft en held meetings in the old San- tiam Academy building. … His journeys took him south as far as California.” When Uncle Joab rode into a town, he typically would stay with a relative or friend, and then put the word out. He didn’t follow a schedule; he just dropped in, preached a “sarvice,” and moved on the next day to do it all again somewhere else. “He always came unexpect- edly; we never knew when he was coming,” Peterson re- called. “He always spent the night with us and as soon as he came it was the business of us children to start out and notify all the neighbors that there would be preaching at Father's house that night. We children would run every- where and by evening when the meeting began there would be a good housefull. Th at is the way he went all over the country.” On occasions when there wasn’t a river nearby for pur- poses of baptism, tanks built of planks were sometimes knocked together and fi lled with water. Uncle Joab was a stickler for baptism, and at ev- ery service the opportunity to get “soaked and saved” had to be ready to hand. B ack at home in Linn County, Providence Church had swelled to more than 400 members — an enormous congregation for the population of Linn Coun- ty at the time. And by 1859 — on the eve of Oregon’s fi - nally becoming a state — Un- cle Joab was far and away the most famous clergyman in the territory. So, naturally, when the fi rst state Legislature convened and thoughts were turned to the need to start meetings off properly with bowed heads and folded hands, his was the fi rst name to come to mind. An invitation was dispatched to him forthwith, off ering a $30 fee for his services as the new state’s fi rst offi cial man of God — the Chaplain of the Legislature. It was just as promptly accepted. It became clear, though, immediately upon his arrival, that the Legislature had had no idea what sort of preacher they were hiring when they sent for him. Th ey would learn, the hard way, over the next few weeks. We’ll talk about that, and the assorted hilarity that ensued, in next week’s article. (Sources: “WPA Interview: Peterson, Rachel Arminta (Powell),” a government doc- ument transcribed by Patricia Dunn in 2000 and published on the Linn County Gene- alogical Society Website at www.lgsoregon.org; Road- side History of Oregon, a book by Bill Gulick pub- lished in 1991 by Mountain Press; In Search of Western Oregon, a book by Ralph Friedman published in 1990 by Caxton Printers Ltd.) Finn J.D. John teaches at Oregon State University and writes about odd tidbits of Oregon history. For details, see http://fi nnjohn.com. To contact him or suggest a topic: fi nn2@ offb eatoregon.com or 541-357- 2222.