Angel Over Her Tent

Chapter 14—Saving McCann’s Farm

When people needed help, they seemed to turn naturally to Mrs. White for aid. In 1894 a Seventh-day Adventist neighbor named McCann came to see her about an embarrassing financial problem. The hard-working farmer—who had nine living children, the oldest a young woman of twenty-three—needed money badly. AOT 111.1

McCann had bought a rocky ten-acre farm. Because a large well-built house stood on the property, the purchase price had been high. Like many other settlers in Australia, he had hoped to become a prosperous landowner. But a continual drought on the arid plains caused constant crop failures, and McCann, like thousands of others, could not pay off his debts. He obtained a mortgage to pay his bills. Yet no matter how hard he worked, he could not earn money to meet the installments on the loan. In fact, he couldn’t even pay the interest due every quarter, and so in desperation he came to see Mrs. White. AOT 111.2

“I have no one to help me—no one else to turn to,“ McCann said. His weather-beaten face, half hidden by his gray-streaked beard, reflected his worry. “I’ve come to you, hoping you might be able to do something. I need seven pounds ten each month for the next three months. With that I can meet the payments. The state railway wants to buy an acre of the farm for its right-of-way. From the sale I will return your money at the end of the quarter.” AOT 111.3

Mrs. White translated the seven pounds ten into U.S. dollars. It equaled about thirty-seven dollars, a figure worth in purchasing power more than a hundred dollars today. In the 1890’s many people did not see that much money during several months—nor did Mrs. White have seven pounds ten. Because she wrote books that the denomination sold widely, people assumed that she was rich. They could never understand that she spent most of her royalties preparing other books. She had to pay the salaries of her assistants and have the type set and the printing plates made. What little money she had left she donated to various church projects. At the moment she was so poor that she did not have enough money to ship her furniture and other belongings from her former home in Melbourne to Sunnyside, her present country home near Avondale College. AOT 112.1

Not wanting to send McCann away discouraged, she promised that she would do something. What it would be, she didn’t know. First she tried to borrow money from the Adventist Tract and Missionary Society in Sydney, an organization similar to a Book and Bible House today. But it had a shortage of funds and could not lend her anything. Banks were scarce then and sometimes not too trustworthy. AOT 112.2

During the past century Adventists who had extra money often turned it over to a denominational institution such as a publishing house for safekeeping. Mrs. White had deposited some money with the Echo Publishing House (now the Signs Publishing Company). Remembering this, she sent a telegram to the publishing company, asking to withdraw it. The treasurer sent back word that he could not return it because the company had used the funds for an emergency. He could not replace it until the book salesmen mailed the money from their sales. AOT 113.1

When she met the neighbor next, she told him she would lend him the money if her son Willie, coming from Melbourne, had money when he arrived. She expected that he would. Despite the fact that she had hoped to use the money to buy a supply of fruit for the winter, she would let McCann use it. Willie arrived from Melbourne with less than five dollars in his pocket. AOT 113.2

Unwilling to allow those holding the mortgage on McCann’s farm to evict him and his family, Mrs. White tried to think of some other way to get the money. If they could keep paying the interest on the mortgage until the New South Wales state railroad bought a right-of-way through the property, they would be able to save the farm. The money from the railroad sale would wipe out part of McCann’s debt. At the moment, though, Mrs. White saw no way of borrowing the monthly seven pounds ten. Puzzling over what she should do next, she thought of a family she knew who might have some extra money. She visited them and asked for ten pounds—enough to meet the interest due on the loan, plus a little extra so that she could ship her belongings from Melbourne to Cooranbong. Without hesitation, the family gave her the ten pounds. They knew that she would repay it. She had a good reputation among her neighbors for honesty. On the following Sunday night, she and George Burt Starr, a minister and Bible teacher, drove to the McCann farm and gave the money to the happy farmer. Had he not gotten it then, the notice for him and his family to leave the home would have come a day or two later. AOT 113.3

“If this large family had been bereft of a home,” she reflected in her diary, “some of us, if Christians, would have had to help him more than seven pounds to relieve his distress. Now he hopes to sell out in a few months and get a cheaper place. He has a nice house, and we believe this will now tide over the difficulty.” AOT 114.1