Footprints of the Pioneers

Chapter 19—Hill of the Man of God

Joseph Bates

MONTEREY, Michigan, is a farming community rather than a town. At Monterey Center there is a general store, a filling station, and one or two houses-no more. Elsewhere in Monterey township you may search in vain for urban influence. But there is a hill, crown of the rolling countryside, which holds for us a sacred interest; for here lie in their last earthly resting place that man of God, Joseph Bates, and his faithful wife, Prudence, who departed this life one year and seven months before him. Poplar Hill Cemetery, abrupt and commanding, and beautifully kept, is to us the center of Monterey. FOPI 163.1

When in the 1850’s Michigan beckoned to the Seventh-day Adventist leaders in the East, and one after another-White, Smith, Loughborough, Andrews, Byington-they were drawn as by a magnet to Battle Creek, the patriarch of them all, the pioneer of Michigan, came also, but not to the city by the rivers which was for half a century to be the Jerusalem of the Adventist people. Joseph Bates, first to penetrate this virgin territory, creating the first church at Jackson, opening the door at Battle Creek, ranged also through the raw frontier country of a score of counties, garnering here a sheaf, gleaning there a handful, of the wheat of the blessed hope. FOPI 163.2

One of the communities where he labored and wrought and saw a harvest, was Monterey. And when, in 1858, he decided to leave his ancestral home at Fairhaven, across the river from New Bedford, Massachusetts, it was to this country community that he chose to come rather than to the congesting center of Battle Creek. This was his home for fourteen years, till his death, though seldom was he in it for more than a few days at a time. His dear wife, his “Beloved companion Prudy,” held the frontier fort, managing the household, ministering to the community, reporting the mutations of the church, the death of a child (primly signing, “P. M. Bates”), and in her last letter to her husband piously and wistfully longing “to have my mind free from care and so many household duties, that I may more exclusively give my mind and time to the all-important subject of getting just right before the Lord.” ¹¹⁹ She who in the beginning of the Sabbath experience had rather rebelliously exclaimed against the poverty come upon them through his liberality to the cause, against the expenditure of that York shilling for “four pounds of flour,” had now “for more than twenty years voluntarily engaged in the Third Angel’s Message.” FOPI 164.1

They built a meeting house there at Monterey, in the heyday of the church; but all I could find were the crumbling foundations, for two years ago the ancient building, its worshipers deceased or scattered, was torn down. Monterey church, one of the charter members of the Michigan Conference, is no more. Joseph Bates and his wife owned a house and lot there, but I could not find its location, and amid the new farm cottages and houses scattered along the road it probably has disappeared like the church. FOPI 165.1

By the courtesy of judge Tucker of the Probate Court in Allegan, I was permitted to see the will of Joseph Bates, made in 1866 and probated after his death in 1872. And also the statement of his executor, Charles Jones, who was a member of the church in Monterey and leader of the Bible class. ¹²⁰ FOPI 165.2

The will bequeaths his little property to his wife, Prudy M. Bates, for the term of her natural life, and after her death to be sold and the proceeds given to the Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association of Battle Creek. As she died before him, doubtless the terms of the will were carried out, and the last of Joseph Bates’ fortune fed into the cause to which he had given his all. FOPI 165.3

The executor’s statement names three children of his, one, Mary Beardon (or Reardon), of Monterey, being that daughter who cared for him, or kept his house, after his wife’s death. The other two are Ellen S. Meader, 73 Willoughby Street, Brooklyn, New York, and Lizzie P. Tabor. I have never heard otherwise of these last-named daughters, but I learned of a son of Mrs. Tabor, recently deceased, through Mrs. Eliza Bradford, of Acushnet, Massachusetts. Bates’ autobiography is singularly oblivious to his family relationships; and aside from three incidental references, there is no mention in it of his children. These three are: his mention of the death of an infant son and the greeting of a little daughter upon his return from one of his voyages; his later mention of a son returned from a Pacific whaling voyage and accident; and his last mention, in a letter to Mrs. White near the end of his life, of his daughter who shared his home. But in 1865 he reports the death of his “only son” Joseph, at sea, at the age of thirty-five. ¹²¹ FOPI 166.1

Joseph Bates was the prime health reformer among us. Long before the revealed light of health reform came through the prophetic gift in Ellen G. White, the strong-willed and conscientious Bates had framed his own health regimen, casting off the habits of drinking spiritous liquors, the use of tobacco and of tea and coffee, finally of meats. At the time James and Ellen White first became acquainted with them, in 1845, he had reduced his diet to bread and water, on which, surprisingly enough, he flourished, and certainly was of little trouble to his hostesses, save for their anxiety that he would starve to death. Later he liberalized his diet to include other forms of cereal and fruits and nuts, but never meats, and water was his only drink. FOPI 166.2

As a result, he was free from all those ills which miserably dogged practically all the other leaders in the early days. James and Ellen White, Edson, Loughborough, Andrews, Smith, Waggoner, Bourdeau, and many others were victims of grievous physical disorders before the health reform message came and was accepted-more or less in various cases; but not Joseph Bates! Through thick and thin, sunshine and storm, in labors abundant and privations sore, he marched ever forward, serene above the physical troubles of his companions, ever sympathetic and helpful in their misfortunes, and never preaching, except by his example, the doctrines of his health gospel. FOPI 167.1

When in 1856 Andrews was sent into retirement by his ills, and Loughborough went along with him, Joseph Bates carried on. When James White, in 1865, was so sorely smitten with his most severe stroke of paralysis, when Loughborough almost immediately came into danger of the same disaster, when Uriah Smith, overcrowding his office labors and, because of his lameness wholly neglecting outdoor exercise, was invalided, when almost the whole personnel of the General Conference and its chief component, the Michigan Conference, were bundled off to the Dansville Sanitarium. in New York, and the cause seemed about to sag into desuetude, Joseph Bates bore up the burden, cheering, working, and gathering funds from the Monterey church and elsewhere to send to the sufferers. And never did he point a self-righteous finger at himself or say, “Live as I do, and you will not suffer so.” ¹²² Malaria was one of the scourges of the Northwest, swamp-riddled and mosquito-infested as it was, and practically everyone was periodically visited by “fever and ague”. But only once in his long life does Joseph Bates report that he had a visitation of the disease, and then by treatments and dieting he was over it in three days. FOPI 167.2

His wife’s death in August of 1870 struck him hard, for they had walked together for over fifty years in harmony and love. Beneath his iron self-control and behind his consuming passion for the cause, and despite his public indifference to family pride and social ties, the heart of Joseph Bates was tender and true. He ranged the country like a gale-driven mariner, especially in the earlier years, seldom staying in a place more than two to four days to give his message; but when he left, as B. B. Brigham testifies at Jackson, “There was much weeping on his departure,” for “the Lord has greatly blessed the labors of Brother Bates.” FOPI 168.1

After his wife died, he halted not at all, it would appear from his reports, only occasionally resting at his home, as before. If, as James White intimates in his addenda to Bates’ autobiography, the old veteran listened to his brethren when they suggested retirement, it is not apparent in the annals of the time, for up to the very month before his death we see him traveling and teaching in the churches of northwestern Michigan-the Northwest of those days, but now the west center of the State. And at the health festival in the summer of 1871, which was staged on the grounds of the Health Institute, Elder Bates, in the eightieth year of his age, testified that he had not an ache nor a pain, and his biographer adds that he stood as straight as a monument and trod the sidewalks as lightly as a fox. ¹²³ FOPI 168.2

Eight months later he was laid low. He died at the Health Institute, or Battle Creek Sanitarium, on March 19, 1872. His obituary, written by J. H. Waggoner, states that he died of diabetes and an attack of erysipelas. The diagnosis of diabetes seems dubious, in view of his own testimony and that of others as to his health and freedom from pain. The science of medical diagnosis was not far advanced in his day, and competent medical authority I have consulted scouts the idea that he had diabetes. The cause of his death was doubtless erysipelas, a streptococcus infection. FOPI 168.3

On the hill looking over the fair country of mid state Michigan stands the modest monument of this man of God and of his wife, Prudence. On two sides are the records of their names and dates of birth and death; on another, in small italics, now almost obliterated in the weathered limestone rock, is the brief running account of his life: FOPI 169.1

In Memory FOPI 169.2

The early life of Elder Bates was spent as a sea captain, during which service he gave his heart to God, and was ever active in the cause of Christ, being identified as a moral reformer of his day. In 1827 he assisted in organizing one of the first temperance societies in the United States. Subsequently he became a colaborer with William Miller in the great Advent movement of 1844. At the close of that work he became convinced of the obligation of the seventh-day Sabbath, and with others founded the Seventh-day Adventists. He remained a venerated and loved pastor until death. FOPI 169.3