Footprints of the Pioneers

Chapter 22—Beautiful for Situation

Goodloe H. Bell

THE Michigan terrain in the Lower Peninsula has not the grandeur of mountains nor the mystic infinity of ocean, though the Great Lakes simulate the sea. But to the placid mind, not demanding the fierce wrestling of tumbled heights, nor the wild surge of restless waves, its rolling landscape, dotted with lakes and interscribed with marching masses of trees, presents a pleasing sight that soothes and composes. From some fair vantage point, rising perhaps a hundred feet above its fellow hills, one’s eye sweeps over the surrounding countryside, to mark many a hollow, many a wooded glen, a pond here, a larger lake there, the serried woods, the green pastures, the cultivated fields; and Michigan seems a paradise. FOPI 185.1

The Seventh-day Adventists who selected Battle Creek for their headquarters in 1855 were blessed with a beautiful site. From the meadows of the clear-water Kalamazoo the land rises leisurely in a broad sweep to the brow of the hill a quarter of a mile north, whence it maintains its elevation, with hills and dales, woods, lakes, and streams. From the river, Washington Street, going north, intersects West Main, passes McCamly Park, Van Buren, and, slightly turning, cuts across Champion Street at the corner where the first cemetery was located, later residences, then the towering, ill-fated late addition to the Battle Creek Sanitarium, now the Government-owned Percy Jones Hospital for veterans. A few rods up the ascent, and you come to the brow of the hill. It is not always easy to tell the original contours, for here, as well as downtown, the hand of man has smoothed the streets out of the ups-and-downs the settlers found. But from what is written and what is left, it is not difficult to imagine how the scene appeared then. FOPI 187.1

Here on the brow, on either side of Washington Street, two prominent citizens established their homes. On the right or east side was the residence and spacious grounds of judge Benjamin F. Graves, a jurist of note and at one time chief justice of the Michigan Supreme Court. Just how early he built there does not appear. On the left or west side was a considerably larger estate where was built in 1855 the home of the Hon. Erastus Hussey, Quaker, merchant, and mayor of Battle Creek, who that year removed from his first home in the center of town to this suburban retreat. FOPI 188.1

Erastus Hussey was presiding officer at the Jackson Convention in 1854 which formed the Republican Party; and he was a noted Abolitionist, as you might suspect from his being a Quaker. Of the 30,000 escaped slaves whom the Underground Railway sent through to Canada or secure places in the North, it is estimated that 1,000 passed through Battle Creek; and Erastus Hussey was there the chief “conductor.” Though noncombatant, he was scarcely nonmilitant. On one occasion, when a party of slaveowners were reported making their way through Michigan seeking runaway slaves, he had printed a batch of broadsides warning them not to come to Battle Creek. Sending these west on the train, he intercepted the party at Niles, and the bills were distributed among them. They did not come to Battle Creek, but doubtless remained blissfully ignorant that it was a Friend who had stopped them with a, “Thee shall come no further!” FOPI 188.2

When he built his new residence on the hill, his cellar was made into a “station” on the Underground Railway. Here, on the site of Hussey’s residence, Battle Creek College was afterward built. It still stands there, poor old, dear old Battle Creek College, one of the only two original Seventh-day Adventist public buildings in the town, unused, its Windows and doors boarded and barred, and the dark secret of the Underground Railway perhaps enclosed within its depths. FOPI 188.3

Seventh-day Adventist headquarters had been in Battle Creek eleven years, when it was decided, in 1866, to build a sanitarium, or, as it was originally styled, the Western Health Reform Institute. This was three years after Mrs. White’s vision in Otsego which pointed out the duty to teach the church and the world the principles of health and Christian ministry. James White and others had in the meantime been to Dr. Jackson’s institution in New York, and received benefit from the treatment and diet. Yet some of the ideas and practices advocated by the physicians there were against the principles of their religion, as, for instance, card-playing, dancing, and theater attendance. In diet they were practically in agreement, though they would not include salt in the condiments they rejected. FOPI 189.1

This saltless diet took quite a hold, however, upon some of our physicians and workers, as I well remember from my boyhood at the Battle Creek Sanitarium table. Food was cooked without salt, and though it was supplied on the table, if we “call boys” (bell hops) took a pinch, it was likely to call forth from the matron, who acted as our hostess, the remark, “Boys, salt makes you cross.” Mrs. White did not long subscribe to the saltless diet, but J. N. Andrews, whose son received much benefit at the Dansville Sanitarium, did. J. O. Corliss tells the story that one time at a meeting Mrs. White sprinkled salt on her saltless mush. Elder Andrews, sitting across the table from her, said in solemn tones, “Sister White, don’t you know that salt is a mineral substance, which should never be taken into the human body?” Sister White, in equally solemn tones, meekly replied, “My Bible says that salt is good.” ¹³⁰ FOPI 189.2

After the Dansville experience Mrs. White advocated the establishment of a health institution of our own, which should exemplify the full gospel of health. At the General Conference in May, 1866, she gave a stirring address on health reform. The General Conference responded vigorously. Many pledged themselves not only to adopt correct habits of life but to carry on the work of education in health as a part of their ministry. Furthermore, the Conference adopted resolutions to begin publication of a health journal and to establish a health reform institution. FOPI 190.1

They called to head each of these enterprises, Dr. Horatio S. Lay. Dr. Lay, a Michigan physician who had come into the faith, had been much impressed by Mrs. White’s views on health from the beginning of her teachings in 1863. He went to Dansville in 1864, and from his apprenticeship there in hydrotherapy and diet he was called to head our first health institution. FOPI 190.2

James White, though elected that spring to the presidency of the General Conference, was too ill to do much promotion work. John N. Loughborough, then president of the Michigan Conference, stepped into the breach. He prepared a subscription paper for the proposed enterprise, and was much encouraged by the response of his first subscriber, J. P. Kellogg, $500. Battle Creek altogether subscribed $1,825, and J. N. Andrews brought the church at Olcott, New York, to subscribe $800 more. Thus with $2,625 the enterprise was launched. FOPI 190.3

For a location, they hit upon the sightly estate of judge Graves. What induced him to sell, whether philanthropic interest in the prospect and a desire to give it the best, or business interests, does not appear; but his eight-room residence, with some additions, became our first sanitarium, the Health Institute. Long afterward, when the first brick sanitarium had been erected, I remember this residence, which was then called the Club House, moved back on Barbour Street, and used sometimes for nurses’ home, sometimes for offices. The final disposition remains hidden in the fog of my memory or the hiatus of my absence. FOPI 191.1

There were beautiful views from this hilltop site and the little sanitarium. To the east the ground fell off sharply into the valley of a brook that flowed from the three Spring Lakes, the first of them half a mile away. Now that valley is a city park. To the south was the valley of the Kalamazoo, and to the southeast, below the hill, was the business section of Battle Creek. The groves about the building helped to the coolness of its situation, and altogether the small institution started with fair prospects, even if, as a later writer declared, it had to begin with one patient and five members of the staff. ¹³¹ That “one patient” condition, so dramatically presented by the writer of the sketch, must have held true for about five minutes, for Dr. Byington says that at its opening enough patients had come “to make a fair beginning.” ¹³² FOPI 191.2

Dr. Lay was at first the only physician, but before the year was out two others had been added; namely, Dr. J. F. Byington, and a lady physician, Dr. Phoebe Lamson. ¹³³ Early additions to the staff were Dr. J. H. Ginley and Dr. M. G. Kellogg, the oldest son of J. P. Kellogg. FOPI 191.3

It was eight years later when the Adventists acquired the property of Mr. Hussey, on the opposite side of the street, an estate that contained thirteen acres. Then the project was a college, the first advanced school of Seventh-day Adventists. From almost the beginning of her ministry Mrs. White had presented the principles of Christian education, beginning with the home and the duties of parents. It had by now become evident that to secure an educated ministry, the denomination must enter upon the more advanced work. Yet Battle Creek College built up from the foundations of elementary school work. FOPI 192.1

Among the patients at the sanitarium was a teacher named Goodloe H. Bell. He had not been there long before he accepted the faith of Seventh-day Adventists. For the sake of his health he worked out on the grounds and in the garden. Elder and Mrs. White lived then on the corner of Washington and Champion streets, just below the sanitarium. Their two sons, Edson and Willie, like all boys, ranged outside the family fence, and became acquainted with the patient gardener. They found him sympathetic to boy problems, and helpful when they brought their school tasks to him. So they begged their father to have Mr. Bell be their teacher. FOPI 193.1

In the end Professor Bell did, with the encouragement of James White and other parents, start a private school. This developed until it was taken under the wing of the General Conference, and the first building of the publishing plant, which had been superseded by later buildings and removed down Washington Street, was employed, its lower story being the schoolroom. and its upper story the home of Professor Bell’s family. FOPI 193.2

By the early 70’s the agitation for an advanced school had jelled into a determination to found a college. George I. Butler was then president of the General Conference. Mrs. White’s counsel was to establish it in the country, on a farm; for agriculture and other industries were in her teaching basic to a well rounded education. But the brethren of that period, as many brethren of later times, could not catch that vision; it seemed to them ideal that our educational institution should be close neighbor to our health institution, and they closed a deal with the good Quaker Hussey for his thirteen-acre estate, the greater part of which they quickly sold off for residence lots. It is said that Mrs. White wept when the final decision was made. And twenty-seven years later she was to support strongly the project of moving Battle Creek College out to its present location on the land, as Emmanuel Missionary College. FOPI 193.3

In this case Mr. Hussey’s residence disappeared. No mention is made of either its removal or its wrecking; but the brick college, three stories high, in the form of a Greek cross, was built, it is declared, right over the “station” of the Underground Railway, and so the original dwelling house must somehow have faded into oblivion. Mr. Hussey, in fact, built a new home on the corner of Washington and Manchester, which may still be seen a short distance down Manchester, where it was later moved. It is now known as North Lodge, a nurses’ home belonging to the present Battle Creek Sanitarium. FOPI 194.1

The memories of three generations and of many successive classes cluster around that old building of Battle Creek College and its two additions on south and north, and the big brick women’s dormitory to the side rear, and across the street to the south the men’s dormitory. That frame building is gone now, but the girls’ brick still stands, its melancholy eyes blinded by boards. How long the old college buildings will be allowed to stand I cannot tell. But sure I am, despite all its vicissitudes and all its divergencies from the pattern, the grand old mother of our schools wove an educational garment that has clothed the progress of the years and sent hundreds of messengers of the truth into every quarter of the earth; and she will be cherished in loyal hearts so long as her children, some of whom still stand in the responsible places of our cause, shall live; for to them still this Zion seems beautiful for situation, the joy of the whole earth. FOPI 194.2