(Radiant Glory) 1 - The Path Blazer

True biography was never nor can be written. Fragrance cannot be put into picture or poem. There is a subtle, evasive savor and flavor about character which escapes both tongue and pen. And, more than this, the very best things about such characters and careers are unknown, save to God, and cannot be revealed because they are among His secret things. Like Elijah, the best men hide themselves with God before they show themselves to men. The showing may be written in history, but the hiding has none, and after studying the narrative of such lives, even with the best helps, there remains a deeper and unwritten history that only eternity can unveil. —ANONYMOUS CHAPTER I THE PATH BLAZER MARTHA WING ROBINSON was a path blazer and came of a long line of path blazers. Staunch Puritans all of them, the ancestors of both her father and her mother came from England to the Massachusetts Bay Colony in the 1630’s. Thus these stalwart pioneers of the American wilderness were among the founding fathers of the United States. Martha Wing Robinson’s first American forebear was Daniel Wing who landed at Boston, aboard the William and Francis, June 5, 1632. Then a lad of about fifteen, Daniel had come with his three brothers and his widowed mother, Deborah Bachiler Wing, under the oversight of his maternal grandfather, a Puritan minister, “old Mr. Bachelor (being aged 71), …. who had suffered much at the hands of the bishops in England,” so John Winthrop, governor of Massachusetts Bay, records in his famous History of New England.ⁿ Note: Wing’s father, the Reverend John Wing, a graduate of Oxford University (1603), was a successful minister in Hamburg, Germany, and later to various congregations in Holland. Thus Daniel’s early, formative years were spent on the Continent. It was while the Rev. John Wing was pastor of a large and wealthy congregation in the Hague that Daniel’s grandfather, Stephen Bachiler, began to recruit settlers for a colony in America, “persuading and exhorting, yea, as much as in him lieth, constraining all that love him to join together” with him in this venture. Evidently Daniel’s father, a man of some means, was one of those constrained. However, he died sometime in 1630, at the age of forty-six, before he was able to leave for the new world. Two years later, on March 9, 1632, Stephen Bachiler and his company sailed from London. Aboard ship were some sixty passengers including Thomas Welde who became an associate minister of John Eliot, the “apostle to the Indians,’ and Edward Winslow, sometime governor of Plymouth Colony, who had first come to the new world aboard the Mayflower in 1620. As fellow passengers together on an unusually long voyage of eighty-seven days, young Daniel had opportunity to become acquainted with two of the prominent colonists of his day. (See Winthrop’s entry for June 5, 1632.) Upon landing, Grandfather Bachiler lost no time in leading Daniel and the other members of his family to their intended destination, Saugus, a little settlement six miles north of Boston, where he became “the first feeder of the flock of Christ.”ⁿ Note: Among Stephen Bachiler’s descendants were Daniel Webster and John Greenleaf Whittier as well as a host of other godly people, including Martha Wing Robinson. Daniel Wing continued to live in Saugus for the next five years when the Wings, along with a number of others who were dissatisfied with religious and political conditions in the Massachusetts Bay Colony, “sought out and were contented with” a place in Plymouth Colony on Cape God which they called Sandwich. Here in what was considered “a remote wilderness” they hoped to enjoy their “spiritual and temporal liberties” and “live peaceably.” For the next twenty years Daniel Wing did “live peaceably” in this quiet town, pursuing the ordinary life of any pioneer. He bought a farm, married, raised a large family, prospered materially, and performed various civic duties. There is, however, a conspicuous silence in the town and church records of Sandwich of his participation in the organized religious life of the community. The fact is that there was a spirit of indifference to religion in Sandwich, an attitude apparently shared by Daniel Wing. At length in 1657 two evangelists, “who were called by such a name as Quaker,” came “into those parts.” These men and their message were “gladly received by many,” including Daniel Wing, “who had long been burdened with a lifeless ministry and dead forms of religion.” The result was that “a great fire was kindled,” and among the “many” whose hearts “did burn within them” was Daniel Wing. Now, although “some believed the things which were spoken” of the Quaker evangelists, “some believed not,” so that “great was the stir and noise of the tumultuous citie, yea, all in an uproar.” And “as he that was born after the flesh persecuted him that was born after the Spirit, even so” did it happen in the erstwhile, peaceful town of Sandwich. Haunted by the authorities of Plymouth Colony, Daniel Wing and the other Quakers were forced to worship in secret. Far within the woods they gathered in a secluded place about 125 feet deep which has since been called “Christopher’s Hollow,” so named for Christopher Holder, the one who ministered to the people there. The persecution of Daniel Wing and his Quaker associates continued with increasing severity. Repeatedly he was heavily fined so that his entire estate was in danger of being consumed. Finally, all “power to act in any town meeting.., or to claim title or interest in any town privileges as townes men” was taken from him. In other words, he was stripped of his civil rights. In spite of all this, like the Daniel of old for whom he was named, Daniel Wing “prayed and gave thanks before his God, as he did aforetime.” At length, such persecution was ended by order of the king of England in 1661, and some years later his civil rights were restored. Thus by his suffering and steadfastness to the truth the cause of religious liberty was furthered. Two years after his first wife died in 1664, Daniel Wing married Anna Ewer, the daughter of one of his companions in tribulation. By her he had three children, the second of whom was Bachelor, the one through whom Martha Wing Robinson came. To summarize the next generations in biblical language: Bachelor begat Sylvanus, and Sylvanus begat Thomas who became a sailor and later settled in Connecticut and was called Captain Thomas Wing. Captain Thomas begat Turner six years before the Revolutionary War, and then he so far departed from the faith of his great-grandfather Daniel as to bear arms in the Continental Army. After the war he and his son Turner moved to Vermont where they settled in the village of Rockingham. For a number of years Thomas was an active member of the Baptist Church which held its services in the meetinghouse that is standing there to this day. Turner Wing married in Rockingham and begat Jason, and after the turn of the century moved north, just over the Vermont border to a place called Dunham Flats, Quebec, Canada. There Jason begat Sylvester who married Amanda Smith in 1845. Within a year of their marriage Sylvester and Amanda Wing moved over the border into St. Lawrence County, New York, where on April 13, 1846, their first child, Charles Orin, was born. To all appearances the baby was born dead or died soon after. The doctor, therefore, turned his entire attention to the suffering mother who was in such a critical condition that he knew he must act quickly if her life was to be saved. After a time, satisfied that he had succeeded in his efforts, he prepared to leave. As he did so, however, he was arrested by a faint cry coming from the corner of the room where the baby’s body had been laid. Could it be possible that the baby was alive after all? Yes, he was, and demanding attention. By so narrow a margin did the father of Martha Wing Robinson miraculously escape death in the very hour of his birth! A year or two after Charlie’s birth, the family moved to Michigan where they lived a number of years and then returned to New York State. In the course of time Charlie attended the Union Academy at Belleville, New York, where he met Harriet Maria Tuttle, a charming, petite maiden, less than five feet tall, who was twenty years old. Born August 1, 1846, at Fairfield, Herkimer County, New York, Hattie was the daughter of Alanson and Elmina Bowen Tuttle. Like Charlie Wing, her first American forefathers had come to America as a part of the great Puritan Migration. Away back in 1635 “Husbandman” William Tuttle and his wife Elizabeth had left their home in Ringstead, Northampton, England, and sailed aboard the Planter for the Massachusetts Bay Colony where they landed in Boston on June 7. The next year on “the 14th of the same 6th month [N. S. Aug. 14, 1636] Elizabeth, the wife of one William Tuttell,” according to the records of the First Church of Boston, was admitted to membership. That she was “admitted” speaks highly both for her Christian experience and for her ability to give a narration of it satisfactory to the exacting elders of the church. About a year later their son, Jonathan, was born and “baptized” on July 8, 1637—the first ancestor of Martha Wing Robinson to be born on American soil. As strict a theocracy as was Massachusetts Bay—too strict for many like Daniel Wing—there were others for whom it was not strict enough. Among these were the Tuttles who are numbered among the founders of the Colony of New Haven, the strictest of all the Puritan theocracies. William Tuttle was one of those “free planters” who assembled on the fourth of June, 1639, and subscribed to the new colony’s “Fundamental Agreement” whereby it was declared “as in matters that concern the gathering and ordering of a church, so likewise in all public affairs, making and repealing laws, dividing allotments of inheritance, and all things of like nature, we would all of us be ordered by those rules which the Scripture holds forth to us.” Forthwith William Tuttle received his “allotment” in the same square as the governor, evidence of his social and economic standing. One of the town’s merchants, he participated in its civic affairs in various capacities. Twelve children in all were born to the Tuttles. One of these, Elizabeth, married Richard Edwards and so became the grandmother of one of the greatest of all American philosophers and divines, Jonathan Edwards. That Mrs. Tuttle was admitted in 1640 to the Church of Christ in New Haven speaks even more for her piety than does her admission to the Boston church, in view of the “more than ordinary exactness in trying those that were admitted into the communion of the church” in the new colony. If Mr. Tuttle did not pass the severely strict, theological tests which his wife did, he was considered a godly man. And simply the fact that these two chose to live in New Haven is sufficient evidence of their intense desire to please God in everything, a desire most clearly reflected in the lives of their many, exceedingly godly descendants. William and Elizabeth Tuttle lived and died in Connecticut as did the next four generations—Jonathan, William, Daniel, and Jabez. Then in the first years of the Nineteenth Century Ransom Tuttle moved on into the beautiful Mohawk Valley near Utica, New York, where his son Alanson was born. In the course of time he married and had three children, the oldest of whom, Martha Ann (1838-1937), was to play a rather important part in the life of her niece and namesake, Martha Wing Robinson. After his first wife’s death, Alanson married Elmina Bowen. It was their daughter, Hattie, who eventually was to marry Charlie Wing and so to become the mother of Martha Wing Robinson. Ardently Charlie pursued Hattie after they had met at Union Academy, but his hopes seemed doomed when she and her family left New York State for Iowa in June of 1867. Undoubtedly it was Mrs. Tuttle’s brother, Asa, who had influenced her and her husband to move to Sand Spring, Iowa. Located a few miles due west of Dubuque, it was situated on a tract of about twenty-five thousand acres called Bowen’s Prairie, so named after the original owner of the land, Asa Bowen. By control of the sale of this property Asa Bowen saw to it that the town was composed of “a better class of people” - industrious God-fearing men and women. The first group of settlers had come from Massachusetts in 1858 under the leadership of a Methodist minister, and their piety is attested by the fact that before their several dwellings were occupied by their owners, they were first used for religious services. Thus, in a sense, the whole community was consecrated to God. To receive and to accommodate prospective settlers until their own houses were built, Mr. Bowen erected and operated a large hotel which became the center of the town’s life and economy. It was in this hotel that the Tuttles lived after they arrived in Sand Spring, and shortly became its managers. Before long, however, Mrs. Tuttle became ill, so that Hattie had to assume her duties which included the operation of the kitchen and dining room. It was with reference to her new duties that Charlie Wing, who was then living in Michigan, remarked in his letter to Hattie, September 6, 1868: “I would like to have happened in at your house about those days when you were ‘chief cook and bottle washer’ so that I could have seen how you managed a hotel.” “I am not very well now,” Charlie said in this same letter in reply to Hattie’s question as to his health. The fact is that Charlie had been weakly and sick from birth. At this time he had a tumor in his chest and had the beginnings of tuberculosis. Chills and a high fever had forced him to stay in bed for two days of the previous week. In spite of his physical condition, he was cheerful and courageous. “I walked two miles today and a little over to go to Bible class,” he continued. “It made me very tired, but I made out.” Those two, brief sentences reveal the character of Charles Orin Wing, father of Martha Wing Robinson. He loved God and he would serve Him with all his strength, no matter how little that strength might be—even if he had to walk two miles to do it. Devotion and determination with a vengeance! Repeatedly in his letters to Hattie he suggested that both of them needed to know God better. To these remarks she responded with casual agreement, for, although a proper church member, she was unconverted, nor was she awake to any special need of God. Sometime during the next year (1869) Charlie Wing arrived in Sand Spring where he “engaged in the mercanthe business.” “He soon won his way to the hearts of the people of this community and acquired a reputation for honesty and uprightness in all his dealings with his fellow men.” He also won his suit for Hattie, and on February 2, 1870, they were married. Mr. and Mrs. Charles Wing began their life together in the Bowen Hotel. There on the twenty-first of November, 1870, their first child, Lunettie Emigene, was born. Just two years later, November 24, 1872, Ada May was born. Early in 1874 Mr. and Mrs. Wing began to look forward to the arrival of their third child. During the intervening months the father gave himself to prayer, and so intense was his supplication that the infant was called of God and separated to Him from her mother’s womb. On the fourteenth of November the baby arrived. Her mother named her Martha Abigail—Martha for her beloved sister, Abigail for a dear friend.ⁿ Delicate and very tiny, Mattie, as the family called her, resembled her petite, graceful mother, except that she had her father’s deep, brown eyes, eyes which when animated looked black and shone as coals of fire. Note: As the child grew older she disliked her middle name so intensely that eventually she dropped it. Thus in Martha there was an admirable blending of the qualities and characteristics of her mother and of her father— of the Tuttles and of the Wings. This was to be true spiritually as well as naturally, for in Martha Wing Robinson there was a marked balance and mixture of the Quaker emphasis on the preeminence of the Holy Spirit and the Puritan emphasis on the importance of the Scriptures. The Bible and the Holy Spirit were to have equal preeminence in the life and ministry of this handmaiden of the Lord. The forefathers of Martha Wing Robinson had indeed helped to beat a thoroughfare “across the wilderness” of the American continent from the rock-bound coast of Massachusetts to the fertile prairies of Iowa. A few years after her birth the physical frontier of America was officially declared closed, but for all the advances which her Puritan and Quaker forebears had made into the Promised Land of the Spirit and the Truth, the spiritual frontier remained wide open. It was into the little-known or unexplored parts of this area that Martha Wing Robinson was to venture and to become a path blazer.

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(Radiant Glory) 1 - The Path Blazer

Martha Wing Robinson

Martha Wing Robinson (1874 - 1936)

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