There and Back Again: The Journey of the Dunker Bible

By Rachel Dworkin, Archivist

 

On September 17, 1862, the Battle of Antietam raged near Sharpsburg, Maryland, between the Confederate Army of Northern Virginia under General Robert E. Lee and the Union Army of the Potomac under General George B. McClellan. At the southern tip of the Confederate line was a small Dunker church. At the end of the battle, the church was badly scarred from bullet holes and an artillery shell had done serious damage to the walls and roof. The day after the battle, a truce was arranged there for the collecting of the wounded and dead. While searching for the missing men of his regiment, Corporal Nathan Dykeman of the 107^th New York Volunteers ventured inside. There, he helped himself to the large bible resting on the lectern, setting off a 40-year odyssey that would take the bible from Sharpsburg to Elmira and back again.

Truce at Dunker Church by Alfred Waud (Courtesy of National Park Service) 

The Dunkers, also known as the Schwarzenau Brethren or the German Baptists, are a Christian sect founded in Germany in 1708. Their nickname comes from their practice of triple full-body immersion adult baptism. After suffering religious prosecution, a group settled in Pennsylvania in 1720 and soon spread into Maryland, Ohio, and Virginia. They eschew drinking, swearing, war, slavery, and, today, certain aspects of modern technology. The church in Sharpsburg was established in 1852 on land donated by local farmer Samuel Mumma. At the time of the battle, the congregation consisted of a half-dozen local farm families. It would take them several years to repair the battle damaged church and many more to recover their stolen bible.

Its thief, Nathan Dykeman enlisted in the 107^th New York Volunteers at age 24 in July 1862 along with his younger brother James. They both joined Company H in Havana (now Montour Falls), Nathan as a corporal and James as a private. Both fought with the regiment for the rest of the war with Nathan being promoted to sergeant in 1863. He was killed on May 29, 1865 when he was struck by a train just outside Washington, D.C. following a victory celebration. His comrades saw to it that his personal effects made it home to his sister, including the stolen bible.

The bible remained with the Dykeman family until 1903 when Nathan’s sister gave it to James H. Arnold, one of her brothers’ former comrades in arms. He presented it to his fellow former soldiers at the annual reunion of the 107^th New York Volunteers on September 17, 1903 at the Elmira Armory and they agreed to pay the sister $10 for it. The original plan was to add the bible to the records of the regimental association, but it was ultimately decided that someone would contact the church in Sharpsburg instead. But who?

Enter John T. Lewis of Elmira. Mark Twain buffs might better know him as the man who saved Twain’s sister-in-law and niece from an almost certain death by runaway carriage in 1877. Lewis was a Black man who was born free in Carroll County, Maryland on January 10, 1835. He was baptized as Dunker at a church in Pipe Creek, Maryland in 1853. He first came to Elmira in 1862 where he owned a 64-acre farm and occasionally worked as a coachman for the Langdon family. Although he had long been separated from his religious brethren, he kept in touch via church publications and personal correspondence. Lewis used his contacts in the wider Dunker church to track down the pastor John E. Otto of the Sharpsburg church and arrange the return of the bible. It was officially returned to its proper place in the church by the hands of Elder Daniel Miller on December 4, 1903.

 

Mark Twain and John Lewis, ca. 1900

The bible still resides in the church today…after a fashion. After the war, souvenir hunters kept taking bricks off of the building. Fearing that someone might try to take the bible again, it was placed in a vault for safe keeping in 1917. In 1921, the church collapsed following a particularly violent storm. By then, the congregation had built a new church in town and the land and ruins we sold to new owners. In 1951, the site was donated to the National Park Service to be part of the larger Antietam battlefield historic site. In 1962, a restored church was built atop the original foundation using as much original material as possible. The bible was also donated to the Park Service where it rests on display at the Antietam National Battlefield visitor center…in a case so it can’t be stolen again. 

Dunker bible (Courtesy of National Park Service)

 

Fives Ladies, Five Objects

By Rachel Dworkin, archivist

In honor of women’s history month, I thought I’d shamelessly steal Smithsonian Magazine’s idea of sharing five objects from our collection associated with five local women.

1. Hannah Marshall’s Cape 

Hannah Marshall (1819-1890) of Horseheads worked as a Quaker preacher for decades. During the 1800s, Quakerism was one of the few Christian sects which encouraged the active participation of women as preachers and spiritual leaders. Hannah is one of the only local women known to have preached here during the 1800s. She never married and was widely respected in her community.

2. Fanny Brooks’ Blouse 

Fanny Brooks (1836-1906) was born into slavery in the south. She, her husband George, and their two children moved to Elmira in the late-1860s. They were part of a northward wave of migrants which tripled the city’s African American population following the Civil War. Fanny was an active member of the Douglas Memorial A.M.E. Zion Church and was a financial backer of the church they constructed in 1890. Although the building is gone, a stained glass window bearing her name remains. She and her husband had four children, the youngest of whom became the first African American to graduate from Cornell.

3. Dr. Rachel Gleason’s Medical Case 

Dr. Rachel Gleason (1820-1905) graduated from Central Medical College in Syracuse in 1851, just two years after the first woman to graduate from an American medical school. In 1852, she and her husband Dr. Silas Gleason opened the Gleason Water Cure on Elmira’s East Hill. They ran it together until 1898 when Silas’ health began to fail.  Rachel specialized in women’s health and published a book and several articles on the subject. She sponsored and offered training positions to other female physicians including her sister and daughter.

4. Esther Williamson Ballou’s Concert Program 

Esther Ballou (1915-1973) was a musician and composer. She began studying piano at age four and started composing music in her twenties. She attended Bennington College, Mills College, and Julliard, where she also later taught. She also taught at Catholic University and The American University, both in Washington, D.C. She composed dozens of pieces, including one which was performed at the White House in 1963.

5. Jennie Fassett’s Ball Gown

Jennie Fassett (1860-1939) was the wife of area Congressman J. Sloat Fassett. During the couple’s years in Washington, D.C., she advocated for stronger child labor laws. Locally, she helped establish the Women’s Federation for Social Services. She was a member of the New York Women’s Suffrage Party and the Board of Trustees of the Steele Memorial Library. She was also a major financial backer of Elmira College.

The Lady and the Tigers

by Rachel Dworkin, Archivist

In September of 1941, Ethel Nichols was on a mission, and so were the 300 men of the American Volunteer Group (AVG). Ethel, an Elmira native and member of the Southside Baptist Church, was headed for Gauhati, India, where she would be in charge of the Satri Bari Girls’ School for the next twenty years. She had joined the American Baptist Foreign Mission Society in 1920 after graduating from Elmira College and had been working in India ever since. She was headed back to her work after a visit home when she met an unusual group of men on her voyage across the Pacific.

Ethel Nichols, ca. 1920s

They, like Ethel, were classified as civilian missionaries according to their passports, but their mission was far less spiritual. In the spring of 1941, retired U.S. Army Air Corps officer Claire L. Chennault assembled a team of 100 pilots from the Navy, Marine Corps, and Army Air Corps, along with 200 ground crew personnel to help the Chinese fight the Japanese. He did so with the supplies, funding, and blessing of the United States government.

AVG personnel were transported across the Pacific in small batches. There were thirty-eight of them on Ethel’s ship. Ethel described them in her letter of September 10, 1941: 

I mentioned a group on board. Guess I can tell you about them now. They are 38 young men, aviators and engineers, on a secret mission. We can guess that they will be on the Burma Road. They were listed as “missionaries”—part of the secret I suppose. That’s why we ran out of beer or low on it. My partner, “Twisty” is one of the “38.” We always speak of them as the “the 38” or sometimes the “38 missionaries.” We are about divided into thirds.: 1/3 missionaries, 1/3 businessmen, and 1/3 the “38.”

So much for secrecy. 

Ethel's letter of September 10, 1941

In his autobiography Baa Baa Black Sheep, Gregory Boyington, an AVG pilot described his own trip across the Pacific aboard the Dutch ship Bosch Fontein with 26 other pilots. They managed to blow their cover the first night. 

Of course it took very little time before these genuine missionaries realized that we were traveling under false colors and weren’t missionaries at all. But the manner by which they let us know that they knew was done rather cleverly…One day one of the real missionaries came up and asked if I would give the sermon for next Sunday’s services, explaining that the duty rotated. I had to decline the invitation to lead the services…As it was, the same missionary invited me to next Sunday services aboard ship. He was one of the younger missionaries, and he himself gave the sermon. But as he did so (I was seated in one of the front rows) he seemed to direct the entire sermon at me and the group I represented.  His point was how horrible it was for people to fight for money. 

Gregory Boyington's autobiography

Nicknamed the Flying Tigers, the AVG proved vital in delaying the fall of Rangoon and preventing the Japanese from advancing into China beyond the west bank of the upper Salween River. Their combat record was exemplary with a kill ratio better than any Allied unit in the Pacific theater. They were disbanded on July 4, 1942 and the surviving members were integrated back into the regular U.S. military. 

Ethel Nichols continued to work in North East India until her retirement in May 1961. In addition to running Satri Bari Girls’ School, she was established training classes to teach rural girls about basic health care and Christian life. After her retirement, the Council of Baptist Churches in North East India established the Nichols English School in her honor.

The Kelvin Scientific Society

By Kelli Huggins, Education Coordinator

A couple of weeks ago, we posted the cover of a dance card from the Kelvin Scientific Society in 1916 on Facebook.  Until then, I admit, I had never heard of the Kelvin Society, as I suspect many others hadn’t.  After doing some digging, I found that this Kelvin Society had quite an interesting history.

The Kelvin Society was founded by Lillian Belle Herrick in 1897.  Herrick was born in Horseheads on June 9, 1872 and was one of five children (Lillian had a twin sister named Millian, who sensibly went by Millie).  After she graduated from Elmira College in 1894 with a degree in chemistry and physics, she taught science at the Elmira Free Academy (EFA).  At EFA, Herrick helped expand the science department and was noted to have constructed and operated the first Marconi wireless telegram in this area.  

Lillian Herrick Chapman

[In an interesting side note, Herrick left the school in 1908, when she married her husband, Rev. William Chapman, and she became ordained as a Presbyterian minister. She was the first female Presbyterian minister in the country, but the State synod revoked her license in 1919 because it didn’t recognize female ministers.  She was then ordained in the Congregational Church serving as a pastor at Park Church and in Big Flats.  She had an incredibly active career and died at age 92].

The group was both scientific and social.  They met every two weeks to discuss the latest scientific work, but every third meeting was strictly social.  The Kelvin Society was open to both boys and girls at EFA.  They had guest lectures and also took scientific inspiration from the city.  For example, in 1900, they spent the year studying the science of local factories and foundries.   They also had meetings at their cottage by the Chemung River, referred to in this photograph as “the Shack.”

Newspaper ad from 1911

The Kelvin Society was named after William Thompson, 1^st Baron of Kelvin.  Lord Kelvin was an influential British scientist for whom the Kelvin unit of measure is named.   Lillian Herrick attended a banquet in his honor at Cornell University in 1902.  The next month, the Kelvin Society received a personalized letter from their namesake.  This wasn't their first brush with scientific celebrity, however; four years earlier, the group received a letter from Thomas Edison. [Learn about another Thomas Edison connection to Elmira here]

"I thank you heartily for your letter of May 2 and for the good wishes for Lady Kelvin and myself which it contains.  I was sorry that I was prevented by incessant occupation from writing to thank you before leaving America.  Yours truly, Kelvin."

"I am pleased to learn that you have formed a scientific society.  Science in the coming years will rule the world of business.  Yours, Thomas A. Edison"

By 1909, the group had been pushed out of their meeting space at EFA (due to some school rule change) and they began meeting at members’ homes.  Although the Kelvin Society continued on until at least the 1930s, they do not appear in the EFA yearbooks after 1911.   Perhaps the Kelvin Society broke from the school and became an independent entity at that point.  They remained active, posting notices of their meetings in the local newspaper.  One of their most popular events remained their New Year’s dance.



Kelvin Society dance card from New Year's Eve Dance, 1916

Kelvin Society members, 1922-23



The last mention I can find of the Kelvin Society is from 1934.  That brief article in the Star Gazette optimistically noted resurgence in participation, but seemed to indicate that interest in the group had waned over the years.  If anyone knows if the Kelvin Society lasted for longer, I would love to hear about it.