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| Janie Frazier, EMHS student, 2011, following Jean François Millet’s The Sower |
David Livingstone explored Africa at the same time Jean Francois Millet painted The Sower
Rejection of a Vision:
An 1853 Call for a Mennonite General Conference
by Elwood E. Yoder
August, 2011
In the spring of 1853, two Virginia Mennonite bishops intended to make a journey. In apostolic fashion, Martin Burkholder and Samuel Shank Sr. set out from their Rockingham County, Virginia, homes and traveled north on the macadamized Great Valley Road. They had made prior arrangements to visit, stay with, and confer with Mennonite ministers in Ohio, Indiana, and Ontario.
The men struck out for northern, free states, like first century apostles. Ontario Bishop Dilman Meyer used the “apostles” expression when he wrote about the cordial, church to church visit from the Virginia brethren in the summer of 1853. From state to state, the Rockingham County bishops traveled, preaching and encouraging Mennonites wherever they went. Between sermons, Shank and Burkholder talked to bishops and ministers about the idea of a general conference of Mennonites.
From Virginia, the two bishops traveled to western Pennsylvania (Brownsville), took a steam boat north on the Monongahela River into Pittsburgh, then boarded a train for Columbiana, Ohio. In Ohio, the Virginia “apostles” attended the Ohio Mennonite Conference in Wayne County, after which they departed for Canada. In Ontario, Burkholder used his classic, oft-used, and impatient phrase, “I have taken my seat,” when he wrote to Cousin Samuel Coffman (1822-1894) in Rockingham County.
Thirty-six year old Burkholder wrote many letters, but it probably took great patience for him to sit and write. He knew that letters were the only way he had to communicate with folks back home in the Shenandoah Valley. Twelve days into the journey, he may have been poking fun, not feeling well, or overly tired when he made an excuse for his brief letter to wife Rebecca. He wrote that his “hand is in a very bad order for writing this morning....” It’s as if he knew he had to write, though he’d rather be in action, and in the same letter he again wrote that “I have taken my seat....”