"CLF" by Laura Cavicchio ©

IV. GRASSROOTS RELIGIOUS PROSPECTING:

The Post Office Mission

All of these events were leading up to what was to come next.  Other kinds of publications and human organizational movements would take over the cause of finding and connecting with the isolated on the new liberal religious front.  The WUC was publishing and distributing two series of tracts known as the "Unity Mission" and the "Unity Short Tract" series.  A very significant force after 1881 was "The Post Office Mission".  In her handwritten history, Susan Jones tells how widespread inquiries and demands for liberal ideas were continuing to grow:

‘Even before Mr. Jones was assigned the Western Secretaryship we had a large correspondence throughout the West, asking for information on doctrinal points… for Sunday School helps…where to get Unitarian books…and in time our home became full to overflowing with tracts, S.S. lessons and helps… all the paraphernalia of a religious jobbing house.  The demand constantly increased…the supply needed to be increased…and it now became a question…of necessity, that there should be a headquarters…and an increase of help."  ^[28]

Mobilization for centralized organization came via the women of the Western Women’s Unitarian Conference.  Of their role, Susan Jones wrote,  "Here was a work for the Liberal women of the West -- a work nobler than trying to eke out church finances by fairs and suppers…" ^[29] 

"To none but those who have been at work (and) put themselves into communication with the world at large, can there come any realization of the broad influence of Liberal Christianity.  How it permeates every nook and corner of this great West. How hungry men and women are waiting for a greener, purer, more helpful, hopeful gospel…the multitude crave a faith which commends itself to reason and helps them into a nobler life." ^[30]

The auxiliary of the WUC raised money to open a headquarters and book room in downtown Chicago and put a woman in the role of assistant conference secretary.  Cynthia Grant Tucker writes of the women’s movement in the West:  "All through the week (the conference headquarters) was thronged by women distributing tracts and Sunday School lessons, editing various publications, and writing letters for the Post Office Mission….the women’s auxiliary of the Western Unitarian Conference had committed itself to supporting the female ministry when it first organized…their members’ success as Office Pastors and lay missionaries or untitled ministers legitimized the ambition some had to have their work recognized for what it was." ^[31]  In addition to the work at Conference headquarters, a companion network of women in churches was emerging.  It grew to be a widespread web of individual correspondents; all sparked by the efforts of a deaf and mostly invalid woman in Cincinnati named Sallie Ellis. 

The Rev. Charles William Wendte, minister of the Cincinnati church where Miss Ellis was a member, recalls helping her to ‘find her mission’ by suggesting she get involved in the mailing of tracts.  Her response came back:  "If I have any taste or talent, it is for the study and spread of religion."   Wendte created a Missionary Society in 1877 and made Miss Ellis treasurer.  Its purpose was "to spread the knowledge and increase the influence of Liberal religious ideas throughout the city and state by publications, correspondence, and other such means."  In fact, it was Miss Ellis who did most of the work of distributing 1,846 tracts throughout 26 states.   In the four years before her death, she received 1,672 letters, wrote 2,541 in return, distributed more than 2,000 tracts, and sold books and subscriptions. ^[32] Wendte describes the growing zeal of a religiously determined woman:

"…This (mailing tracts) did not end the transaction so far as Miss Ellis was concerned.  A letter was written to the applicant, soliciting his or her opinion on the matter which had been sent…this led to the continuance of the correspondence, in whose conduct Miss Ellis displayed an intuition and insight into the spiritual moods and cravings of the human soul…(she had)… a deep, even profound, understanding of the mental and emotional agonies caused by the hell-fire and miraculous religions that were so strong in the mid-West, West and South in those days…and an awareness of the kind of comfort Unitarian Ideas provided those in fear and doubt." ^[33] 

Miss Ellis became correspondence secretary of the Woman’s Auxiliary, including the mailing of sermons that were now being sent to her by ministers.  She chaired the Book and Tract table at the Cincinnati church and soon started a circulating library, loaning by mail her own books and asking others to do the same. She studied the writings of Gannett, Furness, Channing, and Parker, and began discussing theological and church matters in letters to soldiers, prisoners, workhouse inmates and others in religious isolation, to guide, inform, support, and comfort.  "I try my congregation to see what each requires and lead them on and up," she told her minister.  It is little wonder that some correspondents addressed her as "Rev. Ellis." ^[34] 

A woman of little means and eventually entirely house-bound due to respiratory illness, Miss Ellis inspired others by the sheer volume of her own correspondence, and by her single-handed devotion to prison outreach.  An article in Unity published after her death in 1886 declared of Miss Ellis:

"The Post Office Mission is truly a grand mission…guided by her hand, barrels of papers and magazines have been distributed to interested readers among the prisoners…how full of faith and trust the little body, whose helping hand went out all the way from Cincinnati to the Illinois penitentiary!" 

A farmer who corresponded with Miss Ellis wrote:  "I want to pay my humble tribute to the departed Miss Ellis. I never met her; but she was my friend, because she was the friend to all struggling humanity." ^[35]  The 1886 publication by the AUA of a book memorializing the story of Sallie Ellis stirred the spread of the Post Office Mission movement.  Susan Jones wrote that there was "so much enthusiasm and so strong a desire to go and do likewise…interest is now awakened in this work East and West." ^[36] In an article entitled "What Next in the Post Office Mission?" published in Unity that same year, the writer praised the POM volunteers.  He also proposed a critical evaluation of the quality of the tracts, a study of other channels for transmitting the liberal message, a review of the financial and fundraising aspects of the mission, and finally, how increased numbers of workers might and should be found:

"The day is not five years away, we think, when every western church will have a "Post Office Mission" connected with it as naturally and as surely as it now has a Sunday School and a church sociable, and more surely than it has a minister; for the mission belongs to the laymen and can be carried on, though no minister is within a thousand miles.  Is any church a church, until it is a missionary of its faith?"  ^[37]

The latter is a fitting commentary and an indicator of the spirit of Western Unitarianism.  Two weeks later, another article announced that a newly published pamphlet, "a perfect treasure chest of practical ‘suggestions’ for POM secretaries and committees" along with a "Tract Directory" were available to instruct churches about how to start their own ministry of correspondence.  It concludes: "Against twelve missions reported in the west last year, this year reports twenty-seven, and others starting, a joint diocese of 1814 recipients of literature, and a distribution of some 32,000 tracts and 42,000 papers." ^[38]  That same spring, an enthusiastic feature invited children to join the movement:

"How many of our Unitarian girls and boys would like to join the "Juvenile POM" and send their Sunday School papers and magazines to boys and girls in the Far West?  We are just starting such a mission in Geneva, Illinois…(the children here) have commenced sending regularly once a week or fortnight what reading matter they have…to Idaho, to children who are living in the mountains miles away from schools and churches, and out of the way of the magazines and papers of which our eastern children have so many…" ^[39]

As for the centralized organization of the POM out of the Chicago headquarters office of the Women’s Western Unitarian Conference, another issue of Unity that same year reports: "In the last quarter, large packages were sent to committees in the field and correspondents; received were 245 letters, written were 348; sent out 2,962 tracts and 1,400 newspapers." 

The report noted a motion that "The Post Office Mission Central Committee" should be a permanent and legal committee of the Conference. ^[40]   The motion was adopted in July of that year whereby "mission central" would consist of a committee of three members, including the correspondence secretary, for the organization, supervision, and direction of the POM work in the West.  ^[41]

These accounts bear witness to a burgeoning ‘church’ of "Freedom, Fellowship, and Character in Religion" that was not of wood or stone, but evolving out of the perseverance, solidity, and radical openness of the human mind and heart.  These accounts exemplify how the bonds of fellowship embedded both in human structures and spirit allowed for the transmission of the liberal word on the frontiers of religion, culture, and geography.  Susan Jones comments:

 "In this little history of the rise and growth of the Post Office Mission you will plainly see that it began in a crude way, away back in the fifties, groping on through "book depositories", tract distributors…missionaries, "The Sunday School", Pamphlet Mission, each giving it an impetus until it grew so great that it required organizational effort and a band of workers.  You see that it is not the child of Women’s Conferences but it was a large factor in creating these women’s organizations…Man wrestled for a quarter of a century with the problem of how to reach the isolated; woman with her pen and packages (succeeded in) solving it." ^[42]

A testimonial letter written in 1886 by a woman in Gainesville, Texas declares: "The statement of belief card (I was) sent found a hearty response in me.  It expressed a belief I thought I was the only possessor of…" Another from a young man: "…I have been living in doubt and fear…what can I do for the dissemination of this Liberal Faith? ^[43] And from an enthusiastic Post Office Mission worker:  "If everyone professing the name (Unitarian) would but speedily pass on the good reading he enjoys, with instruction that it should be made to continue on its way, he would become, unintentionally perhaps, an active missionary in the cause of promoting justice, love, and truth in the world." ^[44] 

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^[28] S.  Jones, 11.

^[29] S. Jones, 11.

^[30]  Ibid.

^[31] Cynthia Grant Tucker, PropheticSisterhood: Liberal Women Ministers of the Frontier, 1880-1930 (Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1994), 121.

^[32] http://www.uua.org/uuhs/dubb/articles/sallieellis.html, p 2-4.

^[33] Charles William Wendte, The Wider Fellowship: Memories, Friendships, and Endeavors for Religious Unity 1844-1927 (Boston: The Beacon Press, 1927), 366.

^[34] History website, ibid.

^[35] J.R.E., "Miss Ellis’s Mission", Unity, vol. XVII, no. 18 (July 3, 1886), 260.

^[36] S. Jones, 12.

^[37] "What’s Next for the Post Office Mission?", Unity, vol. XVII, no. 9 (May 1, 1886).

^[38] Report of Western Unitarian Conference, Unity, (May 22, 1886).

^[39] "Post Office Mission Work for the Children", Unity, vol. XVII, no. 5 (April 3, 1886),

^[40] Report of the Western Unitarian Conference, Unity, (March 20, 1886).

^[41] Report of the Western Unitarian Conference, Unity, vo. XVII, no. 14 (July 3, 1886), p. 207.

^[42] S. Jones, 13.

^[43] "Notes", Unity, vol XIX, no. 4 (March 26, 1886).

^[44]"Notes", Unity, vol. XVIII, no. 2 (July 11, 1886)

Last updated June 12, 2005