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16. Site of the Although not regularly held a part of the winter, our services have been as well attended as we could expect when we consider the scattered condition of our membership. This was the site of Sherwood's first Society of Friends Meeting House. When the sanctuary caught fire in 1902, the belfry vented the heat with sufficient force to cause the church bell to ring. According to an eye witness: The Old Friends Church burned down when I was thirteen years old. They put the benches and some chairs, and pulpit and old blue song books in our yard. The fire started in alleyway from Ferd Langer's thrashing machine engine [exhaust] stack, from a spark. He was sawing some wood for church. It started in belfry. The bell tolled. We all heard it some time along noon, ran to look, and there was smoke coming out of belfry. Everyone gathered around near our place. The Church property was across from where Rudy and Esther Olsen live now. It used to extend to Roellich building corner, and the parsonage was near the corner across from what is now Colfelt Tavern. The parsonage is still that little square house that is across from Olsen's sitting up on a foundation.
In those days, a ringing bell was heard for miles and attracted close attention. It usually meant someone had died, the toll communicating the age of the deceased. It is impossible to recite this story without reflecting upon a unique Quaker doctrine, the Doctrine of the Inner Light. Just as the church possessed an inner light (at least at the moment of the fire), so a human being possesses a quality that is invisible to the everyday world. The influence that this doctrine had on American life is illustrated by the influence that it had on Abraham Lincoln. An example: "I leave you, hoping that the lamp of liberty will burn in your bosoms until there shall no longer be a doubt that all men are created free and equal."—Chicago, July 10, 1858. |
