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Mrs. May Moore Adams
Tells About an Early
Day Sunday School


For your fiftieth anniversary edition I would like to tell about the first Sunday school organized at Farnam. I think only a few people will be able to recall that first meeting at the home of Dr. and Mrs. Elliot, four and a half miles west of Farnam. The Elliot place later became the home of William Wallingford and family.
One day the doctor was visiting at our house and the conversation naturally turned to the disadvantages and deprivations of pioneer life. My mother, the late Mrs. N. L. Moore, expressed her regret that there was no Sunday school for the children and young people to attend. The Doctor, too, felt that something should be done in the way of religious education and proposed that a meeting be called at his home to organize a Sunday school. Word was passed around somehow and those interested met with Dr. and Mrs. Elliot and their son, Russell on a bright warm Sunday. I was only six years old but I remember it all quite well.
The Doctor acted as superintendent and led the singing with the aid of a turning fork. I still have a card which was given to me that day which indicates that I considered the event of great importance. I think this must have been in the late spring or early summer of 1887.
Soon the place of meeting was changed to Garven's hall in Farnam and continued there until the completion of the Congregational church.
Here I wish to acknowledge a debt of gratitude to my splendid teachers, Mrs. Declow, Mrs. Voodry, Mrs. Doolittle, and Mrs. Sprague and to those who assembled the library. It was our chief source of entertainment and inspiration. When the move was made to the hall, the girls invited the boys to Sunday school and they agreed to come if they might be in the same class as the girls. But when they arrived with their hair slicked down, whoever was running things put them in a corner by themselves and organized a young mens class on the spot. Were they indignant! Next Sunday there was no young mens class, nor thereafter. I recall that later there was a mixed class of young people.
1886 1936

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