Person:Warren Drake (1)

Obituary from The Advocate: "The Rev. Warren W. Drake entered upon his everlasting inheritance on the morning of March 10, 1919 at Lincoln, Illinois. He was born near Topeka, Ill. Jan. 23, 1867. His parents were Baptists who came to Illinois from New Jersey. There being no church of their denomination near, they attended the nearest Methodist church. There were nine children in the family. The testamonies of God's savings grace which Warren heard were the means of his conversion. It was in one of these meetings when 12 years old that he arose and declared his faith in Jesus Christ. That fall on that charge the pastor reported one conversion. That convert was Warren W. Drake. He attended the country school and then the Normal School at Valparaiso, Indiana, graduating from both the teachers' and the scientific courses, teaching meanwhile to help pay expenses. Somewhere along these years he heard the call to preach. He believed profoundly in it. On Aug 9, 1888 he was married to Miss Abbie Mount who gladly shared with him the toils and triumphs of the Methodist itinerant. He was admitted on trial into the Illinois Conference in the fall of 1891. That was a conference session which marked a new era in the lives of many preachers. Dr. S. A. Keene led the 4 o'clock meetings. For about 27 years this man with the heart of a true shepherd labored. The Lord of the Harvest crowned his labors with abundant success. In three different charges new churches arose as testamonies to his faith and labor, at Literberry, Griggsville, and Owaneco. The church at Owaneco, built under trying circumstances, is one of the architectural gems of the conference. Many gracious revivals attended his labors. He leaves besides his faithful wife, a son and two daughters, one grandson, Michael Warren Drake, two sisters and four brothers. Funeral services were held in the church at Mt. Pulaski by Rev. Eugene M. Antrim, district superintendent, and the burial was in the cemetery at that place. Assisting in the services of the day were several ministers of the conference including the Rev. T. M. Tull who read the obituary, the Revs., William Cross, N. R. Johnson, C. R. Morrison, W. W. Theobald, W. M,. Carter, some of them also acting as pallbearers."

From Memories of My Father, The Rev. Warren W. Drake, by Grace Elizabeth Drake, Dec. 1988: "These are mainly childhood memories, because my father's active life ended a few months before I became twelve years old. Although I was very young at the time, he was very important to me. I am also including information gained from overhearing my mother talking about my father. I have the impression that he was a small man and slightly stooped. In contrast, my mother was tall and very straight. Yet he seemed to have self-confidence. Mamma was a brunette, but Papa was not. There was never any baldness, but his hair turned gray during his final illness, though he was only fifty-one. He always wore a mustache when I knew him. My father was intensely interested in his work as a pastor in the Methodist Episcopal Church. The regular work was demanding. There were two preaching services every Sunday (morning and evening), and prayer meeting on Wednesday evening. He did not do just the minimum, but he introduced new services. I remember a Bible study group in Owaneco that met regularly of evenings at our house (the parsonage). It was a group of men and women, who sat around our dining table. It seems to me that they studied one of the gospels.

-2- Papa owned at least two many-volumed Bible commentaries. He rose early every morning and read from a certain commentary before breakfast. At a certain time in the forenoon, he read from another commentary. He devoured books in the religious field. He never had as many as he wanted and considered himself lucky when he had a neighboring pastor from whom he could borrow books. When Papa visited him, he would ask him about a certain book in his library, and the man would reply, "I don't know. I haven't had time to read it." He made Papa welcome to borrow his books freely, and Papa made the most of the opportunity.

Papa was enthusiastic about the Winona Lake Bible Conference held for a week or two every summer at Winona Lake, Indiana. I think he attended several times, and in 1917 (probably), he did something he wanted so much to do. He took his family, his wife(my mother) and two daughters with him to Winona Lake. An idea of Papa's breadth of interests and thoroughness may be gained from perusal of a booklet he prepared, entitled "First Methodist Episcopal Church, Humboldt, Illinois, Years 1910-1912." In Neoga, there were at least four Protestant churches, and their pastors got together rather often, and Papa was a happy member of that group. Every winter he would ask another minister in the conference to come and lead a revival for probably two weeks. This minister stayed in our home. Papa did a lot of pastoral calling.

-3- He often said that the situation in Owaneco (his last charge) was like an English parish. The Methodist Church was the only one in town; all the families in town except one were Protestants, and all the farm families within a certain radius were Protestants. For a family in town, he simply walked to their home, since the town was small, and for the farm families, he rented a horse and buggy from the livery stable. I went with him on one of those rural trips. He was interested in church music and was happy to have a wife who was musical. In Owaneco, his last pastorate, he was in charge of the building of a new church. There is much work for the pastor when a new church is being built; it takes much of his time. Papa was not well, but he did his work well. He wrote in his diary that he considered the building of that church the crowning achievement of his career. The church building my father found in Owaneco was a one-room, frame building with no basement. Most of the congregation had long wanted a new building with classrooms for the Sunday School and space for other activities. But there was a small clique determined to keep the old building, and most of them were on the official board which became the quarterly conference every three months, and it had to vote on any new building. The proposal for a new building had been voted down time and time again. When Papa had been pastor there about two years, the motion came before the quarterly conference for a new building, and the vote was a tie. The presiding elder (District Superintendent)

-4- consulted with Papa and then announced that another vote would be taken immediately. This time one member changed his vote and voted for the new building. So the new church building was built with my father using his knowledge of a good church architect and builder and other things. There were several classrooms, a large basement with kitchen, etc. Papa had to take bitterness from the losing group but love from everyone else. After the new church was built, Papa started a junior league. In those days, there was no talk of persons having hobbies, but if there had been, probably my father's hobby would have been gardening. He raised both vegetables and flowers. In those days, garden vegetables were not frozen and stored. It was many years later that the special process of quick freezing vegetables and fruit so that their freshness was preserved was discovered. But there was canning! I suppose canned food could be bought, but I think that my mother canned enough home-grown vegetables that we needed little or no commercially canned vegetables. Irish potatoes were stored in the cellar. Papa raised beans, some of which were grown on low plants and some on plants that climbed tall poles. He also raised cabbages, sweet corn, peas, lettuce, Irish potatoes and tomatoes which grew up tall poles. Papa's flowers were cosmos, sweet peas, and nasturtiums. I remember hearing him tell people that when he began raising cosmos, they began blooming only very late in the summer; but he saved

-5- the seeds from his earliest blooming plants, and by the time he was telling about it, he had cosmos blooming much earlier. At Owaneco, our garden space was small, but at Neoga, there was an enormous garden area. Papa planted cosmos all along at least two sides, and there must have been hundreds of the plants. One year, in Neoga, my father planted peanuts, which the family gathered around when they were ready to harvest. He also had a strawberry patch at Neoga. When Bogarte was growing up, Papa had him working in the garden, too. My father was mechanically minded. Our window and door screens were always in perfect condition, and one time he fixed at least one window so that it could be opened at both the top and the bottom. He developed an intense desire for a Webster unabridged dictionary. One Christmas while we lived in Owaneco, probably the last one, some of my mother's sisters gave him a gift of money for his dictionary fund. Some weeks later, we had the dictionary, and that was a great day. Papa was always very much interested in international affairs. In those days there was not much in the newspapers about affairs outside the United States. He subscribed to some magazine on world affairs, read it and referred to it in conversations. News of an event that signalled the beginning of World War I in Europe was given to him by another interested man in Neoga, probably in 1914, by coming to our house one evening. I remember, in Owaneco, his

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telling about a cartoon about England and Ireland. He was a Republican but voted for Woodrow Wilson in 1916. My father played no musical instrument, and probably had no musical education. He was interested in music for the church, supported my violin lessons and probably was proud of his wife's musical skill and activities. I think that it was he who showed me how to find in the Methodist Hymnal various tunes that could be used for the same hymn. Papa had very strong feelings about people violating the Sabbath. He opposed Sunday baseball. His own day of rest was Monday. I don't remember what he did on that day except helping Mamma with the weekly washing, a big chore in those days. Perhaps he did a lot of gardening on Monday, also. He did the purchasing of meat for the family, and rump roast was his favorite. Our family also enjoyed different kinds of meat given to us by farmers when they butchered. Papa liked apples and knew different kinds. I remember when he first bought some "delicious" apples. He told Mamma and me that the storekeeper told him their flavor was like a combination of strawberries and bananas (or some fruits). When Bogarte was growing up, Papa made a point of spending time with him. I remember my mother telling someone that he was different that way from a certain other minister in our conference. She said the other minister was appointed to larger churches and became a presiding,elder (now called district superintendent), but his son turned out bad. Her husband, she said, never let church affairs keep him from giving his son the time he needed."