History inspires me and intrigues me, thinking about the 1800's boggles me but, with the research I am getting into I find these people still were a lot like we are today. The thoughts and beliefs still remain the same. Have you he's of Martha McWhirter? This woman inspired me tremendously.
Martha McWhirter started a amazing group oh women who were known as "The Sanctified Sisters" or what was later known as Belton Women's CommonWealth. These women were frowned upon for their beliefs, well what started as Martha's beliefs.
I really found a lot of interesting information in Martha's farewell speech.
( Martha opened her door few minutes after sunrise)
Thank you for gathering and allowing me to say farewell before my group and I head for Washington D.C. I am also grateful for this opportunity to set the record straight about my sisters and me before we leave. With the best of intentions, we have worked hard to mind our own business and to be about the work we believe our Lord has led us to do. We have been aware that we have often been misunderstood and misrepresented. But as time has gone on we have been more appreciated. We have been glad to contribute to the well-being of our town. Before we leave Belton in this year 1899 before the turn of a new century, let me share with you the story of how God has led us as group to this point.
My husband, George Mc Whirter, and I came with our three children Emma (24), Ada (15), and John (13) to Belton in 1865. Our daughter Nannie was born that year, Robert the next year, and Sam three years later. I eventually bore George 12 children. George and I were Methodists and active in the Union Sunday School, the religious center of town before denominations began to build separate churches. After our Methodist Denomination was the first to build its own church and Sunday School, George and I opposed the sectarianism which most Methodists upheld and retained our leadership in the Union Sunday School.
In 1866, after the death of my brother and two of our children, I was convinced that God was chastising me and calling me to take thought of the evils around me. On my way home from a church revival meeting one evening at the end of a mercilessly hot August day, a voice asked me to question myself to see if the meeting I had attended had been the work of devil. I prayed all night and struggled against that suggestion. In my kitchen at my dishpan the next morning, I experienced what I can only describe as spiritual baptism, a second blessing, in which it became clear that the voice was God's and that I was called to a particular work. I had been sanctified, that is set apart for special service. I never set out to form a separatist group. I have always taken God's leading as it came, as have my sisters. I have never set down in writing any sort of religious charter or rules by which to live. Townspeople have called me and my sisters collectively Sanctificationists or Sanctified Sisters, but we simply call ourselves Christians.
As to the gathering or forming of our group, I have only supported and taken in those whom God has brought to me. I would like to make three basic points clear. First sanctification is from God. He sends this conviction only to the worthy. Finally, God speaks through dreams and visions. They come while we are asleep. How they come cannot be explained, being the workings of the spirit. These dreams are given us that we might have more trust and confidence in God. I have always advised wives to live with their husbands when they could, but there is no sense in a woman obeying a drunken husband. According to I Corinthians 7:12-15, if sanctification comes to one already wed to an unsanctified partner, the sanctified partner should exert every effort to keep the marriage peaceful; that the unbelieving spouse should become sanctified if possible. However, if the unbelieving spouse makes trouble or leaves the sanctified mate, that mate is no longer under bondage to live with him or take him back, but should take no second mate. Finally, children should be brought up by the sanctified parent.
The common experience that sisters, who have been married, have had is that their marriages were not happy ones. They experienced husbands who were unfaithful, abusive, financially irresponsible, and/or unwilling that that their wives exercise responsibility outside of their homes. We first found ourselves together in a weekday prayer group, where we were each seeking the Lord's guidance. One sorrow that nearly all of the women in our prayer group shared was the frequency with which their husbands would become drunk and overbearing. Nearly all of us felt bowed and humiliated at being unable to own property, even when we ourselves brought it into the marriage. We nearly all felt galled by the necessity to beg our husbands for money even to run our households. It became to me that we might help one another by building up a common fund, even from the money that came our way through selling simple things like eggs, milk, and butter.
Most of the townspeople were at first indifferent to our growing group of sanctified women. However, when our common fund became known, men in town became uneasy, as they had long been accustomed to controlling women-folk through the purse. When money in the home of a sanctified sister was denied for a legitimate need, she could use money from our joint savings. One sister and her child, who were brutalized by the drunken husband, fled to our home, where they could live with us. We decided that she would work out her board and the child's by helping me.
Our first business enterprise began when decent laundresses after the Civil War could not be found. Our group prayed about it and decided that humility was good for us and that we needed the money; therefore, we agreed to go out in small groups to do laundry or to gather at one of the sister's homes to do the work. Our first court case involved the charges pressed against us when the nasty-tempered husband of one of our sisters found us washing on his premises. He gashed his wife's head and three of the sisters fought back. Ironically, he pressed charges and we together paid the fine of $100 from our fund.
One by one some of our sisters left their difficult husbands and moved into property which the group had begun to collect from the settlements of wills. Some sisters oppressed by their husbands moved in with us. George did not want to put up with these sisters living in our home, so he moved out. He disapproved of my sanctificationist activities, but he admired my forbearance and never lost faith in my integrity. I arranged rooms for him to live in on the north side of the courthouse square above the store building he owned. It was there that he died in 1887. He left me my widow's half of his estate and made me the executor of his will on behalf of our children.
Town animosity grew toward me until my husband's death and then during the divorce of our daughter, a sanctified sister, in 1887. During the nasty divorce trial of Ada, no evidence of anything dishonorable in her life, my life, or in any of the sanctified sisters was produced. Animosity grew toward our group of sanctified women as some of our sisters from the best families in town and from the leading churches left their homes and husbands, taking with them their daughters and small boys. They were "read-out in meetings" and had their church letters taken away; but we prayed for strength and we stuck together.
Our group grew to 50 members. Those were troublesome days such as the night a posse of husbands clattered on to our stone walk, calling out that they wanted their wives. They even fired a bullet into our porch door to frighten us. Husbands also took the Dow brothers, who were from Scotland and who had come join us in our work, out to the Old Waco Road and beat them. When the Dow brothers would not leave, they were tried for lunacy and whisked off to the asylum in Austin. Since they were obviously sane, they stayed only overnight and were released. Another insanity case involved one of our sanctified sisters, Widow Johnson. Her unsanctified husband left her on his dying bed an insurance policy worth two thousand dollars. Her brother-in-law had eyes for the money and instigated charges of her lunacy. She was also taken to the asylum in Austin. One of the sisters had a dream that I should write to Governor Ireland about this injustice, which I did. Widow Johnson was eventually released, bringing with her the $90 she had made there as a seamstress.
Despite the bitter opposition to our group in the 1880's, we worked hard and quietly prospered. Sisters hired themselves out as practical nurses and as silent, but excellent, cooks. Other sisters wove rag carpets to sell. With the help of their boys, two sisters cut cedar posts and firewood and carted it to town to regular customers. The center of our business enterprises became the hotel. One of the sanctified sisters, Widow Henry, inherited her home place and we built on to it to establish Central Hotel. It was not popular at first but became known and well patronized for its clean rooms, gracious hospitality, and farm-fresh food. We bought machinery for a steam laundry and installed in back of the Henry block. It served the sisters, the hotel, and the town.
Professor Garrison, from Texas University down in Austin, stayed in the hotel in 1892. He commended the arrangement by which I rotated the duties of the sisters in the hotel and on the farm, which provided its supplies. He praised as well one sister who had become a competent dentist and another sister who cobbled our shoes. He applauded our music, played on the hotel piano and our reading. He was impressed with our desire to learn and to travel. He commended our summer travels to New York and our renting of a summer home near Central Park.
After my husband's death and his leaving of his will to me and the growth of the hotel business, it seems that the town began to admire our prosperity. The fact that our hotel drew travelers and boarders from all over Central Texas was admired. The fact that two of our sisters leased and ran two hotels in Waco as well was commended. You then admitted me, the first woman, to the Belton Board of Trade. We contributed to the building of the railroad and the opera house and were glad to do so.
God has led us all the way. Now after travels to other American cities, such as San Francisco and Mexico City, we collectively believe that we should now move and retire in Washington D.C. We have purchased our new home and will renovate it with our cash. When we are there, we will continue to hold our prayer meetings, but each sister will be free to attend any church she desires. Feel free to come visit us in Washington at 1437 Kenesaw Ave.
Martha later passed very successful.
Martha and her fellow sisters are buried in D.C area.
I support GIRL POWER!!!!! Martha is truly inspiring huh? Look forward to more information as I do more research.
Photos included are of Martha and of the Sanctified Sisters.
Thank you very much for this. I'm working on the music of various nineteenth-century Utopian groups (intentional societies) and am fascinated by the richness and courage of the Sisters! -- Michael Cooper
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