Melvin Blake - Epworth Forest

Topic: CRS Version
Melvin Blake spent much of the summer of 1952 in Indiana.  His son remembers the family stayed “at Epworth Forest for a week or two (probably two) in the summer of 1952.  I am sure of this because I was there with him and I remember that many people were wearing ‘I Like Ike’ T-shirts and Eisenhower was running for president.” [1]

Epworth Forest was founded in 1922 [2] as a summer resort for Methodists in Kosciusko County, Indiana. [3]  The Presbyterian’s Winona Lake, where Billy Sunday held forth, was about 15 miles away.  The organizers platted 422 lots, [4] and sold 32 immediately.  Twenty-three were on the lake. [5]

A hotel and auditorium soon were built [6] for the annual, week-long, camp meeting.  Methodist women held their own meetings during that week, and men began organizing retreats in 1934. [7]  Men also created the first camp for young boys, [8] and women managed programs for young children.

The Church primarily was concerned with the week-long senior institutes held for high school students during other weeks in the summer.  These began as Epworth League conventions in 1916. [9]  They had their own song leaders, and, in 1920, Friday evenings were devoted to stunts. [10]

Methodist clergymen viewed the Epworth League with the same suspicion as Lutheran’s had the youth-organized Walther League, discussed in the post for 21 June 2020.  William Freeland noted local ministers became more active in 1931.  The institutes were divided into smaller groups, spread over more weeks.  By 1934, Friday evenings were devoted to Decision Services when youth were expected to commit themselves to the church. [11]

The Methodist Episcopal Church became The Methodist Church after the 1938 merger with the Southern denomination, and the Epworth League became the Methodist Youth Fellowship.  At Epworth Forest, the secretary of the North Indiana Conference Board of Education took over all the administrative functions at Epworth Forest 1944.  Previously, different people had handled the institutes, rentals, and camp meetings. [12]

The role of lay organizations was diminished. [13]  Jane Donovan believed the national church used the merger as a pretext for eliminating groups like the women’s missionary group that employed May Titus. [14]  While that seems likely, some of these changes ensued from the professionalization of the leadership.  In Shul with a Pool, David Kaufman noted that, once the United States began producing its own rabbis, they transferred lay activities, like settlement houses and summer camps, to their control in synagogues. [15]

These changes reduced the opportunities for informal singing.  Orrin Manifold remembered some song leader had once taught one about “Alice” who was so thin she washed down the bathtub drain. [16]  He added, approvingly, Varner “Chance wasted no time on such foolishness.  In the course of five short class periods and one extra practice he had most choirs ready to present a program of sacred music by Friday night.” [17]

Of course, high school-aged students are able to work around such restraints.  One woman remembered “it wasn’t just the opportunity to be on stage for the Friday night musical that brought girls to choir practice every day [. . .]  Maybe they would get a solo and get to practice with alone with the organist.  He was so cute and so much fun.” [18]

Adults, freed of direct oversight by the church, no doubt also socialized.  Blake most likely rented or borrowed a cottage from a friend.  With the return of prosperity in the early 1950s, Manifold indicated a group was organized to ensure the quality of the lake by buying rights to the dam, and private cottages were being improved and used for longer periods of time. [19]

Both Blake and his wife would have known some of these summer residents from the late 1940s.  The most important may have been the secretary of the Board of Education.  George Fenstermacher had been dean of male students at Taylor University when they were students there.

Fenstermacher’s family seems to have moved to Pennsylvania from the Palatinate in 1738. [20]  By 1895, his parents were living near Findlay, Ohio. [21]  When George was born in 1899, they were in Cleveland [22] where his father worked as a cabinet maker. [23]  In high school, he sang tenor in the boy’s glee club. [24]

Fenstermacher’s older brother, who later became a Methodist minister in Indiana, suggested he join him as a student at Taylor.  After graduating in 1922, George remained in Upland where he taught German and violin. [25]  When the Blakes were in school, he still was directing the orchestra.

Fenstermacher apparently remained a musician at heart.  His résumé always mentioned he had studied with Walter Logan and Richard Czerwonky. [26]  The first taught violin to working-class children at the Cleveland Music School Settlement. [27]  The second taught violin at the Bush Conservatory in Chicago. [28]  One assumes Fenstermacher met him while he as taking classes for his master’s degree from the University of Chicago. [29]

The histories of Epworth Forest do not mention mundane social activities.  One can only guess Fenstermacher entertained the Blakes at his home or in some camp room, and that others may have been present.  If this were the case, one can speculate that this could have been the time Blake passed on his version of “Come by Here.”  Old habits do not die: if Fenstermacher had asked him to sing, Blake would have done so. [30]

End Notes
1.  Paul Blake.  Email, 16 October 2020.

2.  William B.  Freeland.  Epworth Forest.  North Indiana Conference of The Methodist Church, 1949.  1–51 in Freeland and Orrin Manifold.  Epworth Forest: The First Fifty Years.  Winona Lake, Indiana: Light and Life Press, 1974.  7.

3.  The location is shown on the map with the post for 28 February 2021.
4.  Freeland.  8.
5.  Freeland.  9.
6.  Freeland.  9.
7.  Freeland.  34.

8.  It sounds like this camp followed in the tradition of one of the first private camps for boys.  Ernest Berkeley Balch began by offering outings for bored “boys belonging to well-to-do families in summer hotels” in 1881. [31]

9.  Freeland.  2.

10.  Freeland.  4.  As mentioned in the post for 9 February 2020, E. O. Harbin published a collection of games and stunts for the Epworth League of the Methodist Episcopal Church South in 1923. [32]

11.  Freeland.  42.  Decisions were not conversions.  This is similar to the emphasis of the Lutheran camp that Janet Lynn attended in Wisconsin.  The skater is discussed in the post for 16 October 2018.

12.  Freeland.  47.
13.  Freeland.  50.

14.  Jane Donovan.  “But Gideon Refused: The Institutionalization of Methodist Mission.”  West Virginia University, The American Religious Experience website.  The effects of the merger on the once female-controlled Scarritt College are mentioned in the post for 16 May 2021.  Titus is mentioned in the post for 1 November 2020.

15.  David Kaufman.  Shul with a Pool.  Hanover: Brandeis University Press, 1999.  Many of the settlement houses were organized by women.  Some are discussed in Camp Songs, Folk Songs, including the Jewish one in Cleveland, Ohio.

16.  Fourteen individuals or camps voluntarily mentioned “Alice” in a 1976 survey done for Camp Songs, Folk Songs.

17.  Orrin Manifold.  “Epworth Forest: The Second 25 Years.”  52–122 in Freeland and Manifold.  88.  Chance is discussed in the posts for 21 March 2021 and 28 March 2021.

18.  Nancy Heche.  The Truth Comes Out.  Ventura, California: Regal, 2006.  46.  She was born in 1937, [33] so would have been at Epworth Forest around 1953.

19.  Manifold.  59.

20.  The best documented migrant is Johann Matthais Fenstermacher who landed in Philadelphia with his sons, each of whom had a number of sons. [34]  However, Fenstermacher is a common name that first appeared in Bohemia, [35] so George’s ancestors could have arrived later.

21.  OPPSheryl.  “Russell Anbert Fenstermacher.”  Find a Grave website, 12 September 2011.  This is George’s brother.

22.  Scott Shoup.  “George Edwin Fenstermacher.”  Find a Grave website, 6 April 2013.

23.  “Charles P. Fenstermacher.”  The News-Sentinel, Fort Wayne, Indiana, 19 June 1950.  This is George’s father.

24.  Cleveland, Ohio, East High School Annual.  Volume for 1917 edited by Robert D. Moore.  115.

25.  Dwight Mikkelson.  “Remembering George Fenstermacher.  Taylor: A Magazine for Taylor University Alumni and Friends 88:17:Autumn 1996.

25.  The Gem.  Taylor University yearbooks for 1939, 1940, 1942, and no doubt other years I did not check.

27.  Logan began teaching at the Cleveland Music School Settlement in 1912.  He later helped founded the Cleveland Orchestra. [36]

28.  Czerwonky began teaching violin at the Bush Conservatory of Music in 1918. [37]  It was run by the Bush and Gerts Piano Company. [38]  He later became associated with the Chicago Philharmonic Orchestra. [39]

29.  Mikkelson.  One assumes Fenstermacher spent his summers in Chicago between 1927 and 1934 when he earned his degree.

30.  One also guesses Fenstermacher impressed Blake into speaking at general assemblies or classes on his work in Angola.

31.  Ernest Berkley Balch.  Letter to Porter Sargent, quoted in volume 5 of his The Handbook of Private Schools, reprinted on Balchipedia website and quoted in Camp Songs, Folk Songs.  218.

32.  E. O. Harbin.  Phunology: A Collection of Tried and Proved Plans for Play, Fellowship, and Profit.  Nashville, Tennessee: Cokesbury Press, 1923.

33.  Wikipedia.  “Nancy Heche.”
34.  “Johann Matthais Fenstermacher.”  Geni website, 13 September 2017.
35.  “Fenstermacher History, Family Crest & Coats of Arms.”  House of Names website.
36.  William Osborne.  Music in Ohio.  Kent: Kent State University Press, 2004.  135.

37.  “Czerwonky, Richard, 1886-1949.”  Northwestern University Archival and Manuscript Collections website.

38.  Wikipedia.  “Bush Conservatory of Music.”
39.  Northwestern University.