The Sanctified Sisters

A. L. BENNETT

THE AMERICAN FRONTIER was often the scene of the rise of new, and sometimes strange, religious sects. Cut off from centers of culture and official church discipline, settlers might break away from organized religious bodies to form hardly recognizable splinter groups. In their endeavor to “live the Bible,” or to give outward shape and ceremony to what was directly “revealed,” they gave birth to new faiths, or at least practiced a new symbolic behavior, however scant the theology or formal dogma. This was not, speaking strictly, folk religion, but it was indigenous. One of the most interesting of the new sects was established in Texas about the middle of the last century by a group of determined women who brought quiet consternation to the male population of their community.

It was in old Belton that this little band of women who came to be called “the Sanctified Sisters” overawed, subdued, and almost cowed the male citizenry. It is a kind of cosmic irony that the virile, adventuring husbands stood dismayed and helpless before a feminine assault upon that most radical principle existing between men and women—love. The sanctified ladies removed themselves from their husbands’ beds, and by joining what they called “the True Church Colony” vowed to live a life of sinless perfection—that is, without love. This earthly battle of the sexes was enough to excite the mirth of the gods, but to those most intimately concerned it was no laughing matter. Though psychologists and sociologists may have secular interpretations, this feminine withdrawal was all done in the name of religion.

The soul and genius of the “sanctified” movement was Martha McWhirter, who came with her husband from Tennessee and settled on Salado Creek in 1855. George M. McWhirter established a mercantile business in Belton and in time prospered and became prominent in civic affairs. He built for his family what must have been one of the finest houses in the city. That house still stands (on a street about two blocks west of the main thoroughfare and parallel to it), a fine-looking two-story stone structure with good lines and good proportions. It was not until 1866, and after she had borne twelve children by her husband, that Mrs. McWhirter became convinced it was sinful to live intimately with him. Now this has its humorous side, but Mrs. McWhirter was not one to see the humorous side of things.

According to one account, Mrs. McWhirter's extraordinary religious experience came when she was near death in 1866.¹ She promised the Lord that if she were spared she would consecrate herself to religious endeavors. She claimed that she received “divine revelation” assuring her “in audible voice” that she was not to die—that she had a great work to do. This version differs slightly from that of George P. Garrison, University of Texas historian who lived among the “sanctificationists” for several weeks during the summer of 1893 and had daily converse with Mrs. McWhirter and her followers.² At the time they had established a profitable hotel business in Belton. According to Professor Garrison, Mrs. McWhirter in 1866 lost two children and a brother; these afflictions she considered to be a chastisement from God and she resolved to live a purer life. During a protracted meeting held in Belton she became anxious about her unconverted children, who seemed cold and indifferent to the exhortations of the preacher. As she walked home one night, a voice suggested to her that the revival meeting was the work of the devil. Against this suggestion she struggled and prayed, but while she was busy with breakfast the next morning she received a “Pentecostal baptism” and knew then that the voice of the night before was the Voice of God. From that time forward she professed “sanctification.”³

Up to this time Mrs. McWhirter and her husband had worked together in the Sunday school and prayer meetings, he being super-intendent of the Union Sunday school. The McWhirters were Methodists, but when the Methodists broke away from the Union meetings and built a church of their own, they enjoined the Methodists not to set up a separate Sunday school. When the Methodist pastor did organize his own Sunday school, the McWhirters kept to their original group. As the Baptists and other denominations built churches of their own, they left the Union church, which became the special meeting place of Mrs. McWhirter's followers. It was sectarian differences, says Professor Garrison, as well as the doctrine of sanctification that led to the establishment of the True Church Colony. The zealous leader would not submit to pastoral control, for through revelation she had authority from the Highest Source.⁴

Mrs. McWhirter was a woman of extraordinary powers and wielded an uncommon influence over her followers. They had dreams, visitations, revelations, and finally the “Pentecostal baptism”; they readily accepted the central doctrine of the True Church, that it was sinful for a sanctified woman to live in conjugal intimacy with an unsanctified husband. If both husband and wife were sanctified, they might live together under mutual restrictions—that is, without love's unholy rites. The consequence of the movement was that the Sisters engendered a peculiar hostility among the male population of Belton. They reduced their husbands to a state of celibacy, held their biweekly prayer meetings from house to house, and made those economic arrangements necessary to counter the economic sanctions that some of the husbands invoked.

George McWhirter was a sensible man and from the beginning would have nothing to do with his wife's fanaticism. He kept on living with her because he knew she was sincere, because she was his wife, but mainly because he loved her. In his view she was a victim of delusion. Mrs. McWhirter remained in her husband's house in the role of “servant,” a status which evidenced the humility fitting to religious abnegation and which neutralized their relations as mates. Though George McWhirter was in easy circumstances financially, his wife would accept no money from him. She did, however, require a maid servant, whom she allowed her husband to pay some eight or ten dollars a month. The maid servant, who happened to need an economic haven, was one of the Sisters.

The situation that confronted the men involved was what Bigfoot Wallace would have called a “poser.” You could not fight a Woman, and you could not fight Religion. Again, one with ears delicately attuned might have heard cosmic laughter. Some of the more romantically inclined men sought better fortunes in Central America; some initiated divorce proceedings; and some just fumed and burned. It did no good to invoke economic sanctions against women who were shrewdly working out their own economic viability. If men needed little here below, women needed less. Sunbonnets and cotton dresses, sometimes homespun, sufficed for attire; these and a little food were easily bought with the butter-and-egg and vegetable money they had at hand. If a Sister, unceremoniously evicted, needed a roof over her head, there was always Mrs. McWhirter with her two-story stone house, a perfect physical and spiritual haven. This was not the affluent society, and the only status symbols, for the Sisters at least, were treasures laid up in Heaven.

Their communistic practices were neither doctrinal nor deliberate; communism for them was a practical necessity. Their common fund began when one of the unmarried Sisters, a schoolteacher, laid down twenty dollars she had saved. Others contributed their butter-and-egg money. They took in washing, they chopped and sawed firewood, they went out in the city to do housework. These women, it must be emphasized, were not drawn from the poor and the outcast; nearly all of them had been used to well-to-do circumstances, and some of them were accustomed to luxury. So that when a call came in that a Belton housewife needed a girl or woman to come and “live in” and do housework, there would be a brief fit of quiet weeping, but in spite of the humiliation there would always be someone to volunteer to go out in service and bring the money into the common fund.

It was in the promotion of the Sisters’ laundry business that an unhappy incident occurred. Their practice was to wash and iron clothes at one Sister's house on Monday and at another's on Tuesday. Mr. Henry, one of the affected husbands, strenuously objected to their making his house into a laundry, and the Sisters just as vehemently protested his objections. “Shoo out of here, you old hens!” he yelled. “Now shoo out of here every one of you!” Words flew back and forth, but mainly back, and in the melee of pushing, shoving, and shooing, Mr. Henry let fly sticks and stones, with the result that his wife suffered a deep gash on her head. Central Texas newspapers gleefully reprinted the news item from the Belton Journal. The story in the Gatesville Advance ran thus: “Mrs. McWhirter and three other female members of the Sanctification band in Belton have been fined $20 each for occupying Mr. Henry's premises as a laundry to raise funds for the Lord. Mrs. Henry and her daughter left their home after the trial and will cast their lot with the band instead of the ungodly Henry.”⁵

It seemed that the ungodly Henry had the law on his side, and a refuge had to be found for Mrs. Henry and her daughter. Mrs. McWhirter shrewdly went to work. She took money out of the common fund to buy building materials, chose one of Mr. McWhirter's town lots, gathered her band about her, and raised a house for Mrs. Henry in a few days. Mrs. McWhirter's son and the sons of some of the other Sisters helped out, and the only money expended for labor was for two days of work by a professional house builder. Though George McWhirter protested in strong terms against his wife's taking his lot, the good man had to yield when she reminded him that she had brought some property to their marriage. It should perhaps be added here that Mr. Henry, a man of means, had a large house, and when the poor man died not long after the fight over making his house a laundry, his wife came back to occupy his home, to take in some of the unhoused Sisters, and to start a boarding establishment that prospered and grew into the even more prosperous hotel business the Sisters enjoyed during the last two decades of the century.

In 1880, after the sisterhood had been a going concern for about thirteen years, the husbands of Belton found an effective way to strike back. In February of that year two Scots brothers who had heard of the religious order and thought highly of it came to Belton and proceeded to affiliate. Heretofore no men had joined, although theoretically there was no reason for them not to as long as they were “sanctified” and kept to themselves. But when the Scotsmen took up residence with the Sisters, it didn't look a bit good. In fact, it looked downright scandalous. And when rumors began to float around (false, of course) that the two Scotsmen were enjoying a life of revelry and riot, it was time for “direct and precipitate” action. This was something a man could smash with his fist—that is, another man. So one dark, cold midnight a mob of husbands who had been deserted gathered with their sympathizers at the McWhirter house and demanded the Scotsmen. A pathetic circumstance the mob did not know about was that the Scotsmen's aged parents had arrived to visit their sons this very night. George McWhirter, loyal to the end, was guarding the house, as rumors of mob action had drifted to him. But he was overpowered after a few stray shots were exchanged, and the Scotsmen were seized. The unhappy pair were flogged within an inch of their lives and told to leave town and never come back. This was an unjust, as well as an unlawful, injury, for the Scotsmen were upright and clean-living. They had the courage, too, to let it be known that they did not intend to leave town. Thereupon the civic authorities took a hand; they had the men adjudged insane and sent them to the Austin asylum to get them out of harm's way. The authorities at the asylum refused to accept them, however, as it was plain that the two men were sane; but they did extract from the victims a promise to leave Belton forever.

This violence discouraged male membership in the True Church Colony. The grand jury investigated the affair and indicted the husband of one of the Sisters, but he was speedily acquitted when brought to trial.

Another setback came to the order a little later when Mrs. McWhirter did something very foolish. I have this story from R. B. James, of Belton, who remembers Mrs. McWhirter and her religious band very well. Late one evening a large crowd had gathered in front of her house. She had announced about the town that she was going to demonstrate her religious faith; she was going to prove to people that the Lord would take care of his own. Her faith was so great that she believed if she jumped off the roof of her front porch she would not fall, or that if she did, the fall would not hurt her. Perhaps she had a revelation that told her to do it. Down on the ground were her faithful followers and all the curious of the town. The flat roof to the front porch made a high platform. She came out of the second-story dormer window wearing a long, flowing robe, and after a prayer or two and a dramatic pause, she sailed over the banisters of the porch as if she were trying to fly. She fell right in front of the crowd. When the doctors examined her they found she had broken two ribs and both legs.

All of this was humiliating to George McWhirter, a man of good sense and great heart. He loved his wife, in sickness and in health. He expostulated with her when she took his town lots and built rent houses on them for the sisterhood, but to the public he defended her as a woman entirely sincere in her convictions, however deluded she might be. He continued to live with her under the “restrictions” imposed by her “sainthood” and guarded their house against harm.

He suffered her to bring other women into the house and endured many humiliations, but one night when she endeavored to bring a male convert under their roof he rebelled. She gave him to understand that the male convert must be admitted. This he could not stomach. He gathered his things and left the house forever, and he never saw his wife again. He took up his abode in his mercantile establishment. Two years later when he grew ill and lay dying, Martha McWhirter debated with herself whether she ought to go see him. She said that she was moved by natural affection to go to him, but that she was restrained by her religion. It was a firm rule of her order that the Sisters were not to seek company outside of the order. They welcomed people who came to see them, but they did not go out to visit. She resolved that if she received a revelation that she might be permitted to go see him, she would go, and she would interpret his sending for her as a revelation. But this revelation never came.

Nevertheless he was thinking of her at the last. “He made a will in her favor, and appointed her executrix, without bond, declaring his faith in her integrity, and his conviction that she would do justice to all their children, to those who had not followed her as well as those who had.”⁶ The evidence is that she was scrupulously honest in administering his estate of twenty thousand dollars, as in everything else. In an interview late in life, Martha McWhirter said: “Mr. McWhirter was devoted to me; he loved me through it all. He believed with all his heart in the sincerity of my new religion. For years he tried not to oppose me, and though living under the same roof he allowed me to follow the dictates of my conscience. But when the younger children grew into years of discretion he left me. I never spoke to him again.”⁷

That such an organization could be kept together for so long a time was due to the force of character of this one woman. Under her guidance the order prospered, though the adult membership was never over fifty. The group established a flourishing hotel business, operated two or three farms, drew rent from several houses in the city, and operated a steam laundry in conjunction with the hotel. In 1893, when George Garrison lived in the hotel for several weeks, the sisterhood had assets of about fifty thousand dollars. There were at that time four male converts in the order. One was in New York trying to establish a piano business for the corporation; one was a hotel clerk, one the manager of the laundry, and one a carpenter. The other members were married women who had left their families, widows, unmarried women, and some young girls who had followed their mothers. They were embarrassed for a place to invest their surplus funds. Some of the money was spent on excursions to Mexico City and New York. Toward the end of the century they were seeking fresh ground, and for this reason visited the Great Lakes region and Washington, D.C. In 1899 they left Belton and established themselves in a house on Kenesaw Street in Washington. After Mrs. McWhirter died in 1904, the band dwindled in power and influence, and little more was heard of them.

An epilogue to this story makes a pleasant little tale in itself. Adah Pratt was born into the sisterhood in Belton, her mother presumedly having left her father's household only a short time before. Thus she grew up under strict religious guidance and knew hardly anything else, for the Sisters had withdrawn from society and had as little to do with outsiders as possible. They kept their own school, had their own dentist, and never took much stock in doctors. Adah, and the other girls too, might have been sent to a boarding school if there had been the proper revelation, but it never came. There were some books to read at the hotel—Tolstoy and Edward Bellamy—and some fairly good magazines. But most of Adah's guidance came from the Bible; the Sisters tried to “live the Bible” according to their own interpretation. A German boarder at the hotel one time taught music to the young ones, but when there developed a delicate feeling among the group—a collective insight or intuition—that something was wrong, the music lessons were discontinued.

When the group moved to Washington, Adah was a blooming nineteen, but a girl ought not think of marriage. She was tall, of a striking figure, and had a wealth of chestnut hair.⁸ But to what avail? She was taught to beware of men and was never permitted to have acquaintance with any of them. As time went by she saw men, often noticed them, but had not paid any particular attention to any of them—until one day.

“There were ten children in the colony,” she said, “all girls. Five of the girls grew up, and then slipped away to be married. Of course they were regarded as sinners. I thought them bad. But about a year ago I went down town with a girl friend and she introduced me to Mr. Hoover.

“Somehow or other I could not get him out of my mind. I found myself wishing I might see him all the time. I knew it wasn't right; at least I thought it wasn't. Later I met him down town again, and several times after that. Then he told me he was going to leave the city and asked me to write. I told him I would.”

From her story it seems that Hoover, who was a hotel clerk, went to Chicago, then came to Philadelphia and wrote his intentions to Miss Pratt in Washington.

“I was crazy to see him,” she said, “and then decided to risk the fear of my mother's displeasure, and give him a surprise party. So I slipped quietly out of the house in Washington and came to Philadelphia. When I found Mr. Hoover he was greatly surprised.

“‘Why, Adah, have you come up here to marry me?’ he inquired.

“‘I don't know that I thought much about that,’ I replied. ‘I just felt I had to see you again.’

“‘Well, will you marry me?’ he asked. It took me by surprise, although I was not wholly unprepared for it.

“‘I'm willing,’ I said finally.

“‘Right away?’ he asked. This took my breath away.

“‘Can't you wait until tomorrow night?’ I asked him, and he said he would.”

Ah, brave new world, that has such people in it!