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The Mt. Adams Sun, Bingen, WA., May 14, 1953, page 4

Drawn for The Sun by Larry Jacox

The Mt. Adams Sun,. Bingen, WA., May 14, 1953, page 4

LITTLE CHURCH ON CRUTCHES TO BE REBUILT AT GLENWOOD

Sixty-two winters have laid their white blankets on Camas Prairie since the Glenwood church was founded. Now an architect is designing a successor to the Little Church on Crutches. Like the pioneers it served, the present building has seen its day.
Few remember the Reverend A.J. Goodfriend, a slender little Jew in his 60’s who walked 18 miles over the mountains from Troutlake to meet a handful of Glenwood farmers and villagers. By kerosene lamp in a ranch kitchen they signed the first entry in the old session book on October 24, 1895.
The faded signatures are H.M. Mattie and Emma Trenner; N.A. Wilson; C.W. Harold and Nettie Bell; and Adell Haven. On the second page more names were added; Oliver, Arthur, Harmon and Willis Trenner; the Shaw family – F.J. and J.O., Luella and Lila (Now Mrs. Betsy Leathers and Mrs. E.E. Bartholomew of White Salmon); Katie McAllister, Nancy McGrath, Peter Hoult, A. Willard, Thomas Quigley and Rob Baker.
Just to prove their pledge to encourage the new church “by our means and attendance” most of those signed at the first meeting signed again.

MOVED

Mrs. Julia Krall of BZ Corners remembers attending the church when it was new and stood a few hundred feet east of the present Glenwood Grange hall.
She writes “I do not know the exact year. It was built but my mother married August Berg in 1896 and we all went to church in the old hack every Sunday.”
The old session book ignores the date but indicates H.M. Trenner donated the original site now owned by Frank Leaton. Because cash was scarce and the congregation small, the church was built with missionary funds borrowed from the East Oregon Presbtery who still held the mortgage in 1912.

POVERTY LANE

On June 9 of that year the congregation obtained approval to deed the site to Charles McAllister in exchange for a suitable lot in Glenwood. That summer the building was hauled by horses to its present location on Poverty Lane. A young mail carrier named Tune Wyers remembers stopping for a fresh cup of coffee while the building was being placed on its new foundation beside Poverty Lane.
The name of the main road leading into Glenwood is another example of pioneer whimsy. Actually many of Glenwoods best farms border on Poverty Lane. The road was named by Mrs. J.O. (James Orlando) Shaw, Glenwood’s first postmistress who was required by Washington D.C. to describe the location of her office.
But moving the church to town didn’t accomplish what the members intended. Like many other towns where too many churches make the struggle of each a financial ordeal. Camas Prairie at one time or another tried to support four houses of worship.
The Dukhobor group at the other end of Poverty Lane finally folded. (Actually it wasn’t a church but a neighborhood of sober, hard-working people who denied the divinity of Christ and the Holy Spirit and got married without any religious assistance.

“SCABBY GEORGE”

Snow flattened the church at Laurel. And the Methodist church burned down with the Wyers stables in 1933. But even without competition, the little Presbyterian church behind “Scabby George’s” general store was seldom crowded except for funerals.
Any man with a nickname like “Scabby” is entitled to an explanation. George W. Smith was a shrewd and successful merchant and sheepman. With his partner, Leon W. Curtis, he owned a big sheep ranch at Grand Dalles. Because his sheep were afflicted perennial scab, Camas cattlemen were quick to turn his misfortune to their advantage.
But to get back to our story Glenwood was not anti-religious. They turned to the church in their hours of greatest spiritual need. But in between times, like Americans elsewhere, they tried to make ends meet by working seven days a week instead of six or using Sunday for a well-earned holiday. Most of them lost the habit of going to church.