1959 Early Religious Efforts

Chapter 4

This page is part of the 1959 Reardan History booklet that was written by the Washington State History class of 1958-1959.

In the earliest days, Protestant and Jesuit missionaries traveled the routes of the fur-traders, ministering both to the Indians and to the first white pioneers.

Rev. Samuel Parker, a New School Presbyterian who was sometimes a Congregationalist, induced the First Presbyterian Church of [Ithaca], New York, in [1834], to sponsor a mission to Oregon under the auspices of the American board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions, and he visited the Big Bend area in 1836. The early Jesuit missionaries, Fathers Blanchet and Demers, in 1838, and Rev. Cushing Ells and Rev. Elkanah Walker (Congregationalist) camped near the site of Sprague in 1839.

Circuit-riding preachers served the early settlements for many years, with homes and schoolhouses as meeting places for religious services. In the 1870’s and 1880’s the home of Henry Harder, two miles east of town, was a favorite overnight stopping place for ministers of whatever denomination. His was said to be the only house in the county having a spare bedroom. Beyond this, however, Mr. Harder was a pious Lutheran who in every possible way helped Christianity do its leavening work in the pioneer community.

About 1882, a one-room schoolhouse was moved near what is now the cemetery, and there Union Sunday School classes were held for several years, welcoming Protestant and Catholic children alike. (Concerning this very small schoolhouse, Mrs. Driscoll comments, “No one seems to know when or how it was built, but settlers who came in 1879 found it standing unused on what has been since known as the Peter Walsh ranch,” Now occupied by the Mark Richardson’s). Church services, too, were held in the schoolhouse, with Evangelical and Baptist preachers coming from Spokane on alternate Sundays to give leadership. The names of Rev. H. Schuknecht (Evangelical) and Mr. Peter Setters (Baptist) are recalled as visiting preachers.

The earliest leadership of the Union Sunday School included Mr. and Mrs. Thomas Stevenson (Methodist), the Buckman and John Davidson families (Presbyterian), Mr. and Mrs. Peters Setters, and Mr. and Mrs. Fluelling.

Every three months or so, a Lutheran minister, enroute from Egypt to Spokane, would hold Sunday afternoon services either at the schoolhouse or the Harder home. In June 1890, the Lutherans organized, and in July 1891, dedicated their first building. It was 1902 before they had a resident minister and 1938 before they had a full-time pastor. Theirs is the largest Protestant church in Reardan today., with an adult membership of some one-hundred-fifty people.

To the Baptists go the credit for organizing and building the first church in Reardan, in about 1890. A Baptist minister, Rev. Girard, was the town’s first resident pastor, living here in 1895. Baptist work was disbanded after a decade, and Methodists purchased the building about 1915. Within two or three years, the Methodists gave up efforts to maintain a church, and the old building is used today as a store-shed for Colville’s garage.

A resident Evangelical minister, Rev. W. D. Barnhardt, served as police judge on the first city council in 1903. The Oregon conference of the Evangelical Church had begun work in Spokane and vicinity in 1884, and the first missionary appointed to this “Washington mission” came from Michigan in 1885–Rev. H. Schuknecht.

A church was built on the Milke farm at Edwall (then Sassin) in 1886. The Reardan Evangelical Church was built in 1902 or 1903, and today has a membership of fifty-one adults.