Definitely Not a Coffee Table...

Sometimes I stumble upon a mystery that catches my attention. That's what happened a few weeks ago after I received a covid booster shot at Mayflower Community. The nurse asked me to remain in the lounge of Montgomery Hall for a few minutes after the shot to make sure that there were no unhappy consequences. Discovering that all the seats in the lounge were already occupied, I passed through the lounge toward Montgomery Hall's front door and there found a chair. With no one to talk to, I cast my eyes around the unfamiliar space and noticed an unusual table in the entry immediately below the mailboxes that serve Montgomery Hall residents. I got up to take a closer look, and discovered that the table bore a decorative inscription taken from Christian scriptures (Matt. 28:20): "Lo, I am with you alway." Although Mayflower was founded by the Congregational Church of Iowa in part to provide for former missionaries and pastors, the clerical inscription still surprised me as the entryway gave no other evidence of religious service.

Moreover, the table surface featured a small dedication plate that remembered Lucinda A. Haskell Noble (1832-1921), who was, the inscription announced, "A faithful member of this Church."

Well, that was odd. For one thing, the table was not standing in a church, but in the entry of an apartment building. In addition, Lucinda Noble had died more than a century ago and some thirty years before Mayflower was founded. What the heck? I wondered. 

And so began a winding search to learn how this table, built a hundred years earlier, found a home in the entryway of Mayflower's Montgomery Hall in Grinnell, Iowa.

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Finding the obituary for Lucinda Noble proved fairly easy. Thanks to the digitized records of a northeast Iowa newspaper, I learned that the elderly "Mrs. Noble was a devoted Christian woman, [and] a faithful member of the Congregational Church of Strawberry Point" (Edgewood Journal, April 7, 1921). Glad to know what church she had attended, I was nevertheless further discomfited to realize that the table in Montgomery Hall in Grinnell had previously stood in a Congregational Church in Strawberry Point. Why wasn't the table still in Strawberry Point, continuing the remembrance of Lucinda Noble and her faithfulness?

Undated Photograph Postcard of Strawberry Point Congregational Church

Answering that question also proved easy. A newspaper article from March 1953 reported that the First Congregational Church of Strawberry Point had recently been razed. "A decrease in the size of the congregation and no hope for immediate comeback brought an end to the church," the newspaper explained (Dubuque Telegraph Herald, March 22, 1953). As further investigation proved, in fact the church had been closed already early in 1951 (Clayton County Press Journal, July 26, 1951; Cedar Rapids Gazette, January 25, 1953). Clearly the Strawberry Point Congregational Church had disappeared almost seventy years ago, so whom could I ask about the table? Even those who had been members when the church came down in 1953 would now be either quite elderly or dead. How could I learn more?

Photograph from Dubuque Telegraph Herald, March 22, 1953

Happily, the records of the closed Strawberry Point Congregational Church landed, along with other records of the Iowa Conference and its churches, in the Congregational Library and Archives in Boston, Massachusetts. One of the archivists there kindly located for me the papers from Strawberry Point and sent me scans of the church register which recorded minutes of the last meetings of the congregation. These records report that on a slippery, winter night in January 1952 only eight members of the Strawberry Point Congregational Church appeared for the annual meeting at which they hoped to decide "whether or not to disband." With so few members present, a motion to delay the decision and reconvene in late April or early May carried. The reconvened annual meeting did not take place until June 8. That Sunday, after a pot-luck dinner, the twenty assembled members voted to authorize the church's trustees "to make such conveyance of property, both real and personal as shall be agreed upon in said negotiations" to the Iowa Conference of the Congregational Church, although the vote asked that the Conference find a way to share the proceeds of the sale with the Strawberry Point Methodist Episcopal Church, which at the time was organizing a building fund for a new church.

Undated Postcard of First Methodist Church, Strawberry Point, IA

Formal dissolution of the Congregational Church in Strawberry Point did not occur until November 24, 1952 when Dr. Judson Fiebiger (1905-2005), Conference Secretary, Rev. Andrew Craig, Field Secretary, and Mr. D. H. Thomas (1874-1959), Business Manager and Assistant Treasurer, met Strawberry Point church officials at the Union Bank and Trust Co. of Strawberry Point (subsequently succeeded by Citizens State Bank). The meeting concluded with several resolutions. The first conveyed to the Congregational Christian Conference of Iowa the real estate of both the church and parsonage. The second resolved that fifty percent of the proceeds of the sale be placed in trust in the Union Bank and Trust Company of Strawberry Point for the Building Fund of the Methodist Church of Strawberry Point. According to the final page of the church's records, the church sold for $2250 and the parsonage for $5800, thus ending forever the Congregational Church of Strawberry Point.

One other paragraph from the minutes of the November 1952 meeting is important for the history of the table now in Montgomery Hall:

It was agreed that the Thimble Society of the Congregational Christian Church be empowered to dispose of the personal property in the church, all moneys so rec'd [sic] to enhance the Thimble Treasury, it being understood that receipts be spent to advance Congregational Christian projects (Congregational Library and Archive, Iowa Conference Records, Subgroup III, Church records, Series FF: Strawberry Point Congregational Church Records, 1883-1952, Church register, 1935-1952). 

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Coinciding with the dissolution and sale of the Strawberry Point church was a recently-founded and ambitious project of establishing a Congregational retirement community in Grinnell for former missionaries, pastors, and their spouses. The idea of a Congregational retirement home in Grinnell began with Royal and Margaret Montgomery (1883-1957), who at that time were living in a home at 819 Ninth Avenue, Grinnell. Royal Montgomery (1879-1966) had served the Congregational Christian Conference of Iowa for many years in various positions until his retirement in 1948. As Margaret Matlack Kiesel (1908-1987) put it, the Montgomerys "were living comfortably in the house they had built...," but "Dr. Montgomery also was aware that other Congregational ministers and their wives were not as fortunate as he and Margaret" (A Journey in Faith: The Story of Mayflower Home [n.p.: Mayflower Homes, Inc., 2000], p. 7). The Montgomerys decided to donate the proceeds from the sale of their home to help underwrite the founding of a retirement community in Grinnell. Soon thereafter Ferdinand Kiesel (1879-1956), a stalwart in the Grinnell Congregational Church who was impressed with the Montgomerys' idea, agreed to donate his own home on Broad Street toward the project. With this beginning, the Montgomerys approached the Iowa Conference with a proposal to found a retirement community in Grinnell. The Conference formally adopted the proposal in June 1950 and by November of that year the Mayflower Home was incorporated.

Plaque Recognizing the role of Royal and Margaret Montgomery in founding Mayflower Home
(entry to Montgomery Hall)

Although the recruitment of funds to build the new community proved challenging, by August 1952 officials had succeeded in securing sufficient backing to break ground for the first housing unit in the 600 block of Broad Street. The one-story brick structure featured eleven apartments, half of which were endowed to make them affordable to the denomination's retirees. Named in honor of Royal and Margaret Montgomery, this first building was formally dedicated in June 1953.

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Among those attending the June dedication ceremony in Grinnell were several women from Strawberry Point: Mrs. J. J. Matthews, Mrs. Jennie Howard (1876-1955) (who as clerk had recorded minutes of the Strawberry Point Congregational Church's closing), Mrs. Carrie Slagel, and Miss Nell Westfall (1871-1961) (Clayton County Press Journal, June 18, 1953). All four were members of the Thimble Society, a women's organization which, despite the closing of the local Church, continued to operate. When the Thimbles next met, on June 25th, Nell Westfall and Mrs. Jennie Howard reported on their Grinnell visit for the Mayflower dedication (Clayton County Press Journal, July 2, 1953), helping spread the word in Strawberry Point about the Mayflower Home. Later that autumn, now meeting at the Methodist Church parlors, the Thimble Society welcomed "Miss Francis Ackman [sic; should be Aikman] of the Mayflower Home in Grinnell" who "gave a very interesting and informative talk on the Home" (ibid., November 5, 1953). Francis Aikman (1876-1977), who hailed from Minneapolis, was among the original residents of Montgomery Hall, occupying apartment 11. Her father, Rev. J. G. Aikman (1839-1923), had once been pastor at the Strawberry Point Congregational Church (Congregational Iowa and Pilgrim Log, February 1954), which explains both her connection to Strawberry Point and to the Mayflower.

First Residents of Montgomery Hall, Mayflower Home (1953)
Margaret and Royal Montgomery, 1st row, 1st & 3rd from left; Francis Aikman, back row, 3rd from left
(Drake Community Library, Records of the Mayflower Home #92, Box 2, Series 7,
"Scrapbooks, Pre-1959") 

The Strawberry Point Thimble Society, like other organizations within the Iowa Conference, supported the Mayflower Home initiative financially. Already in July 1952 the group donated $100 to the Mayflower Home (Clayton County Press Journal, July 17, 1952) and in December 1953 sent another $75 (ibid., December 10, 1953). The following April the group decided to send an Easter gift of $25 to Dr. Royal Montgomery, "the founder of the Mayflower Home" (ibid., April 22, 1954). Clearly the Thimble Club knew a great deal about and contributed generously to the Mayflower.

But the Thimble Club was not the only party in Strawberry Point committed to Mayflower. The program for the 1953 dedication of Montgomery Hall, for instance, reports that among those who had underwritten apartments in the building intended for clergy were "Dr. and Mrs. James S. Alderson, Strawberry Point." James Alderson (1864-1953) had operated medical practices in several Wisconsin towns and then later in Dubuque, but he had been born in Strawberry Point and was married there to Mary Buckley (1865-1963), who came from a well-known, pioneer Strawberry Point family. After Alderson retired, he and his wife moved back to Strawberry Point where they lived with Mary's sister, Helen T. Buckley (1871-1960) (Clayton County Press Journal, November 5, 1953). Both women were members of the Thimble Society, and therefore had early knowledge of the Mayflower Home. Moreover, both women provided bequests to Mayflower in their wills; the total of the two bequests ($120,000, about $1 million today) anchored the financing that allowed Mayflower to build its fourth apartment building, named Buckley Hall in their memory (A Journey in Faith, p. 36).

Undated Postcard Photo of Buckley Hall, Dedicated September 1963
(https://digital.grinnell.edu/islandora/object/grinnell%3A11644)

"The Newberry Foundation, Strawberry Point" was also identified as a donor to Montgomery Hall. Information on the Foundation proved scarce; a survey of Clayton County newspapers in the decades around the Mayflower's founding yielded only a single reference to the foundation. But the Newberrys were well-known in Strawberry Point. The Honorable Byron Newberry (1853-1944), for instance, had been a local lawyer and banker, and had served several terms in the Iowa legislature. In 1905 he had married Eva Buckley (1858-1951), thus joining two local pioneer families. Eva Newberry's brother was Parke Buckley (1856-1925), who graduated in 1881 from Iowa (later Grinnell) College and who in 1885 married a local Grinnell woman, Nettie Williams (1859-1889), sister of the plein-air artist, Abby Williams Hill. So the Newberrys had a long connection with Grinnell and also with the Buckleys. 

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Documents confirming the dissolution of the Strawberry Point Congregational Church had empowered the Thimble Society "to dispose of the personal property in the church, all moneys so rec'd [sic] to enhance the Thimble Treasury, it being understood that such receipts be spent to advance Congregational Christian projects." Exactly how the Thimbles disposed of furniture and other movables of the old church is not clear. Newspaper notices confirm that the club regularly hosted rummage sales, so it may be that they arranged for a special sale of church furnishings. If they did, no notice of an auction or tag sale came to my attention. However the Thimble women sold off the church possessions, some items proved difficult to merchandise. Not everyone, for example, needs a pulpit or communion service to add to their living or dining room!

Example Announcement of Thimble Society Rummage Sale
(Clayton County Press Journal, October 26, 1950)

Perhaps for that reason, the Strawberry Point Thimbles decided, as reported in Congregational Iowa and Pilgrim Log (v. 70, no. 2 [October 1953], p. 22), to donate "the Communion service and the Noble memorial table and the pulpit" to the Mayflower Home. At that time Mayflower had no chapel as such, so these items, however valuable they might have seemed, had to find a home that might not have corresponded closely to their original purpose. This explains the presence of the Noble table in the entryway of Montgomery Hall; perhaps the table has stood there ever since the Thimbles gave it to Mayflower (waiting for someone like me to ask how it got there).

Wine pitcher from the Communion Service of Strawberry Point Congregational Church (2022 photo)

Likewise, the church's communion service survives at Mayflower. Now decorating the shelves of Buckley Dining Room is a silver wine pitcher bearing the inscription "Cong'l Church, Strawberry Pt., Iowa 1875," two silver cups ("CC," engraved on the base, presumably signifying Congregational Church), and two silver trays for the communion bread. With no formal chapel at Mayflower until the 1959 dedication of the Warren Hathaway Denison Memorial Worship Center in the basement of Pearson Hall, it seems likely that the communion service stood on display in Montgomery Hall or remained in storage, only later being brought into Buckley to help decorate the Dining Room.

Something similar might be said of the Strawberry Point pulpit: without a chapel until 1959, Mayflower officials either kept the donated pulpit in storage or perhaps decided to re-gift it. What makes the latter option more probable is the fact that when the new chapel opened in 1959, it opened with brand new, locally-crafted birch pulpits made especially for the Denison Worship Center. These pulpits remain visible—one in Kiesel Hall beneath Pearson and one in the Lucille Carman Center above the Mayflower Health Center. But a clue survives to indicate that at least initially Mayflower retained and made use of the Strawberry Point pulpit.

Detail from a faded photograph of the June 1955 Dedication of Edwards Hall
(Drake Community Library, Records of the Mayflower Home #92, Box 10, Series 21,
"Photographs 1953-1965") 

Photographs from the June 1955 dedication service of Edwards Hall, the second apartment building erected at Mayflower, show what looks to be a mahogany or walnut pulpit in use.  Much church furniture of the time bore this dark coloring, perhaps an explanation for why Mayflower, sensing the more modern, brighter tastes of the 1950s, settled on bright birch pulpits when opening the Denison Worship Center.  

I have so far found neither the pulpit nor a document that reports what happened to the pulpit, but I suspect that church furniture on view in photos of the Edwards dedication service was the one bestowed upon Mayflower by the Thimbles of Strawberry Point. If so, then we may imagine that the pulpit saw occasional service at Mayflower at least until the 1959 opening of Pearson Hall and its new chapel that was outfitted with light, birch furniture. What happened after that I am not sure. 

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And so I come to the end of my search. The table that first drew my attention is definitely not, as the title here confirms, a coffee table. Although most Protestant communion tables bear a different inscription ("Do This In Remembrance of Me"), I imagine that the table now guarding the entrance to Montgomery Hall for many years occupied center stage at communion in Strawberry Point's Congregational Church. If so, then the silver communion service now at Mayflower regularly stood upon the table's surface, from which the church's pastors distributed the elements. In this way, the Thimble Club's gift joined together these relics of yesterday among Strawberry Point's Congregationalists. The third part of the Thimble Club's gift, the pulpit, was also present in the Strawberry Point chancel. Any photograph of the church interior inevitably would have joined these three items, all central to Congregational worship.

Their transfer to Grinnell's Mayflower did not fully preserve their liturgical service, as the women of the Thimble Club might have wished. Their church abandoned and torn down, the Congregational women of Strawberry Point, casting about for an honorable retirement for these most precious symbols of worship, must have hoped that at Mayflower, among the retired Congregational pastors and missionaries, the pulpit and communion service would enjoy a new season of usefulness. Perhaps for the first few years the Grinnell retirees found opportunities to revive use of the pulpit and communion service. But before long, they, too, slid into retirement, reduced to quotidian or decorative functions only. 

Today, some seventy years after the Strawberry Point Congregational Church closed, the Noble table and the church communion service survive to remind us of a time when Grinnell enjoyed the interest, confidence, and generosity of the Congregationalists in Strawberry Point Iowa.