The Beginnings
THE BEGINNINGS
Things happened fast in the 1890s. The great industrial and social upheavals of the post Civil War period were beginning to be felt in everyday life. In that decade the majority of Americans, for the first time ever, lived in cities rather than rural areas. Trains, street cars and other mass transports carried people to the suburbs and beyond. People were no longer forced to live within a horse ride of their work. Telephones, telegraphs, great industrial engines — the world grew more wild and fantastic daily. Immigrants, driven by hunger and political oppression, came in waves to the American shores. The past life was over. Who could predict what was to come?
Myrtle Dorthea Monville entered this chaotic world in 1894 in the tiny town of Hubbell, in Michigan's upper peninsula. The middle child in a family of six, Myrtle quickly showed the intelligence and independence that characterized the rough, hardworking people of that area. She had the "can do" attitude and the rugged determination of the miners who chipped a living from the copper and iron ranges surrounding her home.
Myrtle's personality reflected her Irish mother's, Mary Harrington, who had survived the long boat ride from Cork County, Ireland. They were tough, ornery, Irish Catholics — full of pride and determination.
Myrtle's father, a Frenchman named Joseph Monville, had the distinction of being the first male born in Port Huron, Michigan. He moved to the upper peninsula when he was a child in order to work with his family in the copper and iron mines that supplied the industrial revolution throughout the Great Lakes.
Education for Myrtle was basic and parochial. It was from the Catholic schools that she gathered her general education, and also a real love and fear of God. She graduated at 16 and decided it was time to see what wonders the world would show her. She took the train to Ypsilanti, Michigan, some 600 miles south, and continued her studies at the Michigan Normal Teacher's College (later Eastern Michigan University). At home, one summer on a break from her schooling, she was offered a position in a local dry goods store. Seeing no real future for herself in the south, she accepted. For the next five years she worked there, close to her family, in increasing positions of responsibility, finally managing and supervising the entire store.
In 1914 the Great War started, and the industrial revolution shifted into full speed. Jobs in manufacturing munitions, motorized vehicles, clothing, and all the other necessities of war pulled people to the manufacturing centers like iron to a magnet. The mechanization of farming and mining left little for the majority of workers in those fields to do. It seemed quite clear the future pointed to the cities with the jobs, the excitement and money. Myrtle took the Lake Railroad to Cleveland, following the lakes from Superior to Huron to Erie. But her brother in Detroit, Jack, contacted her with a job offer and she was off again. Her first job in the city, a payroll clerk for the Palmer Bee Company, gave her the freedom and time to explore her new environment. Soon she managed the payroll department of the local engineering firm. The war seemed distant and life was fresh and immediate. It was time for love and romance.
Harry Lee was the third of 11 children born to James Madison Beall and Amanda Muntz, an Amish girl. James and Amanda fell in love somewhere west of Waterloo, Iowa, on a wagon train headed for California. James and Amanda stopped overnight in Kansas and wound up as settlers there, on a farm near the Colorado border. Harry grew up with the great plains and the big sky. But the war pulled him to the A.E.F. and Paris.
By Armistice Day Harry, and thousands of other boys from American farms, had to make a decision: back to the farm and the old life, or into the unknown — the cities and gleam of mechanized world? Harry didn't go back to the farm. He considered Chicago, New York, St. Louis, New Orleans — all the great new towns. But he chose Detroit, allowing our story to continue.
Taking an engineering position with the Palmer Bee Company, it wasn't long before he met Myrtle. It wasn't long until they dated. But it was a while before they married. Harry was a Methodist, and though it wasn't something that concerned him a great deal, he still was not about to "turn Catholic" just to marry Myrtle. On the other hand, Myrtle felt Methodists were some sort of a voodoo cult — more pagan than Christian. She was not receptive to the idea of excommunication from the Catholic church, and she was determined not to spend eternity in hell with a hell-bound Methodist family around her.
Myrtle and Harry continued to date, but with a growing resignation and realization that there would be no good solution to their dilemma. When they accepted an invitation to play cards with friends, Myrtle felt it might be their final date. But Myrtle had been praying. She knew she loved God and she knew she loved Harry. There had to be a way to reconcile those feelings. She hoped and prayed for a miracle.
That night, while visiting their friends, she picked up a book from the coffee table. That book changed her life. She opened the Bible randomly and read: "Whither thou goest, I will go. Whither though lodgest I will lodge. Thy people shall be my people. Thy God shall be my God." Here was her sign. That very night she said "yes" to Harry's proposal. They were married as Methodists at the Central Methodist Church. Harry was 34, Myrtle 26.
The Bealls bought an underdeveloped lot near a swamp on Detroit's far east side and began to build a home and family. The street car lines had stretched far enough for accessibility and the homes sprung up like weeds. Someone had even paved an entire road there. It should have been the best of times, but it was the worst for Myrtle. She felt Catholic. And if she was Catholic, she knew she was living in sin and was in serious trouble. Her family ignored her. Her church ostracized her. Her soul felt heavy with guilt.
The weight increased as the children were born. The little ones weren't responsible for their eternal agony. She was damning them forever. Knowing the Catholic church would not receive her, she turned to the church in which she had wed. Soon the Beall family, minus Harry, attended the Methodist services regularly. Myrtle even taught Sunday School classes. She worked at those classes as if she was working for absolution and she would begin each talk by saying, "I was raised Catholic, and I don't believe this, but you should." And they did.
Teaching forced her to the Bible to learn her lessons. It made her closely examine, for the first time, what the Testaments were all about.
Myrtle's conversion experience started when she was invited to a prayer meeting. "A prayer meeting is a place where you pray," Harry had told her. So she went. Myrtle heard the most beautiful prayers of her life that day. She wanted to write them down and memorize them as she assumed the others had done. She wanted a copy of the prayer book. The meetings became part of her regular schedule and a part of her heart. She attended them eagerly.
The Methodist church had its shortcomings, though, it seemed to Myrtle. Pastors came in and out like the seasons. The elders of the church would debate endlessly about the qualifications of a candidate for their pulpit. One morning, as she listened to another of these discussions she heard a small voice in her ear say, "Tell them it is not a minister they need to seek. They need to seek Me!" The voice in her continued to repeat that phrase, louder and louder until she finally blurted it out. The deacons looked at her, amazed at what she said. But the conviction and power in her voice conveyed the truth. The men knelt and prayed. So did Myrtle Beall. It was 1927. She began to tell God of all her worries, fears, guilts and heartaches. She prayed for her family and asked that they would be spared the hell for which they seemed intended. She offered her life to Him, if she could only know that heaven was hers. God told her it was. For the first time since her marriage Myrtle felt peace and hope.
Things happened fast in the 1890s. The great industrial and social upheavals of the post Civil War period were beginning to be felt in everyday life. In that decade the majority of Americans, for the first time ever, lived in cities rather than rural areas. Trains, street cars and other mass transports carried people to the suburbs and beyond. People were no longer forced to live within a horse ride of their work. Telephones, telegraphs, great industrial engines — the world grew more wild and fantastic daily. Immigrants, driven by hunger and political oppression, came in waves to the American shores. The past life was over. Who could predict what was to come?
Myrtle Dorthea Monville entered this chaotic world in 1894 in the tiny town of Hubbell, in Michigan's upper peninsula. The middle child in a family of six, Myrtle quickly showed the intelligence and independence that characterized the rough, hardworking people of that area. She had the "can do" attitude and the rugged determination of the miners who chipped a living from the copper and iron ranges surrounding her home.
Myrtle's personality reflected her Irish mother's, Mary Harrington, who had survived the long boat ride from Cork County, Ireland. They were tough, ornery, Irish Catholics — full of pride and determination.
Myrtle's father, a Frenchman named Joseph Monville, had the distinction of being the first male born in Port Huron, Michigan. He moved to the upper peninsula when he was a child in order to work with his family in the copper and iron mines that supplied the industrial revolution throughout the Great Lakes.
Education for Myrtle was basic and parochial. It was from the Catholic schools that she gathered her general education, and also a real love and fear of God. She graduated at 16 and decided it was time to see what wonders the world would show her. She took the train to Ypsilanti, Michigan, some 600 miles south, and continued her studies at the Michigan Normal Teacher's College (later Eastern Michigan University). At home, one summer on a break from her schooling, she was offered a position in a local dry goods store. Seeing no real future for herself in the south, she accepted. For the next five years she worked there, close to her family, in increasing positions of responsibility, finally managing and supervising the entire store.
In 1914 the Great War started, and the industrial revolution shifted into full speed. Jobs in manufacturing munitions, motorized vehicles, clothing, and all the other necessities of war pulled people to the manufacturing centers like iron to a magnet. The mechanization of farming and mining left little for the majority of workers in those fields to do. It seemed quite clear the future pointed to the cities with the jobs, the excitement and money. Myrtle took the Lake Railroad to Cleveland, following the lakes from Superior to Huron to Erie. But her brother in Detroit, Jack, contacted her with a job offer and she was off again. Her first job in the city, a payroll clerk for the Palmer Bee Company, gave her the freedom and time to explore her new environment. Soon she managed the payroll department of the local engineering firm. The war seemed distant and life was fresh and immediate. It was time for love and romance.
Harry Lee was the third of 11 children born to James Madison Beall and Amanda Muntz, an Amish girl. James and Amanda fell in love somewhere west of Waterloo, Iowa, on a wagon train headed for California. James and Amanda stopped overnight in Kansas and wound up as settlers there, on a farm near the Colorado border. Harry grew up with the great plains and the big sky. But the war pulled him to the A.E.F. and Paris.
By Armistice Day Harry, and thousands of other boys from American farms, had to make a decision: back to the farm and the old life, or into the unknown — the cities and gleam of mechanized world? Harry didn't go back to the farm. He considered Chicago, New York, St. Louis, New Orleans — all the great new towns. But he chose Detroit, allowing our story to continue.
Taking an engineering position with the Palmer Bee Company, it wasn't long before he met Myrtle. It wasn't long until they dated. But it was a while before they married. Harry was a Methodist, and though it wasn't something that concerned him a great deal, he still was not about to "turn Catholic" just to marry Myrtle. On the other hand, Myrtle felt Methodists were some sort of a voodoo cult — more pagan than Christian. She was not receptive to the idea of excommunication from the Catholic church, and she was determined not to spend eternity in hell with a hell-bound Methodist family around her.
Myrtle and Harry continued to date, but with a growing resignation and realization that there would be no good solution to their dilemma. When they accepted an invitation to play cards with friends, Myrtle felt it might be their final date. But Myrtle had been praying. She knew she loved God and she knew she loved Harry. There had to be a way to reconcile those feelings. She hoped and prayed for a miracle.
That night, while visiting their friends, she picked up a book from the coffee table. That book changed her life. She opened the Bible randomly and read: "Whither thou goest, I will go. Whither though lodgest I will lodge. Thy people shall be my people. Thy God shall be my God." Here was her sign. That very night she said "yes" to Harry's proposal. They were married as Methodists at the Central Methodist Church. Harry was 34, Myrtle 26.
The Bealls bought an underdeveloped lot near a swamp on Detroit's far east side and began to build a home and family. The street car lines had stretched far enough for accessibility and the homes sprung up like weeds. Someone had even paved an entire road there. It should have been the best of times, but it was the worst for Myrtle. She felt Catholic. And if she was Catholic, she knew she was living in sin and was in serious trouble. Her family ignored her. Her church ostracized her. Her soul felt heavy with guilt.
The weight increased as the children were born. The little ones weren't responsible for their eternal agony. She was damning them forever. Knowing the Catholic church would not receive her, she turned to the church in which she had wed. Soon the Beall family, minus Harry, attended the Methodist services regularly. Myrtle even taught Sunday School classes. She worked at those classes as if she was working for absolution and she would begin each talk by saying, "I was raised Catholic, and I don't believe this, but you should." And they did.
Teaching forced her to the Bible to learn her lessons. It made her closely examine, for the first time, what the Testaments were all about.
Myrtle's conversion experience started when she was invited to a prayer meeting. "A prayer meeting is a place where you pray," Harry had told her. So she went. Myrtle heard the most beautiful prayers of her life that day. She wanted to write them down and memorize them as she assumed the others had done. She wanted a copy of the prayer book. The meetings became part of her regular schedule and a part of her heart. She attended them eagerly.
The Methodist church had its shortcomings, though, it seemed to Myrtle. Pastors came in and out like the seasons. The elders of the church would debate endlessly about the qualifications of a candidate for their pulpit. One morning, as she listened to another of these discussions she heard a small voice in her ear say, "Tell them it is not a minister they need to seek. They need to seek Me!" The voice in her continued to repeat that phrase, louder and louder until she finally blurted it out. The deacons looked at her, amazed at what she said. But the conviction and power in her voice conveyed the truth. The men knelt and prayed. So did Myrtle Beall. It was 1927. She began to tell God of all her worries, fears, guilts and heartaches. She prayed for her family and asked that they would be spared the hell for which they seemed intended. She offered her life to Him, if she could only know that heaven was hers. God told her it was. For the first time since her marriage Myrtle felt peace and hope.