But those days are over. Vancouver isn’t a fort anymore. It’s gone way past that. Vancouver isn’t even a frontier town now. Vancouver’s become quite a modern city. It’s feeling pretty cosmopolitan these days—almost like San Francisco but without the earthquakes.

The Modern Vancouver

We’ve got progress. Oh, sure we’ve got the hospital and the Academy and all the stuff that Mother Joseph and her Sisters of Charity built for us. But that’s old news. We can take the train from Vancouver direct to Portland now on that new bridge, and then all the way to California. We can telephone Portland most any day—even Spokane if we want. Mostly we can telephone Manor and Pleasant Valley and they say maybe next year they’ll get the telephone cables out to Battle Ground so they can call too.  Heck, we've even got the Vancouver Soda Works so we can bottle our own sarsaparilla and cream soda for them big fancy stores in Portland.

And the streets have electric lights. Bicyclists used to be a nuisance but now we have automobiles, ‘cept they’re getting to be an even bigger nuisance. The sheriff has to arrest some of those reckless drivers who speed along Main. Sheriff Sappington not long ago arrested a Portland woman for frightening a horse on Main into running off. Those Portland automobilists are disposed to turn loose their machines when they arrive in this city and ride rough shod over everything in their way. Now that Mr. Ford is selling his Model T so cheap the condition will only get worse.  And when Silas Christofferson flew his airplane from here last year some folks were talking like the plane could catch on for transportation for regular people.  Hard to believe though.

All The News That's Fit to Print  

But the days are picking up speed every which way just like the automobile. The Columbian just commenced to printing a paper every day which is good cuz we heard about President Taft’s election almost as soon as we heard about Mr. Kiggins getting picked to be mayor. Funny thing about our newspaper being daily and all. They fill that thing with all sorts of nonsense. Like that "Most Popular Lady Contest" they ran for weeks. Mrs. D. A. Sanderson and the lady she beat out, Bernice Eddings, are fine women but they got over 7 million votes out of only nine thousand people in Vancouver!! Must have been that a lot of people voted a lot of times.

But we also learned about that scoundrel out at the Brush Prairie school, Elbert Dickson. He was the principal of those precious children from off the farms, was a former legislator from Illinois, so they say, and he was arrested for defrauding Illinois farmers out of $40,000 just two years before! The paper’s good for helping you know what’s happening. Maybe the most important news we got right away was the passing last year of Rev. William Shepphard from St. Luke’s back at that Mayo Clinic in Minnesota and of our Governor Cosgrove just a few months ago when he died of heart failure in California. He was never in good health since the election but we hoped he’d come around. I never personally met Mr. Cosgrove, but the Reverend was a good man who cared for just about everybody. It's a tragedy that the Good Lord took him not two years after his boy drowned in that excavation ditch filled up with the overflow water from the Columbia.  Everybody respected the parson and he’ll be missed.

But y’know, with progress comes challenges. And while we’ve got the modern conveniences and we can go anywhere in days when it used to take months, our people need a little tending to now and again. So, some of the local preachers figured we needed a good old fashioned Revival service to keep us on the straight and narrow.

The Preacher

So they got this Rev. Shannon to agree to come and they put together plans for a building to hold the meetings in. The preachers from the Christian Church, the Presbyterians, the Baptists, the Lutherans, they all joined together with some others to hold these revival meetings but none of them had a place big enough to hold the people they expected would come. Not even the Methodist Episcopalians who were old hands at revival meetings. So they decided to build a "tabernacle."

The Tabernacle

This tabernacle was a really big building. Like the barracks at the Fort only looking like a church on the inside. And like the tabernacle wasn’t supposed to be big enough at 12 to 15 hundred seats, but every time you turned around the thing just got bigger. 1800.  Then 2000. By the time the tabernacle was done it would hold 2500! And it had room for a 200 voice choir, and electric lights, stoves for heat and glass windows. Pretty good for a structure scheduled to be torn down in a month. And it wasn’t cheap either. But I supposed spending $500 on the work of the Lord is a good investment.

When Shannon got here Vancouver was eager and rarin’ to go. Felida had just wrapped up some revival meetings of their own. Now they got off to a late start cuz the ice storm that froze the Columbia five feet thick and solid enough to walk across made it too cold to get people out to meetings in January. But February was accommodating so the Felida folks ran services for the whole month.

The Message

Hockinson picked up where Felida left off. The Christian Church out there held revival meetings of their own. And by the time Mr. and Mrs. Shannon got off that 6pm train, the Tabernacle had hosted meetings for 11 days with ministers from the area and crowds of 500, 800 and 1500. The preachers were worried that the tabernacle might have needed to be enlarged. "Cyclone" Shannon’s famous wit, humor, and straight talk was sure to fill the place. He did, too.  Many a night every seat was filled and crowds had to stand outside trying to hear. 

Now the Reverend was smart enough to know that not everybody takes to his ways, especially the mischief makers he stirs up with his sermons. He explained it this way, "If you don’t like the way I talk, I don’t like the way you walk. If you walk different, I’ll talk different." Shannon said too many church people were giving the Lord’s work a bad name. "Church people ought to be walking Bibles, instead some are walking libels!" He said that there are "three types of folks in the church, workers, shirkers and jerkers." I really liked his description that some church workers are like wheel barrows, "they go only as far as they are pushed."

Night after night the crowds filled that 80 by 100 foot Tabernacle on the southeast corner of 10th and Franklin. The music man, Prof. Harry Ross made a great success of the singing. He’s a fine leader for this kind of work and does a bang up job with his own solos. Area singers treated us to duets, quartets, and every other combination but each one was a real delight.

Fighting the Good Fight?

Everybody felt Shannon’s preaching. It blessed you or it bothered you, but the one thing it didn’t do was leave you unfeeling. Especially when he got riled up about drinkin’, and the Temperance thing. Most of the crowd shouted loud "Amens" but they weren’t all so inspired. In fact, one day when Shannon was getting a shave over at Thornton and Frey’s Barber Shop, young George Oetzen, a local bartender in his fathers saloon, started up with the evangelist over the preacher’s comments about saloons and bartenders. I’ve heard different versions of just what happened but the Reverend ended up with a mean swelling on his left temple and five stitches in his chin. Oetzen didn’t fair so well either as he got himself arrested for assault. Shannon explained, "I have nothing personal against either the saloon keepers or the bartenders. It is the saloon business that I am opposed to."

The Meetings

Groups from Oregon City, the Salvation Army, the YMCA, members of the Odd Fellows and their wives, high school students and the military got special honor at the meetings. In fact the preacher even went to the soldier boys. When he talked at the Barracks the soldiers filled the post hall and leaned in through the windows so the ones standing outside could hear. He and the Mrs. made the rounds to the various church prayer meetings and Bible studies. And overflow services were held at local churches generally by Mrs. Shannon when the Tabernacle was full.

The After-Effects

What the ministers figured to be a couple weeks of revival meetings ended 52 days later with 1099 conversions recorded at the Tabernacle services. The bills were covered and the Shannons were sent away with $1200 for a thank offering. Of course, not everybody agreed that the evangelist should get paid. Vancouver police officer Ira Cresap stirred up some controversy when he made known his criticism of Shannon. When Cresap called Shannon a "four flusher and a grafter" before witnesses local supporters of the preacher started a petition to demand the city council relieve him of his job. The churchmen and Cresap were both chastised by the Columbian for their lack of toleration.  Ironic, wouldn't ya say, in light of all the good preachin' the evangelist had just done?.

The reviving of Clark County didn’t stop with Shannon. After the Nebraskan left in mid-April for his next crusade in Hood River, revival meetings continued in the Tabernacle until the fall by local and out of town ministers. But the Tabernacle wasn’t the only site for evangelizing. Presbyterian TP Howard erected a big ol' tent in Vancouver’s Heights for meetings. The Baptists’ meetings out grew their building at Columbia and W. 15th. Evangelist JW Markland of Chicago preached at the original tabernacle, then erected one on 13th St. just west of Main.

The Fruit of the Ministry

The results of all this reviving benefited lots of churches. The following year produced growth for the Baptists at 11th and Harney who doubled their capacity holding baptisms at both morning and evening services. First Presbyterian gained 157 new members including 54 all in one service. A new Congregational Church was built at 14th and Main. The Christian Church received over 100 new members. The United Brethren built a church at 17th and Harney and started a new one in Amboy. The Methodist Episcopal dedicated new churches at Maple Grove and Orchards. The Clarke County Sunday School Association had its best convention and largest attendance, nearly 200, in July. St. Luke’s Episcopal announced it would build a new rectory and open their hall to youth until the a YMCA could get going. Lutherans announce plans to build a college at Minnehaha. The Salvation Army were going great guns with 60 new converts per week.

Two other things get your attention about the 1909 revivals. First, Judge McCredle purchased season passes to the local baseball park for every minister in the Portland area. Secondly, evangelistic services out in Felida that followed Shannon were real unusual cuz the preacher was Rev. Jesse R. Kellems, assistant pastor of the Christian Church, and the music leader was Harold Humbert, a singing evangelist of Eugene, Oregon. These two sprouts were just 16 and 15 years old respectively. They did some fine preaching for boys as after the first week of meetings a full fifteen people made up their minds to turn their lives around and start living right.  Surely these were special days in Vancouver.  Life just seemed to be racing by with all the new inventions.  But it was also a special time of feeling the call of God on your life.  We haven't seen times like then since.  But we sure would like to.

Summary

The 1099 conversions recorded during Daniel Shannon's 52 day crusade occurred when Vancouver was a much smaller community than today.  The 1909 population would have been around 9,000 in Vancouver and 26,000 in the whole of Clarke County.  In today's terms, Shannon's results would produce around 15,000 new Christians in just over seven weeks.  Add to that figure the converts made in the other half dozen revivals happening in 1909 (and the winter of 1910) and the effect in today's numbers is even greater.  When considering the impact on these figures of the Portland attendees remember that while we don't know how many came from across the river transportation was by ferry and the trip was considerably more daunting than today's visitors experience.  

Nearly a year later meetings continued, though at a reduced level. Reports of church activity included occasional revival services and signs of modest growth but are characterized more by routine events like improvements to the Sunday school building, guest speakers, and clergy participation in civic affairs. Though later years featured revival meetings by Billy Sunday on two separate occasions, a young Billy Graham at the VA Hospital, Dr. Torrey Johnson of Wheaton Illinois, and Jim Mercer of Minneapolis, no mass evangelism produced the relative impact on the entire county as the Shannon meetings.  The year 1909 was remarkable.