Joseph Pomeroy Widney, M.D. D.D. LL.D (December 26, 1841 – July 4, 1938) was a polymathic pioneer American physician, clergyman, entrepreneur-philanthropist, proto-environmentalist, prohibitionist, racial theorist, and prolific author.
He was the second President of the University of Southern California in Los Angeles and the founding dean of the USC School of Medicine.[1] He was one of the founders and first general superintendents of the Church of the Nazarene, and primary founder of the Los Angeles County Medical Association. One of the "most conspicuous Southern Californians of his generation",[2] Widney was a cultural leader in Los Angeles for nearly seventy years,[3]
Contents |
Joseph Pomeroy Widney was born on December 26, 1841 in his grandfather's log cabin in Piqua, Ohio in the forests of Miami County, Ohio. He was the third son of John Wilson Widney (born December 4, 1809; died 1852) and Arabella Maclay Widney (born 1811; died February 15, 1880). He was the nephew of Robert Samuel Maclay, a pioneer missionary to China; and of Charles Maclay, later a state senator of California. At the age of fifteen, Joseph became head of the family after his father died of pneumonia at the age of 42, as his two older brothers John Widney (born March 14, 1837; died 1925)[4] and Robert Maclay Widney (1838–1929) had migrated west to California. He had to provide for his mother, two younger brothers: William Wilson Widney (born December 25, 1850) and Samuel Alexander Widney (born November 15, 1852), and two younger sisters: Arabella Erwin Widney (born 1843; died 1917) and Elizabeth Widney (born 1848) (latter married to Joseph Leggett).[5][6]
After graduating from Piqua High School, Widney entered as a sophomore at Miami University at Oxford, Ohio. Widney studied Latin, Greek, and the classics during his five months there. In 1907, he was awarded an honorary Doctor of Laws (LL.D.) degree for his Race Life of the Aryan Peoples. The poet-preacher David Swing was one of his instructors.
In 1861 he enlisted in the Ohio Volunteer Infantry Regiment of the Union Army in the Civil War. Though in frail health, Widney served in the field as a regular infantryman, and became a medical corpsman. He was trained to administer first aid to wounded soldiers. He was transferred onto steamers on the Ohio and Mississippi rivers in a medical capacity. He was discharged from the Union army in 1862 due to physical and nervous collapse.[7]
With the encouragement of his two older brothers and his uncle, Charles Maclay, who were in California, Widney sailed to San Francisco via the Isthmus of Panama, arriving in November 1862, prior to his twenty-first birthday. He travelled throughout California on horseback, visited the missions and lived with the Spanish-speaking inhabitants, learning their culture and language.
He returned to university in 1865, receiving a Master of Arts degree from the California Wesleyan College (later the University of the Pacific), (then located at Santa Clara, California). In January 1866, he moved to San Francisco and on June 4, 1866 began the third session of the medical course at the Toland Medical College (later part of the University of California, San Francisco,[8][9][10] graduating at the head of his class with a Doctor of Medicine (M.D.) degree on October 2, 1866. He was awarded a gold medal in recognition of his superior scholarship.
Widney married twice. His first wife was Ida DeGraw Tuthill Widney (born November 17, 1844 in Orient in Suffolk County, Long Island, New York), whom he married on May 17, 1869 in San Jose, California. They had three children, each of whom died in infancy: Ada, who died at the age of fourteen months in August 1870; an unnamed son who died in 1872; and another son, Joseph T. Widney, who died aged six months old in June 1874. They lived in a Victorian mansion at 129 S. Hill Street in the Bunker Hill, Los Angeles, California area, next to his brother Judge Robert M. Widney. Ida died in Los Angeles on February 10, 1879 and is buried in the Los Angeles City Cemetery, in the family plot.[11][12][13][14]
Widney then married on December 27, 1882 in Santa Clara, California to Miss Mary Bray (born April 26, 1845 in Missouri),[15][16][17] the daughter of the late John G. Bray, a pioneer merchant of San Francisco,[18][19] and first president of the San Jose Bank.[20] Mrs. Mary Widney was a respected artist prior to her marriage. They had no children.[21] On February 18, 1884 flooding of the Los Angeles River resulted in the loss of 43 homes. "Widney lost the most expensive house in the area, built fifteen months before at the foot of Sainsevain Street [now East Commercial Street] at a cost of $2000".[22] Dr. and Mrs. Widney then established their new home at 150 W. Adams Boulevard (formerly S. 26th Street), nearer the newly established University of Southern California. As the founder of the Flower Festival Society, Mary Widney was responsible for organising flower festivals that raised money to support the Woman's Home, a home for up to seventy poor working women.[23][24][25][26] Mary Bray Widney died on March 10, 1903 at their home at 150 W. Adams Boulevard, Los Angeles. Dr Widney never remarried.
In 1929 Widney was injured by an automobile which was backing out from the curb. His hearing was severely impaired. By 1937 he was blind. Widney's biographer, Dr. Carl Rand, believes that the failure of his eyesight in latter years was due to the development of senile cataracts, which Widney refused to have removed.[27] He wrote four books in this period with the assistance of his sister-in-law, Mrs. Anna Elizabeth "Hettie" D. Jenkins Widney and her sister, Mrs. Rebecca Davis Macartney. In 1935 Widney was awarded an honorary Doctor of Divinity (D.D.) degree from the University of Southern California in recognition of his life of scholarly contributions.
Widney died at 10:50 am on July 4, 1938 in his home at 3901 Marmion Way, Highland Park, Los Angeles, California, aged 96. After services held in his own home, he was buried in the Evergreen Cemetery at Boyle Heights, Los Angeles, California on July 6, 1938 in his family plot.[28][29] A replica of his Marmion Way bedroom is on display at the General Phineas Banning Residential Museum in Wilmington, California.[30][31]
In March 1939 the new Crippled Children's High School (located at 2302 S. Gramercy Place, Los Angeles) was renamed the Dr. Joseph Pomeroy Widney High School. This school is for those aged 13 to 22 with special educational needs. The historic Widney Hall Alumni House (now located at 650 Child's Way (originally W. 36th Street) at the University of Southern California)[32] Widney Hall, the university's original building, was declared a Los Angeles Historic-Cultural Monument (No. 70) on December 16, 1970.[33][34][35] The University of Southern California honors its distinguished graduates by presenting the Widney Alumni Award. His portrait was painted by American artist Orpha Mae Klinker (born November 20, 1891; died May 23, 1964),[36] and a bust of Widney was sculpted by Emil Seletz (1907–1999).[37]
After his graduation from Toland Medical College (the only medical school at that time in California) on October 2, 1866, Widney re-enlisted in the army as a military surgeon in January 1867 for a two-year tour of duty. He was posted to Drum Barracks[38] in Wilmington, California for a month in 1867, before being appointed Acting Assistant Surgeon for the Arizona Territory during the Apache Wars. During this time he served with the 14th Infantry Regiment under General James Henry Carleton (1814–1873).[39] The regiment camped for several weeks two miles (3 km) south of La Paz, Arizona en route to Camp Date Creek, where they were based for several months where he helped reestablish that post.[40] By July 1867 he was based near Apache Pass during the re-building of Fort Bowie,[41] where he supervised the building of the Post Hospital.[42]
In December 1867 he asked for a discharge from the military. While in the military, his interest in climatology increased. He sent detailed reports regarding the region's rainfall, topography, and climate. Rand concludes that the Arizona Campaign "contributed much more to his appreciation of life in general than to his medical career".[43]
In late 1868, Widney was discharged from the military and he moved to the embryonic community of Los Angeles. Widney began his medical practice on October 8, 1868, sharing offices with Dr. John Strother Griffin (1816–1898), in the old Temple Block (corner of Temple and South Main Streets, Los Angeles). Among those he treated were General William Tecumseh Sherman and Mexican bandido Tiburcio Vasquez,[44] as well as the indigent ill.
Before the passage of the "Anti-Quackery Law" by the California State Legislature on April 3, 1876,[45] licenses were not needed for doctors. The medical profession was not regulated by the State before this date and medical practitioners would advertise their medical skills in the newspapers.[46] Concerned about "medical quackery" in California, and also at the lack of legislation for licensing doctors, on January 31, 1871, Dr Widney became a founder of the Los Angeles County Medical Association, the oldest such association in California. Widney became known as "the Father of the Association".[47][48]
The founders wanted to establish medical schools and publications, raise the standards in the practice of medicine, as well as the income and status of doctors.[49] Widney advocated dispensing aid to "the sickly poor" as a key facet of public health and civic philanthropy.[49] From 1876 to 1901, medical licensing was done by the State Medical Society. In 1901, the State Board of Medical Examiners was created. Widney was among the first licensed by the medical society. Dr Widney was elected its president in 1877.[50] On May 12, 1937, a bust of Dr Widney sculpted by Dr Emil Seletz and commissioned by the Los Angeles County Medical Association was unveiled and placed in the lobby of their headquarters.[51]
Widney believed in scientific medicine. He opposed were faith healing or "mind cure" practitioners, such as Christian Science and John Alexander Dowie. In 1886, Widney, then professor of the principles and practice of medicine in the college of medicine of the University of Southern California, proposed a protocol for such studies.
Widney advocated the organization of both the Los Angeles and California Boards of Health, and was Los Angeles' first public health officer.
In 1884, Widney helped re-organise the Southern California Medical Society. He served on the Committee on Medical Topography, Meteorology, Endemics and Epidemics that reported frequently to the Medical Society of the State of California. Widney was a pioneer physician-meteorologist who was an active exponent of medical topography, a nineteenth century medical specialty influenced by Alexander von Humboldt (1769–1859), that studied the relationship between the environment and disease. "If we would make our work and our statistics of any true or permanent value", wrote Dr. Joseph Widney of Los Angeles, "climatic belt must be differentiated from, and contrasted with, climatic belt. It is only thus that our work will lead to a clear understanding of the varied pathological peculiarities of the State....A complicated geography offered not only a scientific challenge but also new possibilities of cure.[52] In 1886 Widney helped establish the Southern California Practitioner, the monthly journal of that society. He served as one of the editors for the first few years. There was a focus on the climate of Southern California in almost every issue. According to the Illustrated History of Los Angeles County(1890), the Southern California Practitioner, which Widney helped establish and edit, there were compelling reasons for this journal to focus on the climate of southern California.[53]
Widney attributed the health of southern Californian residents to the climate and to the availability of fresh fruit. He was impressed with the therapeutic benefits of strawberries.[54] Widney believed his own long life could be attributed to living simply and keeping busy.[55] At age 94, Widney advocated "no liquor, no tobacco, no drugs. I'm not a fanatic on liquor, but to me it is a medicine. I keep it around and take it when I need it. But there is no excuse whatever for tobacco or drugs".[56] He recommended at least eight hours sleep each night and short naps throughout the day.[57]
Despite being "the most distinguished physician in the city",[58] upon his election as the president of the University of Southern California in 1892, Widney discontinued his lucrative medical practice at age 51, continuing to treat a few personal friends.[59] When he was with the Los Angeles City Mission (1894) and the Church of the Nazarene (1895–1898), Widney offered free medical care for those unable to afford treatment.
While stationed at Drum Barracks and in the deserts of Arizona, Widney began a lifelong interest in climatology and conservation. Widney served as chairman of the Los Angeles Meteorological committee for several years. Widney credited white settlement with several improvements in the Southern California climate, including less variation in temperature, milder winds, and increased rainfall.[60] Widney was concerned about conserving water and was one of the first to warn about what later came to be called smog, identifying it as a concern in 1938 (some five years before it was officially recognised in Los Angeles).[61]
Additionally, Widney argued successfully for the setting aside of three great forest areas for the benefit (in a conservation of resources) of generations to come, thus giving impetus to the great work of securing the present water supply for Los Angeles.[62]
As early as January 1873, Widney advocated in print the flooding of the Colorado Desert to re-establish Lake Cahuilla.[63] This marked his first appearance in print after his arrival in California. Widney believed that by diverting the Colorado River into the Salton Sink (where now is the Salton Sea) that this would increase the rainfall in the area, eliminate the deserts of southern California, and create a new Eden in what was renamed the Imperial Valley in about 1901. His creation would stretch from the Delta all the way to Palm Springs, just as Lake Cahuilla once had. The huge body of water would create drastic changes in the climate of Southern California, making it "similar to that of the Hawaiian or Bahamian Islands." His plan was cause for great excitement in the press. Widney's proposals strongly influenced those of Oliver Wozencraft and Arizona Territory Governor General John C. Fremont, who travelled to Washington to convince Congress of the project's potential.[64] George Wharton James' book, The Wonders of the Colorado Desert, published in 1906, introduced the second volume with a whole chapter on Widney's arguments:[65]
In 1873, a Los Angeles booster named JP Widney had proposed that the city create an artificial lake in the nearby Colorado Desert in order to moisten the atmosphere and free the region from the curse of aridity. A mere two decades later, there was more fear that Los Angeles might be blighted by the curse of humidity. In the summer and fall of 1891, heavy rainfall and flooding created the inland sea in question, and with rain continuing for some time, it seemed to be having the effects that Widney had promised. "[66]
However, Widney's proposal was also criticized by Horace Bell in his Reminiscences of a Ranger.[67] According to Lindsay,
A proposal to once again inundate the Salton Trough, by diverting the entire flow of the Colorado River, was made in 1873 by Dr. JP Widney. His scheme was named the "Widney Sea." His proposal lead to a lively discussion in Los Angeles newspapers until Gen. George Stoneman proved the impracticality of such a proposal.[68]
In his 1935 book, The Three Americas, Widney argued that the fabled lost city of Atlantis once existed in the area where the Bahamas are now located. He believed that Atlantis was a large semi-tropical island ("larger than Libya and Asia – [ Asia Minor, now Anatolia ]"), stretching west of Gibraltar and east of the West Indies, inhabited by peoples from the Americas rather than from Europe. He believed that the Sargasso Sea now covers part of the now submerged Atlantis. He argued that Atlantis was built up originally from the soil washed into the ocean from Africa and South America, and that it eventually subsided because "in the course of the ages the time came when the fissure in the earth's crust could no longer sustain the weight, and Atlantis went down".[69] He also believed that there was a submerged lost continent in the South Pacific Ocean.[70]
In 1872, Widney helped to found the Los Angeles Library Association,[71] and served on its board of governors for the next six years. Along with Jonathan T. Warner (1807–1895) (better known as J.J. Warner)[72] and Judge Benjamin Hayes (1815–1877),[73] Widney wrote and edited the first history of Los Angeles County,[74] the so-called Centennial History of Los Angeles, published in 1876. In 1888, he collaborated with Dr. Walter Lindley (1852–1922), the founder of the California Hospital Medical Center, in producing California of the South, one of the first tourist guides promoting the region. Both of these volumes were produced to extol the benefits of California and its climate. They were commercially available and were popular.
Also from Widney's prolific pen came many books, pamphlets, and magazine and newspaper articles upon various topics – industrial, racial, scientific, climatic, professional, historical, political, educational, national, international, and religious.[75] He discussed such topics as the League of Nations and its shortcomings; judicial reform (he advocated trials by judges rather than juries for criminal cases); and the future of modern civilizations. With the exception of his two-volume magnum opus, Race Life of the Aryan Peoples, published in 1907 by Funk and Wagnall,[76] Widney chose to have all his other writings published at his own expense and donated to influential people, personal friends, and libraries and other public reading rooms to ensure maximum availability of his ideas.[77]
Widney revealed in his Civilizations and Their Diseases (1937),
I have never written for money. The sole object has been the carving out of broader lines for the human race. For more than fifty years of careful historical study, I have thought, and planned, and worked to this end. This ultimate purpose has run through all my publications.
Widney had been impressed with the potential of Los Angeles since his first visit there in January 1867 when posted to Drum Barracks. He apparently said to himself then: "There will be a harbor made here, and a great city will be built about it. I will put some money here when I come back from the front".[78] Widney was the brother of lawyer (and later Judge) Robert Maclay Widney (1838–1929), the city's first real estate agent[79] and publisher of The Real Estate Advertiser, the city's first real estate paper, who had settled in Los Angeles earlier in 1868. Widney made many lucrative investments in real estate in Los Angeles and surrounding areas (often in collaboration with Judge Widney), which were to make him financially independent, allowing him to retire from the practise of medicine at the age of 55, and allowing him to devote the following 42 years to his business, literary, and religious pursuits. By 1900, the Los Angeles Times described him as "an extensive property owner in this city".[80] At one time he owned the Widney Block on First Street (near the corner of Temple and Spring Streets), another Widney Block located at Sixth and Broadway, and a property at the corner of Ninth and Santee streets, where he erected the Nazarene Methodist Episcopal Church.[81] Additionally, he owned a building at 445–447 Aliso Street, where the first college of medicine for the University of Southern California was located from 1885 to 1896.
Widney's speculation in land started early. Between April 29, 1869 and August 28, 1871, he purchased thirty-four lots in Wilmington near the San Pedro harbor area and another 60 acres (240,000 m2) near the San Gabriel Mission (Rand 28). He owned the parcel of land where the Los Angeles City Hall now stands, as well as most of Mt. Washington, Los Angeles, California, on which his last home (a Victorian mansion at 3901 Marmion Way) stood.
During the Los Angeles real estate boom in 1885, Dr Widney purchased 35,000 acres (142 km2) of land (located 75 miles (121 km) northeast of Los Angeles) comprising the relatively undeveloped township of Hesperia, California. Widney formed the Hesperia Land and Water Company to create a town. Hesperia was advertised as either the "New York, Chicago" and Denver of the West".[82][83] This was one of the more controversial real estate ventures associated with Widney. Major Horace Bell, in his On the Old West Coast, a personal reflection on that period, critiqued the boomers, as a "speculative conspiracy against all that was honest." No houses were built in "Widneyville."[84]
Widney's subdivision crews laid out what was known as the Old Townsite. In 1887, Widney began construction of the Hesperia Hotel, a three-story brick building consisting of 48 rooms and hot and cold running water, baths, and a water closet on each floor. The hotel, which took 2½ years to build, even had communication tubes between floors, thus enabling room service.[85]
The Los Angeles Times of June 2, 1887 reported that Widney had purchased a hotel and several bath houses in the town of Iron-Sulphur Springs (formerly known as Fulton Wells, and known today as Santa Fe Springs), fifteen miles (24 km) east of downtown Los Angeles.[86] In 1886 the springs were purchased by the Santa Fe Railroad, which renamed the town after itself.[87]
Widney believed in progress. He was said, "We may look lovingly back on log cabin days, but the looking back must be done over a multi-lane highway, not along a cow track".[88] He was still articulating grand plans for the development of Los Angeles after the age of 95. In 1937 he wrote "A Plan for the Development of Los Angeles as a Great World Health Center." To facilitate the development of Los Angeles, Widney proposed building a series of roads and tunnels that would transverse and pierce the Sierra Madre Mountains, thus linking the city and the interior desert. According to Carl Rand, Widney postulated:
The whole future of the city lies within our own hands. Los Angeles Harbor (which ought to have been larger and deeper); the great Desert City which may be; and the Colorado River water system; these are the three factors which will settle the future of the City of Los Angeles. And the time to strike is now![89]
Widney was a prominent booster of Southern California. Jaher identifies Dr Widney as among those successful Los Angeles entrepreneurs who were the "most avid civic boosters...[who] made sanguine by their triumphs, they expect urban growth to bring further gains...[who] predicted that the city would become a great metropolis".[90] Widney envisioned Los Angeles "developing into the health capital of the world, a heliopolis of holistic health culture".[91]
Widney was an active member of the Los Angeles Chamber of Commerce since October 1888, and served as its chairman or secretary. Widney's first two books were written to promote (or "boost") California. In California of the South (1888), described by David Fine as "one of the earliest booster tracts"[92] Widney and Walter Lindley wrote: "The health-seeker who, after suffering in both mind and body, after vainly trying the cold climate of Minnesota and the warm climate of Florida, after visiting Mentone, Cannes, and Nice, after traveling to Cuba and Algiers, and noticing that he is losing ounce upon ounce of flesh, and his cheeks have grown more sunken, his appetite more capricious, his breath more hurried, that his temperature is no longer normal,... turns with a gleam of hope toward the Occident"—by which they meant Southern California. Many people followed that gleam and found it something more than hope".[93]
Widney did much in outlining the railroad, maritime and commercial policy of Southern California.[94] He and his brother Robert were prime examples of entrepreneurial professionals. They proved to be "effective lobbyists for the Southern Pacific [railroad] and for harbor improvements"[95] and were especially "active in transport enterprises and in the development of the San Pedro harbor".[96]
As early as 1871 Widney saw the need for Los Angeles to have its own harbor, and with Phineas Banning successfully lobbied the United States Congress for funding for the establishment of the harbor at San Pedro, California (the Port of Los Angeles). In 1881 Widney was described in the Los Angeles Times as the "prime mover of Wilmington Harbor".[97] He was chairman of the Los Angeles Citizens' Committee on the Wilmington Harbor. He wrote the memorials to the U.S. Congress advocating the deepening of the harbor. He successfully opposed the attempt of the railroad interests of Collis Potter Huntington and his partners from claiming the state tidelands of the harbor for their own corporate purposes, ensuring these lands remained in public hands.[98]
Widney was discussed the feasibility of dividing the state of California and establishing the commonwealth of Southern California. He wrote on the subject, and was regarded as "one of the ablest and most enthusiastic advocates of the new 'California of the South'".[99] For many years Widney advocated unsuccessfully for the division of the state of California into at least two (and later he advocated four) states, in order to maximise its representation in the U.S. Senate.[98] He indicated in 1880 that "the topography, geography, climatic and commercial laws all work for the separation of California into two distinct civil organizations".[100] In 1888, Widney contended that "two distinct peoples are growing up in the state, and the time is rapidly drawing near when the separation which the working of natural laws is making in the people must become a separation of civil laws as well".[101]
In his book The Three Americas(1935), Widney suggested that the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa form an Anglo-Saxon federation with freedom of migration and a common citizenship.
While Widney was Republican in general politics, he was "an earnest worker in the cause of temperance".[94] In an 1886 Los Angeles Times op-ed piece Widney suggested that the liquor question – the restriction of its manufacture and sale – should not only become the subject of a Republican party platform plank but should be the issue around which the party rebuilt itself.[102] He was interested in the progress of prohibition, and served as head of the city's nonpartisan anti-saloon league.[103]
Widney is regarded as "the outstanding early educator of Los Angeles".[104]
Widney was involved in the University of Southern California from its conception in 1879, and served as a member of the Board of Trustees of USC from 1880 to 1895.
Widney was the person most responsible for the creation of the USC College of Medicine in 1885 at the beginning of a three-year "boom" cycle in Los Angeles real estate, and served as its founding dean, a responsibility he accepted for the next eleven years until his resignation on September 22, 1896. According to Michael Carter, "the University Catalogue for the academic year 1884–85 declared that applicants to the medical school, as to the rest of USC, would not be denied admission because of 'race, color, religion or sex.'"
After the death of USC founding president the Reverend Marion McKinley Bovard on December 30, 1891, the Board of Trustees elected Widney as the second president. He was reluctant to accept this responsibility, but after he "recognized a call of the Lord",[105] he accepted the presidency at a difficult time in the history of the embryonic institution. At that time USC had only twenty-five undergraduate students, and its focus was on providing secondary education.[106]
The College of Liberal Arts was eighteen thousand dollars in debt. His first step was to set up a separate governing board for the College of Liberal Arts, both as a means of refinancing the debt and of tying that branch of the institution more closely to the spiritual leaders of California Methodism.[107] Widney himself went out on the streets and raised $15,000, giving his own personal security to back up the loans, saving USC from bankruptcy. The Southern California Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church increased its support for USC in 1893. The Conference "enthusiastically adopted Widney's new financial program for the institution. Two of the church's most distinguished and trusted leaders [Widney and Phineas F. Bresee] were at the helm. By the time of the annual conference of 1894, the university had passed through its financial crisis, and Widney's principal work was done".[108] In the spring of 1895, Widney decided to resign after "four years of intensive unremunerated service to the university as its president".[109] He announced his intention to spend a year studying in the East. The board finally accepted the resignation, after their benefactor had turned aside repeated requests that he reconsider his decision.[110]
In addition to his responsibilities at USC, Widney served several years as a member and president of the Los Angeles Board of Education.[108]
In October 1894 at the dedication of the Peniel Hall, Widney announced his intention to organize a Training Institute, in which Bible and practical nursing were to be the principal studies.[111]
Widney was raised in the Greene Street Methodist Episcopal Church in Piqua, Ohio, where his father, Wilson Widney, was a steward.[112] His uncle, Robert Samuel Maclay (February 7, 1824 – August 18, 1907, was the first Methodist missionary to China, as well as an early Methodist missionary to Japan and Korea.[113]
He was an active lay leader of Los Angeles First Methodist Episcopal Church,[114] and was close friends with one-time pastor, Rev. Phineas F. Bresee. The Widneys were mainstays of the "District Aid Committee," an organization devoted to securing better support for underpaid pastors.[115] Dr. and Mrs. Widney and his sister, Arabella, were active in the evangelistic endeavors which Methodists carried on among the poor and unfortunate.[108]
According to historian Timothy L. Smith, "all records agree that Widney was an honored citizen of both the city and the church he loved."[108]
He was instrumental in the support and enlargement of the Los Angeles City Mission (the Peniel Mission), especially from October 1894 when the 900-seat Peniel Hall located at 227 S. Main Street in Los Angeles was dedicated. The Peniel Mission, founded in 1886 (as the Los Angeles Mission) by Theodore Pollock Ferguson and Manie Payne Ferguson (born Carlow, Ireland, 1850; died 1932),[116] was undenominational and nonsectarian. "Their entire work, like that of most of the city holiness missions, was oriented toward soul saving and the promotion of holiness".[117]
According to Smith, "all the available evidence indicates that neither Bresee nor Widney was contemplating any change in his relationship with Peniel Mission or with the Methodist church".[110] By early October 1895, Widney and Bresee were "frozen out" of the Peniel Mission. According to Smith, "Certainly J. P. Widney must have been disillusioned when A. B. Simpson, leader of the Christian and Missionary Alliance and reportedly an extremist on divine healing, appeared as a special worker at the mission in May [1895].[110]
Bresee and Widney determined to form a new organization in which their program of a church home for the poor might be fully carried out. They announced a service for Sunday, October 6, 1895, in Red Men's Hall located at 317 S. Main Street in Los Angeles, a short distance from the Peniel Mission. A Los Angeles Times reporter wrote that the leaders "announced that although no name had been decided upon for the new denomination, its work was to be chiefly evangelistic and its government congregational".[118]
After three weeks of meetings, on October 30, 1895, Bresee and Widney organised the Church of the Nazarene.[119] Widney was suggested the name of the infant denomination. Smith explains, "The word "Nazarene" had come to him one morning at daybreak, after a whole night of prayer. It immediately seemed to him to symbolize "the toiling, lowly mission of Christ."[120]
In October 1898, Bresee and Widney each resigned as superintendent as they did not believe in life tenure in a church. The delegates from the various churches voted to limit the term of office for general superintendents to one year.[121] They were subsequently re-elected to an annual term.[122]
Widney returned to the Methodist church as a minister and was appointed to the church's City Mission of Los Angeles (formally organized in 1908), where he ministered to thousands over the next several years.
In 1899 the Southern California Annual Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church accepted his credentials. He was appointed the superintendent of the city missionary work of the Methodist Episcopal Church in Los Angeles, and was also listed as the pastor of the Nazarene Methodist Episcopal Church, which met initially in his home at 150 W. Adams Street.[121] Growth of the congregation necessitated the construction of a 500-seat building at Ninth and Santee Streets on a property owned by Widney. Widney met the entire costs of construction and ministered without compensation. The new building was dedicated on Sunday, June 3, 1900. The new facility incorporated on the ground floor a free reading room, a bath house for men to use, and two stores.[123]
In 1903 this church was renamed the Beth-El Methodist Episcopal Church. The congregation soon relocated to a new property purchased by Widney at the corner of Pasadena Avenue and Avenue 39, as the Ninth and Santee Streets location was not successful in attracting non-churchgoers.[124] Widney eventually resigned from the Methodist Episcopal church in 1911.
Widney advocated: "Man's religions must discard the impedimenta of wornout creeds and ecclesiastical forms, or else themselves be discarded. ... Abstruse creeds must go. Ecclesiastical shackles must be cast off. It [Christianity] must present to the world an understandable Faith, Church forms and rituals that are simple, a front not broken by the wrangling of sects: a Faith so simple and a Way of Life so plain.... Not until this is done can Christianity do its best work for the world" (All-Father, 2–3). According to Frankiel, "his attempt to unite all religions around faith in the "All-Father" was also a return to what he saw as his own root in the American West, via the desert; to the roots of Western culture; and to the roots of humanity in a primitive sense of nature and life".[125]
Believing that Sunday should be a day of rest, and that "those who spend all of their Sundays in churches are guilty of breaking the commandments", Beth-El had only one service each Sunday – a morning service. Dr. Widney conducted the Sunday services there for thirty-six years, while one of his younger brothers, Rev. Samuel A. Widney, led the Sunday School and served later as co-pastor.[126] Dr Widney played the violin during the services, while his brother Samuel played the violoncello, and Samuel's wife, Anna, played the organ.
Widney was regarded as "rather liberal in his religious views" because "He holds no respect for ministers of the gospel who continually seek publicity, who dabble in politics and are always raising a rumpus. Nor does he believe in fads or freak religion. He simply teaches the old-time Bible religion."[127]
In his book The Genesis and Evolution of Islam and Judaeo-Christianity, published in 1932, Widney explained, " The central thought of the work is The evolution of one general world-faith out of many, and too often hostile, racial religions of mankind. The world was once civically racial. It is so no longer. The economic laws of commerce have welded it together as one."
Widney was influenced by the teachings of accused heretical preacher David Swing and Thomas Starr King, a broad-minded, religiously inclusive Unitarian minister, whose "style of liberalism was laced with a Transcendental mysticism and a grounding in love of nature... [who] laid a foundation for liberal Christianity in California tradition"; Widney described King as "as one of the few great and broad-minded spirits of the church" (Frankiel, p30.)[32]. According to Widney, these two felt "called upon to step over the ecclesiastical lines which we have drawn about the simple, kindly, trusting life and teachings of Him we call Jesus of Nazareth" (Three Americas, 65).
As Sandra Frankiel summarises, "Widney's new religion would recognize that all religions are essentially one. Its basic principles included a positive view of human nature."
Mike Davis describes Widney as "an ardent Aryanist"[128] (who "called upon Los Angeles' captains of industry to become "the first Captains in the race war".[129] According to Frankiel, Widney "claimed that a distant forebear of his, from the late Middle Ages, was Jewish; and he spoke out against anti-Semitism and for the Jew (though in a rather condescending way)".[130]
Widney lamented the erosion in numbers, influence, and power of the original Hispanic (generally referred to as "Mexican") population of California. Widney observed, "you could visit the hospitals and almshouses in the late 'eighties and look in vain for the Mexican or the Spaniard." He suggested that the old Mexican life of the province had retreated southward along the coastal plains that reach from Los Angeles to Acapulco. Retreating before the Anglo invasion, the old life had never wholly vanished. "Whether they will or not," wrote Widney, "their future [that is, the future of the two groups] is one and together, and I think neither type of race life will destroy the other. They will merge. The tropic plains will help in the merging. Out of it will come a type, not of the north, not of the south, but the American of the semitropics."[131]
Widney in his 1876 History indicates: "In the spring of 1850, probably three or four colored persons were in the city. In 1875, they numbered 175 souls, many of whom hold good city property acquired by industry. They are farmers, mechanics, or some other useful occupation, and remarkable for good habits".[132]
African-American activist W. E. B. Du Bois used Widney's Race Life of the Aryan Peoples to support his own view of the significance of the contributions of blacks to the development of modern civilization. Widney wrote "They [the Negroes] once occupied a much wider territory and wielded a vastly greater influence upon earth than they do now. ... The first Babylon seems to have been of a Negroid race. The earliest Egyptian civilization seems to have been Negroid. ... The Black seems to have built up a great empire, such as it was, by the waters of the Ganges before Mongol or Aryan. Way down under the mud and slime of the beginnings ... is the Negroid contribution to the fair superstructure of modern civilization.[133]
In The Three Americas(1935), Widney suggests that the United States buy British Guiana from the United Kingdom and give it to the African Americans as reparations for slavery. British Guiana would only be for the "natural increase" of the African American population, he stated; no one would be forced to go there if they didn't want to. (Widney felt that racial characteristics were determined by soil and climate, and thus he thought that African Americans would be happier living in a tropical climate.) Widney's primary motivation was to provide territory for the "rapidly multiplying black population of our land." However, he believed that the "negroes" should not be compelled to migrate, but would desire to do so for climatic and economic reasons.[134]
| Academic offices | ||
|---|---|---|
| Preceded by Marion M. Bovard |
2nd President of the University of Southern California 1892–1895 |
Succeeded by George W. White |
|
|
|||||