Thanks to Earlham’s splendid Quaker historian, Tom Hamm, we mow have information about Laura Ellison, the first pastor at Durham Friends. Appointed in 1914, she served eight years. Here’s her obituary from The American Friend, September 17, 1951.
“Died, Laura A. Ellison, on August 10, at Amesbury, Massachusetts, aged 87.
She was born in Boston, Massachusetts, the daughter of James and Ann Tetley Ellison. She taught in the Lynn schools for 24 years. During this time she became interested in Friends, and although reared as an Episcopalian, she joined the Lynn Meeting. She became an elder and was also recorded a minister in the Lynn Meeting.
Feeling a definite call to pastoral service, she attended and graduated from White’s Bible Institute in New York City and in 1914 went to Durham, Maine, Monthly Meeting as its first pastor. She remained there 8 years, leaving to care for her sister.
After her sister’s death, she suffered from ill health and spent the years until 1942 in Old Orchard, Maine, then entering the Huntington Home for Aged Friends in Amesbury, Massachusetts.
She always retained a loving interest in all the members of Friends and their various branches of work, especially in the Women’s Missionary Society. She was a valued member of the W.C.T.U. and a loyal supporter of the American Bible Society. A contribution was sent to that cause in the place of flowers at the funeral. In her last years in Amesbury she gave her service to the regular visitation of the sick and shut-ins.
She is survived by 4 nieces, 5 grandnieces, and 7 great-grandnieces.
Her funeral was conducted by Carlton Jones, minister of the Lynn Meeting. Interment was in Wenham Cemetery, Wenham, Massachusetts.”
Ministries continue even as the economy suffers. Churches that have ministries to assist the elderly persist even when the cost of food has risen by up to five times. Car maintenance, fuel, and various services that have always been paid for in US dollars continue to be needed, even though they have become more expensive on account of inflation, and because of the difficulty in acquiring US dollars in the interior of the country. (On the black market, one US dollar is now equivalent to forty-eight or fifty Cuban pesos.) Just as the state has increased the salary of its workers, the church has also increased the salary of its workers, lay or pastoral, because everyday life has become more and more expensive. All churches have ministries that need funds to function, in commissions, departments, councils, etc. Electricity rates have risen up to ten times their value, so the monthly rate is close to or exceeds one thousand pesos.
