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CHAPTER XXIX.

SOME FORMER RESIDENTS OF SHELBY COUNTY AND THEIR ACHIEVEMENTS. (CONT'D)

REV. ALVA W. TAYLOR.


Rev. Alva W. Taylor is a son of Mr. and Mrs. L. S. Taylor, pioneer residents of Lincoln township, but now residing in Harlan. Alter attending the country schools of Lincoln township and teaching one or two terms of country school in Shelby county, he entered Drake University in 1896, from which he was graduated later. He took the degree of Master of Arts from the University of Chicago. He took part in the political campaign of 1896, espousing the cause of "free silver." While in college he was especially active in the work of the literary societies. To him belongs the honor of having, in conjunction with Prof. J. Amherst Ott and others, organized the Midland Lyceum Bureau of Des Moines, which has become one of the great lecture course and chautauqna organizations of the country.

Mr. Taylor held pastorates of the Church of Christ, commonly known as the Christian church, in two different suburbs of Chicago. Later he was pastor of the Christian church at Norwood, Cincinnati, Ohio, and subsequently at Eureka, Illinois. While pastor at Cincinnati he organized a school for boot-blacks and newsboys, and while at Eureka, Illinois, he helped to organize the first chautauqna held there, and also assisted in establishing there a camp for poor children from Chicago, and brought out there and helped care for many of them during a period of two weeks. Mr. Taylor, together with another worker named Sharp, raised an endowment for a Bible college in the State University of Missouri at Columbia, Missouri, in which Bible college Mr. Taylor has been teaching ever since its organization. He conducts a department in a religious journal known as The Christian Evangelist, of St. Louis, to which he contributes articles on the general topic of "Social Service." He also furnishes social service applications of the Sunday school lesson for The Front Rank, the Sunday school paper of the Christian church. Mr. Taylor has also found time at intervals of his very busy life to bring out a book entitled, "Social Side of Christian Missions," which has been adopted as one of the standard works by the Christian Foreign Missionary Society. Mr. Taylor is an unusually ready and eloquent speaker and frequently appears on chautauqna programs in various parts of the country.


Transcribed by Cheryl Siebrass, October, 2023 from the Past and Present of Shelby County, Iowa, by Edward S. White, P.A., LL. B.,Volume 1, Indianapolis: B. F. Bowen & Co., 1915, pg. 547.


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