Odd Old News: Holy Rollers Take Garberville
Main Street Garberville, about 1914. [Photo from Melendy–in HSU library Humboldt Room Special Collection]
This week Odd Old News recounts the story of a small religious sect who came to Humboldt County after the turn of the 20th century. Their mode of worship provoked judgement and scorn from local citizenry at every turn. It is sometimes forgotten that many of the first European Americans to land on the continent were fleeing from religious persecution, though, obviously, the practices of the “Holy Rollers” would not have gone over well in that time either.
In 1904 two men, F. E. Creffield and H. Brooks, were inspired by the Holy Spirit to start a new religious sect in Corvallis, Oregon. It quickly attracted new members and grew, with acolytes holding worship services up and down the west coast. The new sect was termed the “Holy Rollers” on account of the peculiar antics of members who cried, laughed, prayed and sang while rolling and throwing their bodies over the floor and ground. Deemed religious fanatics from the onset, their ability to attract unmarried women seemed to be the downfall of the two men, leading to a sort of a baptism where ‘a liberal coat of warm tar and an abundance of feathers were applied over the entire surface of their bodies’ by Corvallis citizens.
When a Reverend Ryan started holding evangelical meetings in Rohnerville in 1905, and recruiting young women for his college in Salem, Oregon, parents became frightened and the citizenry mobbed his home and escorted him out of town. His preaching and speech didn’t help matters as he said that “the society of Rohnerville was rotten to the core…In speaking of the Odd Fellows, Masons and other secret societies, his vocabulary of derogatory and abusive language was copious, rich and varied, and he seemed to delight in indulging in it” (Humboldt Times,12/14,/1905).
One man rose to his defense, denying claims that Reverend Ryan’s Oregon-based Apostolic Holiness Church was associated with prostitution and that they were as low as the Holy Rollers(HT,12/16/1905).
Google map showing 622 2nd Street, a historic Eureka building where an Apostolic Faith group met in 1907.
In 1907, an Apostolic Faith group appeared in Eureka and started holding regular meetings at 622 2nd Street one year after the sensational death of Creffield. The Humboldt Times reported “The disciples cut up all sorts of queer antics, each one rolling on the floor and muttering indistinct conglomerations of words. The killing of Creffield was sensational, and developed into one of the most scandalous affairs ever known. Rollerism seems to have originated on this Coast. Creffield was shot by a brother of a girl whom the former enticed into his flock of fanatical followers. This brother was later killed by the very same sister that he sought to protect and free, from the beguiling Influence of this self-styled Joshua.”(HT, 2/5/1907).
Once again, the members of the local group claimed to be different from the Holy Rollers.: “There are always two sides to a story. These parties who are reporting stories, do not understand it at all, and being against it, naturally, stretch it just as much as they possibly can, in order to get the public down on something that they know nothing about…As far as speaking foreign languages is concerned, it is true that one lady is speaking fluently in twenty-seven different languages, and several others are also speaking foreign tongues, as the Spirit of God gives them utterance” similar to the prophesying and speaking in tongues found in the Bible in 1 Corinthians, 11th, 12th and 13th chapters (HT, 2/6/1907). The group left Eureka in 1910.
When the Apostolic Faith held a tent meeting in Fortuna in 1909 they were described as a ‘peculiar religious sect’ with a unique form of worship: “They have a meeting with short prayers of vociferous nature and when their hysteria has reached the proper stage all hands turn to and roll around the floor, jabbering like a lot of Hungarian track laborers. No linguist could interpret their ravings, but one of their apostles claims to understand each and every brand of face music and makes translations accordingly”(Blue Lake Advocate,9/9/1913).
![Gravestone of Reuben Reed in the Rohnerville Cemetery. [From Find a Grave]](https://kymkemp.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/Rueben-Reed.png)
Gravestone of Reuben Reed in the Rohnerville Cemetery. [From Find a Grave]
Holy Rollers Take Garberville
Blue Lake Advocate
October 19,1912
Garberville has been captured by the Holy Rollers. A dispatch from that place to the Herald Tuesday states that Reuben Reed, but 15 years of age and a native of that place, has practically become the Messiah of that tireless sect, which has its Humboldt headquarters at Rohnerville, but which has established a vigorous branch office at Garberville. At a recent meeting Reed’s tongue suddenly began to emit sounds such as would come from a phonograph bucking up. It immediately became apparent that a mixed consignment of strange languages had been thrust down Reed’s throat by an unseen hand. Overcome by the miracle the congregation broke down and wept with joy and awe. Reed meanwhile delivered an oration which would have put the utterances of John McCullough, the mad tragedian, to shame. The Holy Rollers look upon the conversion and gift of tongues which has come upon Reed as remarkable evidence of the progress which their religion is making in this county. Heretofore Reed had manifested no religious tendencies, but upon attending out of curiosity a session of the Rollers his interest was aroused and before even his friends realized it he had practically abandoned English and was talking in the crazy quilt tongues of the holy ones from Rohnerville. It is hoped here that Reed may ultimately be able either to compile a dictionary of the new language or to set it to music. Reed, however, is not the only Garberville resident who is interested in the new religion for practically the entire population attends the sessions of the Holy Rollers, even politics being forgotten for the present. Food is being rushed to the members of the sect and they are being given every support in their efforts to make Garberville the Jerusalem of Southern Humboldt. A subscription list is in circulation and it is rumored that the erection of a tabernacle may be considered in the near future.
Earlier Odd and Old News:
There are many, but here are the most recent:
- From Cloverdale to Eureka by Stage
- School Ma’am Letters
- The Diary of a Young School Teacher— Part two
- In Which Plans for Ferndale’s Fourth of July Parade Created a Masterpiece of Rage Writing
- Odd Old News: The Tragic Wreck of the Columbia Near Shelter Cove in 1907
- Crusade Against Blind Pigs in Humboldt County
- Back to Nature Man in Trinity County
- Building the Northwestern Pacific Tracks South to Ft. Seward
- The Bug Catcher Lady
Join the discussion! For rules visit: https://kymkemp.com/commenting-rules
Comments system how-to: https://wpdiscuz.com/community/postid/10599/
Reed Mountain, just south of Benbow, was named after the Reed family. Descendants of the Reed family still live here.
The link that David gave to the killing of George Mitchell, the killer of Creffield, is a fascinating tale: https://www.historylink.org/File/4263. I have always been amazed at the things that people will believe in with no basis in fact. I have become so cynical that I don’t believe in anything that isn’t proven to be real. As you might imagine, the things going on in the world today have left my mind spinning.
True that! Everything I ever believed in has been shaken to the core. I reel from the news all day. Absentee voting is good, but mail-in is bad!? Up is down, in is out, wrong is right. I can’t even think about November. That would be almost three months without sleep.
Mary Anderson Reed (1840 – 1912)
My Grandmother, Ruby (Middleton) Branscomb, was 12 years old when Nellie died. As you can see, that brings me a pretty close connection to the local history. I wish that I had paid more attention to the stories.
That’s my double Grandmother.
Did Ruby know her
This explains SO much! Garberville, one of the oddest settlements in the U.S.A., does feature some special folks…
This news item is even better than the one about the Sonoran Desert Toads in the water supply! ( 5-MeO-DMT and bufotenin)
That kookie Holy Roller religion has evolved, into endemic Mormonism, which is one of the most peculiar “churches” in history, and creeping Jehovah’s Witnesses, who are indescribably, er, interesting. Churches, of one sort or another, absolutely control life in Garberville, and if you don’t believe this, go work at SoHum Health for a while…
Garberville History is remarkably odd, and starts during the Goldrush, and every day I learn something new!
And, Ernie, I don’t believe much of anything the folks around there say, either…
Namaste, Garberville!
Mormonism began about 70 years before Holy Roller religion. Jehovah Witnesses about 30 years before the Holy Rollers.
When I paint my masterpiece, I will put in Joseph Smith and his merry band of polygamists, and the JDubs, I file under “outer space cults”…
I think I meant what is prevalent in Garberville, and Northern California in general, but really, I mean that Garberville is a bastion of religious zeal…
Those festive rituals involving the abuse of women, and the repression of women in general, are not attractive to much of anyone, any more, but frontier towns, during and after the gold rush, tended towards attraction of the lunatic fringe and the exploiters of small minds… I think small minds and lunatic fringe are descriptors which fit Garberville very well.
Excellent video about Dawson YT on Netflix: Dawson City: Frozen Time, lends a certain perspective to the times your item refers to.
Namaste, Kemosabe!
Careful, don’t step in the kemosabe.
I’m not sure what you mean by religious zeal perhaps something different than what I do but…by my definition, there is no particular religious zeal in SoHum. The churches are dying.
Thanks Kym for revising correctly, revisionist history once again!
They may of been in existence 70 yrs. prior, but their origins were somewhere else.
Clayton…by my count this is at least the 4th alias you’ve used here. There is a common thread of misinformation that identifies you.
I think most of us recognize who Clayton really is.
Who? Jay Silverheels?
Mr Kirby,
I play 11 other instruments!
Don’t try to figure these things out, you will just get a headache…
OH and it’s time to change the name of the hospital again, maybe you can get them to call it “Dave’s Hospital”!
Vaya con dios, Dave, be safe!
The hospital used to be apPAULing, but I heard they got rid of some really bad employees.
You got it backwards Bro! They keep the bad ones, and the good ones move on.
The worst people, at SoHum Health, occupy the administrative and HR offices.
Your hospital is not the worst employer in Northern CA, as that distinction belongs to Mendo Coast, but your impressive turnover rate and your HR department, are probably the worst in the industry.
Rank and file at SHCHD, have good hearts, and are pretty committed. Thanks to hospital employees everywhere, you are making the best of a very bad situation, every day!
DMT is orally inactive without a MAO inhibitors like harmaline. So toads in the water supply wouldn’t have a psychedelic effect. But bufotine is a potent toxin.
It’s actually possible that the folks in Garberville wouldn’t even notice if another drug was added to the daily cocktail of substances ingested routinely…
I think you have to “sweat” the toad, but I am a sober individual, and it was a joke anyway… I know, jokes are beyond you!
Namaste, UR!
“took” a Native wife…
I bet he had to kill her family and beat her up first.
Ugly ass scumbag.
Nellie was a looker herself
In this case Nellie was a widow of her first husband, Anderson. Reuben (Sr.) left his work near Cedar Creek near Leggett when he heard of Anderson’s death and went to the Anderson home near Hartsook and partnered up with Nellie at that time. Unlike most men with Native partners, Reed had a minister later perform a marriage ceremony. In A Glance Back by Diane Hawk and Margarite Cook, it is stated that she was a cousin of Belle Fenton Jewett and came from Island Mountain area and had the “111” tattoo.
Reuben Reed was innocent of the act you surmised. The scenario you described for men ‘taking’ Native partners did happen….too often
Did she say “I do”? Did anyone even ask her? Or did he just give the minister a dollar to keep from going to hell?
Probably wasn’t that difficult to pick off someone shell-shocked from the first guy that came along to murder her family and rape her.
A lot of outrage with so little information.
David Heller, is this the same “Nellie” who’s grave site is purported to be located on the Southern Humboldt Community Park, back when it was the James Wood Ranch circa early 1900’s? And what was mentioned here, bottom of page 2:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B1qq4OlQcPfdM3RyanBCSmhzWW8/view?usp=sharing
Back when I lived across the river from the Tooby Ranch in the 60’s and 70’s, all the way up to when Southern Humboldt Working Together purchased the Tooby Flat and would become the Southern Humboldt Community Park (2000) there was a plank of wood as a grave marker at the site below that said “Nellie”. The story goes, Dazey took it down.
Just wondering if this is the same “Nellie”?
Thank you for posting a link to some other forgotten history, that of the Southern Humboldt Community Park. Constant Comment, in an open and inquiring way, presented many issues about that park that have been long ignored. One issue is the Native American sites on the parkland, now conveniently buried and forgotten. John and Virginia also paid close attention to the water that the park managed to grab.
And how about those requests for regular public park board meetings? Isn’t that a gas? How many public has the park board ever held in all these years? Maybe a dozen? Every meeting they have should be open to the public.
I wish we still had Constant Comment.
Yup, nothing has changed with the Park Board since 2000, another day older, deeper in debt, with the same vision and outcome, like a vicious circle that keeps repeating itself like groundhog day…
That is James E. Wood’s Native partner Nellie. I know that the gravesite was maintained and protected for years before the park got it. Cows would trample it, I think decades back it had a crude wooden perimeter to keep them out. Don’t know anything about what has happened since.
So its a different “Nellie” or the same person?
Yeah that was how the mating rituals went,back then. You go in , kill the whole family, and take the woman you want, and rape her!?? Or was it the other way around, kill the woman, and……??
Don’t forget saving the children for market. I recently read a stomach churning account of the “Baby Hunters” operating out of the Ft. Seward to Van Duzen region. As is known, the Ft. Seward area was the center of the Indian slave trade, military posts at the short-lived Ft. Seward(a camp that never made it to actual ‘forthood’ status), and Camp Grant were established with one of their aims to quell the activity. One man claimed to have made over $10,000 in the trade. It is known that George Woodman of Long Valley was a major player, and his ranch in Woodman Canyon a stop for captured children and women enroute to ‘market’. These ill-gotten funds no doubt funded to his later purchase of a lot of land in the Alderpoint region on the east side of the Eel River. These people had no conscience, given the scale of the abuse of Native Americans, it is a poor euphemism to call it the “Bad Bachelor” period, but it was lawless frontier single men who were the killers who took what they wanted. Paraphrasing Frank Asbill, one of the slavers son’s words… “there just wasn’t any way to make money except by selling hides and Indians”.
Rueben Thomas Reed was my great Uncle. My grandfather was Benton Reed. I am from both the Wood and Reed families of that area. I wasn’t alive then and only know stories passed down by mother Edwina Reed Smith. I have often wondered about Rueben Thomas Reed and found it interesting that he did have a historical marker – speaking in tongues! I remember from attendance at churches when I was little what my family called Holy Rollers. I also have experienced the Indian Shaker church and have family in that. Quite fascinating experiences although I have never had the Holy.Spirit descend on me I guess. My mom was very proud of her Wailacki connection. Although she called herself Eel River Indian. Despite the negative comments what I found in history was a sense of care from Rueben Reed (grandfather). I mean, nine of us could know for certain but there is historical evidence for him building a better house for his family, moving to Arizona for Nellie’s health and his sons schooling. His daughter from another woman came to live.with them – another Native woman. But people in those areas were tough and probably had to be so who knows what went on. After Anderson’s death…what would an Indian woman do with property and 3 kids? In the 1800’s? She wasn’t allowed to own it so….yes, choices were made. I don’t expect they were always “pretty “. But as far as Reuben Reed was concerned he was friends with her prior and married her. So people can make all the knee-jerk reactive comments they want but you don’t know.-I know more. So throw those stones…sinless ones!
As my brother says Reuben Reed was a rare individual who really loved my great twice over grandmother. They were legally married after the government allowed them to get married. But from the stories of the local area a lot of men settled quite nicely with the native women and treated them well. Anyhow unless you know for sure don’t judge, my family is a living testimony of Reuben Reed and Nellie Reed, who most called Aunty.
I had a person, who will go unnamed, paint my family with the same broad brush that people who don’t know their own family history often paint with.
He accused my family member of selling Indian women just because they are from Laytonville. He went on to say that his ancestors were Spanish Californios. He said the they were proud people that raised prize Spanish horses for most of California. I am sorry to have had to tell him that My ancestors (to my knowledge) Did not sell Indian women. However, most of the Indian women from Laytonville were traded to the Californios for horses. He didn’t know that. That is just one lesson of not knowing your own history.
I’d like to thank “Guest” for raising the question, albeit in an angry and accusatory way. If he hadn’t I don’t think that the family history would have been so thoroughly discussed here. Thank you David for stepping up so clearly to calm the discussion. And thank you to all the descendants who have tried to honestly address the issues.
My reaction is one of deep sadness and immense respect. For the Native people who lost their families, communities including the earth they cared for as family, and their peace and lives, I am in mourning. (I have native ancestors who moved back against the frontier after decimation and “passed,” their lives in shambles until they died. But the bewildering inhumaneness of their situations should be apparent to anyone who looks truthfully at the actions of the Americans). For those who managed to survive with their spirits sufficiently healthy to pass on a love of life to their descendants, I feel a respect nearing awe but wrapped in the same sadness. I have many friends in Native communities who still suffer from the continued effects of the loss of so much and the time spent in states of absolute terror and shock.
I have one friend, a teacher, mentor and healer whose family managed to navigate the genocide in Oregon while still retaining their Native community identity and far-flung network of family connections. Marriages that retained the home property but still respected the relational links to earth and family are a big part of her self understanding. Many of those marriages had an ugly side and the traumas from that ugliness still pass down her generations.
May we all take responsibility for what we can of healing that history, because the burden of trauma still impacts all of us– descendants of perpetrators, descendants of victims, and descendants of both. I think especially those of us whose ancestors walked in afterward would do well to consider what legacies we are living with.
Thanks all.
Beautifully said b.
Over a hundred years later, the labels have changed but behavior is just the same.
“Guest” blithely yet viciously smears the reputation of my relative Reuben Reed, offering not a shred of evidence. Uncle R being dead since 1914, has no way of defending himself. How dare you!
So you label him family, but not her.
Sounds like evidence to me.
Amazingly you confuse outrage over unjustified slander (at least nothing remotely like a fact is in evidence) as confirmation that the slander is justified. That is totally irrational dude! Weird.
. The evidence indicates your lack of upbringing, character and decency.
What a sad life that you live…Sorry for you. Really.
Well, it isn’t *my* uncle who’s implicated in genocidal rape…
If he didn’t kill her family and rape her, then he “took” her, (as the author described), from some other dude who did, because she *was* a victim of genocide, and essentially a POW, whether you understand this or not.
I’ll pray for you, though, and your family. Pourin’ one out for your Aunt Nellie right now.
You sure got a burr under you saddle. If your point is to acknowledge genocide in the area, hell yes, it was awful in Sohum. But if you know the Reed family, they are all very proud of their Native blood. The only surviving Native bloodlines down here are through the women who were partners (housekeepers was the term back then) of white men. The first school down here had an attendance of nearly 3/4 mixed race children. There was an article talking about how in the 1850’s there were 200 men, mostly miners, living with Native partners in Trinity county. Some 1860’s Ukiah area citizens took their grand jury findings to the state, seeking to end the practice of taking young Native women as partners. The politicians said that they could make a law, but it wouldn’t stop “human nature”. Men are beasts.Taking” an Indian woman was a common practice on the frontier. As mean and tough as the men were described in the era, the woman had to be strong to survive, many Native women didn’t. Nellie was a survivor and well regarded in her community. Her grandson “Reuben” was equally well liked.
Did ‘genocidal rape’ occur, yes. Do you know that it occurred in this case? NO. Was there any equality between genders back then? No, many women of both races were kept barefoot and in the kitchen, and like Native women, were viewed sometimes as chattel, the same as the young children slaves who were traded like animals.The Native partners who did survive are the heroines of the story, and if you knew the Reed family, you would know how proud they are of Nellie. The genocide period was awful and a dark stain on the history of California and most of the early ‘settler/squatters’ had some part in it. So we acknowledge the brutality of the times and the men in it, and racial and gender inequality…I just don’t see the need to hammer this family about it without any evidence of Reuben, Sr. (not the young Reuben in the article) being akin to a rapist. Reuben, Sr. may have ‘taken’ Nellie to prevent worse men from seizing her, you don’t know the circumstances, nor do I. (I’ll probably regret this comment, but it seemed to be called for).
Bravo, David..!
It’s hard to both acknowledge the wrong done and note that individual circumstances are more nuanced. I also looked at this and wondered how Nellie felt. Did she feel like a tough survivor who made her best deal with life that she could and survived? It is possible that is true and that she loved her husband and that she mourned her people. Life just isn’t neat packages.
Well said Kym. And the complete story, with all its nuances, is the history we rarely read. We don’t know at all how Nellie felt about her experience and circumstances, herstory, particularly of 19th century Native women is rarely told. That is why the story of Wailacki/Lassik Lucy Young is so unbelievably valuable and heartrending. Anyone wanting to get a sense of what it was like to be a young Native American woman on the frontier in California should track it down. It was first written for the Cal Hist Society Bulletin in 1941, but should be searchable.
The story of Native American women during the time of contact with the Euro-Americans would be heartbreaking, and worse. And yet, how many family’s today trace their California roots back to these early mixed race families.
Awesome comment David, please don’t regret one words, it needs to be said loud and clear, as you so eloquently stated. Its apart of our dark past and history, it needs to be included so no one repeats this unforgivable past…
Few people understand local history as well as David Heller and Ben Schill. I respect their dignified stance to not tell the more gruesome details of our history, both white AND Indian. I have often wondered how the people in history would view our current generation of opinionated keyboard jockeys.
As lacking manners, I suspect.
The term “taking a wife” does not mean what you apparently think it does. It was a common way of saying that a person got married. Not that they literally stole a human female. It is like old nursery room The Farmer in the Dell where the first line is the gamer “takes a wife.” As in “do you take this woman” or “do you take this man”.
Guest- you got it wrong. “Take” does not mean to literally grab a woman. It is to form a marriage as the common language has it. As the ceremony says “do you take this woman as your wife (or man as your husband.)
Nellie Anderson Reed is buried in the Garberville cemetery.
I am happy to hear that, only why is someone named “Nellie” purportedly buried and or grave site located at the Southern Humboldt Community Park?
As kids, sneaking over to the Tooby Flat in the 60’s, sometime at night to play in the old sheep barn on the west side of the flat, we would get caught by Andy Pond (caretaker for the Tooby Family and lived there with his wife), he would tell us about spirits of native people buried on the property, that it was a sacred place were many native people lived, had ceremony and rituals for thousands of years before white people arrived, we should be careful were we play and respect that land. Besides scaring the crap out of us, it gave me a better understanding of native people and how many lived in and around Southern Humboldt with no living memory of their existence in the area. And it gave me a better appreciation for native people to this day.
Thanks for sharing the stories you heard Ed, it is now part of the oral lore about the genocide period for Sohum. Stories about the ghosts of Native people are not uncommon, just not often shared publicly. So many never received their Native ritual burials to help them along.This is my interpretation from my reading, but I am not qualified to talk about such Native matters, nor the non-material worldsof which they were much more aware of.
You answered your question about why a burial came to be there earlier…. “Nellie” Wood, spouse of James E. Wood who lived there, died in 1866 after the birth of Wilson Wood who was taken to his aunt’s home in Piercy initially to be raised as a foster child of Sam Piercy. Sam’s partner “Patti” maybe “Patty”(can’t recall right now) was said to have been from the Sprowel Creek (Nahs-lin-chi-keah) area, as then would be Nellie. When Wood took his second wife, and mother of 17+ children, Wilson returned and was raised with the Wood family.
There is a large invisible landscape of Native American history in Southern Humboldt….living in century and millenia old village sites, their trails(many appropriated later), their best fishing sites, massacre sites, their burial grounds, where there were ‘slave pens’… and, as you say, we know so little.
My uncle told me that the Indians related stories from their verbal history of many battles fought between tribes. Their local war grounds were the Bell Springs ridge and the Long Valley of Laytonville. (bullshistory warning), but I think that there is some truth in it from the abundance of arrowheads found in those areas. There was much, much more indian history here before white guy showed up.
We don’t really know much about actual Indian history because Whiteman diseases decimated most of them from the early Russian and Spanish days.
Thank you David, our family appreciates your comment!
My family appreciates David also.
Yes, Thanks David for an interesting article and comments. Your work.is deeply appreciated. The nasties on here are just reflecting what they don’t really know or care to admit. Thanks again.
Pretty hilarious people “protecting” their ancestors from accusations as they have no idea what really happened back then.
Family secrets around here have been very well protected over the years, like the mystery of why that Swithenbank family member from Garberville up and left the area and was only found decades later at his death in Sacramento. Why did he leave and not tell anyone? No one knows or will say.
My family has a few (actually more than a few) dark secrets. I do genealogy as a hobby and help other folks out with theirs. Every single person has dark secrets in their family. If you don’t know yours, you just aren’t in on the secret.