As time marches onward, we are swept up in a never-ending news cycle, and are bombarded with momentous events, so many that the average citizen is hard pressed to keep track of them all. We live in history-making days. Even the home front is not immune, as Mokena’s United Methodist Church is winking out, and merging its ranks with our neighbors in the New Lenox congregation. The Mokena Methodists have been part of our community for 155 years, no small feat of longevity, having provided a spiritual stronghold to the hearts of countless faithful villagers since 1867. Many men and women of the cloth have tended to our local assembly over the years, and for the flock’s centennial in 1967 a tally was made that counted 49 ministers up to that point. On this long list of spiritual leaders, Rev. James R. Woodcock’s name appears, who manned the pulpit in the years 1883 to 1887. Even when his tenure was up, his association with Mokena didn’t end.
Even before Rev. Woodcock came to Mokena, the Methodist Episcopal church, as it was fashioned in his time, was possessed of an interesting history. As early as 1855, a mere three years after Mokena was laid out and the iron horse of the Chicago, Rock Island & Pacific Railroad first puffed across the prairie, Methodist religious services were being held at the new schoolhouse. This group of the faithful weathered the trauma of the Civil War, and under the leadership of Rev. Lucius Hawkins on the blessed winter day of December 15th, 1867, finally dedicated a church of their own on Mokena’s public square. All in all, the new church, described as “very neat and commodious” cost the young congregation $1,500, which was paid for by the members of the flock. Years later, they would recall that the sale of a stray horse also helped chip in to the building fund.
The Methodist Episcopal Church of Mokena, as seen circa 1915. This historic structure stood at today's 11099 Second Street.
It is important to note that during the church’s halcyon days, their sanctuary was shared on alternate Sundays with the village’s Baptists; a Union Sunday School was even conducted under the wing of the Baptist deacon Rollin Marshall, who was a Mokena pioneer in his own right. Several decades later this accord would play out in a dramatic way, when a particularly bitter lawsuit erupted between the two congregations as to who the rightful owner of the church was. When the dust settled in 1899, the Methodists were ruled the legal owners of the property, which led to the extinction of the local Baptist assemblage for decades.
While an early historian wrote that the Methodist flock was “rather small”, they were prosperous enough in the fall of 1874 to dedicate a parsonage for the use of their pastor and his family, the house still standing today on the southeast corner of Mokena and Second Streets. The edifice cost a hefty $1,000, and the ribbon cutting was rung in with an oyster dinner.
Only two years after Mokena was incorporated, Rev. James R. Woodcock received the call to helm our Methodist Episcopal church in the fall of 1882, and for his work earned a salary of $500 a year, which was upped in his second year in the village to $550. His arrival made him tenth pastor to man the pulpit since the church’s founding sixteen years before.
Rev. Woodcock was a freshly minted 30-year-old pastor, and our community was to be his first charge. He acclimated well with the village, with our local correspondent to the Will County Advertiser noting in the October of his first year that he “is meeting remarkable success as a minister.” A year after his arrival, Rev. Woodcock’s Sunday school boasted of a robust 81 pupils, and while the Methodist sanctuary didn’t have a choir or an organ when he got to it, before his tenure was over, he had provided for both. The reverend and his wife Annie, along with their 2-year-old daughter Grace, lived in the parsonage on Mokena Street, which was the scene of a soiree given in honor of Mrs. Woodcock the following March. The same correspondent described the night as “one of those pleasant social episodes… that helps to dispel the drudging of the every-day routine of life”, the guests all arriving for tea in costumes. The hostess herself was clad as “Lady Washington”, teenage Mokenian Belle Jones was Queen Elizabeth, and 16-year-old neighbor Jennie Hatch as “Miss Fry, a Quaker.” “Games and other social amusements” were had, and at the end of the night, all who were there “declared it was the most pleasant affair of the season.” Mrs. Woodcock quickly found her place in Mokena, and also began giving painting lessons to neighborhood students.
While the seat of Rev. Woodcock’s ministry was Mokena, he was also responsible for the Methodist congregations at Goodings Grove in Homer Township and what in his era was informally called the English Settlement, which corresponded to an area in today’s Orland Township. He traversed his circuit by horse and buggy, nothing to sneeze at in the days when road conditions in our neck of the woods were often less than ideal. He was adored by his flock, as was abundantly shown on October 26th, 1883, when the Woodcocks were surprised at the parsonage by about 25 Orlanders. A bountiful dinner was had, and our friend at the Will County Advertiser said that “best of all, English settlement folks never come empty handed”, for they showered Rev. Woodcock with butter, eggs, flour, cheese, corn, oats and “a little pile of Uncle Sam’s script and coins.”
The reverend and his family were transferred to a new charge in Nebraska in September 1884, and thus their time in our quiet railroad town came to a conclusion. The years marched forward and life went on, and the Methodist Episcopal church stood like a rock in Mokena, weathering every change that came its way. Along the way, pastor Woodcock picked up the additional title of doctor, and after the passage of many years, in the fall of 1926, he made his triumphant return to Mokena. He found many changes in our fair burg, the village was now lit by electricity, autos plied the streets, and the rugged farm lane just west of town now carried a proper name, that of Wolf Road. One of the first things he did after arriving in Mokena was to visit his old church, and in doing so, re-discovered a veritable Rosetta Stone of the congregation’s history. He found a marble-topped communion table in the sanctuary, and after knowingly removing the marble top, he brought to light an inscription on its bottom from the church’s earliest days, it having read:
“This church was dedicated on the 15th day of December, 1867. The dedicatory sermon was preached by Rev. Dr. Kidder of Evanston, Ill. The pastor of the church was Rev. Lucius Hawkins. P.E. (Presiding Elder) of the District – Rev. W.F. Stewart.”
It was said the words were just as legible then as the day they were inscribed. This tablet, a priceless piece of local history, has since been lost to the winds of time.
A little over a year later, in December 1927, the Methodist congregation marked a big anniversary, namely 60 years since their sanctuary was dedicated. At this time, Mokenian Ella Cooper, a dedicated member of the church, reached out to Rev. Woodcock at his home in southern California to see what he might remember of his days in the village. Dr. Rev. Woodcock and Mrs. Cooper began exchanging letters and renewing their acquaintance.
The newfound correspondence between the two piqued the interest of William Semmler, the editor of our erstwhile newspaper, The News-Bulletin, who in a very prescient move, preserved their letters for posterity by printing them in his publication. In a note dated April 11th, 1927, Dr. Rev. Woodcock remembered how “a commodious barn belonged to the parsonage property”, and further reminisced on his first wedding in Mokena:
“We had not tacked down our carpets, when some friends from Joliet, where we had been living drove up and insisted that I should marry them, and after some hesitation on my part, I did. We had no cake to pass out, but did have a merry-making time.”
He also reflected on his preaching beat, and the roughness of travel in that era: “How piercing cold those winters were. I froze myself on one trip around the circuit, and many times the snow was so deep that I drove over the top of stake-and-rider fences.” Aside from dealing with grueling weather, ministering was also physically demanding, as Dr. Rev. Woodcock recalled that in the beginning “I had to lead all the singing, do the preaching, and then follow up with strenuous exhorting.” Reflecting the mostly Germanic makeup of Mokena in his day, he went on to note “I was the only English-speaking minister for miles around, the Germans abounded; and so it was that I married a good many people, conducted numerous funerals, and baptized a lot of children and adults.” As Dr. Rev. Woodcock reflected upon his flock, he remembered one couple in particular:
“How wonderfully the Lord saved them! He was the most profane man in the neighborhood; he swore so loud he could be heard a half mile, and some people wouldn’t have him work for them on their buildings, he was a carpenter, but when God saved him, He did a complete work, and he became one of the most humble and sweet-spirited men I ever knew, and his wife was just as devoted. It was he whom I secured to build the Goodings Grove church.”
Dr. Rev. Woodcock kept up his holy work until he passed away in the spring of 1942 in Missouri. His story is but one of the many over the decades to be closely associated with this local group of the faithful. As the sun sets upon the Mokena United Methodist Church, may we remember those who built the congregation, and those who labored with all of their hearts over the past century and a half to keep it afloat.
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