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The Baptist Home Story
Milford & Mary Riggs:
Pioneers in Benevolent Causes
He
was a visionary - she was a pragmatist. He was scholarly,
serious and resourceful - she was dynamic, forceful and highly
motivated. His life was the pulpit and meeting human needs - her
life was her home, its flowers, and encouraging other women to become
engaged in social change. He worked within the system urging
advance upon Missouri Baptists - she worked to change the system so
that women could become more effective in improving their lives.
Milford and Mary Riggs: they were a complementary team whose
lives and ministry together changed the Missouri Baptists' benevolent
concerns.
Family Background
Milford Riggs was born on September 6,
1866, into a farm family in Kenton County, Kentucky, just as the Civil
War was closing. He was the seventh of nine children born to
James and Elizabeth Longmoor Riggs, with family roots going back to
Yorkshire, England. His parents were members of the Dry Creek
Baptist Church where young Milford was converted and baptized at the
age of thirteen.
In describing events of his first seventeen
years, Milford spoke appreciatively of this farm upbringing and paid
glowing tribute to his mother, "guardian angel of my earlier
years". The farm taught him a "valuable acquaintance
with agricultural life, and hard manual labor". He became
an avid lover of domestic animals - the cow and the mule - and he
spoke later with warm affection of a certain mule that aided in
working the farm.
Mary Dudley Rees was born on March 6, 1868,
the daughter of Dr. and Mrs. Farmer Rees of Owenton, Kentucky.
Dr. Rees was a physician and druggist, whose roots lay deep in
pioneering Kentucky history. Upon the untimely death of her
father, Mary and her brother moved with their mother to Georgetown,
Kentucky, where she attended the Georgetown Female Seminary. Her
kinsman, Dr. Richard M. Dudley, was at that time president of
neighboring Georgetown College. Here Mary met Milford Riggs, a
student at the college, during the Christmas holidays of 1883.
They developed an enduring love that bridged time, economic privation,
and the uncertainty of frequent changes in professional ministry.
Upon his graduation from Georgetown College
in 1888, Riggs enrolled at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in
Louisville, where he graduated on May 29, 1890. Like many
seminarians before him, he commuted to Lockland, Ohio, on weekends
from 1888 to 1890 to serve as pastor. He was ordained by the
Lockland Church in August 1888 with Dr. Richard Dudley of Georgetown
College preaching the ordination sermon. However, due to an
illness, Riggs was forced to resign that pastorate and spend the
summer of 1890 in Colorado regaining his health.
While passing through St. Louis that summer,
Riggs visited his old friend and patron from Kentucky, James S.
Kirtley, who had led Milford to Christ and to Georgetown for
college. Dr. Kirtley arranged for an interview for Riggs with
church members of the Fourth Baptist Church, St. Louis, and the church
eventually called young Riggs as their pastor. He now felt he
was in a position to support a wife. Immediately, he encouraged
the waiting Mary Rees to leave her very successful position as
personal stenographer at a leading hotel in Louisville and become his
bride. After having waited eight years, they were married at
Walnut Street Baptist Church in Louisville on October 15, 1891.
To the Riggs and Rees union were born four
sons - Milford Dudley, Russell, Robert and Milford Junior.
Russell died in military service during World War I, and the sorrow
left both parents deeply bereaved all their remaining days. Out
of her sorrow, as an expression of her love, Mary baked special
molasses cookies which she regularly mailed to anonymous soldiers for
distribution throughout their units. These cookies in ten pound
cans memorialized her son and blessed his comrades.
Ministry in Missouri
In St. Louis, the ministry team of
Milford and Mary Riggs began a successful chain of Missouri and Iowa
pastorates. They ministered at Fourth Baptist Church of St.
Louis (1890-1893), Boonville (1893-1896), Harrisonville (1896-1897),
Joplin (1897-1902), Council Bluffs, Iowa (1902-1903), Lexington
(1903-1905), Immanuel Church of St. Louis (1909-1912), and Ironton
(1912-1918).
In addition to his pastoral duties, Riggs was
also involved in Missouri Baptist benevolent and educational
efforts. While he was pastor of the church in Lexington from
1903 to 1905, he also served as an instructor in Biblical literature
at Lexington Baptist Female College. In 1905, he began to spend
time as a volunteer traveling to the Missouri Baptist Children's
Home. His work was so effective that the managers prevailed on
him to become a full-time speaker for the Children's Home with the
title of "Financial Agent". By 1908 his title was
changed, and he became the Home's first full-time fundraiser. he
was instrumental in raising the money needed to purchase the new
Children's Home site in Pattonville and in broadening the makeup of
the Board of Trustees of the Home to include members from outside St.
Louis.
However, the focal point of the Riggs'
ministry centered on establishing and maintaining the Baptist Home for
the Aged in Ironton. No such home existed anywhere else in the
world of Baptists. It is likely that serving as director of the
Baptist Children's Home is Pattonville and traveling much of the state
to raise funds for that institution heightened Milford's perception of
the need for such a home. He had participated regularly in the
Baptist Young People's Union in the state, and like many others, he
had gathered each summer for an encampment on Arcadia Heights
overlooking Ironton and the Arcadia Valley. It was through these
experiences that Riggs came to love the beauty and serenity of the
area. As the seeds of his call to lead in establishing the
Baptist Home germinated within him, he concluded, perhaps at Sunset
Rock, that its location should be in the Arcadia Valley. God's
Spirit moved him, and soon the commitment to the call was firm in both
Milford and Mary.
Establishment of Baptist Home
Within a few months of their coming to
Ironton in 1912, the Riggs' established a Board of Trustees for a new
Baptist Home for the Aged. They arranged to secure a large house
in Ironton, known as the Emerson Mansion, and on May 6, 1913, they
received the first two residents. They had furnished the house
and had a stock of food supplies, but they did not have a cent in the
treasury. Pure faith paved the way. Requests for
admittance were so numerous that three moves to other facilities came
quickly. The twenty-seven room former Osteopathic Hospital was
secured in 1914, and the Lewis estate east of Arcadia was secured in
1919. Here, on a 175-acre tract, the present Home was completed
in 1923.
During the early days of the Baptist Home,
Riggs also served as the three-quarter time pastor of the church at
Ironton. The church allowed Riggs to spend the fourth Sunday
each month to travel and promote the work of the Home. However,
the growing responsibilities of the Home and the pastoral needs of the
local congregation led Riggs to resign the Ironton pastorate in 1917
so that he could be the full-time superintendent of the Baptist Home.
Mary's Activities
Mary's contribution in the development of
the Home must not be overlooked. Although she was involved in
other interests, her giving of self to the work of the Home never
weakened. Mary was sometimes the nurse and at times the cook as
well as the laundress. Often she sat by the critically ill as
they prepared to die. Some of these moments are movingly and
lovingly recounted in her column she wrote for the paper sent out from
the Baptist Home. In one article she wrote about Mrs.
Piper. "On December 5, at 8:30 in the evening, she
died. We dressed her prettily and when the lines had
straightened out on her face...she looked young again."
Furthermore, Mary insisted that all residents should be treated
equally, and she resisted the giving of gifts or favors to one unless
all could also receive them.
From the moment "the call" came for
her husband to pioneer in the development of the Baptist Home, Mary
was utterly devoted to that cause. Of tireless stamina, she was
equally wife, mother, director of the Home, promoter of women's
rights, gardener, nurse and confiding friend. It was Mary who
was the "supporting rock" upon which Milford could build a
lifetime of human service and ministry.
Mary's interests, though, were not confined
to the work of the Baptist Home. Her friends described her as a
"human dynamo" and "politically minded".
Being quite vocal, she was quick to express her ideas, thus causing a
friend to refer to her as "loud voiced in public".
During World War I she taught classes in first aid at the Ironton High
School. She was particularly interested in the activities of the
Democratic Party, and in 1928 she was a delegate from Missouri to the
Democratic National Convention. She was an active worker in the
Temperance Movement, believing in total abstinence from all alcoholic
beverages. A women's suffrage leader, she asked women to be
loyal and faithful in their right to vote. "Let us not fear
to trust our minds and our consciences in these (political)
matters....Study and pray and then vote as an opportunity offers
us," she wrote. Furthermore, she was a prolific writer,
submitting one column per week to the Iron County Register in
1919 and 1920 called "Our Soldier Boys". Even though
she was involved in so many different activities, she found time for
her family of four boys. Her eldest, Milford Dudley, recalled
how his mother loved to read, including the classics, and she
introduced him to the likes of Dickens, Thackery, and Louisa May
Alcott.
Milford's Work
Milford Riggs had the shepherd's
heart. He hurt deeply for aged Baptists, yet he did not become
sentimental or subjective. He knew that dreams and visions came
to reality only through effort and toil. Riggs loved his
denomination and wished for it a full cooperative role in following
the example of Christ. He therefore urged upon them care for the
aged. He wrote in a book published in 1902.
It is an hour of destiny when some good
work is put into your
hands....To accept the
responsibility and do the best you can, even if you seem to fail, will
mean strength for your character and initiation into good
service. Beware how you treat an opportunity for even a small
service.
In its early years, the continuation of
the Home literally rested upon the lives of the two Riggs'. Even
after Missouri Baptists adopted the Home in 1917, support from the
Convention was pitifully meager. As late as 1931, all Baptists
in the state gave an average of only five cents each to the support of
the Home, and all churches gave less than five dollars each. It
therefore remained for Riggs to be a fundraiser, as he had been since
1913. In this task he showed his most creative skill and his
relentless energy.
Riggs may be called "the father of
development" among Missouri Baptists. From the day the Home
opened, with not a dime in the treasury, Milford devised imaginative
and practical ways to raise funds for operation and development.
He appealed to churches and associations on a direct mail basis.
Each entity was asked to select a person to be the Home representative
and promoter. Godly women were encouraged to prepare food
barrels for shipment to Ironton. Meat was required, so a
"porker" offering was urged. In one instance, a prized
hog was named "Milford Riggs"; later this hog became food
for the Home. Another of the most successful support plans was
the Egg Offering. People were asked to take all the eggs laid by
hens on the last Sunday of March and the four Sundays in April and
send the eggs to the Baptist Home. In conjunction with this plan
went an appeal for "retired" laying hens which could make
their way to stew pots and soup bowls at the Home.
In what might seem a desperation move, Dr.
Riggs even proposed paper subscription donations. A twenty-five
cent annual subscription could produce five cents for the Home.
It did help, but it did not meet the needs. More challenging was
his "Ten times Ten" program. In the churches, ten
people would pledge ten dollars per year for ten years. They
would do this as cooperative groups of ten, agreeing to recruit
replacements if any should die or resign. The goal was
ten-thousand Baptists cooperating, and through this, one million dollars
could be placed in endowment to secure the Home's operation.
After a year, three hundred persons had responded, but any long range
plan died as the Depression settled in.
These unrelenting efforts kept the Home alive
and enlarging. But as many other persons were to learn, Dr.
Riggs' efforts did not overcome the national Depression of the late
1920's and early 1930's. Once again, Riggs had to face the
prospect of an empty food pantry and lack of cash to meet utilities or
other operating costs.
In this period of extreme depression, it
seemed the only way the Home could be kept open was to take in
"paying boarders". Dr. Riggs was extremely reluctant
to initiate such an approach; however, necessity dictated, and for a
period those not necessarily elderly, but in need of lodging, were
taken in. As soon as the crisis passed, the Home reverted to the
original scheme of admitting only elderly Baptists without regard to
their being able to pay their way.
Default on the payment of interest on some
annuities and bonds, which had been issued prior to the Great
Depression, led to some severe criticism of the Home management.
These matters were not forthrightly by Dr. Riggs and faithfully
reported to the Home Board. Nevertheless, several sharp and
influential critics mounted opposition. Never mind that Dr.
Riggs had for nineteen years single-handedly raised funds for food,
and given his own resources at times, to keep the Home afloat.
Now his management skills were being questioned. Some wondered
if he should not be relieved of his position.
Retirement
Dr. Riggs was no longer young. He
had never been rugged in health or physique, for he was only five
feet, six inches tall, and he never weighed more than 120
pounds. At age sixty-five and in failing health, it became too
much of a burden to manage and promote the Home. The worry and
strain proved too much for him. Because of these circumstances,
he resigned in April 1932 as Superintendent of the Home and on April
30, he and Mary departed the Arcadia Valley. They never returned
to the Home they had founded, and the evidence suggests they were
never invited to do so.
Dr. Riggs entered the Missouri Baptist
Hospital in St. Louis for surgery and treatment of tuberculosis of the
bone, a condition from which he never recovered sufficiently to resume
active work. He and Mary chose to make their retirement home in
Louisville, Kentucky, where they could be near old friends and their
son Robert. Both were active members of the Highland Baptist
Church where Dr. Riggs served as a deacon for twelve years.
When declining health demanded it, both
Riggs' were moved by their sons to St. Louis in June 1947 where
Milford lived in the Miller Nursing Home. Shortly after midnight
on August 7, 1947, Milford died at the age of eighty.
Mary continued to live in St. Louis.
She arranged for a last visit to Ironton and Arcadia Valley in October
1947. Through the month-long visit, she enjoyed the fellowship
on many old friends, but she never felt free to ask for a tour of her
former Baptist Home. At her home in St. Louis she was always
busy, reading and writing letters, enjoying the items in the family
trunk, or learning about something new. She died suddenly on
December 18, 1948, and was buried next to her husband and son Russell
in Memorial Park Cemetery in St. Louis.
Milford and Mary Riggs were a team,
complementing one another in Christian service. Together, they
worked sacrificially to help Missouri Baptists see the need to reach
out in caring for needy fellow Baptists. The evidence of their
labors may still be seen in the Missouri Baptist benevolent
institutions they nurtured and sustained.
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