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 in 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 the 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.