UNION GOSPEL MISSION:

An Inventory of Its Records

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HISTORY OF THE UNION GOSPEL MISSION

The Union Gospel Mission was organized and incorporated in 1902 and set up shop in a rented hall at 414 Jackson Street in St. Paul's Lowertown neighborhood. While asserting that its primary purpose was the saving of souls, it fed and sheltered transient and homeless men, operated Sunday schools, boys' and girls' clubs for inner city youth, summer camps, foster homes, a day care facility, a treatment center for the chemically dependent, and other programs and services.

The Mission was supported by "evangelical" (protestant) churches in St. Paul, and the needy were to be served without regard to race or creed. Day-to-day operations were in the charge of a superintendent (or "executive director"), including Everson R. McKinney (1903-1906), B. R. Wiener (1907), Jos. Harkness (1908-1909), Peter MacFarlane (1910-1956), Harold G. Mordh (1958-1974), and George Verley (1974- ) (some dates are approximate).

In 1910 the Mission purchased a building at East Seventh and Wacouta streets, also in Lowertown. A new facility constructed at the same site in the 1920s served as the organization's headquarters until around 1979, when it relocated to a newly constructed facility at 435 University Avenue East.

The Union Gospel Mission was a member of the International Union of Gospel Missions.

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SCOPE AND CONTENTS OF THE COLLECTION

The collection is composed of minute books, financial records, and subject files documenting the operation, management, and finances of the Mission, and containing information about its various programs and services and the clientele (patrons) it served. There are copies of the Mission's articles of incorporation, bylaws, and constitution; newspaper clippings; handbills, brochures, and other information describing programs and activities; fundraising brochures; and some photographs. Scattered throughout the collection is correspondence of Union Gospel Mission superintendents MacFarlane, Mordh, and Verley, St. Paul attorney and Mission president Gustav A. Larson, and others. They corresponded with Mission directors, officers, and staff; state, county, and city officials; attorneys; insurance companies; contractors; area pastors; evangelists; and others.

There is financial and other information about the Mission's Bethel Hotel and Bethel Restaurant, which operated at the Lowertown headquarters; the Arthur H. Savage Boys' Club; its boys'and girls' clubs and branch mission on the city's West Side; and its Shoreview Treatment Center for the chemically dependent.

There is information about the Ober Boys Club, located at 375 St. Anthony Avenue in St. Paul's predominantly African-American Rondo neighborhood, and the condemnation of its athletic field for the construction of Interstate Highway 94, which tore through the Rondo Neighborhood in the early 1960s. Included are photographs (late 1950s?) of the Ober Club building (which it shared with the Welcome Hall Girls Club), and its adjacent athletic field and the surrounding neighborhood. There are also photographs (late 1940s?) taken at the Mission's Welcome Hall Ober Club Day Nursery and Child Care Center, two programs for children of working mothers which operated in the same building. The Ober files include some maps and other information about freeway construction and urban renewal activities proposed for, or taking place, in the neighborhood around 1960.

Records of the Shoreview Treatment Center (STC) and its related half-way house, three-quarter-way house, and Victory House include some annual reports, financial information, a minute book, and directors' files (letters from the executive director and related papers). These materials trace the history and development of the STC from its inception in 1970, as a ministry to homeless alcoholics, to its closure in 1979 for financial and other reasons. Correspondents represented in these files include executive directors Daniel H. Lambrides and Dennis L. Olson, administrative assistant and interim executive director H. David Root, and Lyle D. Tollefson of the Victory House staff.

Other items of particular interest in the collection include a 1914 patron register giving names, ethnic and occupational information, denominational affiliation, and other data about men receiving shelter at the Mission. A scrapbook contains newspaper clippings and other information about long-time superintendent Peter MacFarlane, and about the Mission's early years and its activities. Also in the scrapbook are handbills, advertising cards, and other material related to Bible conferences, evangelists and revival meetings, and MacFarlane's speaking engagements. There is also foldered information in the collection about local revival meetings and the evangelists conducting them.

The minute books for the earliest years (1902-1906) of the Mission are missing. MHS also holds some separately cataloged Union Gospel Mission annual reports, although most (1913 to 1982) are missing.

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