By Laura Belle Barnard
Historical Sketch of Dr. Eugene Louis St. Claire
Though not 50 years old at his death, Dr. Eugene Louis St. Claire was one of the most prominent evangelists of the Free Will Baptist denomination. At the time of his death he was living in Live Oak, Florida, trying to regain his health following several paralytic strokes. Dr. St. Claire had been pastoring the church in Glennville, Georgia. His body was returned to Glennville and buried in the Ebenezer Free Will Baptist Church cemetery.
The Free Will Baptist paper, published in Ayden, North Carolina, carried an account of his death in its February 16, 1916 issue and a tribute to his life and ministry in the following week’s issue. Editor E.T. Phillips commented that the late Dr. St. Claire was well known in Ayden and in the state, having conducted revival campaigns there. He won many friends by his kind and genial disposition. Especially was he remembered for the great zeal and energy he had put forth in building and strengthening the Free Will Baptist Seminary in Ayden, North Carolina.
Born June 9, 1866, Eugene Louis was orphaned before he was four years old. If there were brothers and sisters, no mention is made of them in any available records. Both parents were of English descent. His early life was spent on an old-fashioned Southern plantation, in the home of his guardian. There were no other children in the home, and in an autobiography he writes that his playmates were the Negro children on the plantation. He learned to hunt “possums” and “simmons.” He also became accustomed to the fun and sports of the country children, including wrestling, in which he appears to have had considerable experience.
He pursued his higher education at the University of Alabama. The title page of one of his booklets indicates that he held the Master of Arts degree, and one concludes that this degree was earned at the University of Alabama. He became “proficient in several of the ancient and modern languages, as well as in the arts and sciences of his day.” Later on, according to Editor Phillips of the Free Will Baptist paper, he studied and graduated from “several theological colleges,” although no such theological college is named in the meager records available. However, the Doctor of Divinity (D.D.) designation appears consistently wherever his name appears in print.
Upon completing his secular education, he began his career as a bookkeeper and rapidly advanced to the position of cashier or possibly business manager of the firm that employed him. This, it seems, was an influential and lucrative position for the young businessman. Being intellectual, winsome, and full of ambition, he could look forward to a promising future. But the future for Eugene Louis St. Claire was vastly different from anything he had planned or dreamed.
Within a few brief years he was stricken with brain fever, causing the almost total loss of his vision. Yet the loss of his physical sight was to mean the opening of his spiritual eyes. Soon after his illness and loss of eyesight, he professed faith in Christ. One and one half years after conversion, he received his call to the ministry of preaching. At age twenty-seven, in 1893, he was licensed to preach. In November of the same year he was ordained to the ministry. Elder J.T. Knight, “a great revivalist and a great defender of the Free Will Baptist faith,” had become a kind of spiritual father to young St. Claire. The two worked together during the year of 1893.
The record of Dr. St. Claire’s accomplishments over the relatively short period of twenty-three years of ministry is nothing short of phenomenal. It is written of him, “In several of our Southern states he has done a great work. Association after association has been organized and put in working order. Thousands of souls have been led to the Lord in his meetings.” In the first year of his ministry he helped to organize three associations one that we know now as the South Georgia Association, known then as the Ogeechee Association. It was Dr. St. Claire who influenced this association to adopt the Free Will Baptist Articles of Faith and the practice of feet washing. It is not known how many associations he helped organize, but the first three were in three different states: Alabama, Florida, and Georgia. In his autobiography of only a few pages, written in 1908, he says that to date he had organized seventy-three churches, and won and baptized 4,879 persons.
The records of the Glennville Free Will Baptist Church show that Dr. St. Claire was its founder, in the year 1899. He pastored this congregation off and on up until his death. Other churches in the South Georgia Association that he helped organize were Stoney Hill and Philadelphia. He was appointed to the position of “National Evangelist” in 1904 and 1907.
Dr. St. Claire was also known as an orator, writer, and public debater. Debating was one of his skills, done in a witty manner, and at least five of these occasions are on record. Twice he publicly debated the subject of Washing the Saints’ Feet, twice the subject of Communion, and once the subject of Baptism. In these debates in particular, as in his solo sermons and speeches in general, he gained for himself the reputation as a fine caliber orator, scholar, and logician. This ability was recognized far beyond the denomination. He is acclaimed as one of the foremost preachers of the land, of scholarly ability, a man of culture and zeal, almost without a peer’ in ability and service for his denomination. He was renowned as one of the most learned Bible students of his day.
For Dr. St. Claire’s entire life as a Christian and as a minister of the Gospel, he was almost totally blind. This would mean that his Bible and theological education was acquired in spite of his lack of physical vision.
One is at a loss, at this distance in time, to imagine how he was able to acquire such vast and thorough knowledge of letters. Was Braille available to him? Did others read to him? However it came to him, he got it, and this fact is a tribute to his indomitable spirit. Such a man cannot be defeated. Though his natural vision failed him, he still had a vision far beyond that of most men. He was enabled to fulfill his vision by his achievements in his brief lifetime of less than fifty years.
His wife died shortly before he did. They had three children, two girls and one son.
When the news came to King David that Abner had been killed, the king exclaimed, “Know ye not that a prince and a great man is fallen this day in Israel?” No doubt the news of E.L. St. C1aire’s death was in God’s sight the announcement of the heavenly homecoming of a prince and a great man.
About the Author: Miss Barnard was born February 13, 1907 in Glennville, Georgia. She was appointed in 1935 as the first missionary of the newly formed National Association of Free Will Baptists and served in South India from 1935 to 1940, and from 1945 until 1957. Later, from 1960-1973, she served as head of the Missions Department of Welch College.
Miss Barnard submitted this article for The Timemachine, the newsletter of the Georgia Free Will Baptist Historical Society, in February 1991, and it was published in March 1992. On the ninth of that month, Miss Laura Belle went to be with the Lord, after a lengthy illness.
This article is published to the web by permission of the Georgia Free Will Baptist Historical Society.
No Comments