In 1883, when William was thirteen, his parents purchased a little over four acres of land in nearby Verdunville, about a mile and a half east of Centerville. The following year the family moved there. Adjacent to the Seymour home, the Baptists had started a church. There is some speculation that the Seymour’s may have attend the church from time to time because it was so close, but they maintained their membership in the Catholic Church in Franklin.
During this time, after the Civil War, Simon made bricks for a living and also planted crops on the small family plot. During the period of reconstruction the Methodists and Baptists sent evangelists and teachers throughout the South to establish schools for the children of former slaves. The Freedmen’s Bureau, a grossly over-burdened and under-funded Federal agency bore primary responsibility for their ongoing welfare. The census for 1880, when younger brother, Simon, was both enrolled in school where they received basic literacy skills. When they were not in school, they worked as farm laborers.
Simon Seymour had become sick with intestinal problems while serving in the Union army. It had required hospitalization. During the summer of 1891 these problems became acute and he was placed on disability even though he was only 54. This continued to spiral into a steady decline and he died in November of 1891. The next few years were very difficult for the Seymour family. They managed to keep their property. William was 21 when his dad died and took on the primary responsibility for caring for him mom and younger siblings. They continued to grow a little corn, a few potatoes, and some other vegetables, but they had very limited income from the sources. As a result, in 1895 William left Louisiana and made his way to Indianapolis.
Indiana
During this time period it was not common for former slaves to leave the South. African American immigration to the urban centers of America, especially to the North and the West did not really start taking place until the 1920s. At that time, the African American communities in New York and especially in Chicago and Los Angeles grew by leaps and bounds. In the 1890s most African Americans believed that it was just too risky for them to travel to unknown areas of the country. It was the unfortunate case that after the Civil War angry whites were developing new strategies to keep African Americans disenfranchised. They wanted to maintain a cheap labor force that they could control, and they did so both through legislation and intimidation. In spite of the prejudice and racism of so many whites and the rising number of “Jim Crow” laws throughout the South, most African Americans chose not to move. There were exceptions to this rule, like a planned migration to Kansas that brought around sixty thousand African Americans there between 1874 and 1878.
The primary reason that African American men the age of William Seymour left the South was almost inevitably related to economic opportunity. They had job offers other places or they felt they could find a job somewhere else. William Seymour chose to move North, to Indianapolis so he could find work that was not n the fields of some former plantation. While Indiana had been aligned with the North during the Civil War, and it was home to many Quakers and holiness people who had worked to free the slaves, it was also on the way to becoming a stronghold of white supremacy and in the 1920s, of the revitalized Ku Klux Klan. After 1831, and for a generation to follow, all African Americans in Indiana were required to register with county officials.
In spite of these apparent dangers, William Seymour moved to Indianapolis and settled within the boundaries of the historic African American community at 127 ½ Indiana Avenue. His room was in a two-story apartment building with a central staircase. The area in which it stood was decidedly industrial in nature, with a railroad spur line running within 65 feet of his room. The stagnant Central Canal where neighbors emptied their garbage ran within a half block of Seymour’s apartment. It was a nosily place because of it’s proximity to the trains. By 1898 he had found more suitable housing, this time on a narrow street at 309 Bird. He was surrounded by large yards, horse stables, a few small apartment buildings and a Methodist church. This place was also a bit closer to Indianapolis’ downtown area where he worked.
Each edition of the Indianapolis City Directory published between 1896 and 1898 listed Seymour as being employed as a waiter. He was employed in three different upscale hotels in Indianapolis during the years that he lived in that city, the Bates House, the Denison House, and the Grand Hotel. President Lincoln actually stayed at the Bates House at one time. The Grand Hotel served as the unofficial headquarters of the state and national Democratic Party in the city. President Grant had stayed there at one time. The Denison Hotel served as the state headquarters to the Republican Party for a number of years as well. The fact that Seymour, being from the fields of Louisiana found jobs at such posh settings says a lot about the favor of God on his life as well as his ability to adapt, to learn and to serve.
It was during Seymour’s time in Indianapolis that he had his conversion experience. In 1914 Charles Shumway, a Methodist minister who was writing a baccalaureate thesis for the University of Southern California, interviewed William J. Seymour. He noted that while Seymour was in Indianapolis, he had been converted in a “colored Methodist Episcopal Church.:” While we do not know which congregation that was, there are several possibilities. Bethel African Methodist Episcopal church is one such possibility because it was the strongest African American congregation in the area at the time and it was fairly close to Seymour’s second apartment. Another possibility is the Meridian Street Methodist Episcopal Church, which stood across the street from his second address as well. A third possibility was the Simpson Chapel Methodist Episcopal Church in the city. It was led by an African American pastor.
While it was during this time that William Seymour would have become familiar with the work of John Wesley, the founder of Methodism, Shumway tells us that Seymour soon left the Methodist church over two important issues. First, the Methodist Episcopal Church, like most Protestant churches of that period did not subscribe to the doctrine of premillennialism. Premillennialists believe in a literal return of the Lord before a literal period of one thousand years (millennium) during which He will rule over the earth. The Methodist church held to an “amillennial” position that is a position in which the millennium is viewed as a figurative or spiritual reality and not a literal reality to which the return of the Lord might be connected. Most other Protestants were optimistic postmillennialists, who embraced a form of Social Darwinism, that is the progressive evolutionary theory by which society would become better over a thousand years, after which the Lord would return and rule forever. Second, Seymour differed with the Methodist church on the role of “special revelations.” The Methodist church did not give them much value. Seymour did.
Mother Emma L. Cotton, an African American preacher and a friend of Seymour’s was an early participant in the Azusa Street Mission. She claimed that Seymour was converted and sanctified among the Evening Light Saints. Today we know this group by the name Church of God (Anderson, IN), and we have been blessed by their musicians like the Gaithers and Sandy Patti. It is possible that Seymour was converted at an AME church, and then went on to worship with these other saints while living in Indianapolis. They were very active in Indiana during the time Seymour lived there. His time with them may help to explain several key ideas that he took hold of. The Evening Light Saints were big on preaching about and longing to produce a new “Reformation” in the Church. Interestingly enough, the Evening Lighters also practiced racial and gender equality at a time in our national history in which this was not fashionable.
In recent years, several historians in the Pentecostal movement have claimed that Seymour served as a minister with the Evening Light Saints during his time in Indianapolis, but as of yet they have not produced any evidence that documents this claim. When William Seymour ultimately arrived in Los Angeles, he was committed to a policy of non-sectarianism, the equality of the races, and the equality of women and men. It is possible his time with the Evening Light folks helped shape his views in these areas. That said, it should be noted that he did not remain with the group for long.
During the summer of 1900 Seymour returned to his home in Verdunville, Louisiana. He was working as a farm laborer at the time the census was taken. His younger brother, Simon, would continue to live on the family farm. His sister Julia had become the primary on-site family caregiver for their mother, and her younger brother Jacob who was physically handicapped. Throughout the years of his absence, William had probably continued to contribute to the family income.
Oral tradition originating in the African American “Apostolic” tradition in Indianapolis suggests that during his stay in Indianapolis, William Seymour had been influenced by another holiness preacher and teacher, Martin Wells Knapp. In some respects, Seymour’s position was closer to the theology of Martin Wells Knapp than he was to that of Daniel S. Warner. In 1900 Knapp had established “God’s Bible School and Missionary Training Home” in Cincinnati, Ohio. It looks much the same today as it did at that time. The motto of the school was “Back to the Bible.” The advertisements for the school that circulated in various publications described it as “Pentecostal” and like Warner’s work in Indiana, as “non-sectarian.”
The term “Pentecostal” was commonly used across the holiness movement at the time. It did not identify the school as having sympathies with those who spoke in tongues, but rather, with those who held to two works of grace-salvation and sanctification. This history runs deep and is still and issue within the various Pentecostal denominations today. Many believe that after salvation there is simply a subsequent filling, or baptism of the Holy Ghost that allows for holy living and demonstration of the ministry that Jesus did by his power today. That said others still believe in distinct baptism that is called a work of sanctification, thus you will still hear some older evangelist say they are “saved, sanctified, and Spirit-filled.”
The ads that ran for the school claimed that the scriptures were being taught by sanctified, Spirit-filled teachers. So the term “Spirit-filled” became language commonly used to denote teachers and other ministers who were part of the holiness movement. Later Pentecostals would appropriate the term “Pentecostal” for themselves, filling it with new meaning to identify those who believed that they had received the same baptism in the Spirit that the believers had received on the day of Pentecost that is described in Acts 2. So, the term “Spirit-filled” would also indicate those people who had received what they understood to be the baptism in the Holy Spirit with the biblical evidence of speaking in other tongues. Eventually, holiness people would release their grip on these terms in their desire to distance themselves from tongue-speaking, “Spirit-filled” Pentecostals. One powerful example of this eventually came when in frustration the line between speaking in tongues and baptism in the Spirit, dropped the designation “Pentecostal” from its name in 1919 to become simply the Church of the Nazarene.
Three important factors must have attracted Seymour to study at “God’s Bible School” that year. First, Knapp’s school was racially inclusive; blacks and whites studies did by side. Second, Knapp was an avowed Premillennialist. He taught that Jesus would return prior to a literal millennium. Third, Knapp took “special revelation” seriously. A decade earlier, Martin Wells Knapp had authored a book titled “Impressions.” It described how to discern whether a person had received “impressions” from god or “impressions” from Satan. Knapp was unique, for such subjects were not mentioned too often in traditional white, Christian circles and when they were discussed, they were typically set aside in favor of rational understandings of God’s direction based largely on the interpretation and application of biblical texts.
It is safe to content that William’s interest in “special revelation: may actually reflect another aspect of his years of formation. He had undoubtedly heard appeals to dreams and visions within southern Louisiana’s African American community. There are many “slave narratives” going back to the 18th century, that speak of slaves talking and receiving guidance through visions and dreams, hearing voices, and having different states of altered consciousness like visions and trances. All of this suggests that the role of what might be described as “special revelation” was widely accepted within the African American community.
Seymour was certainly aware that similar things were frequently invoked in the “Hoodoo” tradition which was prevalent around Centerville and Verdunville. He was aware of the possibilities and potential dangers that this type of phenomena would bring about. Dreams and visions had provided direction to many people in God’s Word, both in the Old Testament narratives, and among the Spirit-filled believers in the early church. William most likely found some resonance in the way Knapp wrote about the need to take visions, dreams, and internal voices seriously, while warning his readers to discern the spirits in order to recognize which manifestations came from God. Seymour’s attention to this subject would pay dividends when people at the Azusa Street Mission, both black and white, and soon people from various ethnic background who lived in Los Angeles, and eventually people from all over the world began to claim to be seeing visions and having “prophetic” type of experiences. The words “prophetic experience” would include a wide range of similar yet unique spiritual encounters such as a vision, dream, trance, being caught up into the Spirit and the like. William was often required to seek God for guidance, and be able to interpret dreams for others.
While Knapp ran the Bible school, he also managed a publishing company know as the Revivalist Office. Among his publications were a number of books that circulated throughout the holiness community, which were often distributed by merchants who carried them door to door. He published a magazine called God’s Revivalist. Students were offered courses in English grammar, rhetoric, orthography, penmanship, reading and music. The curriculum was very basic, and students evidenced various levels of previous schooling.
