State

Elizabeth Ann McRae Here, indeed, was a woman with a vision. And after you have read Mr. Lawrence’s article we believe you will agree that she was one of the greatest women this state ever has produced. SCOTT’S Talisman is a fascinat¬ ing romance of the middle ages, of the days when Richard the Lion Hearted, King of England, fared forth with his train of lords, knights, and gentlemen, and with his army of archers, upon a crusade to recover the Holy Sepulchre at Jerusalem from its Moslem captors. Hero one of his knights visited the grotto of the Her¬ mit in the desert of Kngedi, and spent the night in prayer and vigil l>oforc the High Altar in the chapel of the anchorite, and while thus engaged in prayer it was given unto him to see a wondrous vision of the Christ. Then he would fain have departed, but the Hermit stayed him with those words: “The vision is not yet ended.” A Woman of Two Visions 1 wished to write of somo woman of vision hero in Carolina. 1 selected Elizabeth McRae because she had two visions — one in the East, another in the West. Her home was near Maxton in Robeson County. Here she became inured to a life of inflexible discipline; rigid self-control; privation, hardship, disappointment. Hero her two hus¬ bands died ; here she gave her only child, a lad of seventeen, into the serv¬ ice of the Confederacy, the "seed corn" to be ground into the grist of a fratri¬ cidal strife. Her son died while in the service of the South. Then the Low- rie gang of out¬ laws overran the countryside and terrorized its peo¬ ple. They broke in¬ to this lion-heart¬ ed woman's home, but they were un¬ able to frighten her, or to shake her indomitable calm s e I f - r e- straint. T heir inability to force her to comply with their demands so infuriated the robbers that one of the gang drew Tucked high in the mightly hills along the Tennessee border, and not so far from the Virginia line, in what is now Avery County, the section around Hanncr Elk was far from tin- traveled route and constituted the most remote depths of what was commonly known as the “I/>st Provinces” of North Carolina. To this section in 1897 came Rev. Edgar Tufts, mis¬ sionary of the Southern Presbyterian Church, n flaming evangel in the cause of religion, education, social service. Naturally he first applied himself to the building of о church around which the sacrifice of service could have a focus. This done, he sought to improve an extremely backward educational situation. Hither in 1898 to his sup¬ port came the heroic Elizabeth Mc¬ Rae. Ceaseless Labor A school was opened in a one-room rented building, and the work inau¬ gurated. Here Mr. Tufts and Mrs. McRae toiled unceasingly, underwent privations and hardships in an effort to rear an educational structure so es¬ sential to the development of a back¬ ward section. Lazarus was rich as corn¬ ered with those pioneer builders, for e had the crumbs which fell from the rich man’s table, whereas Mr. Tufts and Mrs. McRae had to pro vide their own crumbs. They did not, as Longfellow ad¬ vised, "learn to lu- hor and to wait." They learned to labor and then to labor. Finally from the smallest of be¬ ginnings, h e r e a little and there a little, the educa¬ tional seeds so planted a n d wa¬ tered began to sprout. The plant was at first pale and sickly, hut there was life. In 1 9 00 Elizabeth (Con. on page 20) By R. C. LAWRENCE down his musket upon her and fired. Only the quick interposition of a ren¬ egade Union officer, a deserter from the Federal service, saved her life, for his action deflected the aim of the out¬ law. As it was Mrs. McRae lout most of her hair, which was coiled upon her head. Without husband and bereft of her child, her great natural gift for lead¬ ership and her passionate yearning for service led her into the missionary work. She became a missionary of the Presbyterian Church, and for many years went up and down Fayetteville Presbytery, undertaking the organiza¬ tion of women’s missionary societies in the country churches. She served for a pittance barely sufficient to keep body and soul together, but she served effectively. She organized more than sixty such missionary societies in Fa¬ yetteville Presbytery alone. Rev. I)r. H. G. Hill truly said that she was the founder of the woman’s missionary work in the Southern Presbyterian Church. Then she received the call to even larger service as she lifted up her eyes to the hills. But in Fayetteville Presbytery, the vision of Mrs. McRae is not yet ended.