A Farmer’s Will

• Publication year: 2022
• Pages: 10

51 Colo.Law. 10 A Farmer’s Will Vol. 51, No. 6 [Page 10] Colorado Lawyer June, 2022

COLUMN-HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVES

BY FRANK GIBBARD

The he story of the Cleve family resembles that of any number of pioneer families in Northern Colorado. George Cleve immigrated from England in the 1800s. His wife Mary and her niece Caroline (“Kate”) came with him. He became a prosperous farmer with a home in Laporte, near the city of Fort Collins.

George and Mary had planned to adopt Kate, but that never came to pass. At age 22, she married a local man named William Lindenmeier Jr., the son of a German immigrant family.^[1] William and Kate lived nearby in Fort Collins for a while, but then moved back in with the Cleve family. Several years later, the Lindenmeiers moved to their own home in Fort Collins, and a few years after that, in December 1893, Mary Cleve died.^[

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] Mary’s obituary called her a “most estimable Christian woman” and praised her “earnest and consistent” faith.[

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Following the death of his longtime companion, George relied heavily on his niece for support. He lived in the Laporte home, with Kate managing his business affairs, for several years. But eventually he grew restless and, like many Americans of that era,^[4] he became especially preoccupied with spiritual matters and the state of his soul.

George Cleve's Spiritual Quest

In 1901, determined to investigate what he called "the holiness business,"^[5] George moved from Laporte to downtown Denver. It's not clear what Kate thought of her elderly relative's sudden spiritual quest. The old farmer was not in the best of health. Among other things, he complained of dizzy spells. But his pilgrimage to Denver stemmed at least in part from his belief that his health might improve if he left the farm.^[6]

At first, George found a spiritual home with the Salvation Army. These days, people associate the Salvation Army with volunteers cheerfully ringing bells at Christmastime and thrift stores raising money for charitable efforts. The organization’s charitable emphasis indeed reflects its origins in the era of the “social gospel.”^[

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] But it would be a mistake to downplay the evangelical fervor associated with the group, particularly in its early years.

Its founder, William Booth, created the Salvation Army after he had a hellish vision of people drowning in their sins who were desperately in need of rescue from their impending damnation. Booth purportedly later stated that if the doctrine of hell were removed from the Salvation Army, it would soon disappear. When organized in the London slums, the Army had as much an evangelical purpose as a charitable one. It was modeled after the military, and its recruits were expected to lead sober, disciplined lives.

For whatever reason, even the Salvation Army’s enthusiastic evangelism did not quench George Cleve’s spiritual thirst. Like many a spiritual traveler, he turned to a more austere group. For George, it was Jennie Lehman’s Union Mission, an obscure group that met at 20th and Larimer Streets, near Denver’s notorious “red light district.”8 In those days, “Union Mission” was a common name for organized religious groups that aimed to help the inner-city poor...