Remembering Our History
Many argue that the Christian Connection, the denominational home of the founders of Craigville, was the first in modern times to ordain women in large numbers. Mrs. Melissa Terrell was ordained by the Christian connection in 1807.
Among the best known of these early pioneers was Reverend H. Lizzie Haley, who was a summer presence in Craigville from 1880 nearly until her death. She was ordained on May 10, 1877, in the chapel of the Biblical School at Stanfordville.
Lizzie became an evangelist, preaching the revival circuit around New England. Milo True Morrill, author of The Christian Denomination in America reports that “competent judges regard Miss Haley as the best evangelist they have ever known”
Lizzie’s brother, John W. Haley contributed a memorial in a journal of her undergraduate college, The Bates Student: “… for twenty years, she labored faithfully and untiringly as an evangelist. Churches of various denominations—Congregational, Methodist, Free Baptist, Calvinistic Baptist, as well as those of her own faith and order, the Christian denomination, were built up and blessed by her labors. Revivals attended her preaching. Large numbers of persons professed conversion. In more than one instance, nearly or quite one-half of the present membership of a church is due to her faithful ministrations, under the Divine blessing.”
Hannah Elizabeth Haley was born in Tuftonboro, N. H., on November 24, 1845, and died in Lowell, Mass., at age 52 years. She was the third daughter and youngest child of John S. and Mary Neal (Piper) Haley. Three brothers and one sister survive her; an elder sister had died in infancy.
Miss Haley's school privileges in early life were quite limited, but she studied much at home, under the tuition of her mother and an older sister. She entered Bates College, pursued the regular curriculum, and graduated in the Class of 1873. She then went to Stanfordville, N. Y., and pursued a four years' course of study in the Christian Biblical Institute. located there. Her first sermon was delivered in Lowell, Mass., on Sunday, August 31, 1873, in the Free Chapel, then under the pastoral care of her brother-in-law, Rev. H. C. Duganne. During her connection with the Biblical School above mentioned, she preached much of the time, supplying one church regularly for many months.
An account in The Herald of Gospel Liberty in 1892 speaks of Lizzie Haley at Craigville that summer: “Rev. H. Lizzie Haley’s cottage at Craigville was our bookstand while on the grounds. Here Sister Haley spends her summers in recuperation after months of severely exacting evangelistic work, and in preparation for further work in the field she so eminently occupies. Probably no evangelist in the country can show a larger per centage of real conversions among those publicly consecrating than Sister Haley. She has had remarkable success in reaching minds inclined toward infidelity and in inducing middle-aged, and even aged persons, to take a public stand for Christ.”
Lizzie died the following year in Lowell, MA.