Historical Sketch of James HENDRICKS and Drusilla DORRIS
[ Table of Contents | Prev | Next ]

Childhood, Marriage and Family

A woodcut portraying the damage of the New Madrid earthquake. Courtesy State Historical Society of Missouri.

Drusilla Continues.

The first thing I can recollect was the earth shaking¹ and my eldest brother and wife running with me to my father's house. The next incident I can remember, I was saying Prayer after My Father. I was then about five years of age. He was a praying man. There was much talk concerning Religion. My parents were Baptists, our neighbors were Methodists and Presbyterians, so I heard much contention on religion. I was a child but continued to pray after my Father until I was 6 years of age. Then there were revivals among the different denominations and with them came the Jirks and dancing. My Father became disgusted but read and prayed the more until the king of exercise ceased.

In my seventh year my Father sent me to school six months. I learned to read and write a very little. Then my reading was confined to the Bible and Hymn Book, until I could recite pages of it without looking at the book. In the year 1817 my Father moved a short distance to be nearer his married children but not out of the Country where I was born. Nothing of note happened to me until I was in my 10th year. Then there was some sickness in my Father's family. I was sent on an errand to three or four places and waded a stream of water and took cold. I still had my places of Prayer but dare pray after my Father no longer; I thought him to be a Christian while I was a sinner. And when I went to my Prayers I could say nothing but "Lord have mercy on me and save me from that awful place I have heard so much about."

I was taken with a severe pain in my side and for three days and nights they thought I would die. They sent for the Doctor and also my brothers and sisters. The Doctor was a faith Doctor and a minister in the Baptist Church. The pain crossed to the right side and he succeeded in keeping it there. My friends all gave me up except my father and mother. I have heard my Mother tell how she would go before the Lord and bury her face in the dust and beseech him to spare my life. My Father told the same thing and the Doctor prayed in the family. He asked the Lord to spare my life and led me to my parents in their old age. He also asked that I might become a Mother in Israel and do much good in my days, all of which I never forgot.

I lay in great pain, they had to move me in a sheet for I could not move myself. One evening--I think it must have been sunset--my Mother came and asked me how I felt. I was sinking under the load I felt on me and I said, "Oh Mother, raise me up" and as she raised me up the light and glory of Heaven seemed to fill the house. I shouted and praised God in the Name of Jesus. I quoted scripture from Genesis to Revelations. My pain was gone. I felt as light as a feather. I was so happy. My brothers and sisters came to bid me goodby. My father came and said "Drusilla, who will deal with you after death?" I said, "God Almighty, but I am not going to die. I want to live to be baptized for the remission of my sins." I saw it as plain as when I heard the Gospel.

I began slowly to recover but my pain settled in my right shoulder and on the 15th of February, 1817, the Doctor took out my collar bone and many pieces of bone came after and I was kept under the influence of medicine for two years. The Doctor called my disease "A white swelling." My system began to be more healthful and I began to be more playful again. My sisters would check me and say "that isn't pretty for Mama's little Christian". I had no idea I was making a profession of religion. I knew I felt happy and I praised the Lord but I was like the Scripture where it says "The wind bloweth where it listeth, but thou canst not tell from whence it cometh or whither it goeth. So is everyone that is born of the Spirit". For I saw so many things so far from what the people talked and preached I stood still in amazement.

It was two years I could not work. My parents wanted me to read lest I should forget how. We had no variety of books as we have now, so I had to read the Bible and Hymn book. It looked so strange to me that no one was doing as the Bible told them. When I would read John Revelations, I would ask my Father so many questions, as to when this would be in my day. But he would put me off and say we had no business with these things. I have heard him say to Mother, "What a mind that child has got." I knew by that that he could not answer my questions. My Mother often asked me if I did not want to be baptized into the Baptist Church. She would exort me to faithfulness and for me not to mind what the girls said when they were teasing me.

James and Drusilla Hendricks.

The time went on until I was 15 years old. During which time my brothers and sisters were all married and I was left alone with my parents. My mother taught me in all the branches of housewifery that she was capable, for which I always felt thankful. In my 18th year, I was married to James Hendricks. Then I had to leave my parents but oh how hard the parting, for I loved my parents. But the distance was but one mile from my childhood home. We often went to see them. I was married the last day of May, 1827. My first child was born on the 10th day of May 1828. We called her name Elizabeth. It was then my trouble began for I found I was a Mother and the responsibilities of a mother were upon me. My husband came in and found me crying. He then asked if he had neglected me or said or done anything to hurt my feelings. I answered him, "no" but I was a mother and was not capable of doing a Mothers duty. He wept with me and told me that I was better prepared to be Mother than he was to be a Father and do the duties of a Father. We had many serious hours over it and as it appeared to me then, so I found it. No small thing to be a mother.

My health grew bad. One of my husband's brothers wife died. Then my husband traded his interest in the homestead for his brother's land. This was in 1828 and in the year 1829 the great hue and cry came about the State of Missouri. It surely was the garden of Eden. His father, brothers and sisters and brothers-in-law all began to shape their affairs to go to that state. They were determined that we should go with them. I plead with my husband to stay until the death of my parents, which he made up his mind to do as I wished. We had plenty to make us comfortable but stripped ourselves of property to buy the old homestead back again. We then had more land than we could keep in cultivation.

William Dorris Hendricks b. 6 Nov. 1829.

About this time my second child was born and we called his name William Dorris Hendricks. We toiled hard to get the things to make us comfortable and in 1832 we began to feel pretty comfortable and in that year my father died. The property left to my mother was sold at public auction and she came to live with me and we used all our endeavors to make her happy. She often said to me, "Drusilla, do you know you are more comfort to me than all the rest." I asked her why that was, and she answered, "Because you always ask me what I want for breakfast or dinner or how to do any kind of work." I had never thought of that before nor had I thought of the principle of obedience planted within me. It was not to gain my Mother's favor. It was to show the reverence I had for my Mother from a child. She lived with us two and one-half years and was then called home to that God who gave her life, in the year 1834.

Catherine Tabitha Hendricks b. 2 Aug. 1832.

My third child (Catherine) was born August 2, 1832 and was two years of age the day my mother was buried.

On the 8th of August, 1834, my husband went to the door, fainted and fell and he was so heavy I could not get him on the bed until nearly night when I sent for a physician. He still grew worse and I sent for another Doctor. He came and worked with him almost four weeks and no one thought he would live. He then began to improve slowly. We had joined the Baptist Church two years before but I was no better satisfied than before. He had been under conviction of sin when he obtained the forgiveness of sin he wanted to be baptized but I found no answer of a good conscience for me. I felt for weeks I should go crazy, finally I began dreaming and I knew there was a reality in dreams. I had dreams mostly from my childhood up and had seen many of my dreams literally fulfilled when my Mother would call me Joseph the Dreamer.

I will tell some of my dreams I had during the two years I was a Baptist. I read nearly all the time I could spare from my work; I found that none had the Gospel as taught in the New Testament. I was sorely troubled when I dreamed. I saw Jacob's ladder reaching into Heaven, I saw men ascending and descending on it. There was seven steps, it had the appearance of a rainbow, both the steps and uprights. I thought there should be communication between the heavens and earth.

NOTES

1. The New Madrid Earthquake of 1811-12 which formed the Realfoot Lake.

Historical Sketch of James HENDRICKS and Drusilla DORRIS
[ Table of Contents | Prev | Next ]
Sunday, 08-Aug-2004 19:32:54 MDT