Although she operated a mission on the near west side of Chicago for almost 40 years, Mary Jane Everhart remains virtually unknown. While her contemporaries, notably Jane Addams, sought the public spotlight as part of campaigns to improve living conditions for the urban impoverished, Everhart worked in the shadows. Hers was a religious mission, but she lacked the institutional support provided by denominations such as the Roman Catholic Church or the Salvation Army. Everhart, a licensed Free Methodist evangelist, operated the Olive Branch mission and raised all the funds necessary to support its work. While supplying the usual social services, she averaged one religious conversion per day.
Mary Jane Everhart was born February 13, 1853, on a farm near Lickingville in Clarion County, Pennsylvania. She was the only child of John and Jemima Gilfillan Everhart, and the granddaughter of a Scotch Methodist preacher (1-28.2.6). She was graduated from a normal college in Edinboro, Pennsylvania, in the late 1860s, then taught school in the Keystone State for twenty years.
Raised in the Methodist Episcopal Church, she was converted to Free Methodism at an 1882 revival conducted by Rev. D.B. Tobey at Newmansville, Pennsylvania, just three miles from her family's farm (3-15). Her strongly-held Protestant faith shaped the rest of her life as an evangelist and social worker.
Everhart became a "regularly licensed conference evangelist" of the Oil City (Pennsylvania) Conference of the Free Methodist Church, and held church membership at Tidiout, Pennsylvania (3-15). She moved to Chicago, Illinois, in October 1890 in answer to a call for teachers from the Chicago Industrial Home for Children. At the suggestion of its superintendent, T.B. Arnold, she also began volunteering at Rachel A. Bradley's near west side mission. Everhart saw that the need for her help was great, not only because of the desperate plight of the clientele, but because Bradley herself was in poor health.
Bradley had started a mission on Wells Street in Chicago around 1876. The mission moved to 95 South DesPlaines Street, at the corner of School Alley, in 1891. In mid-1893, as Bradley lay dying, Everhart agreed to purchase all the mission's equipment and carry on her work. Naming it the Olive Branch, Everhart reopened the mission August 30, 1893. In the first year, she gave out "2782 garments besides bedding, 883 loaves of bread, 40 baskets of provisions" and served "1168 meals." There were "1067 seekers at the altar." (1-1.1.2-3) These statistics were printed in the first issue of The Olive Branch: The World for Jesus, a four-page monthly newspaper Everhart began publishing in September 1894.
By July 1895 she reported more than 1000 subscribers who paid twenty-five cents per year to receive it. These subscribers from across the country (but concentrated in the midwest) were one of two sources of support for the mission. The other came from Free Methodist camp meetings, primarily in Ohio and Michigan. After speaking at a summer gathering, Everhart would take up a collection to fund the Olive Branch. These train trips to the countryside, an escape from the "noisy, wicked city of Chicago" (1-4.1.1), also afforded a brief vacation. But, Everhart's work was never far from her mind: "As the train left the smoke, filth and saloons behind and swept out into the fresh air, by green fields and forests, past country homes and school-houses, my eyes looked out at the beauties through which I was passing, but my thoughts went back to DesPlaines Street, its sights and sounds which formed a very dark background to the beautiful picture of nature before me" (1-1.12.2).
Conditions around the DesPlaines mission were abysmal. On the same block were "cheap lodging houses, brothels and pawnshops" (1-4.1.2) as well as thirteen saloons (2-15). The street was filled with "...crowds of poor, half-starved, ragged, wretched humanity jostling, cursing and fighting..."(1-1.1.3). Here, amid the stench and pollution of an industrial slum, Everhart worked among prostitutes, abandoned women and children, drunkards and opium addicts, as well as among "the fallen-away" and "the unchurched children of Christians" (1-1.1.4). But the "cursing, quarreling, gambling and beer-drinking people" (1-5.8.2) of the neighborhood did not deter mission workers. One volunteer assured readers of The Olive Branch that "the singing of the redeemed and the praying of the faithful make up fully for the odors you meet on your way" (1-1.4.4).
Living conditions for Everhart and her co-workers were not much better than those they served. At first, they slept behind a curtain partitioning the mission, then, "up forty-five dirty steps" to one third-floor room above a saloon (1-5.8.2). In May 1902, a residence for mission workers was purchased at 114 South Peoria Street. In 1911, the mission bought a house at 2034 West Monroe Street; Everhart and her co-laborers walked the two miles to and from the mission each day.
Daily life at the Olive Branch varied little over the forty years. It was an endless round of feeding and clothing the poor, visiting the sick and those in prison, evangelizing in saloons and barrel-houses, conducting religious services both in the mission and on street corners, providing temporary housing for homeless women and children, listening to "tales of sorrow, sin and woe," soliciting funds, tracking and acknowledging donations, recruiting and training volunteers, and handing out religious tracts. "When we cease because completely exhausted, the many things we see to do rise mountain high and the cry for help echoes and re-echoes through not only our head but our very soul until we wish for the strength of ten that we might succeed in helping all" (1-6.9.2).
In addition, Everhart wrote most of the copy for each monthly newspaper; co-workers set the type and printed it on site. Then, each was prepared and mailed. By 1900, the mission also printed the religious tracts it distributed.
Each issue of The Olive Branch opened with an "uplifting" or "moral" poem, gave thanks for help and asked for more, provided a testimonial from a saved soul, included letters from supporters (especially children) and listed donors and their gifts (Everhart called her newspaper the only "financial agent" the mission ever had (1-27.11.2)).
Every contribution was accepted, from money to fresh flowers (which were distributed to hospitals). Food was always welcome, and frequently solicited by direct appeals: "Dear readers, we have to pay 24 cents per pound for butter. Don't some of you want to send us a five-quart pail full by express?" (1-1.12.1). Occasionally the appeals were tinged with sarcasm: "It would surely be very convenient if the Olive Branch Mission family could do without food during the summer months (our famine time, as we call it) for foods of every kind are so highly priced it takes a small mint of money to buy enough of any kind to keep soul and body together" (1-26.9.2).
Contributors were thanked by name in each issue, often with reference to the Christian obligation to help the poor: "Butter! butter! Yes, a jar of fine, fresh butter from Mrs. Harvey Hawkins wonderfully astonished and very, very greatly delighted the Olive Branch Mission workers. This precious co-laborer believes in giving to the toilers in this little corner of the Master's vineyard a part of God's share of her fresh butter (real cow's butter), something we could not buy here even if we had plenty of money" (1-26.10.2).
Everhart was disappointed that her denomination did not consider her work on a par with overseas missionaries. Her conversions were primarily among the immigrant poor, and she kept meticulous records to prove her successes in converting Swedes, Germans, Norwegians, English, Danes, and Russians. However, she never was successful in convincing the denomination's governing body to contribute money to the Olive Branch. However, the Free Methodists did provide visiting ministers (so that services with the sacraments could be held at the mission), helped her recruit additional volunteers and served on the board of directors (six of the nine members when she incorporated the mission in 1896 were Free Methodist ministers).
Everhart was a relentless campaigner against taverns, raging that men and women were "ensnared into the hell-holes which curse this city" (1-6.9.1). She abhorred alcohol use, because she knew "drunkenness reduced happy homes to places of sorrow, poverty and shame" (1-6.9.3). Whiskey was "a trap set by Satan" (1-6.9.3) and liquor was "a licensed murderer" (1-7.2.4). "Oh, how can men vote to license the sale of that which so wrecks our brothers and sisters for whom Christ died!" (1-18.9.2), she wrote in 1912. The enactment of Prohibition did not end her crusade, as illegal liquor remained available.
The work of the mission expanded with the population of immigrant poor, and Everhart documented every service provided. At the 1900 annual meeting she reported that during the year the mission had given out 4,225 garments and 452 baskets of food; made 2,482 visits and calls [to individuals and families], visited 1,730 saloons and 392 lodging houses; distributed 64,812 tracts, 15,509 papers, and received 423 seekers at the altar. Although a building fund was started that year, there was not enough money to purchase a building at 1047 West Madison Street until 1927.
Because Everhart, was an only child who never married or had children, those working at the mission with her over the years became her extended family as well as her colleagues. She purchased a burial plot with space for six internments in Arlington Cemetery at Elmhurst, Illinois, and erected a pink granite headstone. At the top is the legend "Olive Branch Mission Workers", and, at the bottom, "They rest from their labors and their works do follow them." After Everhart, the names inscribed are Mabel E. Lane (superintendent from 1929 to 1939), Katie V. Hall (superintendent from 1939-1952), Violet B. Harp, Clara B. Spencer and Geraldine Bower (5).
Throughout much of her life, health problems, no doubt exacerbated by the heavy workload and polluted environment, plagued Everhart. Healing prayers were requested in The Olive Branch when she was "very sick" in May 1897 and again in September 1897, after she "was knocked down by a group of racing bicyclists as she crossed the boulevard on her way to church". (1-4.2.1) She had been reported dead in 1901, was ill for two months in 1907 and developed severe eye problems in 1910. She was bedridden for several months in 1921 and again in 1922. By 1925 she seldom was well enough to work at the mission. After proclaiming, "Amen, amen!" (1-34.9.33), she died April 3, 1928, in her bedroom at the mission workers' home on Monroe Street of chronic nephritis, mitral insufficiency and senility (4). After services on April 7, 1928, in the new mission hall on Madison Street, Everhart was interred at Arlington Cemetery, Elmhurst, Illinois.
Praise for Everhart filled the May 4, 1928, edition of The Free Methodist newspaper written by some of the same church officials who had refused over the years to approve funds for her urban evangelism. J.T. Logan, editor of The Free Methodist, added his own by-line to her official obituary. In a memorial tribute, Bishop Walter A. Sellew noted, "The one, great, consuming passion of her soul was to help up those who were down -- to rescue the submerged." He concluded, "Her life, her character and her deeds are indescribable. She was a woman among thousands...." (3-15)
Mary Jane Everhart edited a newspaper each month (with at least four pages) from 1894 until her slow decline in the late 1920s, writing virtually all of the copy herself. Included are not only extensive statistics enumerating the mission's work, but fund-raising pleas and descriptive narratives of life in her corner of Chicago's slums. A set of bound copies of the Olive Branch: The World for Jesus is in the library of the Chicago Historical Society. An obituary and other memorial tributes to Everhart are in the May 4, 1928, edition of The Free Methodist newspaper, which can be found in the Free Methodist Church of North America World Headquarters in Indianapolis, Indiana. Ralph Woodworth, pastor of the Pine Grove Free Methodist Church in Rockford, Illinois, included information on Everhart in Light in a Dark Place: "The Story of Chicago's Oldest Rescue Mission" (Winona Lake, Ind.: Light and Life Press, 1978). A brief derivative overview of the mission is included in One Part Honor: Stories and Faces of Chicago's Olive Branch (Chicago Review Press, 1993), with text by Jack Dierks and photos by Sharon Smith and Wally Wright.