Born in Sheboygan County, Wisconsin, on October 27, 1905 and one of the earliest graduates of Westminster Seminary, John Davies returned to his native Wisconsin in 1932 where he served as stated supply in six PCUSA churches over the course of four years. On July 20, 1936 he joined the OPC, and for nearly two decades Davies served as a missionary with the Menominee Indians while pastoring Old Stockbridge OPC in nearby Gresham.
Betty Meissner recounted Davies’s creative measures in New Horizons: “Back in 1936, John Davies pitched an umbrella tent on the Menominee Indian Reservation in Wisconsin. He held vacation Bible school beside the public school in Neopit, about seven miles from Zoar. Once, a tornado passed nearby, but the tent stayed standing, with only some of the bows being bent and not a peg pulled up. … Mr. Davies would drive around in his old Chevy with the running board and collect the children from all over the area. Sometimes the car would get stuck, and the kids would have to get out and push. When the car was so full of children that some were standing on the running board and hanging on, he would stop and hold Bible school ‘just any old place’ … [with a ] portable organ and trumpet that he used to accompany the songs he taught them.”
Later Davies served OP congregations in Wildwood, New Jersey, and Glenwood, Washington. He passed away on April 4, 1986, at the age of 80.
Picture: John Davies and family
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