Morning Star - Steamboat

Creator

Barbara G. StovallFollow

Document Type

Image

Preview

Creation Date

Winter 1-1895

Description

This is a photo of the Morning Star Riverboat built in 1894. The mission of the boat was to serve as a "floating chapel, mobile welfare center, home for workers, and means transportation in mission work in the southern part of the United States" (White Estate, 2021).

Comments

The Story of The Southern Work The 1890’s was the decade of repeated appeals from the pen of Ellen G. White to the church, urging its evangelistic forces to enter the great harvest field of the South. First appeared the far-reaching Testimony to Church Leaders in 1891, headed “Our Duty to the Colored People.” This document was circulated in manuscript form and then printed in a leaflet. It was this that stirred the missionary zeal of Ellen White’s son James Edson White and led him to launch evangelistic and educational work among the neglected people of the South. In doing this he built a missionary boat christened The Morning Star, which provided residence, chapel, schoolroom, and printing office. Evangelistic work was begun at Vicksburg, Mississippi, in January 1895. {SWk 5.1}

In the Adventists' efforts to educate the Blacks in the South there was one man by the name of James Edson White, the son of Ellen G. White who took it upon himself to answer the call. In 1895, after having built a 72' ship in Michigan, he and W. O. Palmer, his associate shipbuilder, traveled down the Mississippi River and docked at Vicksburg, Mississippi. It was there in Vicksburg, Mississippi where the ship was named "Morning Star", which became the first Seventh-day Adventist mission in the South. The ship was termed "The Floating School'.