A Preacher to the End

In the mid 1930's the Reverend Claude Harris was pastor of the rural Buncomb Pentecostal Church located about 6 miles south of Naylor, Missouri, near the Ripley / Butler County line and just one-quarter mile north of the Missouri / Arkansas state line.

Although times were hard, travel was difficult, and the population was small and scattered, crowds filled that little church building (which was still being used fifty years later - although it burned in recent years and was not replaced).

While there he met and fell in love with the local twenty year old widow Dorothy Griffin Baxter. Her husband of just two years had died of TB in 1938. They began a family there in Ripley County, Missouri. Their daughter was born in December of 1943 in Naylor.

Then in 1951 Claude and Dorothy Harris moved to Kankakee, Illinois, with intentions of beginning a new church work. In the fall of 1952, they held their first church service in a small rented building on Cypress St. The seventeen people who attended that first meeting grew to be the Peoples Church. The founding pastors served the congregation for 35 years (until 1987).

After retiring they moved to Idaho. In his later years Rev. Claude Harris developed alzheimer's disease and had to be placed into a nursing home. It was reported that even in his final days when he could no longer recognize family members that he still had a commanding voice and "preached" powerful sermons from his bed quoting lengthy passages of scripture verbatim from memory.

2011-11-07 22:50:26 RBaxter

See additional information on the Individual Data Info Page for Claude Harris.

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