1863-1948
Quaker Teacher, Minister, and Leader

A Small-Town Boy.

In his autobiographical works, A Small Town Boy (1941) and Finding the Trail of Life (1943), Rufus Matthew Jones presented a picture of his idyllic childhood in the small Quaker village of South China, Maine. He wrote that "sunset and evening stars produced a spell on my young mind" and of how he enjoyed the sound of "the swish of my scythe in the grass wet with morning dew." The mystical beauty of nature and the joys of hard work were staples in his young life. The story goes that his Aunt Peace, upon the birth of Rufus, held up the newborn and proclaimed, "This child will one day bear the message of the Gospel to distant lands and to peoples across the sea." She was right, of course, but she might have added much more. Rufus Jones became...