Grace Evelyn Reese Adkins (1884–1973)

Grace Evelyn Reese Adkins devoted most of her considerable energy and talents as a teacher, writer, composer, and minister to promoting Christian beliefs espoused by the Restoration Movement, also known as the Stone-Campbell Movement. In her pastoral work, she served as a part-time “community missionary” in Washington County and pioneered Christian summer camps for young people before she founded and led for more than a decade a Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) congregation in southern Fayetteville (Washington County) that embraced the fundamental tenets of her religious beliefs.

Grace Reese was born in Mondovi, Wisconsin, on April 23, 1884, to Edwin Frank Reese and Ida Cook Reese, and she moved to Fayetteville with her father and siblings soon after her mother’s death in 1902. A high school graduate, she taught school in Prairie Grove (Washington County) and other rural communities near Fayetteville until 1907, when she resettled in Winslow (Washington County) to teach at the nearby Oak Grove (Washington County) school. She left the classroom after her June 1909 marriage to Ary A. Adkins. They soon had two children, Mildred Grace born in 1910 and Harold in 1913.

In Winslow and afterward in Fayetteville, Grace Adkins wrote nonfiction articles as well as stories, poems, and songs that were published mainly in religious magazines. The prime outlets for her work were the Christian Standard, a magazine associated with the Restoration Movement, and the Lookout, a weekly magazine for members of fundamentalist churches. Among her dozens of publications were seven novellas that appeared as serials in these two weeklies. Her most challenging project as a writer was a 1919 book with the eyebrow-raising title The Sex Life of Girls and Young Women. It provided the basic elements of sex education while steering its audience toward what Adkins considered proper Christian behavior.

More than a dozen of Adkins’s songs, some written while in Winslow and others later, were included in at least seventeen church songbooks. One song that still often appears in published hymnals is “I’ll Wish I Had Given Him More.” Although she wrote poetry throughout her life, she was especially prolific from 1935 to 1938 when more than 200 of her poems were published in the Fayetteville Daily Democrat (renamed the Northwest Arkansas Times in 1937) as part of Walt Lemke’s column, “Ozark Moon.”

Adkins and her family moved to Fayetteville in 1920, and she was soon engaged in civic life there, as well as in activities of the city’s First Christian Church. In 1922, she was elected president of a Parent-Teacher Association (PTA) she helped create for the elementary school her children attended, and she also assisted in the establishment of a city-wide council of PTA associations. In 1926, she joined a few other women to form the Fayetteville Civic Arts League to bring music, art, and beautification to the city. Also, in 1926, she sponsored the formation of the “Pahala Club,” a neighborhood literary and arts club for women. That organization, unique to Fayetteville, was active into the 1950s. In 1929, she was elected president of the Fayetteville chapter of the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union (WCTU).

Upon their arrival in Fayetteville, Adkins and her family had transferred their membership from the Winslow First Christian Church, whose creation she and Ari had led shortly after their marriage, to Fayetteville’s First Christian Church. She was appointed superintendent of the elementary division of the church’s Sunday school. In 1925, about the time she had her third child, Lois, Adkins was drawn to rural evangelism and began conducting Sunday services at non-denominational churches in small communities outside of Fayetteville that could not support full-time ministers. She initiated what she called the Bethany Bible Camp in the summer of 1927 for young people living in rural areas. The camp was one of two held that year, and they inspired the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) to encourage more of them. The number of such camps grew from two in 1927 to 197 in 1946 to 416 by 1957. Adkins continued convening her own camps until 1933 and later offered them from 1939 to 1949.

Adkins was ordained as a minister in August 1930. She left the First Christian Church, which she thought had strayed from core Restoration beliefs, in 1932 to become assistant pastor of the city’s nondenominational Gospel Tabernacle, which Adkins hoped would become the church she had long sought. However, soon after her arrival, the church joined the Assemblies of God denomination, and she left her position but remained a member of the church until June 1937.

After Adkins returned to Disciples of Christ circles, she tried to convince several ministers to start a church in Fayetteville that conformed to foundational Reformation beliefs. Finding none who would do so, she began in June 1938 to form such a church herself. The effort was initiated with Sunday “cottage services” held in a private home. Initially, the services were attended by fewer than a dozen people. In December, Sunday services shifted to a small rented hall near the Fayetteville square, and on January 29, 1939, nine church members signed a charter creating the Central Christian Church. According to a 1940 article in the Northwest Arkansas Times, Adkins was at the time the only female minister in Fayetteville. She remained minister of the church, whose membership increased gradually, until September 1949, when she left the position due to health issues.

Adkins was succeeded as minister in late 1950 by Fred Huckelbury, who embraced her vision for the church and whose charisma attracted a swell of new members to fill a recently completed church building. The church was soon renamed “Christ’s Church.” Adkins supported Huckelbury’s ministry by managing the Sunday school and the annual Summer Vacation Bible School, teaching Bible study courses for adults and children, playing the church piano during services, and staging holiday pageants. When Huckelbury left in 1958 to become a national evangelist, church membership declined. It suffered further losses in 1960 after Adkins, in a disagreement with a replacement minister, left the church. She returned to the church in early 1964, and it reverted to its original name, Central Christian Church. Adkins’s husband Ary died that same year.

Adkins remained active in the church until late 1967, when she left Fayetteville to live with her daughter Lois in Illinois. She died there on January 10, 1973, and is buried in Fayetteville’s Fairview Cemetery.

For additional information:
Adkins, Grace Reese. “Rugged Paths to Victory.” Restoration Herald 18 (September 1952): 5.

———. The Sex Life of Girls and Young Women. Cincinnati, OH: Standard Publishing Company, 1919. Online at https://archive.org/details/02420010R.nlm.nih.gov (accessed September 27, 2024).

“Bethany Bible Camp Pioneered in Modern Christian Service Movement for Youths.” Northwest Arkansas Times, July 24, 1948, p. 2.

“Christ’s Church Began in Cottage, Moved to Lodge.” Northwest Arkansas Times, June 14, 1960, p. 89.

Daily, Daphne. “New Woman Minister of Diverse Talent; Many Accomplishments.” Fayetteville Daily Democrat, August 6, 1930, p. 6.

Durning, Dan. “Grace Evelyn Reese Adkins. “New Woman of Diverse Talents, Many Accomplishments.” (Part 1). Flashback 74 (Spring 2024): 32–43.

———. “The Strenuous Life of Grace Reese Adkins.” (Part 2). Flashback 74 (Summer 2024): 75–90.

“Grace Reese Adkins Author of New Book for Women and Girls.” Fayetteville Daily Democrat, Apr 1, 1920, p. 1.

“Grace Adkins in ‘Lookout.’” Fayetteville Daily Democrat, February 7, 1931, p. 3.

McCullough, Florence W., ed. Living Authors in the Ozarks and their Literature. Joplin, MO: n.d.

“Non-Denominational Church Plan Plea of Tabernacle Pastor.” Fayetteville Daily Democrat, September 13, 1931, p. 6.

Dan Durning
Birch Bay, Washington