For the love of Jesus.
Written by Jeanine Plumer.
In the town of Belton, Texas, just south of Temple in Bell County, there once lived a Martha McWhirter.
She and a group of women operated a commune for women from the mid 1800s until 1899. They were called “Sanctionists”, though Mrs Whitaker never referred to herself as anything but a Christian.
It all started when a small group of women began meeting together once a week to talk and pray. Their conversation often turned toward problems they were experiencing with their husbands.
In the 1800s, women had yet to receive the right to vote or own land, but those were not the troubles the disgruntled ladies were most concern about.
Two prominent points of male content were husbands who drank too much, and the necessity to ask their husbands for money.
At one meeting, Mrs McWhirter suggested that they take what little money they could collect on their own, from selling eggs and butter, and put it into a joint fund to be distributed amongst themselves when one was denied money from her husband.The joint fund was often in need of replenishing, so the women began to expand their financial endeavors by doing work usually designated for servants. They hired themselves out using whatever skills they possessed, such as laundresses, nurses and cooks.
They called themselves “Sanctified”, and the manner in which they lived sanctification. Sanctification is an act of separation from that which is evil, and of dedication unto God, as defined in the New Testament, Romans 12: 1& 2, Hebrews 13: 12. God guided the women through prayer or dreams. They lived a simple, hard working existence in cooperative environment where each was respected.
Many women chose to leave their abusive husbands or unhappy marriages and move in with Mrs McWhirter. At the group’s peak, there were 50. Sactificationists living in the McWhirter House.
Mr McWhirter, 11 years older than his wife, must have had some belief in his wife’s actions because it was discovered, following his death in 1887., that in his will he left her not just the traditional widow’s half of the estate, but the whole of the substantial estate. Eventually, the Sanctified women consolidated all of their monies and energies into the hotel business. Together, they established the finest hotel in Bell County.
As the principal members of the organization began to age, they realized the change was necessary.
After much prayer and discussion, the sanctificationists decided to sell their holdings in Belton and move to Washington. DC. They purchased a large house in Mount Vernon with $23,000 in cash and thirty of the women settled into easy living or retirement. Mrs Mcwhorter died five years later at the age of 77.
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