John W. Price (1824-1894)

In the first part of the last century there lived two godly people, John and Catharine Gear Price in Franklin County, Pennsylvania. He was related to the Prices that emigrated from Germany a few generations before. About 1820 the family moved to Berkely County, West Virginia, and settled on a farm near Charlestown, here John W. was born February 9, 1823. When John was a lad of 16 summers he came with his parents to Ogle County, Illinois. The family settled on a farm a few miles south of Mt. Morris, Illinois. Here the parents lived and died and here John also lived until he passed to the beyond.

School privileges were meager in those days. While a boy, John knew more about hard work than books for even in the winter until Christmas or after, he helped to thresh out wheat on the barn floor by the slow process of "tramping." After this work was done he had an opportunity to attend a few weeks of school before the spring work opened up. When he became of age he attended several terms at Rock River Seminary now known as Mt Morris College, thus prepared he began to teach county school, continuing that work for a number of winters. Along with this he kept up his farm work in a very successful manner.

When 27 years old he and his wife confessed Christ, had baptism administered within the bounds of the Rock River Congregation near Franklin Grove, Illinois. Later, in 1857, when the Pine Creek congregation was formed these two were charter members and did not remove from its bounds until their membership was transferred by the Father to the Glory World. In 1864, he was elected a deacon and served in that office for thirty years as a good man full of the spirit of faithfulness and kindness to all. In 1887 he was elected a member of the District Mission Board of Northern Illinois and Wisconsin, and continued until 1892. He was a wise counsellor during those experimental days.

He was an untiring student of the Word of God, a great reader of religious literature and a regular attandant at the special Bible terms at Mt. Morris as long as he lived. It was his delight to attend Annual Meeting, drink from its overflowing spiritual fountain and was more than overjoyed when permitted to return from the Meyersdale, PA Conference in 1894 with the glad news that the church was sending missionaries that year to foreign lands -- June 7, 1894. Two days after his return with the vision of enlarged church on the foreign field still vivid in his mind, his spitrit suddenly and quietly took its flight. His body was laid to rest in the Pine Creek Cemetery to await the resurrection morn. Elder D.L. Miller, preached his funeral sermon from II Corinthians 5:1.

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