wfn.org | Highlights of The History of Utqiagvik Presbyterian Church - part 1

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19-March-1999 
99105 
 
    Highlights of The 100-Year History of Barrow's 
    Utqiagvik Presbyterian Church - Part One 
 
    compiled by John Filiatreau 
 
Editor's note: In the last issue of NEWS BRIEFS, we reported on the 100th 
anniversary celebration of Yukon Presbytery and Utqiagvik Presbyterian 
Church in Barrow, Alaska. This is a brief history of that storied 
congregation. - Jerry L. Van Marter 
 
1877 - Sheldon Jackson, who already had established more than 100 churches 
and missions, including the first Presbyterian churches in Wyoming, 
Montana, Utah and Arizona, adopts Alaska as his principal mission focus and 
begins recruiting Presbyterian and other missionaries to set up schools and 
pulpits in Alaska. 
 
1884 - Charles D. Brower establishes a trading post at Barrow and becomes 
its first white settler. Eventually he learns Inupiaq, marries two Native 
women and sires 14 children. To this day, many of the community's leaders, 
white and Eskimo, bear his surname. The residential "suburb" of Barrow was 
named Browerville in his honor. 
 
1885 - Jackson is appointed U.S. General Agent for Education in Alaska. 
Separation of church and state goes by the board. Missionaries are paid 
from government educational funds. 
 
Mid-1880s - Jackson, concerned about "the hundreds of immortal souls" in 
Alaska "who have never so much as heard that there was a Savior," divvies 
the mission territory up among the Christian denominations. The Baptists 
get the Cook Inlet area and Kodiak Island. The Episcopalians are told to 
continue the work already begun by the Canadian Anglicans along the Yukon 
River, and also to help along the Arctic Coast. The Methodists are given 
the Aleutians. The Moravians take the Kuskokwin region. The 
Congregationalists are assigned to Cape Prince of Wales. The Quakers get 
the Kotzebue area and a small mining area near Juneau. Lutherans and the 
Covenant Church are dispatched to the Nome area. The Presbyterians keep 
Southeast Alaska, where they first began their work, and add St. Lawrence 
Island and the northern Arctic Coast, which no one else seems to want. 
 
1886 - Jackson writes of the Eskimos: "They are savages ... (who) have not 
had civilizing, educational or religious advances. ... Among those best 
known, their highest ambition is to build American homes, possess American 
furniture, dress in American clothes, adopt the American style of living 
and be American citizens." 
 
1890 - Presbyterian missionary M. Leander Stevenson, 45, lands at Port 
Barrow. He contracts to stay for only one year, but winds up staying seven 
years, to the presumed chagrin of his wife and family back in Ohio. He 
opens a school in the Rescue Station, built to house shipwrecked sailors 
for the winter. None of the eight natives in his first class can speak 
English. He knows no Inupiaq. 
 
1894 - Stevenson erects the first school building in Barrow, using lumber 
shipped north for the purpose by the Presbyterian Mission Board. By now he 
has found an interpreter and begun telling the Natives about the Christian 
faith. 
 
1896 - Stevenson - having failed to convert even one Eskimo to the 
Christian faith - is replaced by Dr. and Mrs. Horatio Marsh, newlyweds. 
Marsh is a recent medical school graduate. For the next several decades, 
many missionaries in Barrow will combine medical and spiritual expertise. 
(They also will serve as fire chief, mortician, orphanage and judge.) 
 
1897 - Jackson is elected moderator of the Presbyterian Church (defeating 
former U.S. President Benjamin Harrison); an orator calls him "the greatest 
missionary the world has ever seen since the Apostle Paul went far hence 
unto the Gentiles and died upon the scaffold." 
 
April 2, 1899 (Easter) - The first service of Utqiagvik Church is held in a 
church at Nuvuk, near the present site of Point Barrow, with 13 native 
communicants. 
 
July 26, 1899 - Three Presbyterian clergymen meet at Eagle to form the 
Yukon Presbytery. (One of them, S. Hall Young, sometimes known as the 
"Father of Alaska Missions," bragged in his autobiography: "One strong 
stand, which so far as I know I was the first to take, was the 
determination to do no translating into the Tlingit language or any other 
of the native dialects of that region. When I learned of the inadequacy of 
these languages to express Christian thought, and when I realized ... that 
the task of making an English-speaking race of these natives was much 
easier than the task of making a civilized and Christian language out of 
the Tlingit, Haida and Tsimshian; I wrote the Mission Board that the duty 
to which they assigned me, of translating the Bible into Tlingit and of 
making a dictionary and grammar of that tongue was a useless and even 
harmful task; that we should let the old tongues with their superstition 
and sin die - the sooner the better - and replace these languages with that 
of Christian civilization and compel the natives in all our schools to talk 
English and English only. Thus, we would soon have an intelligent people 
who would be qualified Christian citizens." This decision will be 
regretted, by Inupiats and missionaries alike.) 
 
1899 - The Rev. and Mrs. Samuel Spriggs are sent to Barrow. 
 
1900 - More than 200 inland Eskimos trading at Point Barrow die of 
influenza after the visit of a whaling ship. 
 
1901 - The Presbyterian Church in Barrow has 30 members. Native elder Peter 
Koonooya and his wife represent the Yukon at a presbytery meeting in Eagle. 
 
1905 - A three-masted ship piloted by Capt. James Cook brings in freight 
for the construction of a school building, about 50 yards from the current 
location of Utqiagvik Presbyterian. 
 
1906 - The Spriggses are holding classes in a new school building. Dr. 
Marsh and Rev. Spriggs learn Inupiaq and begin preaching in the native 
tongue. They also translate hymns, some of the Scriptures, and the shorter 
catechism. 
 
1909 - The church burns to the ground while the Marshes are off on a 
furlough. 
 
1910 - The church is rebuilt "with the help of natives and some white 
people in the village." 
 
1911 - Dr. and Mrs. Marsh leave Barrow, which is then without a missionary 
for four years. 
 
1914 - Presbytery of Yukon affirms an overture to the General Assembly 
endorsing the Anti-Saloon League. 
 
1915 - Dr. and Mrs. Frank Spence arrive. 
 
1916 - The church is enlarged and two steeples are added. 
 
1921 - Dr. and Mrs. Henry Greist arrive to take charge of a new 
Presbyterian hospital under construction in Barrow. Greist is both a 
medical doctor and an ordained Presbyterian pastor; his wife is a nurse. 
 
1922 - The first child born at the new Public Health Service hospital is 
Eben Hopson, who 50 years hence will be the first mayor of the North Slope 
Borough, a founder of the international Inuit Circumpolar Conference, the 
George Washington  of his people. 
 
1923 - Four young Native men are taken under the care of Presbytery as 
students preparing for the Gospel ministry: Percy Ipalook, Roy Ahmaogak, 
Andrew Akootchook and Samuel Simmonds. 
 
1923 - Dr. Greist organizes Olgonik Presbyterian Church at Wainwright. 
 
1924 - Fire destroys the old manse. 
 
1925 - Dr. and Mrs. Greist, scheduled for a furlough, pack up their things 
and await the arrival of their replacement. When nobody shows up, they stay 
on for another year. They complain in a letter to the New York headquarters 
of the church, and get a quick reply nine months later. Eventually they 
leave to visit "the lower 48." 
 
1925 - Dr. A.W. Newhall, a layman of the Methodist Church, is appointed to 
run the hospital by the Board of National Missions. Two years later he is a 
member of the Barrow church and is recommended as a candidate for the 
ministry. 
 
1929 -Newhall dies; his wife agrees to stay on until Dr. and Mrs. Griest 
come back. Griest becomes pastor and his wife becomes head nurse at the 
hospital. 
 
1930 - The church at Nuvuk is dissolved, the members transferred to a new 
church in Barrow. 
 
1929-1930 - A small green parsonage (still standing and still occupied) is 
constructed next to the church. 
 
1934 - Percy Ipalook and Andrew Akootchook, the first Eskimos to become 
students for the ministry, are examined and licensed as lay preachers. 
 
1935 - Ipalook is sent to Cape Prince of Wales. (He will eventually serve 
in the Alaska Legislature). 

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