Thornton Chase

Thornton Chase (February 22, 1847 – September 30, 1912) was a distinguished officer of the United States Colored Troops during the American Civil War, and the first western convert to the Baháʼí Faith.

Samuel Francis Smith he instead enrolled as an officer in the American Civil War serving with two regiments of United States Colored Troops, mostly in South Carolina, where he was wounded.

After the war he worked as a businessman, performed as a singer, and was published as a writer of prose and poetry while living in several states after leaving Massachusetts.

[1] He was born James Brown Thornton Chase on 22 February 1847 in Springfield, Massachusetts to parents who traced their family back to Britain, and Baptist religion.

His father was a singer, amateur scientist, and wealthy businessman,[4] and was a descendant of Aquila Chase who migrated from Chesham in 1630 and of many other colonial families (such as Thomas Dudley).

Just before his seventeenth birthday, in early 1864, Chase traveled to Philadelphia to attend the "Free School for Military Tactics", which was set up to graduate potential officers specifically for black infantry units.

[15] The school also helped train troops - eleven African American regiments were raised in one year, and were supported by several abolitionists.

[18] About 1000 men, the regiment was mustered and practiced on Rikers and Hart Islands and would have received its "colors" (its flags) on March 26, 1864, however, a severe storm struck.

[30] Robert Stockman, a scholar on Chase, draws attention to two stanzas of the poem as having a biographical tone to them:[31]At whose memory courage blenches, And the dreadful Wilderness; Carolina's swamps, and Georgia, Like a hydra-headed Borgia, Send their armies bodiless.

Chase's activities in work in society multiplied:[37] he started his own specialty lumber business, directed the choir of First Baptist Church, and served as an officer in one of Springfield's musical organizations, and performed in a local concert.

[40] Not finding sufficient work to support him and his family in Boston, Chase moved to Fort Howard (Green Bay, Wisconsin), where he taught school.

Chase published a booklet called Sketches that explains why people should purchase life insurance for themselves, using biblical and religious stories to illustrate its major points.

[84] In May he was in Omaha, NE,[85] and Salt Lake, UT,[86] for business, and in early September the president of his company was killed in a train accident back east.

[91] Chase was then put in touch with Ibrahim George Kheiralla, recently immigrated to the United States and the second Baháʼí in America after Anton Haddad.

[98] In January 1897, his speech at an insurance agents convention was described as "beautiful…, bright and sublime in its imagery", about attaining to noble ideals above "killing time".

[99] In February Chase used an editorial commending of the insurance agent association for "inviting men in various walks of life to its banquets to speak to the members on topics that inspire, elevate, and encourage",[100] and expands on the theme, quoting his words: If we are only business seekers, traders, worshipers of the calf of gold, Caesar is our tax assessor and God to us is nothing; but if we are teachers and bearers of "good will to men," we shall keep the laws of humanity with heart and act, helping men to help themselves, teaching them the beauty and wisdom of unselfishness, of laboring for others, of providing a certain hope for their own futures, of protecting those dependent on them, even after earthly interests shall cease.

Let us hope that we may urge their minds so close to the border land of the life to come that they may look across the line of division between earthly affairs and eternal ones, and grasp ideals of the greater beauty and grander wisdom of striving for the fulfillment of God's promises to men, and of providing for a permanent home in the kingdom of their Creator.

[109] Among those earliest Baháʼís who retained belief and membership in the unity with ʻAbdu'l-Bahá were Louisa A. Moore (known after marriage as Lua Getsinger), Howard MacNutt, Arthur P. Dodge and Helen S.

[94] In 1904, a letter of a pilgrim to Chase reported ʻAbdu'l-Bahá seeing the American community in a dream as lacking coherence and harmony and the community was characterized by scholar Gayle Morrison as "lacking a wide selection of sacred literature, the study of which forms the basis of individual spiritual responsibility, and without a functioning (national) administration… (and) remained individualistic, even idiosyncratic, in their communal relationships," (such as in race relations amidst a segregated America.

A series of articles in the fall of 1908 including Chase among a set of women in several newspapers about the aim of the Baháʼís to build a House of Worship.

[129] Stockman says "Chase considered resigning from the company, but at the age of sixty-two he found it impossible to obtain another job, and he had to support his wife, his son in college, and his elderly mother-in-law, none of whom had become Baháʼí.

[138] Chase observed a distinction between ʻAbdu'l-Bahá's message of promoting spiritual unity as a higher calling than that of simply recognizing partisanship among nations vying for priority or advocacy of a race and stressed that the transformation of the time required accepting the influences of the "new heaven".

In November he summarized the presence of the religion in California for the first major Baháʼí periodical of the country, Star of the West, noting excitement in San Francisco because of the visit of Dr. Fareed and Lua Getsinger in advance of ʻAbdu'l-Bahá coming west, regular meetings in Los Angeles as well, and the hospitality provided by Mrs. Goodall and Cooper in Oakland.

ʻAbdu'l Bahá was on a train en route to California at the time; He immediately changed his plans and went to Los Angeles to visit Chase's grave.

Samuel F. Smith, joining the military at 17, his Civil War service and rising to Captain, but not the detail of it being with black regiments, did include briefly of his life in Colorado and then as an insurance agent.

Another mention came a month later by alumnus Wilfred H. Munro commenting on the incompleteness of a text of Brown university students who had served in the Civil war by adding that Chase was Captain of Company D of the 104th US Colored Infantry.

[149] The October issue of Star of the West made room for remembering him while news continued of ʻAbdu'l-Bahá's travels and speeches and dedication of the cite for the Baháʼí House of Worship near Chicago.

[193] In 1945 Chase was mentioned in the Pittsburgh Courier, a noted African-American newspaper, but only his status as the first American Baháʼí and his gravesite visited by ʻAbdu'l-Bahá.

[208] It was written from the point of view of a Catholic man in love with a Baháʼí and their struggle over unity being of different religions and their resolution at the interaction of ʻAbdu'l-Bahá, Thornton Chase's gravesite, and them.

His capacity to love anyone, especially those who disagreed with him, is especially demonstrated in his words and actions.… He is perhaps the only person before 1912 who had a thorough understanding of the Baháʼí concept of consultation.… was the prime mover behind many of the (local council)'s activities."