JQ Tidbits by Dave, July 2009:
John and Linda:
A few tidbits about John Quincy Biggs.
JQ was born on 20 August 1878, and he died in December 1968--90 years old.
His birthplace was in Missouri, either in Pemiscot County (SE Missouri, in the
Boot Heel) or in Rocky Comfort. The reason for the uncertainty is that the
Biggs family (John James Madison and Dicy Reed) in 1878 was in the process
of moving from central Illinois to southwest Missouri. The Boot Heel would
be about half of that journey; they may have rested there for a while, but I
do not know whether birth occurred there.
What is certain is that JQ spent his entire boyhood on the Biggs farm in
Rocky Comfort. Zona Davidson was also from a farm family. He was 7 years
older, but there weren't that many marriage prospects in such a remote
place, so they dated and "courted" from an early age. While Zona was
finishing high school, JQ was doing a variety of odd jobs. One was
door-to-door sales of sewing machines. He also helped on the Biggs farm.
At some point a year or two after 1900, JQ "got religion" and decided to
become a preacher. In about 1903, he left Rocky and traveled to Lexington,
Kentucky, where he enrolled in a Disciples of Christ pastor's program.
Sometime during the early months of that program, Zona traveled to
Lexington, and the two married in Lexington. A few months later, their
first child, Portia, was born.
That began JQ's career as a Disciples of Christ minister. I cannot recite
the names or locations of churches he served, but here is a
less-than-complete list of towns. I believe he started with a couple of
small towns in Illinois, and then went to Buffalo, Missouri, where my mother
Anita was born. Next (around 1908) the family went to Oklahoma for a while,
Pawhuska or Enid, I believe. Then it was off to the Pacific Northwest,
where his older sister Mary and her husband Anvil Arnett had moved. He may
have had churches in Baker, Oregon and Spokane. At the same time, he was
taking courses at the U. of Idaho, from which he earned a bachelor's degree
in about 1918.
In 1918 or 1919, the Biggs family left the Northwest and moved to Fort
Worth, Texas. There, he had a church, as well as an appointment as a
professor of rhetoric/oratory at Texas Christian U. (TCU was one of the
nation's leading Disciples of Christ educational institutions.) The girls,
Portia and Anita, were outstanding students at Fort Worth High. Your dad
Melvin was born in Fort Worth in 1920. Also in Fort Worth, Zona launched a
career as a chiropractor. Her downtown office was next door to "Biggs
School of Oratory," apparently a "side operation" for Professor Biggs.
The next move, in 1922, was to Topeka, where again he had a church and Zona
had her chiropractory. Portia and Anita were students at Washburn College.
Anita graduated in 1925, and Portia (who also had attended TCU and
Northwestern) graduated, perhaps with a master's degree.
In 1925, the family moved to Zanesville, Ohio to serve another D of C
church. Portia and Anita had public school teaching jobs for a year or two,
then left JQ and Zona to travel to the bright lights of New York City. In
about 1928, the next church was in Tonawanda, New York (near Buffalo). Both
daughters were married by JQ in Tonawanda in 1929.
Sometime in the mid-1930s, JQ and Zona, with Melvin of course, moved to
Johnstown, Pennsylvania. After a few years, they moved to their last
church, in Waynesburg, Pa. JQ retired from active preaching in about 1943.
From then on, and for the rest of their lives, Zona kept them moving, from
Daytona Beach (Olds Hall) to Rocky Comfort to the Ream farm in Millstone
back to Daytona then to the Ream home in Princeton and back to Rocky and
Springfield, Missouri. And then on to Tallahassee for a while, and I believe they
spent quite a bit of each summer in Lexington, Mass. JQ finally died in
Daytona in 1968.
After JQ's death, Zona went chasing after an old Rocky high school flame
named Fred Reasor, who was a widower living in Aberdeen, Washington, on the
Olympic Peninsula. At Zona's insistence, hey actually got married. Zona
then began to drag Fred around the country like she did with JQ. Fred's
daughter put a stop to that after a couple of years, and Fred gratefully
returned to his home and familiar haunts in Aberdeen. Zona then went to
Springfield for a while, and from there to a retirement village in Columbia,
Missouri named Lenoir Manor. She died there, in 1987, at age 102.
About the Disciples of Christ. As I understand the church's relation to the
ministers, it is very different than the Methodists. I believe that JQ had
to find churches all by himself, rather than being assigned by some
centralized office. My other grandfather, T. J. Ream, was a career
Methodist minister who was moved by the relevant bishop from one church to
another every few years.
Another side bit. Zona, along with most of the population of Rocky Comfort
100+ years ago, was Southern Baptist. I don't know why JQ elected D of C.
What I do know is that, as soon as JQ died, Zona resumed her affiliation
with the Baptists. By the way, most D of C churches are designated
"Christian" church. Thus, the "First Christian Church" in any community
would be a D of C church.
Let me know if you wish to explore any of these points a bit further.
Dave
