The Life of William E. Dodge

Dodge was 13 when he first heard of preparations being made to send young Henry Obookiah, a Hawaiian orphan being educated in Cornwall, Conn., as the first Christian missionary from America to Hawaii. Having no money but eager to help, he proposed a “missionary potato-patch” to some of his friends. Together, they took an unpromising patch of swamp land near home, reworked the soil in their spare time, and planted potatoes they had purchased with their pocket money.

Though other crops in the area did only indifferently that season due to a lack of rain, the love and care put into that reclaimed swamp land produced a bumper crop, and a very happy William Dodge went to Cornwall to deliver the materials they had bought with the sale proceeds. Of the episode he later said, “I never in my life felt more proud or happy. From the time of this missionary potato-patch, everything I touched seemed to prosper.”

At the age of sixteen, by popular account, he was a gallant, considerate, good-natured, and well-respected young man in the Hartford, Conn. area. Happily for him, however, his pride and self-composure were mortally wounded by his pastor’s remark, made as he was about to return home after a week of revival meetings at his church: “What! Going home and taking that hard heart with you?”

He came forward at a prayer meeting soon after to request prayer for his spiritual condition, and from that night in June, 1821, he was the Lord’s. The same year, he established his first Bible study and prayer meeting, in his hometown.

Ten years later a newcomer to New York heard a stirring address at a local Christian meeting. The speaker was William E. Dodge – “I asked who the speaker was, and learned he was a merchant in active business, but quite as active in his Master’s work.” As the years passed, he became one of the leading merchants in New York and a principal in Phelps, Dodge & Co., major exporters of cotton and the largest importers of metals to the U.S. (today’s Phelps Dodge Corp. is a direct successor to Phelps, Dodge & Co.), and a partner in financing the transcontinental railroad expansion, notably the Union Pacific Railroad.

On the other hand, it is harder to describe adequately the scope of Dodge’s support for foreign missions. From the first potato-patch to the end of his life, he gave prayer, time and money freely to support them. Within the United States, he helped to strengthen many struggling young churches – no one knows exactly how many.

In his personal spiritual work also, he was a fruitful man: “In passing through New Orleans, St. Louis, Chicago, like his master he could not be hid. Some Christian tradesman, teacher or preacher would hail him, and gratefully acknowledge that the seed he had sown in their youthful minds had ripened into a harvest of manhood and piety. But in nothing was he so much at home as in revival work.” Dodge was a chief ally and supporter in New York of the revivalist Charles G. Finney. He was also active in the daily work of New York’s spiritual revival of 1858.

Throughout his long business career he kept his priorities firm and plain. In his middle years, for example, letters arrived one day reporting that certain Pennsylvania iron and coal miners he had recently spoken to had since found Christ. Though it was a busy work day and many people were waiting to see him he took time out for the letters, saying to a friend, “No matter. Let them pound away! I care more about the souls of these miners than about any of those people out there who have come to talk about money.” It is not surprising, when you reflect on it, that Dodge was nevertheless one of the most successful businessmen of his day.

In his single term in Congress, 1865-67, Dodge urged a policy of reconciliation with the defeated South, as Lincoln had done; he foresaw the long bitterness promised by the harsh terms of Reconstruction, but finding himself in the minority he could do little to mitigate the vengefulness of the post-war legislation.

Looking at the thrust and impact of his life, you have every right to take encouragement from the 16-year-old Christian who wholeheartedly sought to do his Master’s will, whose life later broadened and deepened into a channel of wide and good influence throughout the country. God is able to do exceeding abundantly above all you could ask or think, so if you give your life to him you too will prove what is the good and acceptable and perfect will of God in your own experience. Then you will one day be able to say as Dodge said, at age 73:

“Let us be thankful for all the way in which the Lord has led us, and keep on hard at work while He gives us strength. I do not expect this ever to be ‘the place of my rest,’ I was never so fully pressed in my life.”

May it be said of you, as a friend spoke of Dodge after his death:

“He was alive to whatever touched the spiritual interests of men … when God sought for a man among them that should make up the hedge, Mr. Dodge was not wanting there.”

© 1973 The Beacon Committee