As soon as they arrived in New York, the woman who had brought him died, and at only nine or ten years left alone in the great city. However, thanks to his personal sympathy, He was very easy to make friends with. A German doctor took an interest in him and urged him to study medicine. With the death of this surgeon, Edward, then about 13 years old, went to live with the Allison family, who owned a farm in Stony Point, near the Hudson River. This family cared for him, helped him in his studies, and led him to the Presbyterian Church of Haverstraw, where he made his profession of faith around 1854. He was influenced in his decision by the reading of the book Graça Abundante , by the writer Puritan John Bunyan (1628-1688).
At the age of seventeen, Edward had a strong desire to study - almost pleading to go to West Point Military Academy, located nearby - but his adopted father wanted him to study business. Hearing that in the south conditions were best, he bid farewell to the friendly family and followed went in the end of 1855 to Georgia. He worked as a teacher at a boys' school in Evansville. Between 1858 and 1861, he lived with the family of a pastor in Athens, in the same state, and studied at Oglethorpe College.
During the Civil War (1861-1865), he worked as a surgeon's assistant in a military camp in Richmond, Virginia. Feeling the desire to prepare for the ministry, the young man got in touch with Dr. Robert Lewis Dabney, noted preacher, theologian, and professor at the Union Seminary in Hampden-Sydney, who welcomed him to his home for three years (1865-1868). When, he finished his studies, he joined the volunteers to found the first mission of the Southern Presbyterian Church in Brazil. He and the Mortons were among the fourteen members of the first graduating class after the war.
Edward was licensed on May 2 and ordained on 17 November 1868 by the West Hanover Presbytery in Virginia. On June 22, 1869, Lane and the Morton couple boarded the Winifred in Baltimore, landing in Rio de Janeiro on August 17. The missionary trio went to Campinas in September, staying at the boarding house of Mrs. Susan Porter, and went on to study the language. On March 29, 1870, Lane began the first of his many Evangelism journeys, going in the company of the Rev. Hugh Ware McKee to Sorocaba. The same year, on July 10, Lane and Morton founded the Presbyterian Church of Campinas.
The First converts were a black bricklayer and his wife. The two missionaries also began to preach in the church of the American colony in Santa Bárbara and planned to open works in the neighboring cities of Itu, Limeira, and Mogi-Mirim. In 1871, Lane went to the United States and married on May 4 with Sarah McCorkle Poague, born in Rockbridge County, Virginia, on February 10, 1837. Sarah had been married to Samuel Lightner, a student of theology who died in the War Civil.
Another objective of Lane's trip back to the United States was to secure financial support for a college and for work as a whole, having spoken to the General Assembly of the Church of the South meeting in Huntsville, Alabama. The couple Lane arrived in Campinas on October 30 of that year. After staying for a few months in a boarding house, they rented two rooms in the city center (General Osório Street corner with Regente Feijó), where he lived with the new missionary Arianna (Nannie) Henderson, who arrived in June to create a school for girls. Later the Lanes moved to the town where his four children were born. On January 13, 1872, Revs. Lane, Morton, James Baird, William Emerson, and the Presby-terians William P. McFadden and James McFadden Gaston, organized in Campinas the Presbytery of São Paulo.
The two new churches, Santa Bárbara and Campinas were in the Synod of Virginia. Later the Church of Penha (Itapira) was inscribed. This presbytery was extinct in 1877, resurfacing ten years later as the Presbytery of Campinas and West of Mines.
The International College, formally started in 1873, was a great success for almost two hundred students, many of them from distinguished families in the region. Lane was a great enthusiast of this institution, which he thought indispensable for the good formation of evangelical youth, making use of friends to obtain the necessary resources. He unfolded himself to improve the property, digging a well and setting up a pottery shop whose bricks served for the construction of both the college and the temple. Other workers came together: Mary Videau Kirk, William LeConte, John W. Dabney, and John Boyle. However, in 1879, in the midst of a series of financial crises, Morton left the school and went to São Paulo.
The school continued for a few more years, now focused on evangelism and leadership training. Two new educators arrived in 1882 and 1883: Charlotte Kemper and Mary Goodale. However, a new problem arose - yellow fever. Later this required the moving of the institution to Lavras, where it came to be called the Gammon Institute. While the mission's educational project was struggling, Rev. Lane would devote himself, to his great vocation - the evangelistic work. Other fields of the early times were Penha (Itapira), whose church Lane and Morton organized on January 10, 1874, and Mogi Mirim.
After Rev. Emerson's death and Rev. Baird's return to the States United, Lane and his colleagues gave assistance to the American immigrant church in Santa Barbarian. Rev. Lane has also toured relentlessly many other cities and towns of the interior, such as Piracicaba, Water Choca (Monte-Mór), Capivari, Tietê, Água Branca, Itu, Porto Feliz, and Tatuí, arriving at Botucatu. Going east, he was in Itatiba, Bragança, Amparo, Serra Negra, São João da Boa Vista, White House, and São José do Rio Brown. On several of his trips, he was accompanied by German Jacob Filipe Wingerther. In 1876, on one of his visits to Itapira, Lane was accompanied by the young man Júlio César Ribeiro, the future philologist and writer, who helped him in preaching. On August 11, 1878, Lane had the satisfaction of inaugurating Campina's second Presbyterian temple in Brazil, built by him.
He contributed to the coming to Brazil of several notable missionaries, such as the Rev. Samuel R. Gammon. In addition to his work as an evangelist and founder of the college, Lane also prepared future pastors such as Álvaro Reis, Delfino dos Anjos Teixeira, and Flamínio Augusto Rodrigues. The Lane couple acquired a farmhouse near the town that became part of the current neighborhood of Jardim Guanabara. In it was the pottery shop that made the bricks for school, the houses of the missionaries, and the temple. The source of the money used to buy the material was quite unusual. A wealthy bachelor in Mrs. Lane's church decided to donate about five thousand dollars for each of the five most beautiful girls in the church. One of the girls was the young Sarah Poague.
On April 14, 1887, Lane and his companions John Boyle, John W. Dabney, George Wood Thompson and Delfino Teixeira created the Presbytery of Campinas and Oeste de Minas, five churches: Campinas, Santa Bárbara, Itapira, Mogi-Mirim and Itatiba. Lane was elected the first moderator. On September 6, 1888, in Rio de January, Rev. Lane participated in the creation of the Synod of the Presbyterian Church of Brazil, and was elected vice-moderator. He preached on the occasion the opening sermon, based on Luke 2-33.
Soon after the meeting, he returned to Campinas and took his family to Staunton, Virginia, on vacation. He spent a year visiting churches and seeking support for his missionary work. Leaving his family in the United States, he returned to Brazil in November 1889, accompanied by educators Mary Parker Dascomb and Charlotte Kemper, who returned from their holidays, and the new workers Samuel Rhea Gammon and Frank A. Cowan. At the end of the 1880s yellow fever outbreaks began in the region of Campinas, which hampered the work of the school and the churches. On May 1, 1889, this illness
took the life of Rev. George Wood Thompson and on March 9 of the year following his colleague John W. Dabney.
In April, Rev. Lane went to the United States with the five sons of Dabney. During his stay at Davidson College, North Carolina, it was conferred upon him the title of Doctor in Divinity. Lane returned to Brazil at the end of the year, in the company of the presbyterian Flamínio Rodrigues. One of the responsibilities that they were charged with was the direction of the newspaper Pulpito Evangelico, which he founded in 1888. In addition to sermons, the periodical contained historical notes, sketches of sermons, explanations of difficult texts, and comments. The Synod of 1891 had decided to install the Presbyterian Seminary in Campinas, in the dependencies of the International College.
Lane was elected chairman for the start of classes on April 1, 1892. Early that year yellow fever reappeared in Santos and soon reached Campinas. Lane, insisted that the other workers go elsewhere. However, he and Charlotte Kemper remained in the city to care for the sick and to comfort those who were dying. On March 18, the missionary Kemper was affected by the fever; Rev. Lane gave aid until she recovered. Then, on the 22nd, he himself became ill and died on March 26, 1892, at 1:30 p.m. A small group of church members performed the burial.
Like no shepherd Missionary Charlotte Kemper, still convalescing, instructed the gardener to recite Psalm 23 at the tomb. The simple marble column in the Cemetery of Saudade has the words of Acts 20:24 in English and Portuguese: "In nothing, I consider life precious to myself. " Dr. Horace Manley Lane, President of Mackenzie College, went quickly to Campinas but did not arrive in time to see his friend. He wrote to the Mission headquarters in Nashville and gave a beautiful testimony about the deceased worker. Sarah M. Lane returned to Brazil the following year to discuss the transfer of ownership of the mission. She would still live for twenty years, having died in Christiansburg, Virginia, on May 15, 1913.
The Lane couple had four children in Campinas: Edward Epes Lane (born 03-02-1873), Margaret Susan Lane (18-09-1874), Sallie McCorkle Lane (04-25-1876), and Wilson Poague Lane (22-10-1878), who died at a year and two months. Margaret stood out as a writer, using the pseudonym Mildred Welch. Edward Epes Lane studied in The United States, pastored several churches, and was a chaplain in World War I. In 1919, he visited Campinas, his native land, and two years later he moved to Brazil with his wife, Mary Abbott Cook Lane. He worked in São Sebastião do Paraíso and Sponsorship, where he definitively consolidated the Biblical Institute that bears his name (IBEL). In 1948 he moved to Campinas, where he did much for the Presbyterian Seminary, whose new headquarters was built on land donated by the family. He was president of the Missions and died on July 19, 1962. His son of the same name, Dr. Eduardo Lane, was born in São Sebastião do Paraíso on September 18, 1923, and was a well-known physician and elder who rendered many relevant services to the Presbyterian Church of Brazil and died in Campinas on June 28, 2002. One of his sons, Rev. William Lacy Lane (Billy), pastor and professor of theology in São Paulo and Paraná, is the continuation of a long tradition of service to the cause of Christ in Brazil.
Bibliography:
• Lessa, Annaes , 50, 73, 120, 180a (photo), 338, 413-15.
• Ferreira, History of IPB , 109-117, 151, 160-168, 189s, 214s, 218s, 245-47, 283, 285s,
327-330, 334, 341, 362-65; II: 280, 368s, 388s.
• Álvaro Reis, "Rev. Dr. Eduardo Lane, " Evangelical Pulpit (October 1895), 183-197.
• Braga, "The International College and its Founders", 42-47.
• A General Catalog of Union Theological Seminary in Virginia, 1807-1924 .
• Herculano de Gouvêa. Eduardo Lane . São Carlos: The Printer, 1931.
• Edward E. Lane. "A History of the West Brazil Mission". 1936. Manuscript no
published.
• Ministerial Directory, PCUS (1861-1950) , 371.
• Ferreira, Evangelical Gallery , 67-116.
• Mildred Welch. Edward Lane: 1837-1892. Nashville: Executive Committee of Foreign
Missions, CPSU.
• McIntire, Portrait , 7 / 2-38.
• Hahn, Protestant Cult in Brazil , 178-183.
• Fernandino Caldeira de Andrada, "Reverendo Eduardo Lane", Brazil Presbyterian
(Feb 1998), 20.
• Eduardo Lane III. "Footprints of Faith: Story of Edward Lane" [Campinas, 2000].
Unpublished manuscript
Rev. Edward E. Lane
A Presbyterian pioneer in Campinas and Mogiana Unlike his colleague George Nash Morton, who had had an aristocratic background, Edward Lane had a very humble background. He was born in Dublin, Ireland, between 1835 and 1837, and was orphaned as a child. He started to live with a family and was supported by unknown people whom each month sent money for housing, food, and clothing, as well as for the fees of a school run by the local parish priest. He was a lively, robust boy, and had a relatively happy childhood in contact with nature. A few years later, he was delivered to the care of a lady who took him to Liverpool and from there to the United States. On the trip, there was a fire in the ship and a few days later the boy was almost swallowed by the sea during a violent storm.
(Translated loosely from Portuguese)
In the early hours of June 28, 2002, Dr. Eduardo Lane, a well-known physician, and priest rendered relevant services to his community and to the Presbyterian Church of Brazil. This leader was a member of a family linked to the very roots of Brazilian Presbyterianism. His grandfather, the Rev. Edward Lane, along with his colleague George Nash Morton, was the first missionary sent to Brazil by the Presbyterian Church of the United States (PCUS), the former Church of the South. He arrived in Campinas in 1869 and was the founder of the Presbyterian Church in that city (1870) and of the famous International College (1873), later transferred to Lavras and named Instituto Gammon.
After 23 years of outstanding evangelistic and educational work, the selfless Rev. Lane died in 1892 of yellow fever. His eldest son Edward Epes Lane (1873-1962), was born in Campinas, after working as a pastor in the United States and serving as a chaplain in World War I, he came to Brazil with his wife, Mary Abbott Cook Lane, in 1921. At first he lived in São Sebastião do Paraíso and in Patrocínio, where he consolidated the Biblical Institute that bears his name (IBEL). In 1946 he settled in Campinas, his homeland, and did much for the Presbyterian Seminary, whose new headquarters was built on a large plot of land donated by the Lane family. The Rev. Edward E. Lane and Dona Mary had three children: Eduardo, Nancy (who died young) and John. where he consolidated the Biblical Institute that bears his name (IBEL). In 1946 he settled in Campinas, his homeland, and did much for the Presbyterian Seminary, whose new headquarters was built on a large plot of land donated by the Lane family. The Rev. Edward E. Lane and Dona Mary had three children: Eduardo, Nancy (who died young) and John. where he consolidated the Biblical Institute that bears his name (IBEL). In 1946 he settled in Campinas, his homeland, and did much for the Presbyterian Seminary, whose new headquarters was built on a large plot of land donated by the Lane family. The Rev. Edward E. Lane and Dona Mary had three children: Eduardo, Nancy (who died young) and John.
Eduardo was born on September 18, 1923 in São Sebastião do Paraíso, Minas Gerais. He attended primary and secondary school in different cities where his father was a pastor and completed his high school education at Mackenzie College in São Paulo. At that time, he resided in a house for the children of missionaries, initially located on Rua Cubatão and managed by Mrs. Bessie Allen, and later transferred to larger premises at Alameda Campinas, under the supervision of Mrs. Esther McIntire, wife of the Rev. Robert L. McIntire. Eduardo studied at the Escola Paulista de Medicina (1948-1953). On December 12, 1953, shortly before graduation, he married Nelly Bolliger, born in São Paulo on May 2, 1931, daughter of Mr. Paulo Guilherme Bolliger, of Swiss origin, priest of the Church of Campinas, and D. Ana Luiza Nogueira de Souza Bolliger. The nuptial ceremony was held in one of the rooms of the Presbyterian Seminary, as the main hall of that house of prophets was not yet completed. Officiating were the Rev. Américo J. Ribeiro, pastor of the Church of Campinas, Rev. José Borges dos Santos Jr., whose wife had been raised with the bride's mother and was her namesake, and the groom's father, the veteran Rev. Edward Epes Lane, then 80 years old.
After the wedding and graduation, the couple went to the United States, where Eduardo did his medical residency at Grady Memorial Hospital, in Atlanta, Georgia, for a year and a half. It was the time of the Korean War and there was a shortage of doctors in the United States. In mid-1955, the Lane couple moved to São Paulo, in the Cambuci neighborhood, at which time they attended the Jardim das Oliveiras Presbyterian Church. A year later (1956), Dr. Eduardo went to direct the Hospital Evangélico de Rio Claro, which had been donated by the well-known Presbyterian philanthropist, Colonel Joaquim Ribeiro, to the Associação Evangélica Beneficente. This institution was in a precarious situation and was fully recovered by the new director, who resided in the hospital's own premises. In July 1962, Dr. Lane settled in Campinas, where he remained for the rest of his life. In the beginning, he worked at Clínica Diagnóstica, created in partnership with his brother John Lane, also a doctor. This organization evolved into the Eduardo Lane Clinic, located on the family property in Jardim Guanabara, which faced difficulties and even criticism from certain sectors, but ended up becoming one of the most respected in the city and a reference for its standard of care.
Another important area of activity of Dr. Eduardo was the ecclesiastical sphere, both locally and regionally, and nationally. He was elected elder for the first time in 1959, at the 1st Presbyterian Church in Rio Claro. In 1962, he became presbyter of the Church of Jardim Guanabara, which began its activities on the premises of the Presbyterian Seminary and later moved to its own facilities in the same neighborhood. He held the position of president of the Presbytery of Campinas twice, was 1st and 2nd secretary several times, and was executive secretary for twelve years. He presided over the Synod of Campinas twice, was 1st secretary once, and was a member of the Synod's tribunal from 1997 to 1999. In 1978, Dr. Eduardo was responsible for the preaching point at his church in Barão Geraldo, near Campinas. In the same year, preached at the celebration of the couple's silver wedding, the old friend Rev. José Borges dos Santos Jr. The following year, the Lane family moved their residence to that prosperous suburb. After doing an internship in the area of gynecological endocrinology in Leeds, England, in 1980, Dr. Lane took up permanent residence in Barão Geraldo, whose Presbyterian Church was organized in 1982. In that year he became an elder of his new church.
Always willing to serve the cause to which his father and grandfather were so dedicated, Dr. Eduardo was dean of Southern Presbyterian Seminary from August 1966 to December 1974, a troubled time in church life. Thanks to his conciliatory spirit, he greatly helped that theological institution. In the words of his wife Nelly, he was like the boy who put his little finger in the crack in the dam to prevent the damage from becoming irreversible. In 1974, he ran for president of the Supreme Council of the Presbyterian Church of Brazil. He was IPB representative at the Gammon Institute assembly in Lavras, and president of the same. In 1990 and 1994, he was elected by the Supreme Council to join the Board of Trustees of Instituto Presbiteriano Mackenzie, holding the presidency of that body from August 1994 to July 1999.
The Doctor. Eduardo Lane left eight children, four men, and four women: Eduardo Lane (IV), born on April 16, 1955, in the United States, agronomist; Paulo Bolliger Lane, born on April 4, 1956, in Campinas, mechanical engineer; Margaret Lane, born on October 28, 1959, in Rio Claro, Christian educator; Anelisa Bolliger Lane, born on November 10, 1960, in Rio Claro, nurse; Mary Lane, born on October 28, 1961, in Rio Claro, Christian educator trained by IBEL; Sara Bolliger Lane, born on September 18, 1962, in Campinas, special education teacher; William Lacy Lane (Billy), born on October 13, 1963, in Campinas, pastor and professor of theology; and Marcus Bolliger Lane, born on May 2, 1970, in Campinas, a mechanical engineer. Sara and Marcus were born, respectively, on the father's and mother's birthdays. Eduardo, Margaret, Anelisa, and Sara reside in the United States. The Doctor. Eduardo also leaves thirteen grandchildren.
The funeral ceremony was held in the auditorium of the Presbyterian Seminary of Campinas, under the direction of Rev. Dr. Silas de Campos. Several speakers, both pastors, and laypeople, took the floor, highlighting the righteous character and valuable contributions of the illustrious deceased. The bulletin of the Presbyterian Church of Barão Geraldo containing the memorial service program included an expressive reflection written by Rev. Dr. Waldyr Carvalho Luz, former professor at the seminar, highlighting three aspects of Dr. Eduardo Lane: the illustrious doctor, the model Christian and the exemplary citizen. The burial was held in the late afternoon at Flamboyant Cemetery, speaking on the occasion, on behalf of the national church, Rev. Guilhermino Cunha, President of the Supreme Council.