(ABOVE: Emeline Dryer—Find-a-grave. Public domain because photographed before 1925)

IMAGINE WORKING AND PRAYING for fifteen years toward a goal, raising funds for it, and finally seeing your vision realized—only to have the work wrested from you and placed in the hands of others. This happened to Emeline Dryer. Her vision was to create a school in Chicago to train men and women for Christian work. Endorsed by Dwight L. Moody and financed by Nettie Fowler McCormick and prominent businessmen, she succeeded.

Dryer wasn’t from Chicago but Massachusetts. Coincidentally in the year of her birth, 1835, Mariette and Emily E. Ingham founded New York’s first female college (the Attica Female Seminary, affiliated with the Presbyterian Church) where Dryer would graduate. (The school soon moved to LeRoy and was renamed for the town.) Dryer learned her letters early and her parents encouraged her intense desire for knowledge. When her parents died, an aunt adopted the girl, encouraged her Christian growth, and supported her ambition for an education.

In 1858, Dryer graduated from LeRoy and taught there before becoming the preceptress (principal) of Ewing Female University in Illinois. Next she taught at Illinois State Normal University—established to train high school graduates to become teachers. A bout of typhoid fever nearly killed her in 1870. While sick, she questioned what she had accomplished for Christ and decided she could do more. After her recovery, she gave up her salaried position to live by faith winning souls and training workers in fast-growing Chicago.

D. L. Moody, then America’s most famous evangelist, heard of her work and sought her out. He encouraged her to settle permanently in Chicago and continue soul winning. In response to the Chicago Fire of 1871, she led a women’s relief project. In 1873, Moody engaged her to head the Bible programs of the Chicago Avenue Church.

Moody agreed with Dryer that Chicago needed a Bible training institute to prepare workers for urban ministries. He promised his support in getting such a school founded; but, overwhelmed with his responsibilities as an evangelist, didn’t follow through.

Dryer’s refusal to give up her dream is a lesson in faith and perseverance. In 1883, Dryer and associates began prayer meetings for the founding of a training school. That same year Dryer organized the May Institute which brought gifted teachers together with ardent learners for a few weeks each year. The turnout was so high that Moody took notice. He said that if Dryer and her friends could raise $250,000, he would return to Chicago to found the school.

Dryer secured the necessary pledges and wrote Moody the news. Moody responded coolly. Furious at what seemed to her a betrayal, Dryer wrote back.

Through loneliness and trouble, and constraint, wearing work, then I held on. When others shuddered, I believed. When others hurried away, I prayed on and worked on. When others said you were never meant to come here, I believed that God had made you speak The Truth, in preaching and planned purposes. And I prayed on.

Moody came, and on this day, 5 February 1887, met with Dryer and other sponsors to found the Chicago Evangelization Society (later renamed Moody Bible Institute). From the start the board’s vision differed from Dryer’s and her lack of deference to male members antagonized some of them. A power play ensued. The following year, the board even gave to another woman the female work that Dryer had founded and managed.

Advised by Nettie McCormick, a peace maker, Dryer refused to become bitter. She moved into other leadership and evangelistic roles with women’s societies and with the Chicago Bible Society. She retired in 1903. In 1925, following a stroke, she died. Moody Bible Institute named a hall for her in 1997.

—Dan Graves

For more about Moody and the bible institute Dryer helped found, see CH #25 The Unconventional Dwight L. Moody