| Notes |
- Religious Herald, February 15, 1934
Rev. J.W. Wildman
Rev. James William Wildman, 82, well known for over half a century as a Baptist minister in Virginia, North Carolina and Florida, died Sunday at his home in Burkeville. He was born at Burtons Creek, near Lynchburg, October 16, 1851.
Mr. Wildman was the son of John Walter and Mrs. Mary Frances Bass Wildman. He graduated from Richmond College, where he was active in literary studies, won the Mu Sigma Rho debaters? medal and essay awards and became a Phi Kappa Sigma. He spent two years at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary at Greenville, S.C. graduating in 1877.
He was the inventor of the Wildman Folding Partition, a collapsible wall for dividing classrooms and auditoriums. The last years of his life were spent perfecting the device, which is manufactured at Burkeville.
Mr. Wildman retired from the ministry in 1929 and went to Burkeville to live. He is survived by his wife, Mrs. Mary Alice David Wildman, whom he married May 29, 1878, and two sons, W.D. Wildman, of Petersburg, and J.R. Wildman, principal of Wytheville High School.
Upon graduated from the seminary, Mr. Wildman became pastor of Fincastle Baptist church, serving from 1877-82. Other pastorates and the dates served were as follows:
First Baptist church, Roanoke, 1882-85; Calvary, Richmond, 1885; Laurinburg, N.C., 1885-87; Greenville, N.C., 1887-89; Pisgah-Sandy River, at Rice Va., 1889-92; Wadesboro, N.C., 1892-93; South Boston, Va., 1893-1904; Herndon, 1904-05; Chapel Hill, N.C., 1905-09; Sanford, Fla, 1909-13; Cluster Springs, Va., 1912-15; Hillsboro at Yancey Mills, 1915-20; Cluster Springs, 1920-29.
Brother Wildman rounded out full fifty years in the active ministry, serving in some of the best pastorates in the State, notably the First Church, Roanoke, and South Boston. He came of sturdy stock, and other avenues of usefulness opened for his choice, but prayer, parental influence, and the Holy Spirit won him for the ministry. Abraham offered Isaac, but this young man laid himself on the Altar: he yielded to the touch of the same Hand that vibrated the soul of Isaiah, Wycliff, Huss and Savonarola, saying, ?Here am I.? Youthful pleasures had but little appeal to this serious boyhood. His youth took him through the period of the Civil War, with all its awful, lurid atmosphere, blood and hardships. In college he died solid and abiding work. He loved study, but rather excelled in logic, physics, math, and mechanics. His student days did not end with the Seminary in Greenville. Integrity, honesty, sincerity and zeal were manifest in all his work; in the pulpit and in the pastorate. His sermons were animated, cogent, logical, captivating ? matter and delivery. He stabilized his churched, fortified them in the faith and stirred them to high endeavor. The Recording Angel was kept busy making glorious record of his pastorates, each one of which he left sounder, stronger, thriftier and easier for his successors.
Brother Wildman was original; never Spurgeonized. He was a thinker, deep yet broad and balanced. He never really grew old, as to the inner man. It is the mind and heart that make the real man, and these can be as young at eighty-two as at twenty-one. He believed in work, growth and faith, and when life functions in these, it remains young. Throughout his ministry he exalted Christ, and at the last could echo the final words of William Carey, who said, ?When I am gone say nothing about Dr. Carey, but speak about Cary?s Saviour.?
Wherever he lived and labored he abides in the ardent love and devotion of the people.
One of his noble kinsman, Dr. James H. Franklin, Secretary of the American Baptist Foreign Mission Society, writes Mrs. Wildman as follows: ?Cousin James was a very extraordinary man, in his character, his genuine ability, his sympathy, his forward look, and his Christian simplicity. I admired him greatly. Truly he was one of God?s nobleman, whose self-denying life proved he was a part of the salt of the earth. In thousands of hearts there is personal grief at hearing of his death. In your deep bereavement, you are comforted by Him who said, ?I am the resurrection and the life?; and you are thinking of your husband as having merely preceded you, and the rest of us, into the Other Room.?
Ah, ?He is not dead. He has but passed Beyond the mists that blind us here; Into the new and larger life, Of that serener sphere.?
Dr. Garnett Ryland wrote Mrs. Wildman: ?How attractive and real Heaven has become, since those whose presence made earth so sweet, are gathering there.?
Brother Wildman died December 31, and, after a funeral at Burkeville, he was buried in the Springhill Cemetery, Lynchburg, Va., Brethren Larsen, Wright, Lamm, Henderson, Jo. E. White and the writer taking part.
?Solider of Christ well done; Praise be the new employ; And while eternal ages run, Rest in the Saviours? joy.? W.S. Royal
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Bassett Family Association Database
1812 - 1890 (78 years)