Heritage

The Orphan, the Angel, and the Long Walk

Adventist pioneer Dan Shireman— builder extraordinary

Bert Haloviak
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The Orphan, the Angel, and the Long Walk
Everett Bartels | Unsplash

Dan Shireman was a survivor. His mother died when he was only 4. Three years later, in 1841, his father died in a train explosion, leaving Dan alone in the world.

So Dan learned about sleeping in barns, in the woods, on lumber piles. He wore his clothes “until they were in strings and rags.” He learned about rejection. People turned him away when they saw him “filled with vermin on his head and body.” They feared the contagious diseases he might be carrying. Dan made a vow: If ever he had his own home, he would never turn a needy person away.

Young Shireman became adept at many kinds of work as he struggled to survive. He learned carpentry and became a general mechanic and brick mason. In addition, he learned to walk great distances. When he was 16, he cared for the horses of a man who, in return, took him to northern Illinois. Dan eventually walked from there to Iowa, where he supported himself working at various trades.

Dan Shireman married Amelia McDowell in 1857. The next year, in Lisbon, Iowa, he heard Adventist preacher Josiah Hart present the Sabbath. Within 30 minutes Dan accepted the new light. Soon he and Amelia became Sabbathkeeping Adventists and began their lifelong ministry.1

They first tried to establish an Adventist presence in West Union, Iowa, where Amelia’s parents lived. Because of his deep poverty, Dan walked 130 miles to get there. The attempt to convince Amelia’s parents failed. Yet the Shiremans succeeded in introducing Adventism to Mary Jane Daniells, mother of a future president of the General Conference.

Shireman’s “longest walk” came in 1860. His longing for fellowship with believers was so strong that he walked from West Union to the conference meeting at Marion, Iowa, a round-trip of 160 miles. Dan felt well repaid for his long walk, however, for he met James and Ellen White for the first time and rejoiced with them in the conviction of the near Advent.

Ellen White inspired the type of ministry begun by the Shiremans. Most Adventist ministers of the time centered their evangelism on debates. Dan Shireman, however, became a forerunner of the caring pastoral ministry. He responded to Ellen White’s call for families to enter areas that had no Adventists. In such places the gospel message would flourish because of Sabbathkeepers who moved in and lived humble lives that witnessed to their neighbors.

The Shiremans thus began a ministry that resulted in their building more than 45 homes, in as many different locations. They left brand-new Adventist communities in every place they lived.

Message From an Angel

Dan’s ministry was affirmed dramatically in 1887. An “angel of the Lord” challenged the Shiremans to proclaim, the quickest way they could, “The Lord is coming.”2

The angel also wrote a message to the Shiremans: “God will have all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth” (see 1 Tim. 2:4). After signing the message “Christ’s Expositor,” the messenger suddenly disappeared. That experience and textual focus guided the Shiremans for the remainder of their lives. The all-inclusiveness of the gospel message became more and more meaningful to them.

Dan and Amelia Shireman began a new ministry in the mountains of North Carolina in 1890 with an urgent sense of mission. As he traveled the mountains, Dan recalled crossing that same Appalachian chain some 40 years earlier. He remembered his poverty, lack of education, isolation, and fears. From Dutch Creek the couple walked together the nine miles to Mast. There they began meetings, hoping to convince some about the truths of the everlasting gospel.

Dan Shireman quickly became part of the mountain community. His humble past and genuine love of people endeared him to the mountaineers. His humanitarian, nonsectarian concerns made him welcome in many a community and church congregation.

Elder Shireman built more than Seventh-day Adventist churches in the mountains of North Carolina. As he witnessed the needs of these communities, he began to build small schools. The first was at Hildebran, where Dan initially held tent meetings and established an Adventist community. That school included a teachers’ home, students’ home, farm and farmhouse, blacksmith shop, and chapel. The Hickory Mercury newspaper praised the results, applauding the Adventist pastor for “the vast amount of good one live, energetic, persevering Christian man can do in a neighborhood.” Other communities asked Dan to establish similar enterprises.

Shireman displayed remarkable energy. His workday began at 2:00 a.m. and usually occupied 16-18 hours, even in his 70s. He often lacked adequate nourishment, sometimes subsisting on bread and water. This self-imposed poverty sprang from his commitment to the task.

Every man is not dependent upon a school or college education to do work for the Master, if he is converted to God, soul, body, and spirit.

After turning over operation of the Hildebran school complex to the North Carolina Conference, Dan responded to a request from the citizens of Toluca. Within 24 hours of the Shiremans’ arrival, some 20 men with teams reported to work.

Another phase of Dan Shireman’s remarkable ministry began in 1905, at age 71. He developed an enterprise that he had been preparing for all his life. The Shiremans had constantly made their home a boarding place for the needy. Now Dan built a home in Toluca that he designed as a live-in family school for orphans.

During this time Amelia died a painful death from stomach cancer, which had caused her agony for a decade. Dan wrote Ellen White that Amelia had urged him to continue the work he was doing for the orphans at Toluca.

As the widower reflected on the now-broken family ministry, he remembered Amelia’s tender sympathy toward the poor and how her willingness to share their troubles had endeared her to others. He reminisced about his six children, all of whom had died in their youth and were buried in five different locations. With his wife and six children dead, Dan felt “like a lone tree in a field with all the trees in the forest cut down.”

Soon Dan had a building with 16 rooms that served as an orphanage. He also had a school building with a home for teachers. The community donated 30,000 feet of lumber, and Dan sold his home at Hildebran to provide funds to support the orphans and teachers.

The Toluca school and orphanage provided a family setting for 15 to 20 orphans. Besides a “father” and “mother” for the children, the group consisted of a principal and his wife, a cook, a seamstress, a farm superintendent, and a teacher. Dan served as “general overseer.” The children of the family worked on the farm and in the various industries. Besides school and work, they participated in morning and evening worship services.

While in his 70s, Dan Shireman established enterprises similar to Toluca in several other locations in the North Carolina mountains.

Correspondence Ministry

After some near-fatal accidents and debilitating injuries, Elder Shireman reluctantly retired. Counsel from both Ellen White and the General Conference Committee convinced him. At age 77 he resigned himself to the more “sedate” life of a corresponding ministry.

Dan had remarried a few years earlier. He and his wife opened their home to a disabled writer and her homeless mother. Together the group wrote letters to those they could interest in the gospel. Since 2:00 a.m. had been Dan’s “getting-up time for years,” he could still fill his day spreading the gospel. He wrote to Mrs. White, “I expect to spend my closing days in His service.” He could not be idle, he told her. He and his wife visited neighbors, distributed SDA literature, held evening meetings, and told “the simple story of salvation.”

Ellen White often praised the kind of ministry fostered by the Shiremans. She considered that Dan had done “a noble work to advance the truth.” His efforts had been “in accordance with the will of the Lord.” She urged, “Many more should work as Brother Shireman has been working.”3

Mrs. White understood Dan Shireman’s sense of inferiority over his lack of formal education. She told the delegates to the 1901 General Conference session that he received his education as did John the Baptist in the wilderness. She praised his ministry of establishing “church after church” through his work as a carpenter and builder. She told the congregation, “Every man is not dependent upon a school or college education to do work for the Master, if he is converted to God, soul, body, and spirit.”4

Ellen White applied the Shireman experience to the variety of ministries possible within the church. While some may not preach, “they can help in many other ways.” Said she, “God has given us Brother Shireman’s work as an object lesson.” She added, “There are others who can and should work as he has worked.”5 Because of Dan Shireman’s “unpretentious” manner in presenting the gospel, he reached “a class that ministers generally cannot touch,” she concluded.6

Elder Shireman wrote one of his last articles for the Review in 1914. It recalled what the angel told him 27 years earlier: “We should live as if we believe with our whole hearts that the Lord is soon coming.”

Dan never forgot his origins. He wondered “why the Lord gave me the truth so early when there were so many educated and well-to-do persons who have never received it.” He came to this conclusion: “The humblest child of God can be instrumental in the salvation of many souls.”

Dan Shireman died January 26, 1920, at the age of 85. He rests beside Amelia in the cemetery at Hildebran, North Carolina.


1 While Mrs. Amelia Shireman participated fully in the family’s ministry, her story is not told here, since it would require a separate article.

2 The full experience appears in a document in the General Conference Archives and is affirmed in a letter from Ellen White to Brother and Sister Shireman, Apr. 17, 1902 (letter 61, 1902).

3 Ellen G. White manuscript 16, 1902.

4 Ellen G. White, in General Conference Bulletin, Apr. 8, 1901, p. 127.

5 Ellen G. White manuscript 37, 1901.

6 Ellen G. White to Edson White, Aug. 8, 1902.

Bert Haloviak

When this was written, Bert Haloviak served as assistant director of Archives and Statistics at the General Conference. He passed away October 18, 2022. This article appeared in the Adventist Review, May 31, 1990.

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