E. D. Winstead and wife Jo, December, 1981, in their home in Wilson, North Carolina.
The portrait on the wall in the background is of John Tomline Walsh
(1816 - 1886), Jo Winstead's great-grandfather.* **
According to Leonard Wilson, Editor-in-Chief of the 1916 book Makers of America: Biographies of Leading Men of Thought and Action "Rev. Dr. John Tomline Walsh was one of the distinguished men of his generation." "He studied medicine, graduated in due course, and from then until the end of his long life he divided his time between the practice of medicine and the work of a missionary preacher, covering large sections of Virginia and North Carolina." He was "an editor of religious publications, a poet of no small merit and an author of note. He was a man of unusual ability and magnetic personality."
John Tomline Walsh was a driving force in the growth and development of the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) denomination in North Carolina. According to NCpedia: "The preeminent Disciples intellectual was John Tomline Walsh (1816-86), a Virginia physician and former Methodist who responded to an invitation in 1852 to evangelize eastern North Carolina." He founded the journal Christian Friend (originally published in Wilson, NC!) "to raise the intellectual level of religious discourse, emphasizing the legitimacy of interpreting scripture by recognizing that 'literal and figurative' scriptural language 'are often mingled together in the same prophesies and require great care and discrimination to understand.' "
For more information about John Tomline Walsh see the book The Life and Influence of Dr. John Tomline Walsh (pdf on this website) (or from https://archive.org/details/lifeinfluenceofd17grif .) "From the year 1852 until 1886 ... he was the outstanding leader among the Disciples in North Carolina." This book was written by Dr. Griffith Askew Hamlin, the son of history professor Dr. C. H. Hamlin, a professor at Atlantic Christian College when E. D. Winstead was also a professor there. (E. D. Winstead's son Ray and daughter Sue took a history course taught by Dr. C. H. Hamlin. Whenever Dr. Hamlin saw one of us on campus near someone else he would always stop and excitedly tell that person that we were a direct descendant of the famous John Tomline Walsh! RLW: I was always under the impression that he was somewhat envious of that relationship.)
For even more information about John Tomline Walsh also see HERE. For example, Dr. Walsh taught anatomy and physiology at a medical college in Pennsylvania from 1848 to 1850.
Although considered a relatively minor part of the accomplishments of John Tomline Walsh here are a couple examples of his poetry:
INVOCATION.
Gracious Master, heavenly King,
Help me thy glorious name to sing;
Help me to praise Thee day and night,
And live uprightly in Thy sight.
And when the night of death is o'er,
And time itself shall be no more;
May I appear in heaven with Thee,
From sin and sorrow ever free.
PRAYER I DON'T LIKE.
I do not like to hear him pray
Who loans at twenty-five per cent;
For then I think the borrower may
Be pressed to pay for food and rent;
And in that Book we all should heed,
Which says the lender shall be blest,
As sure as I have eyes to read,
It does not say, “Take interest.”
I do not like to hear him pray,
On bended knees about an hour,
For grace to spend aright the day,
Who knows his neighbor has no flour.
I'd rather see him go to mill,
And buy the luckless brother bread,
And see his children eat their fill,
And laugh beneath their humble shed.
I do not like to hear him pray,
“Let blessings on the widow be,”
Who never seeks her home to say,
“If want o'ertakes you, come to me.”
I hate the prayer so long and loud,
That's offered for the orphan's weal
By him who sees him crushed by wrong,
And only with his lips doth feel.
I do not like to hear her pray
With jeweled ears and silken dress,
Whose washerwoman toils all day,
And then is asked to “work for less.”
Such pious shavers I despise—
With folded hands and face demure,
That lift to heaven their “angel eyes,”
Then steal the earnings of the poor.
I do not like such soulless prayers—
If wrong, I hope to be forgiven;
No angel's wings them upward bears,
They're lost a million miles from heaven!
* John Tomline Walsh: David Green Walsh: Pauline Winton Walsh (William Lee Minshew, Sr.): Josephine Walsh Minshew (E. D. Winstead).
** The charcoal portrait on the wall is a Korean artist's copy of the 1885 illustration (also on this page) as commissioned by E. D. Winstead's son Ed ("Dee") while he was stationed by the U. S. Army in Korea in 1966.
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