Plummer, Lorena Florence (Fait) (1862-1945)

Lorena Florence Plummer (née Fait) was a church administration, a teacher, an author, and a Sabbath School director at the General Conference of Seventh-day Adventists.

Early Life

Plummer was born in Pennville, Indiana, on April 27, 1862¹ to John (1831-1914) and Elizabeth (1843-1916) Fait.² As a child, she was baptized and joined the Christian (Campbellite) Church and attended schools in Pennville. She was baptized in January in a hole cut in the ice.

Plummer subsequently served as a one-room teacher in a country school for eight years. Then she accepted a call to “assist” in high-school teaching in Nevada, Iowa, where she met and married the principal, Frank Everett Plummer (1858-1918) on July 10, 1883. Two years later the Plummers accepted a call to the Des Moines, Iowa, High School.

Involvement in Adventism

While in Des Moines, Della Wallace asked Plummer if she was interested in promoting Bible study. She wished to “call once a week and conduct Bible readings.” Since she thought this was how they welcomed new people into the community, Mrs. Plummer “entered heartily into the plan.” She invited more friends. After a while, A. G. Daniells, a local pastor was invited and gave most of the Bible studies. The readings were “wonderful,” and the message “plain and clear.” After several weeks it was whispered that they were Seventh-day Adventists. “No matter,” they said, “we will quit when they try to make seventh-day people out of us.” But when Flora Plummer discovered there was no Biblical authority for observing Sunday, “her defiance vanished, and her surrender was complete.” She made this decision in the spring of 1886, at a time when she was coached a debate team that had a contest on Friday evening. She described this as her “Gethsemane” experience in which she stood firm, but afterward, decided to devote her life full time to ministry instead of teaching.³

Later that year, Plummer was asked to assist in the Sabbath School department for the Iowa Conference. In that capacity, she traveled throughout Iowa visiting small churches, giving presentations at camp meetings, running children’s programs, and selling books.⁴ In 1897 she was elected secretary (the second leadership officer) of the Iowa Conference, and in 1900 she likely briefly served as interim conference president when the president of Iowa Conference, Clarence Santee, was sent to California.⁵ In 1900 she left Iowa for Minneapolis and again, became responsible for Sabbath School work.⁶

The next year (1901) when the denomination was re-organized, and the International Sabbath School Association became a department of the General Conference, Plummer became the corresponding secretary of the department. In 1905 her husband’s work necessitated that they relocate to Washington, D.C., which permitted her to continue her involvement in the Sabbath School department at the General Conference.⁷ That same year they adopted two children: Donn Laurence (1905-1990) and Dorothy Virginia Boggs (1905-1977). Plummer’s husband, Frank, died on July 19, 1918. He became an Adventist shortly before he died.⁸

From 1913 to 1936 Plummer was director of the denomination’s Sabbath School department. She wrote numerous Sabbath School lessons for all ages, edited the Sabbath School Worker (1904-1936), and regularly contributed to church periodicals with tips on how to run a Sabbath School. She wrote several books about small groups and how to teach effectively, including The Soul-Winning Sabbath School, The Soul-Winning Teacher, and The Spirit of the Teacher. She also wrote on the histories of the Sabbath School work and young people’s work. She believed in the three pillars of an effective Sabbath School, which meant outreach, Bible study, and the opportunity to give sacrificially to advance the mission of the Church.

Final Years and Legacy

One of her lasting contributions was the thirteenth Sabbath School Offering for missions at the end of each quarter of the Sabbath School lesson—an initiative that has raised millions of dollars ever since and continues to the present in Adventism.

The Plummers lived at 128 Willow Avenue in Takoma Park, Maryland, which is sometimes featured in Adventist heritage tours. Plummer retired in 1936 but continued serving the Church. She wrote the Sabbath School lessons on the book of Acts and the life Christ as well as camp meeting material for children from eight to twelve years old. She died at the Washington Sanitarium, April 8, 1945.⁹ She is buried next to her husband in Rock Creek Cemetery in Washington, D.C.¹⁰

Sources

Covington, Ava Marie. They Also Served: Stories of Pioneer Women of the Advent Movement. Washington, D.C.: Review and Herald, 1940.

Hoopes, L. A. “Missionary Reading Circle.” ARH, November 14, 1899.

“Mrs. L. Flora Plummer Dies; Adventist Church Leader.” Evening Star, April 9, 1945.

Myers, Marie Louise. “L. Flora Plummer: First Woman General Conference Sabbath School Secretary.” Term paper, Andrews University, 1977.

Obituary. ARH, May 24, 1945.

Plummer, Frank Everett. Gracia: A Social Tragedy. Chicago: Charles H. Kerr, 1899, 1900.

Plummer, L. Flora. Early History of the Seventh-day Adventist Young People’s Work. Washington, D.C. Young People’s Missionary Volunteer Department, n.d.

Plummer, L. Flora. From Acorn to Oak: A History of the Seventh-day Adventist Sabbath School Work. Washington, D.C.: Review and Herald.

Plummer, L. Flora. From Which Fountain? Washington, D.C.: Young People’s Missionary Volunteer Department, n.d.

Plummer, L. Flora. History of the Seventh-day Adventist Young People’s Work. Washington, D.C.: Young People’s Missionary Volunteer Department, n.d.

Plummer, L. Flora. The Present Situation. n.p., n.d.

Plummer, L. Flora. The Soul-Winning Teacher. New York: Fleming H. Revell, 1934.

Plummer, L. Flora. The Spirit of the Teacher. Washington, D.C.: Review and Herald, 1935.

Plummer, L. Flora. The Spirit of the Teacher. Rev. ed. Takoma Park: Review and Herald, 1967.

Plummer, L. Flora. What Price Record? Sabbath School Department, n.d.

Santee, Clarence. “Our Editors.” The Workers’ Bulletin, December 12, 1899.

Seventh-day Adventist Encyclopedia. Second revised edition. Hagerstown, MD: Review and Herald, 1996. S.v. “Plummer, Lorena Florence (Fair).”

Seventh-day Adventist Yearbook. Washington D.C.: Review and Herald, 1920.

Sustentation File, General Conference Archives, December 31, 1975.

United States Federal Census, 1860-1940.

Notes

1. Obituary, ARH, May 24, 1945, 19.↩

2. For detailed genealogical information, see: https://www.ancestry.com/invite-ui/accept?token=p8A840AX6Iy7RImZVoRCirx0tj1fOTc1YfTssqqDr-c= .↩

3. Ava Marie Covington, They Also Served: Stories of Pioneer Women of the Advent Movement (Washington, D.C.: Review and Herald, 1940), 26-27. See, for example, the listing in Seventh-day Adventist Yearbook for 1894 (Battle Creek, MI: General Conference of Seventh-day Adventists, 1894), 30.↩

4. Covington, They Also Served, 28-29.↩

5. For a description of her many responsibilities in the conference, see Clarence Santee, “Our Editors,” The Workers’ Bulletin, December 12, 1899, 89; The Workers’ Bulletin, January 26, 1897, 116; L. Flora Plummer, “Iowa Conference Proceedings,” ARH, July 5, 1898, 433. For the gap between Iowa conference presidents, see General Conference Committee Meeting, March 25, 1900, and March 31, 1900, 105, 127; The Workers’ Bulletin, June 12, 1900, 192. For the argument that Plummer held the position, see Eric E. Richer, “Women Conference Presidents: A Forgotten History,” Adventist Record, December 17, 2020. The period would have been quite brief though as she moved to Minnesota shortly after Santee went to California although she remained actively engaged in the Iowa Conference and listed as such in their periodical The Workers’ Bulletin.↩

6. Clarence Santee, “Welcome,” The Workers’ Bulletin, January 9, 1900, 108. For first efforts to establish Plummer in this position, see L. A. Hoopes, “Missionary Reading Circle,” ARH, November 14, 1899, 745.↩

7. See, for example, listings in Seventh-day Adventist Yearbook for 1905 (Washington D.C.: Review and Herald, 1905),16; Seventh-day Adventist Yearbook for 1909 (Washington D.C.: Review and Herald, 1909), 11; Seventh-day Adventist Yearbook for 1911 (Washington D.C.: Review and Herald, 1911), 6; Seventh-day Adventist Yearbook for 1914 (Washington D.C.: Review and Herald, 1914), 9; Seventh-day Adventist Yearbook for 1920 (Washington D.C.: Review and Herald, 1920), 12.↩

8. ARH, August 1, 1918, 24.↩

9. Obituary, ARH, May 24, 1945, 19.↩

10. https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/194777758/lorina-flora-plummer↩