Cardey, Elmer Lee (1884–1973)

Elmer Lee Cardey served as a pastor and conference president but was best known for his achievements as a public evangelist both in the United States and South Africa.

Education, Marriage, and Early Ministry

Elmer was born January 16, 1884, in the village of Cassville, Wisconsin, located on the banks of the Mississippi River. His parents, James Henry Cardey (1840-1906) and Julia Polander Cardey (1841-1915), operated a farm in Grant County. They became Seventh-day Adventists about a decade before Elmer’s birth. He was their tenth and last child.¹

His mother’s influence, in particular, along with his own reading led Elmer as a teenager to dedicate his life to Christ. He was baptized during a camp meeting at Kankakee, Illinois, in 1901. After two years at Bethel Academy in Wisconsin, Elmer enrolled at Emmanuel Missionary College in Berrien Springs, Michigan, in 1902, the second year of its operation. For the next two years he took the ministerial course under Professor Edward A. Sutherland, the college president.²

On March 28, 1905, Elmer married Effie Golden Philbrick in Du Quoin, Illinois.³ In June, Cardey began ministry in the Southern Illinois Conference. During the next year and a half he showed early promise as an evangelist, engaging in several series of meetings and raising up two churches.⁴

Central American Mission

In November 1906 the young couple began mission service in Central America, based in Belize (then British Honduras). Cardy was appointed director of the Central American Mission and ordained by Irwin H. Evans and Eugene W. Farnsworth, on January 17, 1907, at a meeting of the West Indian Union Conference, conducted outdoors due to destruction caused by a massive earthquake two days before.⁵

The Central American Mission territory comprised Belize and Honduras, including the Bay Islands. At a meeting held March 5-15, 1908, at Coxen Hole, Roatan, one of the Bay Islands, Cardey led out in organization of the Central American Conference. Still only 24, with less than three years’ experience in ministry, Cardey was fortunate to have William A. Spicer, secretary of the General Conference, on hand for guidance. Guatemala and El Salvador were added to the territory of the former mission, with Guatemala City becoming the headquarters of the new conference, even though Adventists as yet had no organized presence there.⁶

As president, Cardey led out for the next year in the formidable task of pioneering Adventist mission in Guatemala. Much of Cardey’s future career would involve “reaping” large numbers of converts through public evangelism. But this setting required the more gradual work of seed-planting. To gain a foothold with a populace that was almost entirely Roman Catholic, the conference acquired the Guatemala English School from a missionary of another denomination whose health was failing. The school was operated entirely as a missionary enterprise, with the purpose of gradually building relationships and gaining credibility.⁷

Along with raising the couple’s first child, Paul Carlos, born in Belize on May 1, 1907, Effie assisted with editing the conference paper, the Central American Herald. However, her health deteriorated, making it necessary for the family to return to the United States.⁸

Evangelism in Southern California

Elmer entered evangelistic work in the Southern California Conference in June 1909. During the next 18 months he conducted one series after another—five in all, with notable success. Meetings in Orange, for example, led to organization of a new church with 42 members. In all, Cardey reported baptizing 175 persons during this intensive period of labor.⁹

Effie gave birth to their second son, Norman Leroy, on November 4, 1909. Both sons eventually became physicians practicing in southern California.¹⁰ Effie’s health, however, deteriorated, rendering her an invalid. When Elmer accepted a call to the New York Conference and left California in December 1910, Effie did not move with him, but remained in southern California in the care of her mother, Sarah Philbrick (1856-1942).¹¹

Evangelism in New York State

Cardey’s first year in New York state was devoted to planting a church in Troy.¹² In April 1912 he began work in the state capital, Albany, with what he called “something of an experiment.” Prior to the beginning of tent meetings on June 15, two Bible workers along with church members took door-to-door the first of ten tracts newly authored by Cardey. Those who consented received the remaining nine week by week. After three weeks, he reported that personal contact had been established with 1,900 families who were still accepting the tracts.¹³

During the Albany meetings, Cardey stirred public controversy with his criticism of the papacy, particularly in a presentation titled, “Will Rome Rule America?” The evangelistic tent finally was closed down by order of the county sheriff. However, many in the community, including some ministers of other denominations and public officials, supported the Adventist evangelist’s right to preach his beliefs.¹⁴ As Cardey and his team continued their labors in 1913 and early 1914, “a number of substantial persons,” in the words of General Conference president A. G. Daniells, accepted the Adventist message. Daniells came to Albany for services on December 13 and 14, 1914, to dedicate a church building acquired in the Capitol Hill section of the city to house the growing congregation.¹⁵ Cardey was particularly gratified by the “fine class of men” who joined the church during his labors in Albany—more men than in any of his previous evangelistic campaigns, some of whom, at least temporarily, lost high-paying positions because of their commitment to observe the Sabbath.¹⁶

Evangelism in Brooklyn and Boston

In March 1914, Cardey began evangelistic work in Brooklyn, New York, that extended over the next year. Here he was on the leading edge of a General Conference-backed effort to utilize newspapers more effectively to generate interest in city evangelistic meetings. Cardey’s work in collaboration with a branch office of the General Conference Press Bureau set up in Brooklyn led to publication of 200 articles in Brooklyn and Long Island newspapers between February and April 1915.¹⁷ By the end of 1915 he had baptized approximately 200 new members.¹⁸

Cardey moved on to the Boston, Massachusetts, area in January 1916 to take charge of evangelistic work in the city while also serving as chaplain at Melrose Sanitarium. He recorded 400 baptisms over the next four years, with many of the converts added to the Tremont Temple church.¹⁹

Ministry Interrupted

Cardey was elected president of the Southern New England Conference in November 1920.²⁰ The conference covered the states of Rhode Island and Connecticut, with headquarters in Hartford. He was re-elected in 1922 and 1924, but issues involving his marital circumstances complicated his standing as a church leader. The week after a California court granted him a divorce from Effie, Cardey married Frances Ethel Boyle (1882-1954) in Hartford on June 4, 1923.²¹ Frances, a nurse at Melrose Sanitarium, was born in Toronto, Canada. She began nurses’ training at Hinsdale Sanitarium in Chicago and completed it at Iowa Sanitarium in 1907.²²

Effie had not functioned as a wife or mother two her two sons for 13 years, with no sign of hope that she would ever regain the capacity to do so. For a time she was a resident patient at the Southern California State Hospital for the Inebriate and Insane at Patton, California.²³ Nevertheless, Cardey’s divorce and remarriage violated the denomination’s position that the Bible permits divorce only in cases of adultery. In 1926 the Atlantic Union Conference leadership concluded that it was necessary for Elder Cardey to step down as conference president and withdraw from ministry altogether.²⁴

The Cardeys moved to Takoma Park, Maryland, where Elmer earned a living as an automobile salesman and took an extension course in Commercial Law from LaSalle University.²⁵ Effie died on October 9, 1929, in Pomona, California, at age 42. Pulmonary tuberculosis and epilepsy were identified as the cause of death.²⁶

Ministry Resumed

Cardey had been cooperative with fellow church leaders through the painful experience of his dismissal from ministry and he and Frances continued to live as devoted Seventh-day Adventists in close proximity to General Conference headquarters. In 1933, although not yet returned to denominational employment, he was allowed to resume public ministry as pastor of the Laurel, Maryland, church.²⁷

In 1934, Cardey accepted a call to Lincoln, Nebraska, serving for two years as pastor of the College View church and one year as director of the Home Missionary Department of the Central Union Conference. His evangelistic efforts in Lincoln won 225 new believers.²⁸ Here he was one of the first to use the “jury trial” to help stir interest: 12 jurors were selected from the audience to hear the evangelist prosecute his case against the papacy for the crime of changing the day of the Sabbath in violation of God’s law and render their verdict.²⁹

South Africa and the VOP Bible School

Cardey returned to the east coast in 1937 to serve as pastor of the Baltimore First church. He began an evangelistic series in the fall that ran for 13 weeks, after which 65 were baptized. In May 1938 the Cardeys left Baltimore for a new assignment in South Africa, touring Europe and the Middle East en route.³⁰ Cardey raised up three new churches in Cape Town and, in 1943, was appointed director of the Voice of Prophecy Bible School, a new evangelistic project of the South African Union.³¹ Through an extensive advertising campaign in newspapers throughout the nation, South Africans were invited to take the Voice of Prophecy Bible lessons by correspondence and listen to Cardey’s weekly radio broadcast. The short wave radio signals covered the entire continent of Africa, reaching as far as England. During a fund-raising tour of major Adventist centers in the United States in 1947, Cardey reported that more than 100,000 were enrolled in the Bible correspondence school.³² Frances Cardey worked alongside her husband in operating the school, and as a musician at his evangelistic meetings.³³

The Twentieth Century Bible School of Prophecy

Cardey took up a similar project upon returning to the United States in 1950, serving as director of the Southern Union Twentieth Century Bible School of Prophecy, based in Atlanta, Georgia. More than one million students enrolled in the Bible correspondence course during his 13 years as director.³⁴

Frances Cardey passed away in Atlanta on August 13, 1954, at the age of 71.³⁵ Elder Cardey married Caryl Margarette Porter (1887-1968), a retired school teacher, on March 13, 1955, in Los Angeles, with Pastor John W. Osborn performing the ceremony.³⁶ After Elder Cardey retired in 1963, he and Caryl resided in St. Helena, California. In 1968, Caryl died at age 81.³⁷ Not content to remain alone, Elder Cardey, at age 85, married 65-year-old Dorothy Hope Updyke (1904-1986) on October 26, 1969.³⁸

Legacy

Elmer Lee Cardy went to his rest at age 89 on January 16, 1973, in St. Helena,³⁹ leaving a legacy of relentless dedication and innovation in public proclamation of the Seventh-day Adventist message throughout a career that spanned more than half a century.

Sources

Cardey, E. L. “Albany.” Atlantic Union Gleaner, May 15, 1912.

Cardey. E. L. “Boston.” Atlantic Union Gleaner, January 29, 1919.

Cardey, E. L. “The Central American Conference.” ARH, May 14, 1908.

Cardey, E. L “The Greatest Event.” Southern Tidings, January 31, 1951.

Cardey, E. L. “Guatemala, Central America.” ARH, November 12, 1908.

Cardey, E. L. “New York—Albany.” ARH, April 9, 1914.

Cardey, E. L. “Troy,” Atlantic Union Gleaner. January 10, 1912.

Clifford, F. G. “A Nation-Wide Evangelistic Project.” South African Division Outlook, July 15, 1943.

Daniells, A. G. “The Dedication of the Albany (N. Y.) Church.” ARH, January 15, 1914.

“Elmer Lee Cardey.” FamilySearch. Accessed January 27, 2025. https://www.familysearch.org/tree/person/sources/2Z3K-6XD.

“Elmer Lee Cardy obituary.” ARH, October 26, 1973.

“Frances Ethel Boyle obituary.” Southern Tidings, September 8, 1954.

“Julia Palander Cardey obituary.” ARH, May 13, 1915.

Moffett, W. F. “Chesapeake New Notes.” Columbia Union Visitor, May 19, 1937

Secretariat Missionary Files, RG 21, Record 114883. General Conference of Seventh-day Adventists Archives, Silver Spring, MD (GCA).

Slade, E. K. “Notice.” Atlantic Union Gleaner, August 18, 1926.

Weeks, Howard B. Adventist Evangelism in the Twentieth Century. Washington, D.C.: Review and Herald, 1969.

Woodman, I. J. “Signs of the ‘Loud Cry’ in Africa.” Central Union Reaper, March 4, 1947.

Notes

1. “Elmer Lee Cardey,” FamilySearch, accessed January 27, 2025, https://www.familysearch.org/tree/person/sources/2Z3K-6XD; United States Census, 1880, FamilySearch, accessed January 27, 2025; https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:MN4K-XFG; Elmer Lee Cardey Biographical Information Blanks, January 7, 1947, and January 16, 1938, Secretariat Missionary Files, RG 21, Record 114883, GCA; “Julia Palander Cardey obituary,” ARH, May 13, 1915, 22.↩

2. Elmer Lee Cardey Biographical Information Blanks, GCA.↩

3. Illinois, County Marriages, 1810-1940, FamilySearch, accessed January 27, 2025, https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:Q28Z-LSDG.↩

4. Elmer Lee Cardey Biographical Information Blanks, GCA.↩

5. I. H. Evans, “The West Indian Union Conference,” ARH, February 7, 1907, 12-13.↩

6. E. L. Cardey, “The Central American Conference,” ARH, May 14, 1908, 12-13.↩

7. Elmer Lee Cardey Biographical Information Blanks, GCA; E.L. Cardey, “Guatemala, Central America,” ARH, November 12, 1908, 11-12; Seventh-day Adventist Encyclopedia, 2^nd rev. edition (1996), s.v. “Guatemala.”↩

8. Elmer Lee Cardey Biographical Information Blanks, GCA; “Effie G. Cardy obituary,” Pomona Progress-Bulletin, October 9, 1929, 15.↩

9. Howard B. Weeks, Adventist Evangelism in the Twentieth Century (Washington, D.C.: Review and Herald, 1969), 46; Elmer Lee Cardey Biographical Information Blanks, GCA.↩

10. Elmer Lee Cardey Biographical Information Blanks, GCA; “Elmer Lee Cardey,” FamilySearch.↩

11. “Effie G. Cardy obituary.”↩

12. E. L. Cardey, “Troy,” Atlantic Union Gleaner, January 10, 1912, 6.↩

13. E. L. Cardey, “Albany,” Atlantic Union Gleaner, May 15, 1912, 2-3.↩

14. Weeks, Adventist Evangelism in the Twentieth Century, 69-70.↩

15. A. G. Daniells, “The Dedication of the Albany (N. Y.) Church,” ARH, January 15, 1914, 15.↩

16. E. L. Cardey, “New York—Albany,” ARH, April 9, 1914, 15-16.↩

17. Weeks, Adventist Evangelism in the Twentieth Century, 70.↩

18. Elmer Lee Cardey Biographical Information Blanks, GCA.↩

19. Ibid.; E. L. Cardey, “Boston,” Atlantic Union Gleaner, January 29, 1919, 3-4.↩

20. E. K. Slade, “Recent Important Changes in the Atlantic Union,” Atlantic Union Gleaner, November 24, 1920, 1.↩

21. “Judgments,” San Francisco Reporter, June 2, 1923, 1; Elmer Lee Cardey Biographical Information Blanks, GCA. “Elmer Lee Cardy obituary,” ARH, October 26, 1973, 23, incorrectly states that Cardey married Ethel Boyle after the death of wife.↩

22. Frances Ethel Cardey Biographical Information Blanks, February 7, 1947, and January 16, 1938, Secretariat Missionary Files, RG 21, Record 114883, GCA.↩

23. Effie Cardey, 1920 United States Federal Census, accessed January 29, 2025,Hughes/Boyle Family Tree, Ancestry.com.↩

24. E. K. Slade, “Notice,” Atlantic Union Gleaner, August 18, 1926, 8; Richard W. Schwarz and Floyd Greenleaf, Light Bearers: A History of the Seventh-day Adventist Church (Silver Spring, MD: General Conference of Seventh-day Adventists Department of Education, 2000), 470-471.↩

25. Elmer Lee Cardey Biographical Information Blanks, GCA↩

26. “Los Angeles, California, United States records,” FamilySearch, accessed January 29, 2025, https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/3:1:3QS7-L9SF-811C?view=index; “Effie G. Cardy obituary.”↩

27. R. E. Crawford, “Chesapeake—News Notes of Camp Meeting,” Columbia Union Visitor, August 31, 1933, 5.↩

28. Elmer Lee Cardey Biographical Information Blanks, GCA.↩

29. Weeks, Adventist Evangelism in the Twentieth Century, 171.↩

30. W.F. Moffett, “Chesapeake New Notes,” Columbia Union Visitor, May 19, 1937, 3.↩

31. “Elmer Lee Cardy obituary,” ARH, October 26, 1973, 23; F.G. Clifford, “A Nation-Wide Evangelistic Project,” South African Division Outlook, July 15, 1943, 1.↩

32. I. J. Woodman, “Signs of the ‘Loud Cry’ in Africa,” Central Union Reaper, March 4, 1947, 1; “Elmer Lee Cardy obituary.”↩

33. “Frances Ethel Boyle obituary,” Southern Tidings, September 8, 1954, 10.↩

34. E. L. Cardey, “The Greatest Event,” Southern Tidings, January 31, 1951, 1.↩

35. “Frances Ethel Boyle obituary.”↩

36. “California, County Marriages, 1849-1957,” FamilySearch, accessed January 29, 2025, https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:K86K-VRF.↩

37. “Cheryl Porter Cardey obituary,” Southern Tidings, July 1, 1968, 27.↩

38. “California, U.S., Marriage Index, 1960-1985,” accessed January 29, 2025, Ancestry.com;↩

39. “Elmer Lee Cardy obituary,”↩