Julia Tutwiler appears to have deeply influenced Miss Dee during some of her most formative years. But Sara Estelle Haskin was probably her most ardent advocate and mentor in her chosen mission work. She was the pioneer in the settlement house mission work. The United Methodist Church celebrated a bicentennial in mission work in 2019. Its published material concerning the celebration included the following information about the work of Miss Haskin:
“When the Methodist Episcopal Church, South (MECS), began its foray into settlement work at the turn of the twentieth century, it asked Sara Estelle Haskin to take up the post in Dallas. With no equipment and no real pattern to follow, she plunged into the work and began a very successful ministry. Her goal was to be a neighbor to those around her in the neglected areas of the city where she settled. She started three settlement houses that provided much-needed services for the area. Afterward, she moved to Nashville, where she worked with Mrs. Sallie Hill, an African-American woman, to start another center to serve the neighborhood. Eventually, her success in such endeavors led her to a position as secretary of literature of the Woman’s Missionary Council, located in Louisville. Biography was important to her, so she used many sketches of persons of faith in the literature she published.”
So Miss Haskin was the true leader in settlement work. She actually had started mission work to Blacks in Nashville that preceding Miss Dee’s Bethlehem House in Augusta. Miss Haskins was on the faculty of the Methodist Training School in Nashville while Miss Dee was a student. No doubt she was the faculty advocate who pushed for the approval of Miss Dee’s proposal to do missionary work to Blacks in the south. Miss Dee apparently work with Miss Haskin on the project for missions to Blacks in Nashville before going to Augusta, and likely many of her ideas were derived from that work.”
After Miss Dee successfully started a settlement project for Blacks in Augusta, the Women’s Missionary Council of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South decided that such projects should be called “Bethlehem” houses. The project in Nashville was then named as a Bethlehem House, and a number of other Bethlehem Houses were established.
Miss Haskin died in New York in 1940, working on the plan to implement unification of the Methodist denomination following the 1939 merger.
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