Born: February 9, 1854, Oregon, Ogle County, Illinois.
Died: January 5, 1892, on a ship near Sierra Leone.
Buried: At sea.
Dake was the founder of the Pentacost Bands (not Pentecostal) that evangelized Illinois, Iowa, Kansas and Ohio. He was on a missionary trip at the time of his death.
--www.hymntime.com/tch
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Vivian Adelbert Dake, the oldest of five children was born February 9, 1854, in Oregon, Agle County, Illinois, to Athelia Merrill Dake and Jonathon Woodcock Dake. Jonathan Dake was at this time pastor of the Methodist Episcopal Church. In 1860, he and his wife enrolled as charter members of the newly organized Free Methodist Church. Vivian, who was then six years of age, grew up in the Free Methodist Church, becoming one of its able preachers.
His desire for an education was granted through an unusual circumstance; directly connected to the founder and first Bishop of the Free Methodist Church, Benjamin Titus Roberts. At a camp meeting in 1867, the bishop was raising money for seminary buildings at North Chili, New York, one of the first to give was a poorly dressed young teenager who gave ten cents. In 1870, after the school was established, this story was repeated in another camp meeting with an appeal for someone to support this boy in school, as his parents were unable to help him. A man responded to the need.
When Vivian heard the news he could go to school, he was jubilant, causing him to turn a somersault and stand on his head. He entered Chili Seminary in 1872, at eighteen years of age. Following graduation, he entered Rochester University, completing only three terms before leaving to begin his ministry. He preached his first sermon July 12, 1874, at Jefferson, Iowa. In the spring of 1876, he taught a course in Greek at the Seminary.
Dake was married to Lenna Bailey at Birmingham, Iowa, in October 1876. In this same month, he was appointed by the Illinois Conference to the St. Charles Church. Because of his wife's frail health, he was not able to accept. They accepted work in the Iowa Conference where the climate was more suitable. Mrs. Dake died in December, 1876. On January 30, 1878, he married Ida Campbell of Fairfield, Iowa. The couple's son, Bertie, died at the age of three, shortly before the birth of their daughter Mary, in December 1881. Two more daughters, Carrie and Ruth, were born to this union.
From 1876 to 1881, he served churches in the Iowa Conference; also traveling widely as an evangelist. He received his ordination as elder at the Iowa Conference in September 1881. In 1882, he joined the Minnesota and Northern Iowa Conference, receiving an appointment as conference missionary. It was during this year, in a revival meeting lasting nearly 3 months, that he wrote his first song, entitled "My Cross."
In 1885, he joined the Michigan Conference and was appointed as Conference evangelist. It was at Parma, Michigan, on July 25, 1885, that the Pentecost Bands were permanently started by Dake.
Dake's work centered in the Pentecost Bands. These consisted of groups of itinerant evangelists; mainly young people, who were assigned to do evangelistic work in dozens of cities in the United States and around the world. In this he was ahead of his generation. From 1889 until his death, Dake traveled in Germany, England, Norway, and Monrovia.
It was while in Monrovia that he contracted a tropical disease and died on January 5, 1892, in Sierra Leone.
His biographer lists more than forty hymns and prems written by Dake, the most famous and most characteristic of his works being "We'll Girdle the Globe with Salvation." This particular song, the composer of which was his wife, Ida, appeared in the 1910 edition of the Free Methodist Hymnal.
--Arlene Clyde, DNAH Archives
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