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Appendix A
four items herewith: I have held 9,388 meetings and have made 11,744 missionary
visits. My work required the writing of 48,918 letters, and in getting to my appointments I have traveled 554,439 miles. This report does not include mileage to or from
my mission field, India, nor does it include any miles covered in my travel there.
Documents Concerning the Life and
Work of Jessie Weiss Curtis (chapter 5)
5.1 Article from a Hazleton, Pennsylvania, newspaper, 1927

Kingston Girl Holding Services Near Drums
Miss Jessie M. Weiss, of Kingston, daughter of a well-known merchant of
Wilkes-Barre, is stirring the countryside in the vicinity of Drums in Luzerne
County with an evangelistic campaign in which she is doing most of the preaching.
Stirred with the desire to give the gospel to the people, Miss Weiss secured a
tent, and with the aid of two men pitched it on the C. A. Straw farm, and people are
flocking by the hundreds to hear her. Coming from a radius of twenty miles, there
have been as many as 110 automobile loads at a single service.
It is the first evangelistic campaign that Miss Weiss has ever conducted, and her
success is very apparent from the way in which the crowds come night after night,
arriving in time to join in the old-time song-service, and remaining until the
preaching service is concluded.
With the skill of a clergyman of long years experience, Miss Weiss declares that
she will teach no doctrine but what she can substantiate from the Word of God.
Her repertoire of subjects reaches out over a wide range.
Methodists, Baptists and Lutherans, who have churches in the community are
regular attendants.
5.2 Excerpts from an interview with Jack and Joan Davis by the writer in their
home in Monrovia, Maryland, Aug. 26, 1984. (Mrs. Curtis was Jack’s great aunt.)

BENTON: How did Mrs. Curtis, nee Jessie Weiss, prepare for ministerial work?
JACK DAVIS: She went to Battle Creek. She was the youngest they had ever

accepted. But they were impressed with her sincerity, and so they
accepted her. At 14 years of age. She was going to be a nurse, at that
time, but later she changed to be a ministerial worker, a Bible worker,
they called it at that time.
BENTON: I had wondered about money, whether the church paid her very well. I
imagine it was a close budget.
JACK DAVIS: At first the church didn’t pay her anything because she financed everything herself. She had an effort back in 1927. When she held the effort
in Drums, Pennsylvania, the farmer who let them pitch the tent on his
property donated the property, and they build the church on the same
place where they had the tent. That’s where the church is located
today, the Drums Church in Drums, Pennsylvania.

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