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REVERAND ARNOLD EDWIN MOODY

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Reverand Arnold Edwin Moody, Presbyterian Minister
by Peter Wilson, Park Rapids, Minnesota

After buying nearly a mile of shoreline on the south shore of Big Sand Lake, Rev. Arnold Edwin Moody summered in Park Rapids from 1911-1928. I suspect he was invited to preach at least one or more Local congregations, since he had a broad view of Christianity. Rev. Moody was active in the early Boy Scout movement and many humanitarian religious activities. When he died his wife, Mary Isobel, and mother-inlaw, Sarah Laura Wright Beckwith, wintered on Big Sand during the depression, and knitted Christmas treats for Dayton's. There were no church pensions for widows of many ministers then, nor Social Security, and their savings were lost during the Depression. Yet their son Alexander Moody finished a law degree, Leonard Moody finished a medical degree, and Mary Moody Anderson finished college at a woman's college in Nevada MO. Their son Frank Moody learned a technical trade, but loved working as a fishing and hunting guide in the area when he was young and later retired with his wife Frances to Loon Lake.

All the family visited the Moody Bible Institute in Chicago at one time or another because Dwight Lyman Moody was a great uncle, I believe, of Rev. Arnold Edwin Moody.

Frank Moody is the only member to live in Hubbard Co. today, but his cousin Dwight Moody keeps an uninsulated summer cottage almost across the road in the easternmost part or the original 1911 purchase. Both are pretty well secluded from the road. Frank and Rosemary Moody are active in the Hubbard County Historical Society and court house art museum, I believe. Dwight and Mary just come up for 2 weeks in the summer from Aledo IL, usually in the August. Frank and his cousin Dr. David Moody in Florida have pretty extensive documentation of the Moody family in Hubbard Co. and in colonial America. They can correct and elaborate on what I am only writing from memory.

I spent many happy days at old cottage on Big Sand before it burned to the ground about 1984. There was a good photo in the Enterprize. By that time Sophus Marcus Anderson and Mary Moody Anderson, a retired elementary teacher in PR, were living on the lake. Their 2 children, Stephen Anderson and Mary Anderson Wilson were living in the Seattle area and Minneapolis, respectively.