Fifty-Seven Cents

57 Cents

The Temple Baptist Church of Philadelphia today has a seating capacity of 3,300 people.  The church is the origin of Temple University and the Temple University Hospital in Philadelphia.

Temple Baptist was a growing church in 1886 under the leadership of their pastor, Dr. Russell Conwell who is well known for his sermon entitled ‘Acres of Diamonds.’  Dr Conwell was walking to church one Sunday morning when he came across a young, shabbily-dressed girl, alone on the street, crying.  When he stopped and asked her what the matter was, she told him that she couldn’t go to Sunday School because the classrooms were full.  Dr Conwell learned her name was Hattie May Wiatt and that she lived in one of the city’s run-down tenements. 

Demand for the children’s’ classes was significant, and the church at the time had no choice but to turn many children away once classroom space was full, but his heart went out to this particular girl.  He picked her up, escorted her into the church personally, and walked her to a class she could be a part of.  As they walked to class, the Pastor told her, “someday we’re going to have a building big enough for all the little children who want to come hear about Jesus.”

Two years later, Pastor Conwell officiated Hattie May’s funeral after a sudden illness.  Her heartbroken mother handed him a small, worn-out purse she said had belonged to her daughter.  The pastor opened the purse to find 57 pennies (no small savings for a girl from a poor family at that time) and a scribbled note which read, “This is to help build the little church bigger so more children can go to Sunday School.”

Dr Conwell took those pennies and the note back to his church and issued a challenge to build.  He auctioned off the pennies one-by-one and immediately raised over $250 – enough to buy a nearby house which was the church’s first expansion.  For many years, Sunday School classes for children were held there and later, the first classes of Temple University.   As the building program took off, some members of the church formed what the called the “Wiatt Mite Society” with the goal of making Hattie May’s little offering grow as much as possible.  They raised a great deal of money, in large and small donations, toward the expansion of their church building and other needs of the church and eventual University.

Later, when the church was ready to build a new campus, the church leadership was negotiating with the bank to finance the purchase of the land.  Knowing the story of Hattie May, the banker offered the land, worth ten thousand dollars, to the church for a down-payment of fifty-seven cents.

https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/57-varieties-of-truth/

https://www.truthorfiction.com/hattiemaywiatt/