Harold Mars

The Reverend Harold Mars (1911 - 1989) was a prominent Narragansett Native American Christian preacher in Rhode Island and Upstate New York. He was a pastor at several evangelical churches in Kingston, Rhode Island and Rochester, New York. Besides these posts, Mars also travelled as a visiting preacher across the United States. He held the title of prophet for the Narragansett tribe.

Mars came from a family of preachers connected for generations to the Narragansett Indian Church in Charlestown, Rhode Island. Mars was also a carpenter, cabinet maker and building contractor.[1][2][3] He was once profiled on the cover of the Providence Sunday Journal Magazine.[4]

Mars attended Rhode Island State College), the Zion Bible Institute in Haverhill, Massachusetts, and Anderson College in Indiana. He was ordained to Christian ministry in 1938, at the former First Church of God in Kingston.[1] Mars earned five dollars a day during the 1940s preaching to congregations in Providence, Rhode Island, Peace Dale, Rhode Island, and Wakefield.[5] He then moved his family to Rochester, where he led the First Church of God for a decade.

In the 1960s Mars returned to Rhode Island to become the pastor of the Narragansett Indian Church in Charlestown, then in the 1970s returned to Rochester to the First Church of God.[1] During the Rochester years, his family always returned to Rhode Island for the August powwow, and Rev. Mars would preach in the Indian Church on that Sunday.[6] When Mars retired in the 1980s, he and his wife moved to a house in the woods near the old Narragansett reservation in Kingston RI. Mars died in 1989.[7]

Mars was interviewed by the folklorist William Simmons as a source for New England Native American lore and spirituality.[7][8] Mars stated that he could trace his ancestry from his father White Buffalo, also a preacher to Christian Indians, to the family of James, brother of "Father Sam" (Samuel Niles), the founder of the Narragansett Indian Church in the 1740s.[6][9]

Mars and his wife Laura (Fry) Mars had four children: Harold S. Mars Jr.; David K. Mars Sr., former chief sachem of the Narragansett tribe; the Rev. Roland C. Mars (1940-2015), who took over his father's mantle as preacher; and Janice L. Hill.[1] Roland carried on the family preaching tradition into the 21st century, but reached a smaller congregation as many younger Narragansett turned away from Christianity (which they called the religion that “came over on a ship”), and tried to revive their ancestral beliefs.[6][10]

References
  1. "Rev. Harold S. Mars Sr., 78, clergyman for 51 years, dies", The Providence Journal, November 27, 1989 (with correction published November 28, 1989).
  2. William S. Simmons, The Narragansett, Indians of North America series, New York: Chelsea House, 1989, p. 80-81, 84-86.
  3. "Tomaquag Museum's New Narragansett Indian Church Exhibit", Charlestown Citizens Alliance, March 18, 2018.
  4. Providence Sunday Journal Magazine, May 28, 1986.
  5. Among others he was pastor of the Nazarene Church in Wakefield, RI, and established and was pastor of the First Church of God in Peace Dale, RI. (See obituary notice, "Rev. Harold S. Mars Sr., 78, clergyman for 51 years, dies", op. cit.)
  6. Paul Davis, “One Nation, Two Worlds - Preacher carries on “the call” handed down through generations", Providence Journal, August 4, 2004.
  7. William S. Simmons, Spirit of the New England Tribes: Indian History and Folklore, 1620-1984, Hanover : University Press of New England, 1986, p. 152 ff.
  8. William S. Simmons, The Narragansett, op. cit., p. 97-99.
  9. "One Nation - Two Worlds - Centuries of Struggle - From church to citadel, Narragansetts endure", Providence Journal, August 4, 2004.
  10. Obituary for the Rev. Roland C. Mars

Archival sources
  • Index cards and notes belonging to Mars are kept in a vitrine at the Tamaquag museum in Exeter, Rhode Island.
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