Finis E. Yoakum

     Finis E. Yoakum was born in 1851. He was the son of Franklin Laughlin Yoakum and Narcissa C. Teague. Finis E. Yoakum married Mary [—?—] in 1873. Finis E. Yoakum died in 1920 at age 69 years.
     He From Gary R. Hawpe, ed. and Ray Faircloth, comp., 'Yoakum Biographies,' Van Bibber Pioneers E-Newsletter, Vol. 4 No. 4 (February 2001), pp. 7 - 8.

Pisgah Home Founding by Dr. Finis E. Yoakum

Faith healer and social reformer, A medical doctor in Texas, Colorado, and California, Finis Yoakum (1851-1920) gave up his lucrative medical career following a personal healing miracle to found the Pisgah Home Movement in Highland Park at the Christ Faith Mission/Old Pisgah Home. Born to Franklin and Narcissa (Teague) Yoakum; his father was a country physician in Texas, who later became a minister with the Cumberland Presbyterian Church and served as the president of their college in Larrisan Texas. A younger brother, Benjamin Franklin Yoakum, was an important figure in American commerce, serving as president of the San Antonio and Arkansas Pass Railway and chairman of the board for the St. Louis and San Francisco Railroad ('Frisco') as well as several other major railroads and business enterprises.

In 1873, Finis took a wife, Mary. They had three sons and twin daughters. Yoakum studied at Larissa College ultimately graduating from the Hospital College of Medicine in Louisville, Kentucky, with the M.D. degree on June 16, 1885. Following medical school, he specialized in neurological disorders and finally occupied the Chair of Mental Disease on the faculty of the Gross Medical College in Denver, Colorado.

On the evening of July 18, 1894, while on his way to organize a Class Leader's Association for his Methodist Church, Finis Yoakum was struck by a buggy operated by a drunken man. A piece of metal pierced his back, broke several ribs, and caused internal hemorrhaging. A medical assessment of his injuries predicted them to be fatal. Plagued by infection for several months, he moved to Los Angeles hoping to gain relief in its mild climate. In early 1895, he made a miraculous recovery during a dramatic healing experience and by the Summer of that year he was again practicing medicine. After his recovery Dr. Yoakum received visions directing him to create a mission for the needy. He soon turned his home at 6044 Echo Street into a mission moving himself and his family into a tent adjacent to his home. The site soon grew with additions to his original Queen Anne home and the conversion of an adjacent barn as a new tabernacle that also doubled as a dormitory. He vowed to spend the remainder of his life serving the chronically ill, poor destitute, and social outcasts. This is what gave rise to the Mission Site still operating today.

While in Los Angeles, he associated with a number of churches speaking on divine healing and hosting many camp meetings at the Mission site or along the Arroyo Seco two blocks to the east. During the Azusa Street revival gatherings in Los Angeles (credited as the founding movement of the Pentecostal Church) he hosted many followers at the Mission site in Highland Park. He named his Mission site, Pisgah Home after the hill where Moses stood to view the promised land. By 1915, he had built an impressive Tudor home just three blocks from the Mission at 140 S. Avenue 59. Most of the labor to build this home came from Mission residents.

Headquartered from Christ Faith Mission on Echo Street, Dr. Yoakum created a variety of outreach ministries throughout the Los Angeles area. These efforts were called Pisgah, giving the Mission Site the additional name as headquarters for many of these efforts. In 1911, Pisgah Home provided regular housing for 175 workers and stable indigents and made provisions for an average of 9,000 clean beds and 18,000 meals monthly to the urban homeless, the poor, and the social outcasts, including alcoholics, drug addicts, and prostitutes. Each week, Yoakum sent his workers throughout Los Angeles to distribute nickels for the cost of trolley fare to Pisgah Home. Other activities included the nearby Pisgah Store, Pisgah Ark (recovery House for Women), Pisgah Gardens (rehabilitative center, orphanage, and farm in North Hollywood), Pisgah Grande (3,225 acres for a utopian community in Chatsworth), and a later donation of a 500 acre retreat center and farm in Tennessee.

Dr. Yoakum was a controversial figure throughout the latter part of his life. He was the object of a love hate relationship with the City of Los Angeles, because his ministry at the Mission site attracted indigents to the City from across the country, yet the City was happy to send many of their own to him for care.

The site is closely aligned with the founding of the modern Pentecostal church. Pentecostalism, a world wide Protestant movement that originated in the late 19th century in the Los Angeles area, Kansas and in the Southern Appalachian Mountains in the Southeast, takes its name from the Christian feast of Pentecost, which celebrates the coming of the Holy Spirit upon the disciples. Pentecostalism emphasizes a post conversion experience of spiritual purification and empowering for Christian witness, entry into which is signaled by utterance in unknown tongues, also known as glossolalia.