Daughter

In Hammond, Ind., one day last week and again in Chicago, a 16-year-old girl tried out as a professional evangelist. She was Roberta Star Semple, daughter of Aimee Kennedy Semple McPherson, prosperous Baptist evangelist of Los Angeles. Roberta was beginning her career at a younger age than did her mother. But she had her mother to help her.

Mrs. McPherson, born near Ingersoll, Ontario, in 1890, ran away from home in 1907 (at 17) to accompany one Robert Semple, evangelist. They barnstormed the tabernacles of Canada, China, Australia. The man died in 1911--a month before Roberta Star Semple was born. The widow pet-named her baby "Star of the East."

The mother has had a hard time of life. She married again, one Harold McPherson, San Francisco grocer, by whom she has a son,

Rolf McPherson, 14; divorced the man; fended for herself. In 1918 she set up as an evangelist in Los Angeles preaching what she called the "Four Square Gospel" and presuming to cure maladies by divine healing. She prospered; owns property worth approximately $1,000,000; is now coaching her daughter in the profession.

Roberta Star Semple is tall; has a soft voice and a clear laugh. She does not know men. Aimee Semple McPherson has been careful to keep men out of her daughter's ken. The girl, however, does know people. On the platform of the Chicago Coliseum, which Mrs. McPherson hired at $1,000 a day to tell about her notorious kidnaping of a year ago (TIME, June 7, 1926 ), the daughter last week followed her mother. She held her audience's attention, put them in a mood of sanctity, but she took no money from them. Mrs. McPherson did that, after her own sermon. Later, the two, with a dramatic troupe from their Angelus Temple in Los Angeles, set out to work towards Manhattan where they would arrive for the fall and winter evangelistic season.