USA > Virginia > City of Staunton > City of Staunton > The First Presbyterian Church, Staunton, Virginia > Part 22
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Rev. Paul E. Stevenson, of New York, succeeded Mr. Steele as pastor. He came to Staunton, by invitation, in the fall of 1837, imme- diately from the Seminary of Princeton, and was installed June 8, 1838. While he was pastor, Augusta Female Seminary (now Mary Baldwin Seminary) was founded by the Presbyterian ministers and people of the town and county, at the instigation and through the agency of the Rev. Rufus W. Bailey. Mr. Bailey was a native of the State of Maine, but had lived for many years before he came to Staunton, in South Carolina. He was the first principal of the school, and conducted it for some years with considerable success.
As far back as I can remember, and for years previously, there was a school for girls in Staunton, more or less under the auspices of this Church, with the exception of an interval prior to 1843. The first teacher of whom I have a vague recollection was a Mr. Easterbrook, who came from the North, and went from here to Knoxville, Tenn. He lived and had his school in the Seminary building now known as "Hill Top."
The next teacher was the Rev. Mr. Thacker, who also came from the North, and conducted a school for girls in a large frame house which stood where the Y. M. C. A. building now is. Afterward he taught boys in the Academy. How long he lived here, and where he went when he left, I do not know. He was notable chiefly on ac- count of his absent-mindedness and the liberties he allowed his pupils, girls and boys, to take with him.
Mr. Robert L. Cooke was the next principal of a school for girls, having his school for several years in various rented tenements.
The Seminary having been founded and incorporated in 1845, the centre front building was erected on the ground then recently pur- chased and added to the church lot. The deed for the ground is dated May 13, 1841, but I am under the impression that it was purchased, enclosed and improved before that date.
During many years the young people of the congregation found recreation and enjoyment nearly every winter in attending singing school. They did not attend balls and card parties. Indeed, those pastimes were almost unknown in Staunton. If the dance called "German" and the game called "progressive euchre" had been
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invented they were unheard of here. It was during Mr. Stevenson's residence here that the Presbyterian Church of the country was divided between the Old and New school parties. The harmony of many congregations was seriously disturbed, and many, even feeble churches, were divided, as was the case in Winchester and Harrison- burg. Here there was hardly a ripple of discontent, although there was not perfect unanimity of opinion in regard to the reasons which led to the division. The majority of our people favored the Old school, and the minority acquiescing, the affairs of the congregation went on peacefully as before. Throughout our whole history, the Church was not vexed by any serious dissensions. I attribute this to the fact that, as far as I know, there never was a faction or individual in the Church striving for the ascendancy, or endeavoring to "lord it over God's heritage."
Mr. Stevenson was relieved from his charge April 2, 1844, and was succeeded by the Rev. Robert R. Howison, who was regularly installed.
Mr. Howison occupied the pulpit for part of a year, preaching with great acceptance. He then, by advice of physicians, was induced to demit the ministry. He resumed his original profession, and for some years practiced law with success. Finally, however, he returned to the ministry, and has long been prominent as a zealous and efficient preacher of the Gospel in the eastern part of the State.
The Rev. Benjamin M. Smith was the next pastor. He was installed by Presbytery on Saturday, November 22, 1845. During his incumbency, the manse was erected, chiefly through the agency of Mr. Bailey. Large additions to the Seminary building were projected, and the first election of deacons was made while Mr. Smith was pastor. Immediately before coming here, he was pastor of the united churches of Waynesboro and Tinkling Spring. Being ap- pointed secretary of one of the General Assembly's boards, he resigned his charge, in 1854, and removed to Philadelphia. The latter years of his life were spent as professor in the Union Theological Seminary.
The Rev. Jos. R. Wilson, a professor in Hampden-Sidney College, accepted a call from the congregation in December, 1854, and removed to Staunton the last week in March following. He was installed June 24, 1855. While he was here, the enlargement of the Seminary previously planned, was accomplished, so as to provide a residence for the principal and boarding for a considerable number of pupils. The principal room of the centre building was then converted into a study hall, and the basement room of the new eastern wing was
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used as a congregational lecture room. A vestibule to the Church was built, the old-fashioned pulpit was lowered, and the interior of the Church was otherwise improved.
Mr. Wilson remained in Staunton a little more than two years. His relation with the Church was dissolved October 8, 1857, and he removed to Augusta, Georgia.
After Mr. Wilson's departure, there was a vacancy for more than a year.
The Rev. William E. Baker, a native of Georgia, came here by invitation, in 1857, and on April 23, 1859, was installed pastor of the Church.
He remained here for about 25 years, having been released on February 20, 1884.
While Mr. Baker was pastor, the congregation had increased in numbers so greatly as to require more ample accommodations, and the present building was erected on the lot donated by Misses McClung and Baldwin, of the Seminary. The work was begun July 16, 1870, and completed in the spring of 1872; but on the first Sunday of Decem- ber, 1871, the congregation began to worship in the basement room. The last service in the old Church was held on Sunday, June 25, 1871, and the house was then abandoned to workmen, to be fitted for the use of the Seminary.
In 1872, the number of Church members enrolled was 271.
Probably about the year 1870, a member of this Church, the late Mr. T. B. Coleman, began to hold prayer meetings in an humble dwelling two miles east of town. These meetings grew into a Sunday School conducted by members of this Church, and finally into Olivet Church, the expenses of which have been largely sustained by our congregation.
In the year 1875 the Second Presbyterian Church was authorized by Presbytery, on the petition of some of the members of this church, and on the 14th of November of that year, seventeen persons were transferred from this to that Church. As is not unusal under such circumstances, there were for a time some heartburnings between the members of the two organizations; but all feeling of that kind has long since disappeared. The members of the mother Church enter- tain no sentiment but fraternal regard towards the younger society, and rejoice with its members in its growth and prosperity. The little company of fifteen or twenty, of a hundred years ago, have grown into two bands, numbering together more than a thousand, about an eighth or ninth of the population of the town.
The General Assembly of the Southern Presbyterian Church met here in May, 1881.
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FIRST PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH, STAUNTON, VA.
The envelope system was adopted to some extent during Mr. Baker's pastorate. From an early day the pews of the Church were rented like stalls in a market, and for many years no collections even were taken up in public meetings. The false opinion prevailed that to mention money at worship militated against the idea of a gospel without money and without price. The minds of the officers and con- gregations were disabused of this sentiment about the year 1870, when the discovery was made that it was a duty and privilege "to worship the Lord with our substance." The plan of renting pews was changed in the course of time; it never had worked satisfactorily, and year after year there was a deficiency in church revenues. The system was finally abolished, the doors of the Church were thrown open, and all persons were invited to enter and occupy seats assigned to them, without any stipulation as to payments, each being left to contribute according to his ability and willingness.
Since Mr. Baker's time we have had three pastors, whom I will merely mention. First, the Rev. John P. Strider, a brilliant young preacher, but of frail physical constitution, who was installed Novem- ber 23, 1884, and relieved September 24, 1885. Second, Rev. D. K. McFarland, greatly beloved, installed March 24, 1886, and relieved March 15, 1892. Third, the Rev. A. M. Fraser, present incumbent, installed May 21, 1893, and long may he be spared to minister to us.
During the pastorate of Dr. Strider, the Rev. Dr. Wm. Dinwiddie conducted services here for many days, and partly as the result, on a succeeding Sabbath, one hundred persons were publicly received into membership of the Church.
The remains of Drs. Strider and McFarland repose in Thornrose Cemetery, and are guarded by our people.
I cannot tell what salaries the various pastors received. I doubt if Mr. Calhoon received as much as $400 a year. Mr. Joseph Smith hardly received more than $600. Mr. Baker received for some years $800, increased gradually before he left, to the sum now paid.
I have thus given all the leading facts in the history of our Church. I should have described the various pastors more particularly, and paid tributes of respect to some departed members of the Church; but as I could not speak of all alike, I have avoided making invidious dis- tinctions. I must, however, say a few words more in regard to the three pastors who served the congregation longer than others, and whom I remember.
Mr. Stevenson was remarkably gifted in prayer, and was "mighty in the Scriptures." To use a common expression, he seemed to have the Bible at his tongue's end. He always had a fit quotation in every emergency, and hardly ever failed to give book, chapter and verse.
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Soon after he came here he was introduced to a young girl whose parents had recently died, and advised her to read the 27th Psalm, where she would find the words, "When my father and my mother forsake me, then the Lord will take me up." Having gone through deep waters in his religious experience he knew how to succor those who were immersed in the flood. The first sermon he preached was from Hebrews VI : 18-"That by two immutable things, in which it was impossible for God to lie, we might have a strong consolation, who have fled for refuge to lay hold upon the hope set before us."
Dr. B. M. Smith was remarkable for his fluency of speech and the fullness of his instructions. His more formal sermons rarely did justice to his abilities ; but his Sunday night discourses and especially his lectures at Wednesday night meetings, were unsurpassed in excel- lence. He always appeared to do better when he had apparently made little or no preparation.
Mr. Baker was here twenty-five years, one-fourth of the century just closed. Mr. Baker did a great work. He built up the congregation, and to him chiefly are we indebted for this commodious and beautiful house. He was specially helpful to the poor and friendless. He was devoted to Sunday School work, and had a peculiar talent for enter- taining children. For young people generally he manifested much sympathy, and often took much trouble and labor to provide pastimes for them.
As far as I know, only three persons who were here, as children, in the time of Dr. Joseph Smith, now survive. One generation after another has passed away since this Church was founded. The mem- bers of the present congregation have reason to cherish the memory of many who have gone before; and, stronger in number and means than ever, they should cling together with increased devotion to the Lord and in love to one another.
We are not divided, All one body we, One in hope and doctrine, One in charity.
The Centennial exercises at the First Presbyterian Church of this City were resumed October 27th, at 11 o'clock. Rev. Robert H. Fleming, D. D., of the West- minster Church, Lynchburg, presided over the meeting. Dr. Walker in his welcoming address, on the first day, spoke of the close association personally, or by family ties,
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of those participating in the meetings, with the congrega- tion here. He might have stated that Dr. Fleming is a direct descendant of John Lewis, the first settler.
After devotional exercises, being introduced by Dr. Fraser, Dr. Fleming said:
A gifted speaker-at a meeting of the Scotch-Irish Congress- related an incident of one of England's forceful statesmen. Morning after morning he would enter the family gallery, and stand over against the family portraits. "I'll not forget, I'll be true." His son watched him in awe. One day his father led him into the gallery and as he stood facing the pictures-"You too, must hear them talk." "Father, how can they speak?" "My boy, for many years, they have spoken to me, and each picture has its own message. One says, 'Be true to me'; another says, 'Be true to your race'; another says 'Be true to thyself'; another one, my mother, says, 'Be true to my God.'" We are to-day to look upon the faces of our ancestry, to rehearse the story of John Lewis and Col. Patton, and Pastor Craig and Waddell and Wilson and Speece and Scott, how they wrought and worshipped. No doubt the message which their lives will bring us, is "Be true to them, to ourselves and to our God."
The story we are to hear is of beginnings of "foundations," laid broad and deep.
The author of the Declaration of Independence has inscribed at his own request on his tomb, "Author of the Statute of Virginia for Religious Freedom." But it was the Scotch-Irish people of Virginia who brought the question before the Legislature in an able memorial from the Presbytery of Hanover. The paper had been prepared with great care, and went straight to the mark. In 1777, and in subse- quent years, this Presbytery of Hanover, presented additional me- morials on the same subject. It was a bold enunciation of grand principle, important to Church and State alike.
Jefferson had before him when he drew his immortal statute, these memorials of the Hanover Presbytery. In 1786 the bill became a law, and the victory for Religious Freedom was won. One of the gifted sons of the Puritans, Mr. Choate, has said :
"In the reign of Mary, a thousand learned Englishmen fled from the stake at home to the happier seats of Continental Protestantism. Great numbers of them came to Geneva. There they awaited the death of the Queen and then, in the time of Elizabeth, went back to England. I ascribed to that five years in Geneva an influence that has changed the history of the world. In that brief season English
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Puritanism was changed fundamentally and forever." But it was in Scotland that the Geneva faith builded high and strong its most en- during monuments. It was John Witherspoon, a lineal descendant of John Knox, whose courageous speech turned the scale when the fate of the Declaration of Independence was trembling in the balance. He said: "There is a tide in the affairs of men, a nick of time, we perceive it now before us. To hesitate is to consent to our own slavery. That noble instrument upon your table, which insures immortality to its author should be subscribed this very morning by every one in this house. He that will not respond to its accents and strain every nerve to carry into effect its provisions, is unworthy of the name of free- man."
The Scotch-Irish were the largest and the most potent elements in the formation of our American history. "The sons of men who on the 2d of December, 1688, shut the gates of Derry, and starved rather than surrender to the tyrant, James, were trained to endure the hardships of the frontier life that awaited them here, and had nerves which did not flinch or quiver, however great the foe before them."
These men did not flinch nor quiver, because there was a conscience within, a history behind, a future before, and a God above them.
Memorial celebrations such as we are engaged in to-day, are to enable us to tell our children the deeds of our fathers, and to impress upon them the greatness of their responsibility which must soon pass to them. We are to ask them, as they bow before God and the family and in the sanctuary-which are the glory and the defense of our land-to resolve that they will be true to their fathers, to them- selves and to their God.
In one of the darkest periods of the Revolution, Washington said: "If retreat I must, it will be to rally the Scotch-Irish of the Valley of Virginia around the standard, and with them to make a final stand for freedom."
When Tarleton ravaged the country beyond the "Ridge" it was under the inspiring words of the pastor of one of the churches whose history we are to hear to-day, that every man grasped his weapon and went forth to beat the invader back.
The weapons of our warfare are not carnal, but mighty through God to the hurling down of strongholds.
"Though numerous hosts of mighty foes" are enlisted for the destruction of our liberties and our religion, there are those who will to-day keep the faith, and rally around the old banner that has come
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to us from the hands of the brave and true, and who will, with closed ranks, make a final and successful stand for the Bible, the home, the Church and the Sabbath.
The descendants of the men who built Augusta, Hebron, Tinkling Spring, Bethel, Staunton First Church, never
Dread the skeptic's puny hands While near the school the Church spire stands Nor fear the blended bigots rule While near the Church spire stands a school.
SKETCH OF TINKLING SPRING CHURCH, BY REV. G. W. FINLEY, D. D. Mr. Chairman, Ladies and Gentlemen :
The present speaker must at the outset plead guilty to more than wonted embarassment and trepidation. For he is called to personate or represent a venerable Mother, over whose honored head the sunshine and the shadows of one hundred and sixty-four years have passed. Consequently, he can but fear that your patience may be sorely tried, if he truly represents her, when he remembers the strong temptation to the aged of both sexes to live in the past and to become garrulous as they recall and recount its history.
But before he attempts to tell you who and what that Mother is, and how through all these years she has sought to serve and honor her God, it is his pleasing duty to come, in her name, to greet to-day and to express her love for and pride in a daughter who wears upon her brow the crown of a century's loving and faithful service for the glory of God and for the good of man. She would rejoice with that daughter not only in all that, under God, has been accomplished during the hundred years that have passed, but also in the glowing hopes of the future, and especially now that the shadow which so recently seemed to be gathering has passed away, and the tie that threatened to be broken has been made only the stronger and tenderer. She joins you in the earnest prayer that the bond which now so happily and strongly unites you to your honored and beloved pastor and binds him to you may grow in strength and tenderness, in unbroken love and service until the Master says to him, "Well done faithful servant! enter into the joy of thy Lord."
But this venerable Mother would not forget to bring her warm and loving greeting to the granddaughter who is here present in the vigor and hope of her youth to participate in and add to the joys of this memorable day. She, with you, rejoices in the rapid growth of that granddaughter in strength and usefulness, and congratulates her upon the bright outlook for the days to come, as she wins back from Texas,
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that true son of the Old Dominion, her honored pastor, and with him strives to extend the blessings of the Gospel at home and abroad Long, long may they thus labor, with the richest blessings of God upon all their efforts!
But it is now time that your speaker should turn to the special duty and privilege assigned him and try to tell you something of the origin and life of Tinkling Spring Church. To do this you must with him cross the seas to and before the days when "the bold, bad Clavers" rode with his fierce dragoons over "the land of the blue bell and the heather," and like another Saul of Tarsus "breathing out threaten- ings and slaughter " for those who sought to worship their God ac- cording to the teachings of His Word and the dictates of their own consciences. Exposed, as they were, to be shot or sabered on the moors of Scotland, or led to the rack, the gibbet and the stake, many of her sturdy sons sought refuge in the North of Ireland, in the vain hope that there they might worship God unmolested.
Disappointed in this they turned their eyes to the new lands beyond the ocean, and about the time the Pilgrim Fathers landed at Plymouth Rock they sought to emigrate to America. But under what seemed then to be strange and incomprehensible providences all of their desires and efforts were baffled for a hundred years or more. Yet these providences are now seen in the light of history to have been the wise and gracious ordering of the God whom they sought to serve. He had for them a nobler and grander work than they ever conceived. Kept still in the crucible of oppression they were given time not only to fully organize the Church they were to transplant to new shores, but as we have already been told so eloquently to-day, so to keep the Gates of Derry and to battle on the banks of Boyne River as to win and preserve for themselves and the world the principles of Protest- antism and the inestimable blessings of civil and religious liberty.
About 1732, when what is now Augusta County was part of Orange County, which then extended from its boundaries in Eastern Virginia northward to the Great Lakes, westward to the Mississippi and southward to the present state of Tennessee, a little band of that sturdy Scotch-Irish race that has left its impress so wide and deep upon the world's history, under the leadership of John Lewis and John Preston, came as the first settlers to the region of which Staun- ton is now the centre. The country between the Blue Ridge Moun- tains and the North Mountains was then, for the most part, a beau- tiful prairie, abounding in game and much frequented by hunting parties of Indians.
The men of that band of immigrants were grave, God-fearing, loyal to their King so long as he governed according to law, but
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seekers after liberty of conscience and determined to choose for them- selves those who should rule and teach them in their local affairs, industrious, frugal and lovers of sound learning.
They had scarcely reared their rude log dwellings in this wilder- ness before they are found petitioning Synod and Presbytery for preachers.
In 1737 and 1738 they sent to Donegal Presbytery, of the Synod of Philadelphia, for help, and, in the latter year, Rev. Mr. Anderson was sent to intercede with Governor Gooch for their relief from laws that oppressed them as dissenters. He visited the Valley and preached at the house of John Lewis, near the present site of Staunton, the first sermon, perhaps, ever preached in that region.
In 1739 a Rev. Mr. Thompson visited the settlement and preached for awhile, and a little later Rev. John Craig came and was called to be the pastor of what was then known as the "Congregation of Shen- andoah," and soon after as the "Congregation of the Triple Forks of the Shenandoah." Robert Doak and Daniel Dennison presented and urged the call before Presbytery. Mr. Craig accepted it and entered upon his work in 1740 as the first regularly settled Presbyterian minister in the colony of Virginia. His field extended along the Blue Ridge from near Port Republic to Greenville and across the Valley west of Staunton to the North Mountain and along it to a point below Mossy Creek, and across the Valley again to the beginning. His flock was scattered and worshipped according to tradition in a number of places in log buildings and arbors. But they were mainly gathered about two points: One, 8 miles north of Staunton on what is now the valley pike and known as the Old Stone or Augusta Church; the other, 7 miles southeast of Staunton, called Tinkling Spring, perhaps, from some peculiar sound made by a cold spring that breaks out from the hill on which the Church now stands. Mr. Craig lived between these two places and served both as one congregation until 1764, and after- wards confined himself to the Old Stone Church up to his death in 1774.
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