Left: Clipping from “Philadelphia Press,” Sunday June 28, 1903. Pearl: 7122. Proper: Rev. Henry C. McCook at Grand Military of the Republic Memorial Day, undated, picture through PHS.
In late June 1903, the “Philadelphia Press” printed an article a few Scotch-Irish household recognized popularly because the “Preventing McCooks.” The reasoning for this text was twofold: it shared in regards to the loss of life of Normal Alexander McDowell McCook on June 12, in addition to the centennial anniversary of the city of Lisbon, Ohio, the household’s birthplace.
The article gives a genealogical historical past of “one of the crucial exceptional households in the USA … contributing sixteen members … to the Union Military through the Civil Struggle, of whom all however one have been commissioned officers,” whereas additionally highlighting the life and work of the Rev. Dr. Henry C. McCook (1837-1911), a Philadelphia pastor.
Henry was considered one of fifteen McCook males to battle for the Union. Following the outbreak of the Civil Struggle, he left Western Theological Seminary in Pittsburgh and enlisted as first lieutenant within the forty first Illinois Infantry. He was appointed as chaplain of the regiment, a place he held for 9 months earlier than resigning from navy service to volunteer on the workers of Normal John McArthur.
Although he supposed to take one other place within the military, he was satisfied by mates that he might serve his nation greatest behind the pulpit. In 1869, he grew to become pastor of Seventh Presbyterian Church of Philadelphia, which merged with Sixth Presbyterian Church in 1873 to change into Tabernacle Presbyterian Church. In 1898, McCook was appointed president of the Presbyterian Historic Society (PHS), a place he served in till his loss of life in 1911.
On June 18, 1952, Dr. John Coventry Smith (1903-1984) attended the dedication ceremony for the Taegu Presbyterian Hospital’s new nurses college constructing. The caption of {a photograph} taken on the hospital two years earlier tells us that the Taegu Hospital was a “70-bed establishment … staffed with 11 medical doctors, 7 resident physicians, 6 interns and 24 graduate nurses. As well as, there are 34 women in coaching within the College of Nursing.” The nursing college students would flourish of their new constructing as this system continued to develop.
The Presbyterian church’s overseas missionary enterprise within the nineteenth century was chargeable for the institution of academic services, hospitals, orphanages, seminaries and different establishments that mirrored the church’s academic, medical and evangelical ministry.
The missionary operation continued to develop within the 20th century when Smith started his service, touring to Japan after graduating from Pittsburgh Theological Seminary in 1928. Within the early Fifties, he served as affiliate common secretary of the overseas mission board of the United Presbyterian Church in the usA. (UPCUSA), a place that noticed him journey to varied websites all through the world, together with Taegu Presbyterian Hospital in 1952.
In 1959, Smith grew to become common secretary of the Fee on Ecumenical Mission and Relations. From 1968 to 1975, he served because the president of the World Council of Church buildings. The yr he took that place, Smith was additionally elected moderator of the UPCUSA.
In June 1962, Presbyterian Life printed a particular report titled “Troubleshooters of the Racial Disaster” that chronicled the work of two UPCUSA ministers: the Rev. J. Metz Rollins (1926-2009) and the Rev. John H. Marion.
From 1958 by 1963, Rollins and Marion traveled all through the South to talk with church communities about racial justice and civil rights. They recommended with pastors, assisted in establishing packages of Christian motion and visited civil rights activists in jail, all with the mission of demonstrating that the UPCUSA stood for an built-in church and society.
Earlier than working alongside Marion for the UPCUSA, Rollins was the founding pastor of Tallahassee’s Trinity Presbyterian Church (Presbyterian Church in the USA), that metropolis’s first Black Presbyterian congregation. There, he grew to become concerned in a bus boycott and different nonviolent resistance efforts towards racial segregation. Rollins was detained a number of occasions for his activism. In 1960, he was arrested for collaborating in lunch counter sit-ins; in Mississippi in 1961, he was arrested for his involvement within the Freedom Rides.
In 1964, after his service with the UPCUSA’s civil rights group got here to an finish, Rollins moved to New York. Three years later, he grew to become the primary government director of the Nationwide Committee of Black Churchmen, a corporation devoted to advocating for racial consciousness inside church buildings. In 1972, Rollins accepted a name to function pastor of St. Augustine Presbyterian Church within the Bronx, the place he stood on the pulpit for over 30 years.
Left: George Laird Hunt (entrance left) and PHS director William Miller packing the time capsule, June 11, 1989. Pearl: 33559. Proper: the capsule being weighed in 2016, picture through PHS.
June 1989 noticed the PC(USA) Normal Meeting rejoice the bicentennial of the primary Normal Meeting in the USA in Philadelphia. One of many highlights of the celebration was the ceremonial burying of a time capsule in entrance of PHS at 425 Lombard Road.
The time capsule was positioned within the base of a sundial. PHS director William Bayard Miller and board chair George Laird Hunt led the ceremony, putting printed supplies, together with a difficulty of the Presbyterian Outlook, into the canister.
There it remained undisturbed till 2016, when alterations to PHS’s Heritage Stroll compelled the capsule’s relocation. After weighing out at 42.2 kilos the capsule was positioned in momentary storage, then returned to its conventional resting place, unopened. In June 2039, on the 250-year anniversary of the primary Normal Meeting, the capsule’s seal will probably be damaged for the primary time and a brand new group of PHS caretakers, volunteers and researchers will look inside.
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