Left: Clipping from “Philadelphia Press,” Sunday June 28, 1903. Pearl: 7122. Right: Rev. Henry C. McCook at Grand Army of the Republic Memorial Day, undated, image via PHS.
In late June 1903, the “Philadelphia Press” published an article about a Scotch-Irish family known popularly as the “Fighting McCooks.” The reasoning for this article was twofold: it shared about the death of General Alexander McDowell McCook on June 12, as well as the centennial anniversary of the town of Lisbon, Ohio, the family’s birthplace.
The article offers a genealogical history of “one of the most remarkable families in the United States … contributing sixteen members … to the Union Army during the Civil War, of whom all but one were commissioned officers,” while also highlighting the life and work of the Rev. Dr. Henry C. McCook (1837-1911), a Philadelphia pastor.
Henry was one of fifteen McCook men to fight for the Union. Following the outbreak of the Civil War, he left Western Theological Seminary in Pittsburgh and enlisted as first lieutenant in the 41st Illinois Infantry. He was appointed as chaplain of the regiment, a position he held for nine months before resigning from military service to volunteer on the staff of General John McArthur.
Though he intended to take another position in the army, he was convinced by friends that he could serve his country best behind the pulpit. In 1869, he became pastor of Seventh Presbyterian Church of Philadelphia, which merged with Sixth Presbyterian Church in 1873 to become Tabernacle Presbyterian Church. In 1898, McCook was appointed president of the Presbyterian Historical Society (PHS), a position he served in until his death in 1911.
On June 18, 1952, Dr. John Coventry Smith (1903-1984) attended the dedication ceremony for the Taegu Presbyterian Hospital’s new nurses school building. The caption of a photograph taken at the hospital two years earlier tells us that the Taegu Hospital was a “70-bed institution … staffed with 11 doctors, 7 resident physicians, 6 interns and 24 graduate nurses. In addition, there are 34 girls in training in the School of Nursing.” The nursing students would flourish in their new building as the program continued to grow.
The Presbyterian church's foreign missionary enterprise in the 19th century was responsible for the establishment of educational facilities, hospitals, orphanages, seminaries and other institutions that reflected the church's educational, medical and evangelical ministry.
The missionary operation continued to expand in the 20th century when Smith began his service, traveling to Japan after graduating from Pittsburgh Theological Seminary in 1928. In the early 1950s, he served as associate general secretary of the foreign mission board of the United Presbyterian Church in the U.S.A. (UPCUSA), a position that saw him travel to various sites throughout the world, including Taegu Presbyterian Hospital in 1952.
In 1959, Smith became general secretary of the Commission on Ecumenical Mission and Relations. From 1968 to 1975, he served as the president of the World Council of Churches. The year he took that position, Smith was also elected moderator of the UPCUSA.
Metz Rollins and John Marion travel throughout the Southern states. Pearl: 6198.
In June 1962, Presbyterian Life published a special report titled “Troubleshooters of the Racial Crisis” that chronicled the work of two UPCUSA ministers: the Rev. J. Metz Rollins (1926-2009) and the Rev. John H. Marion.
From 1958 through 1963, Rollins and Marion traveled throughout the South to speak with church communities about racial justice and civil rights. They counseled with pastors, assisted in setting up programs of Christian action and visited civil rights activists in jail, all with the mission of demonstrating that the UPCUSA stood for an integrated church and society.
Before working alongside Marion for the UPCUSA, Rollins was the founding pastor of Tallahassee’s Trinity Presbyterian Church (Presbyterian Church in the United States), that city’s first Black Presbyterian congregation. There, he became involved in a bus boycott and other nonviolent resistance efforts against racial segregation. Rollins was detained several times for his activism. In 1960, he was arrested for participating in lunch counter sit-ins; in Mississippi in 1961, he was arrested for his involvement in the Freedom Rides.
In 1964, after his service with the UPCUSA’s civil rights organization came to an end, Rollins moved to New York. Three years later, he became the first executive director of the National Committee of Black Churchmen, an organization dedicated to advocating for racial awareness within churches. In 1972, Rollins accepted a call to serve as pastor of St. Augustine Presbyterian Church in the Bronx, where he stood at the pulpit for over 30 years.
Left: George Laird Hunt (front left) and PHS director William Miller packing the time capsule, June 11, 1989. Pearl: 33559. Right: the capsule being weighed in 2016, image via PHS.
June 1989 saw the PC(USA) General Assembly celebrate the bicentennial of the first General Assembly in the United States in Philadelphia. One of the highlights of the celebration was the ceremonial burying of a time capsule in front of PHS at 425 Lombard Street.
The time capsule was placed in the base of a sundial. PHS director William Bayard Miller and board chair George Laird Hunt led the ceremony, placing printed materials, including an issue of the Presbyterian Outlook, into the canister.
There it remained undisturbed until 2016, when alterations to PHS’s Heritage Walk forced the capsule’s relocation. After weighing out at 42.2 pounds the capsule was placed in temporary storage, then returned to its traditional resting place, unopened. In June 2039, at the 250-year anniversary of the first General Assembly, the capsule’s seal will be broken for the first time and a new group of PHS caretakers, volunteers and researchers will look inside.
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