Mín Englisc Blog

Moving has gone well; I type this as I'm about to go to sleep at Drosts', with all my things moved as necessary. Admittedly, I did leave one thing in my room upstairs, but it's a fan: I'm guessing that they would be happier with the fan than without it.

Over a year ago, when I was first offered this job for the archives, I was promised that I could live at RPTS with certain conditions. In April of this year, when I was actually able to accept the offer, I hoped for the same situation, and was given it: as part of the conditions, I was told that I would have to live elsewhere for the two weeks when the Theological Foundations for Youth program was here. That time has arrived.
I've wondered for a while where I would live: although I was told that I would live at newly-purchased RPTS property across the street, it became obvious to me a couple of weeks ago that the reconstruction project was not moving ahead fast enough to make those apartments livable. Since I'd been told that I could live on RPTS property, I've never worried about sleeping arrangements, assuming that I'd be offered some other place. We'd considered perhaps my sleeping in the basement, but it's turned out that the basement wouldn't be good either.
Today at church, I was given a new and surprising offer: to stay at the apartment of Dan and Abigail Drost, a couple just down the street. I didn't really know the Drosts until I came here (although Abigail was my top proofreader for the Glasgow project), but I've gotten to know them a bit since coming. Dan is an RPTS student (just licensed last week!), and they're members at Providence, so they've been driving me to church each week. Although I thought about it for some hours, I never seriously thought of declining the offer. Consequently, I've moved most of my things to their apartment (thanks to their help for carrying things) and should be able tomorrow to move everything that remains. I'm really thankful to be able to live in a place where I'm not the only resident!

Back from Cleveland, where I had quite a useful time. Updates to follow...but they only allowed me to get four hours of sleep last night (so that they could be certain that I'd be asleep during one test), so I'm rather tired!

Although I did get inside to work today, I was too impressed with the outside to stay inside all day long. Since this scanning project is part of digitization of text, and since we really can't OCR manuscript, manuscripts of minutes will ultimately need to be typed by a human. Some days ago, I typed up the minutes of the Synod of 1809 (the first RP synod in North America), and tonight I ended up typing the Synod of 1811, the second. It was quite nice to sit out on the front lawn as evening fell, typing on my computer a manuscript likely over 120 years old, recording events of just almost 200 years ago. As I finished, I was also struck by the idea of my typing Synod minutes this week: as I was typing the minutes of the Synod of 1811, the Rev. Bruce Martin was drafting the minutes of the Synod of 2008 as it sat! I wonder what will be happening with this week's minutes in the summer of 2205?
I had a pleasant surprise late this morning: while I was working, Mrs Edgar (the secretary) came up to tell me that there was a phone call for me from Erskine Seminary in South Carolina! Over a week ago, I emailed their archives to ask about early records: since Erskine is the seminary of the Associate Reformed Presbyterian Church, and since all the RP ministers in the USA were part of the union that created the ARPC in 1782, I had wondered if the minutes of the first Reformed Presbytery in America (1774-1782) were in their possession. I quickly received a reply, several days ago, from the lady whom I emailed, informing me that the documents were not in their possession; therefore, today's call (telling me where I might search next for these minutes) was quite a surprise, and pleasant.
Right now, I'm scanning the earliest minutes of Illinois Presbytery (most of the time, if I use two hands, one gets in the way, so I can type, albeit slowly), 1840-1866. In one way, it's the hardest-to-scan volume yet: the volume is two notebooks bound together, and the first (containing the minutes of the 1840s and 1850s) apparently was larger at one time, for the clerk's handwriting goes almost into the binding. In some places, there's so little room between the end of the writing and the binding that it's hard to read, let alone flatten for scanning: we'd have to break the binding (although admittedly the binding is falling apart anyway) to get the entire text. Anyone who uses this volume for future research will literally be making the book bend over backwards!

Well, looking out the window this morning, I decided that being done by late Thursday wasn't that important; I don't want to get done quickly so much that I can't be outside at all. It's nice to be able to eat breakfast and read a bit outside :-)

I've been really busy the last two days, working more often than not: between yesterday and today, I've worked 24 hours and 17 minutes. If I can equal this tomorrow, I might even be able to finish my week's work time on Thursday, before going home!
This evening, I scanned the minutes of the Illinois Presbytery from 1933 to 1965. As most of the presbytery's congregations (just six!) were in decline by the 1960s, it's easy to see that many people were excited by Dr Blackwood's new work in Indianapolis. It's really fun reading about this: to think that the fifteen to thirty people (attendance varied a lot in the first months) were the first people in a congregation that has been the largest impulse behind eight other congregations, including some of the largest in the denomination, and all within the last forty-five years! Even though this job has its sad times (a week or two ago, I had to scan documents from the events that led to the organization of Covenant Fellowship of Indianapolis), I'm very thankful to be able to know more about the history of these congregations of which so many of my friends are members.

Happy birthday to Mom today! She's ___ years old (don't fill in the blank, or your comment will be deleted) today.
I'm thankful that I've not needed to wonder where to go to church: even though I still don't know a lot of people, I've been able to go to Providence for four straight weeks so far, and I'm glad I can be with them each week. I'm not with all the same people, each week. Various people (sometimes lots) go on vacation; I was asked to lead the singing two weeks ago — all the precentors were out of town — and I'm going to do it again next week :-) I'm thankful that I can participate in the life of the congregation, and that I knew some people before the last several weeks, so I can sort-of build off them and meet more.
Synod begins tomorrow in Beaver Falls.
I'm really busy this week: not because of Synod, or because of any difference in work, but because I'm headed up to Cleveland on Friday for my neurology consultation. What's more, I'm going home with Dad on Thursday, so much of Thursday's work time will be unavailable. Not complaining about going home, of course :-) but that does mean that I'll be working a lot more of the day Monday-Wednesday, and likely several hours on Saturday. I'm really thankful that I was allowed to do a lot of this week's rent-prevention work last week.

Over ten hours of scanning today: although I worked more overall on Tuesday, most of that was working under Mr Martin (less than four hours of scanning), so today was the most work I've done this week, and the first ten-hour day in over a week (admittedly, two other days last week were each within five minutes of ten hours, but...). And finally, the first time (since early in my first week) of no work after midnight.
Today was a mix of things: some digging among the boxes, some scanning of various churches, but perhaps most impressively, Lakes Presbytery from 1840 to 1868. This large volume, over 500 pages, includes the record of presbytery's sponsorship of J.B. Johnston's new school, Geneva Hall, in Northwood, Ohio :-) Tonight was McKeesport, McKeesport and Monongahela (two congregations were merged), and Morning Sun.

Today was a busy day. Since I'll be gone for part of next week, and since I'm not supposed to do overtime for the archives work, I decided (with permission!) to do most of next week's work today. So I had eight hours of work (plus two yesterday) on the grounds, doing everything from scrubbing the wood of the grand staircase to planting marigolds and impatiens. And follow that up with 4½ hours of work in the archives...I'm tired :-)
Tonight's work wasn't as nice as normal. Some of it was simply history: today I scanned the minutes of Third New York RPC, including most of the years of Finley Foster's pastorate. A long-lived minister, he was pastor there from 1887 until 1940, seeing the congregation go from 255 communicant members to 51: what sadness that must have been in his later years! Even more seriously, I went through more discipline cases, sometimes more serious than the previous: how sad it is to see the excommunication of an ordained minister of the gospel, once a leader in the church, now (as of these documents, well before I was born) turned away from the church altogether. Less saddening is when I work with narratives of people who repent of their sin and have to work through the church courts to be restored. I am thankful that God gives the church the power of discipline, that some may be restored and that others may publicly be renounced by the church.

Time for dinner break. I just finished the minutes of Fourth New York RPC from their organisation in January 1870 until they filled the minutes book in mid-1879. It's amazing reading about how busy the session was: admittedly, by the late 1870s, the congregation was approaching 200 communicant members, but it was still the smallest of the city congregations! Despite their "small" size, they had an impressive budget: in 1872 or 1873, their budget was over $10,000, equivalent to over $2,100,000 in today's GDP. Second RP, whose minutes I scanned this morning, was even busier: as the largest city congregation for decades and the largest in the entire denomination for more than ten years straight (surpassing 400 communicant members in 1868 and 1870), their session was so busy that it didn't even have time to interview candidates for membership: a commission was appointed to do it! I would love to go back in time and participate in one of their worship services. My statistical side would also enjoy going around in those years, determining the average attendance and similar levels of participation; I would guess that it was rather high, as these sessions were careful to warn and discipline people who had been ignoring the church for two or three years. On the other hand, I might be a little loth to be a member, completely aside from questions such as not voting and mandatory total abstinence. Rather, I would be a little afraid of church discipline: they were often bringing people up for various things, including one man (admittedly, as far as I saw, they didn't try him after all) whose offence appeared to be letting his business go bankrupt.

It's amazing what I'm discovering in the archives, just buried away in boxes...for some reason, I wasn't considering the immense significance of the document of which I wrote last night: because the Clerk of the General Synod in the split of 1833 went in the New Light side (now part of the PCA), our records before 1833 are fragmentary; searching both in Geneva's Covenanter Collection and at the library here, I've only ever seen small extracts from a few years' minutes. While I was working on republishing Glasgow, I remember reading or hearing somewhere that Glasgow had recopied the minutes of those years, but that sadly his copy had been lost :-)
Looking around in the room, I decided just to inspect some stacks of boxes without actually scanning them: simply open them and see what was inside, so I'd know what was coming when I got to the boxes. Among other things, I've discovered the original copies (handwritten by the clerk at those meetings) of nearly fifty different synods, going back to 1833 or 1834. And I've found a synopsis of the synods before 1833, less complete than Glasgow's transcription (of course) but far fuller than anything I've ever seen before, and perhaps far fuller than anything else known. Naturally, New Light documents would have gone into the PCA when the denominations merged in 1983. However, Dad tells me that most New Light documents were lost when their Duanesburgh church burned in the early 1950s, so these may be the only remaining copies. I'm excited to see these digitised :-)
For quite a while, I've had an interest in noncanonical Christian texts, whether late Jewish writings (such as the Odes of Solomon, which I studied in my sophomore year) or early Christian (including many apocryphal gospels, which I find interesting even as I recognise the frequently twisted theology), and as someone who reads these documents, I'm well aware that virtually all of them are rare. One such document is the Didache, the existence of which was long known, but which was considered lost until an Orthodox bishop discovered it by accident in a library. I've always wondered what it must be like to go through an uncatalogued library and find treasures, and (to an extent) I'm doing that now. Even though the minutes of the synod of the Reformed Presbyterian Church, under than 200 years old, aren't as significant as a major early Christian theological and practical treatise (perhaps 1,900 years old), it's still amazing to be able to access documents that have, for all practical purposes, been missing for some decades.
Funny things can be discovered in these boxes: there's one box full of records up to the 1940s from Second New York RPC, Third New York RPC, and Fourth New York RPC (yes, there really were four congregations in New York City, for twenty-five years!), stuffed full of their session minutes, congregation meeting minutes, and more, plus two other things: a small record book from Superior-Beulah RPC, and the documents of a Synod judicial commission from the 1980s — how did the commission get in with New York? I'm just putting things back in the boxes where they came from, but I hope that I can help to get things reorganised bigtime before I'm done for the summer.

Everyone remember my Glasgow book-republication project? I've just discovered one of his original manuscripts: a copy of the minutes of Presbytery and Synod from 1798 to 1833!

finally updating...
I've been rather down in the last few days, due to a combination of factors: bad news (one friend in a bad car accident, another having significant complications from surgery), sleeping and eating too little, no clean clothes, and even dreary work (scanning over two hundred pages of transcript and evidence in a presbytery judicial commission that resulted in the deposition of a minister and three ruling elders).
Tonight, I'm thankful to be doing better! Although the one friend is still in the hospital, the other is recovering significantly, and the first isn't in as serious of danger as I initially thought. I got a good nap today (admittedly by accident, sleeping through my alarm), I had a good lunch today, and I'll finally be able to go the bank tomorrow to get money to buy enough milk that I don't have to reserve it for cereal only. Laundry is done for the first time. As well as getting past the deposition case reports and (hopefully) finishing wading through boxes of financial documents from Marion (Iowa), I'm now just beginning to get into more boxes of various session minutes, including some of remote, short-lived, and little-known congregations such as Eckley, Holmwood, and Hot Springs. This is the kind of material I'd really looked forward to doing :-)
I had a great time at the Kails' wedding last week, and (more importantly!) they had an even better time. I'll post more when I can.

Just to reassure you, in case it wasn't clear: I wasn't trying to seek trouble; rather I was basically trying to spy on things from dark corners, keeping as quiet as possible.

(1) Who with God Most High finds shelter In th'Almighty's shadow hides. To the LORD I'll say, "My Refuge!" In my God my trust abides. From the fowler's snare He'll save you, From the deadly pestilence; Cover you with outspread pinions, Make His wings your confidence.
(2) God's own truth, your shield and buckler: You will fear no ill by night, Nor the shafts in daylight flying, Nor disease that shuns the light, Nor the plague that wastes at noonday. At your side ten thousand fall; You will only see this judgment Which rewards the wicked all.
(3) You have made the LORD your refuge, God Most High your dwelling place; Nothing evil shall befall you; In your tent no scourge you'll face. He will angels charge to keep you, Guard you well in all your ways. In their hands they will uphold you Lest your foot a stone should graze.
(4) You shall trample serpents, lions, Tread on all your deadly foes. For his love to Me I'll save him, Keep him, for My name he knows; When he calls Me I will answer, Save and honor him will I. I will show him my salvation, With long life will satisfy.

I have never been more frightened than just now: while I was working, finishing up the minutes of the earliest years of the Pacific Coast Presbytery, I heard doors shutting loudly downstairs. Since both of the other residents typically go to bed far before now, I was suspicious, and peered out the windows (from dark rooms) and went downstairs on the non-creeky steps while carrying knife and cellphone. It's one of those times when you really really really wish you weren't alone, except that it's quite possible that, if you aren't alone, it's because of someone you don't want to be with. I called Rev Martin, the caretaker, who sleeps in the basement, but I didn't get an answer. I considered calling police, but a couple of slamming doors (combined with the fact that I didn't dare go near the doors that slam that way, so if something's damaged or stolen, I've not seen it) isn't enough. I just hope it's that one or the other of the men, or perhaps someone else who has legitimate reason to be here at some time, was up rather later than normal.
As is, this has quite disrupted my evening. I'm now totally distracted from more scanning (in less than ten pages scanned after I got back to this room, I scanned one twice!), and the tiredness is really taking over. I'm thankful for Psalm 91 (above), for otherwise I might still be quaking with fear.

Just done scanning presbytery minutes: I've finished all of Kansas Presbytery except 1906-1915 (don't know where that book is), and I just finished the Southern Presbytery (effectively equivalent to the modern Atlantic Presbytery) of 1840-1854. It's interesting seeing a piece of paper signed by both James Chrystie and Moses Roney, prominent ministers in the Church in their day. Rev Chrystie, I must say, has much better handwriting than J. M. Willson, whose normal writing is so bad that half the time I can't read it, and whose signature is so squiggly that I had to look at several different examples of it (and note that the last name was similar to someone with the initials S. M., another Willson minister) before I knew who the clerk even was!
I'm enjoying scanning all these books, although some of them (including the 484-page-long minutes of Kansas Presbytery from 1893 to 1905) are big enough that they can't be scanned in the normal way. I wish that the Kansas Presbytery clerk (I can't read his name, since his handwriting isn't the best!) had bought a smaller book, but admittedly he didn't expect someone to be scanning the book 115 years later :-)
Next task after taking a break to get my medicine: the Colorado Presbytery records of 1911-1952, when it merged into Kansas Presbytery to form Midwest Presbytery.

Time for bed...I've worked longer these past two days than at any other time in my life — eleven hours yesterday, over ten hours today. Since I'm living at RPTS, I'm liable to pay rent: thankfully, the arrangement is that I pay in labor, not in dollars; I was able to get all of the week's work time completed yesterday, along with some time of scanning documents. Today was completely documents: specifically, the minutes of Kansas Presbytery during most of its history (organised 1971, merged with Colorado Presbytery to form Midwest Presbytery in 1951). My big problem with it is that various Clerks of Presbytery, not imagining what would happen several decades in the future, used books that are just slightly too large to use properly in the scanner with which I'm working! I can still get scanning done (and have), but it's therefore a lot harder than working with smaller volumes. I don't look to work over twenty hours in most weeks; since I'm not obligated to work a specific time on any individual day, I can work longer on one day than on another, and I want to have some free time. Tomorrow I'm to be seeing a guy that was on my floor in sophomore year, Thursday is the rehearsal for the wedding in which I'm reading, and Saturday is the wedding itself: if I don't do as much as possible now, I might not have time for work itself before Saturday is over!

I was glad to go to the house of God today! I worshipped today at Providence RPC on the southwest side of the city, where I plan to continue worshipping throughout the time that I'm in Pittsburgh. I really don't know many people, but there are some: Pastor Rut Etheridge and his family (Indiana readers should all know them :-), the Spyridovitch family, and (despite meeting them only today) the McFarlands. I wish I could see the Reids, whom I've known longer than anyone else in the congregation, but they're out of town currently. Today, I ended up meeting a few families and talking with several people. With nearly two months ahead, I hope to be able to meet most of the people and be able to talk with a significant number of them.