Mín Englisc Blog

Here's a typical evening activity: although I never played myself, I spent parts of several evenings watching Scrabble games between certain people. Clockwise from left are Gordon Keddie, Ken Carson, Mark England, and Harold Hutcheson.

Since returning home yesterday afternoon, I've mostly been relaxing and attempting to get back to a normal at-home life for the next week.

Attending the closing ceremony for RP International Conference 2008 at the moment. I've not seen it for sure, but I believe that this has been the highest attendance, well over 1600, for any RP International Conference: and the approximately 1,250-seat capacity of the main auditorium of the Fine Arts Center is well exceeded. This may be the largest single assembly of members of the RPCNA in history, and I'm sure the largest since we began using the 1973 edition of the Book of Psalms for Singing. With Synod's deliverance on the new edition of the psalter, this is likely the final such conference at which we use this psalter: what a glorious part of the conclusion of the use of this long-used book of praise to God!

Because I've not been told whether I'm leaving late Thursday or late Friday, I've been working a ton since early yesterday: over thirteen hours yesterday, over two already today. It doesn't result in a lot of sleep...
Currently, I'm scanning the earliest minutes of New Alexandria RPC, a smalltown congregation southeast of Pittsburgh that only closed five years ago. These early minutes are faint and written on an unusually brownish paper, so I'm running in color scanning mode, thus slowing down the process somewhat. I hit a huge slowdown last night: when I reached 25% complete, I saved and went to dinner, but as soon as I resumed scanning the computer suddenly restarted. Of course, I didn't lose much (just one page), but this computer scans at different speeds every time it's restarted for whatever reason. It had been scanning at a rate of perhaps four color scans per minute, but after restarting was doing at most one per minute! Before going to bed, I restarted it again: it's not going as fast as it was, but it's much better, perhaps three per minute.

Done typing the minutes of the Synod of 1825: only four more synods to go!

Today's work, like yesterday's, went quite well. The box on which I had been working was composed of lots of small books, so many that I needed help in getting them all put back in so that they'd fit well. Opening the next box, I discovered New York Presbytery minutes: some in small binders, some 8½×11 typescripts, and some large books. I was extremely thankful to discover that the one large book was actually used for just fifty-six pages: it's a lot quicker than if it had been filled all the way to its 400+ page capacity!
I finally was able to have a confusing statement cleared up: in the minutes of Multiracial RPC (Pensacola, FL), there was a statement that, by itself, made virtually no sense, so I asked Mr Reid (who was clerk there then) for advice last week. He replied that he'd come to help, but wasn't able to, so at church he promised me that he'd be in "tomorrow" (i.e. Monday) morning — just in time for me to forget entirely! I was thankful that he was able/willing to come again today and clear up the ambiguity.

Today went really well, and I had quite a useful time. I typed another year's Minutes of Synod this morning, and before beginning work in the Archives, I went (thanks to Dan Drost for driving :-) to Pittsburgh Theological Seminary. They possess the diary of John Cuthbertson — the first RP minister in this part of the world — and I had wondered if they also possessed the minutes of the first RP presbytery, as the seminary was founded by the body into which that presbytery merged. Sadly, nothing, but I'm thankful that the librarian who worked with me was quite helpful and knew what I was talking about: it's good when I don't have to explain what I'm asking about :-) Moreover, she assured me that their archives are catalogued, so I'm thankful that we know definitively that it's not there...better to have a "no" than an ultimately fruitless "perhaps" when you're simply looking for a rare book. Now it's time to contact the Presbyterian Historical Society in Philadelphia: if they don't have it, and if their Louisville branch doesn't have it, I'll be unable to imagine anywhere that these documents could be. As is, I expect that they're lost, and I'll be rather surprised (very pleasantly surprised, of course) if they turn up anywhere.
Once I got back to RPTS, I enjoyed work: rather than going through tons of presbytery minutes, I scanned the minutes of First Boston throughout almost all its history (everything but their first four years). What happened to the records of Second church I don't know (perhaps they were microfilmed; the microfilmed documents are set apart), but First is done. Considering that it took me four days last week to scan nine books, it's nice that just today I can scan six books :-)

Sorry for no posts recently: it took three days to get through the 87 years of Pittsburgh Presbytery, and I was a little exhausted from that. I have made progress otherwise, however: I've typed the original Minutes of Synod as far as 1816.
I'll try to post more tomorrow; right now, however, I'm tired enough that I really need to get to sleep as fast as possible.

Today's work wasn't too nice. Not that there were any trials or other problems: it's simply that I had to work with huge books (all of them at least 400 pages, and some over 500), and the work went really slowly. With the computer not scanning as fast as it does sometimes, I was often able to make only about 100 scans per hour, and most of the seven books in this box are large enough that I can only scan one page at a time. Even worse: this afternoon, as I was halfway done with one of these huge 400-page books, the program closed and I lost all 190 pages! At least we're going to have good records of the history of Pittsburgh Presbytery, with nearly 100 years encapsulated in these seven books.
Tonight's work, while shorter, was in some ways more enjoyable: typing Glasgow's transcription of the minutes of the Synod of 1812. I've now done the three earliest synods of the RPCNA.
By the way: did any of you read about the bulldozer terrorist attack in Jerusalem today?