Presbyterian Historical Society of Ireland
September 2022 – March 2023
Acquisitions
We have received several new accessions of archives in recent months.
With the closure of Townsend Street Presbyterian Church in Belfast additional records of the Shankill Road Mission and Townsend Street were deposited including a portrait of the Rev William Johnston, a former minister of Townsend Street. (The Rev Johnston had a keen interest in education and was actively involved in establishing days schools in Belfast but is perhaps better known as the founder of the Sabbath School Society and helped to establish the Presbyterian Orphan Society.)
Additional records were also received from Crumlin Road Presbyterian Church, now closed.
A complete archive of Drumlee Presbyterian Church, Co Down, from 1826 was transferred to the Society. This was the home congregation of the Rev John Shillidy who was ordained as a missionary to India in 1874 – his biography by R H Boyd was among the papers.
Additional papers of the late Rev Dr W D Bailie relating to his research on the 1798 Rebellion with some documents relating to Kilmore Presbyterian Church, Co Down.
We continue to receive donations of books – recent acquisitions include books from the library of the late Wolsely Knox of Dungannon, a former member of the Society.
The most recent acquisition is a beautifully bound illustrated presentation album containing an address to the Rev Thomas A Smyth and Mrs Smyth from Great Victoria Street Presbyterian Church, Belfast, to mark the semi-jubilee of his ministry in the congregation, 1897-1922. Included in the album are watercolours of Great Victoria Street, Clogherney and Newmills. Presbyterian Churches.
We very much welcome the receipt of congregational records which can be deposited with the Society on an indefinite loan basis whereby the church retains ownership of the records and the Society merely has custody. The records will be fully catalogued and a copy of the catalogue will be sent to you. If for any reason you need to withdraw a record that can be accommodated.
Cataloguing
Time permitting, we aim to catalogue all new accessions as soon as ever possible. Almost all the new acquisitions above have been fully catalogued.
Website and Facebook Page
We like to keep our website up-to-date, making sure that all non-current events are removed as well as adding new content. The History of Presbyterian Congregations on the members only area is being updated on a regular basis. Three years of additional indexes to births, marriage and deaths from the Witness newspaper have been added in recent days for those who are interested in tracing their family history. Family historians might also want to check out other indexes, for example, to stipend and seatholder lists, subscription lists and ministers’ calls for various congregations which are being added to all the time. You will need to be a member of the Society to access these.
We have over 1,000 followers on Facebook while our website continues to attract a good number of visits. From September 2022 to February 2023 we had 11,378 visits to the website.
We would be very grateful if congregations would include on their website a link to the Society’s website. If you would like a piece of text to add to your congregational website we can supply this.
Talks and Lectures and Annual Field Trip
A full programme of talks and lectures delivered face-to-face are now up and running, mostly in Belfast but we do try to deliver some to venues outside of Belfast. The Rev Geoffrey Allen gave a talk in October 2022 at Cullybackey Reformed Presbyterian Church on the Rev William Martin who, among other Presbyterian ministers, left these shores with hundreds of his congregation and others to resettle in South Carolina in 1772. An outstanding evening was held in Cregagh Presbyterian Church in February 2022 when the Rev Scott Moore, one of our Joint Secretaries, gave a fascinating talk on ‘Psalms, Hymns and Spiritual Songs’ and the controversaries surrounding the introduction of hymns and musical instruments in Presbyterian churches. The talk was preceded by Cregagh choir singing some well-known psalms, one of which was sung unaccompanied as used to be the case.
Our new progamme of talks and lectures is now available on our website. Please feel free to advertise them to your congregations and encourage them to attend. We try to record talks and lectures – some are available on our YouTube channel or on our website if you were not able to attend in person.
This year will see the resumption of our Annual Field Trip which because of Covid has not taken place since 2019. This is a great day out – visiting churches and enjoying lots of good food and fellowship. This year we are going to the Route Presbytery area – full details of the itinerary are available on our website. If you can take some leaflets to advertise the Trip to members of your congregation we will be happy to provide these. To compensate for the disruption of our Field Trips we produced a video on the development of Presbyterianism in Belfast which is available on our YouTube channel.
Publications
The Publications Committee of the Society has been very busy in the last 6 months. The latest issue of our annual Bulletin is now available featuring two substantial articles: one by the Rev Joseph Thompson, on W P Nicolson, one of Ulster’s best-known evangelists, who through his Gospel campaigns in the early 1920s brought thousands of people to Christ; the other by Mrs Avril Heenan on the history of the ordination of women in the Presbyterian Church in Ireland from 1900 to 2018. In addition, we also published: ‘Forgotten Covenanters’ by Dr William Roulston, the story of the Eastern Reformed Presbyterian Church and the first split in the Reformed Presbyterian Church of Ireland which ended with some of the congregations joining the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in Ireland; and ‘Wonderful Years’ – recording the memories of Claire Trueman as a former missionary Of the Presbyterian Church in Ireland in Jamaica from 1962 to 1998, edited by the Very Rev Dr John Dunlop. This was a joint publication with PCI’s Global Mission which was formally launched in Assembly Buildings on 7 December with a video-link to Claire and others in the United Church in Jamaica and the Cayman Islands.
Copies of all these publications as well as past publications can be obtained by ordering them through our website or by contacting the Librarian and Archivist at Assembly Buildings.
Second Hand Books
We have several books for sale that are surplus to our requirements. A list of these is available on our website under ‘Publications’ with details of costs to which we will need to add on postage. Most are related to Presbyterianism in Ireland and to the work of overseas mission in Ireland including some congregational histories but are not exclusively so. For example, read the challenging life story as told by Mrs Weir, of her husband, the Rev Andrew Weir, Presbyterian missionary to China, from 1899-1933, who travelled thousands of miles by mule cart often in great physical danger as a result of attacks by bandits.
Volunteers
We have a number of volunteers who help us out for a few hours each week. They can be engaged in a variety of tasks - numbering books and documents, indexing, cataloguing, preparing mailings, etc. If you would like to get involved please contact the Librarian and Archivist. We would be very grateful for any help you can give us.
Networking
We have been exploring how the Society and the Gamble Library at Union Theological College could co-operate more effectively. It has been agreed that in future, students in the College will visit the exhibition in the reception area of Assembly Buildings and the Society’s premises and will learn about the resources held by the Society. Society members will also be given the opportunity to visit the Library prior to the Robert Allen Lecture held in May of each year and to hear of the resources held by the Gamble Library for the history of Irish Presbyterianism.