http://www.phcmontreat.org/ This Week In Presbyterian and Montreat History en-us A new display on 18th - 19th century hymn books and shape note song books is open at the Presbyterian Heritage Center. It includes a first edition Isaac Watt hymnal, first American Adaptation, first American split psalter, and shape note Presbyterian psalm and hymn book (Presbyterian Psalmodist, 1855), as well as Rev. Andrew Law's 1803 shape-note system which didn't use a musical staff. http://www.phcmontreat.org/index.htm On Sunday afternoon, July 13th, Bill Wade and other panelists will highlight Presbyterian Missions in Appalachia, including church formation, educational institutions and medical services, to mountaineers, Cherokees and Melungeons. 2:30 pm at the Presbyterian Heritage Center. Free. http://www.phcmontreat.org/index.htm A major exhibit of Presbyterians in Appalachia: Evangelical, Educational and Medical Missions, 1757 - today opened July 4, 2008. It runs until to April 15, 2009. http://www.phcmontreat.org/index.htm On July 6, 1743, the first sermon by a Presbyterian minister — William Robinson — was delivered in Hanover County, Virginia. Rev. Robinson had been sent as an evangelist to the colony by the Presbytery of New Castle. Four years later, the Rev. Samuel Davies would establish a permanent church in Hanover. http://www.phcmontreat.org/index.htm On July 7, 1878, Francis J. Grimke was ordained as a Presbyterian minister. Born in 1850 as the son of a white plantation owner and a black slave, Grimke would graduated in 1870 from first college for blacks in the United States — Lincoln University, founded by Presbyterian Rev. Dr. John Miller Dickey and his wife, Sarah Emlen Cresson. Grimke then studied at Princeton Theological Seminary, graduating in 1878. He was called to Washington's 15th Street Presbyterian Church, which her served for 50 years, except for a brief call to Jacksonville, Florida (1885 - 1889). An articulate opponent of racism — "Race prejudice can't be talked down, it must be lived down" — Rev. Grimke helped in the formation of the NAACP. http://www.phcmontreat.org/index.htm On July 8, 1933, William Stuart Red (1857-1933) died. A Presbyterian minister and historian, Red was licensed to preach in 1884 and ordained a minister of the Presbyterian Church (US) in 1887. He studied at Princeton Theological Seminary and then attended Columbia Theological Seminary in South Carolina in 1884-85. He served several Presbyterian churches in Texas, as well as editor of the Texas Presbyterian from 1894 to 1897 and moderator of the Synod of Texas (1902). He championed Austin for a seminarian school. His family offer the land and buildings of Stuart Seminary (a girls school), which they inherited from his mother, to the Texas Synod. In 1902 the Austin Presbyterian Theological Seminary opened at the former girls' school. Reverend Red also worked with Rev. Samuel M. Tenney to establish a center for historical research, which became the Historical Foundation of the Reformed and Presbyterian Churches at Montreat, North Carolina. http://www.phcmontreat.org/index.htm On July 10, 1888, Toyohiko Kagawa was born in Kobe, Japan. Under the influence of Presbyterian missionaries — Harry W. Myers and Charles A. Logan of the Presbyterian Church (US), Kagawa became a Christian and studied at the Presbyterian College in Tokyo (1905 - 1908), theology at Kobe Theological University and then at Princeton Theological Seminary (1914 - 1917). He worked in the slums as a Christian missionary and labor organizer. Kagawa also wrote about 150 works. He founded an Anti-War League in Japan during 1928. He died on April 23, 1960 and the Emperor posthumously awarded him Japan's highest honor, the Order of the Sacred Treasure. http://www.phcmontreat.org/index.htm On July 11, 1834, an anti-abolition riot by a thousand people wrecked the interior and windows of the Fourth Presbyterian Church of Newark, New Jersey. http://www.phcmontreat.org/index.htm