1902: Samuel M. Tenney
In 1902, 31-year-old Presbyterian pastor Samuel M. Tenney found a bundle of manuscripts in a second-hand bookstore in Houston, Texas. The store’s proprietor, who evidentially had planned to dispose of the loose papers, gave Tenney the manuscripts at no cost.
The salvaged manuscripts–primarily made up of a student notes from a Senior Theology seminary class at Hampden-Sydney in Virginia–were not particularly historically valuable by themselves, but their discovery inspired Tenney to organize the Presbyterian Historical Society of the Synod of Texas.
The original collection found by Tenney is currently archived at Columbia Theological Seminary in Decatur, Georgia.