So begins my open-ended and occasional series on Stone-Campbell Bibliography.
For installment #1 I’m posting an article I ran across quite by accident early this morning (some of the best finds happen out of the blue). I find the parallels with Disciples of Christ Historical Society intruiging. I’d have to check our membership files to see whether John Allen Hudson is a member of DCHS in 1951. I find it difficult to believe that he didn’t know about the Society (it was a decade old in 1951). Additionally, Hudson operated Old Paths Book Club and through it issued reprints of many out-of-print books from the 19th Century Reformation. He was certainly a heads-up business man and book man. Its entirely plausible that he didn’t much like the Disciple influence, and wanted to start his own archival endeavor (this is how ACU’s Center for Restoration Studies got its start…By the way, I’m pleased that we have a very cordial working relationship with CRS). What is amazing is that he basically prophesied the construction of the TW Phillips Memorial at DCHS. The Phillips family built our building to honor their father and the Society moved into it’s million-dollar home in the 1958, seven years after Hudson’s article appears in FF! Pretty neat, eh? Speculation aside, the article betrays a clear interest in our history in our fellowship. John Allen Hudson reflects it and appeals to it. If some have distanced themselves from our history, so be it, but not everyone was like that.
I have added a few footnotes to Hudson’s text. I haven’t read any further in FF to see what became of his proposal; that would make a nice future installment. One last thing: I’d love to see that correspondence he mentions: who is he talking with, what were their dreams, and what (if any) historical treasures did they flush out of hiding?
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The Restoration Historical Association—A Proposal
John Allen Hudson
Firm Foundation, March 6, 1951, p. 6.
For a few years there has been in my mind the idea of establishing a great central library somewhere where it might be the most convenient and where we might have some inducement to do so, that would house under the name of the Restoration Historical Association all the material that we can gather from the past and store and preserve it for research purposes and for general use. We should want whatever has come from the press over the years in the ranks of churches of Christ in this country and also whatever might be contributed to it from other ends. We should want files of all the old papers, like T. R. Burnett’s Gospel Trumpet, Joe S. Warlick’s Gospel Guide, W. R. Richardson’s writings, like Mable Clement Reviewed,[1]the tracts and debates of all the writers that we can find, et cetera. Much of this material has been scattered until some of it will be in the limbo of forgotten things, but much can be recovered perhaps, to make a great and rich library for writers of the future.
We shall need not only facilities but a Board of Directors, a Curator (I nominate myself since I have a part in its formation for this position in this de facto organization) an Associate Curator, a Research Director with several assistants, a Corresponding Secretary and a Treasurer.[2]
We shall need funds and maybe some wealthy person will give us the memorial library, and others will contribute generously so that we can get this under way. It will naturally start out in a small way and then grow over the years. I have some ideas for financing it, but would prefer that there should be a discussion when the organization is formed. Perhaps one of the colleges would at first offer us some real inducement to locate it on its campus.[3]
There would be a correlation of the data and information in the libraries of all the colleges, and by the microfilming process, anything obtained would be made available for any of the colleges which would care to meet the expense. There is no desire for any kind of rivalry, but of cooperation of this great literary work.
Not only all kinds of tracts, pamphlets, debates of the past, and books on all kinds of subjects, in our ranks, and files of the papers of the past, but also the unpublished theses that are now being written would be filed here.
What have you from the past that is valuable that should be placed in such a library? What would you be willing to do to help preserve this material? Would there be someone with means who would like to help start this work, to build a memorial to some loved one, or to some great gospel preacher of the past?[4]
For some months now, and at slow intervals, there has been some correspondence on this matter, but I have been very busy with other things and have been able to get to it. While the organization will have to be formed in large measure along private lines, this is a “feeler,” and the reaction will be of service in this direction.
Please write me about the matter, concerning what you have, or what you think, or what you would do in this direction. Address me at 600 North Rossmore, Hollywood 4, California.
[1] Italics and underlining added to these titles.
[2] When Disciples of Christ Historical Society was established in 1941, it had a Board of Directors and a Curator; much of the grunt work was performed by Culver-Stockton students working in Claude Spencer’s library.
[3]DCHS was initially housed in the basement of the campus library at Culver-Stockton College in Canton, Missouri. Culver-Stockton is a Disciples undergraduate liberal arts college. College librarian Claude Spencer was the first Curator of the Society. When they moved to Nashville in the early 1950’s Claude and his wife Maud moved as well.
[4]In 1950 DCHS was in the process of moving from Culver-Stockton College to Nashville. The collection and offices would reside at the Joint Universities Library at Vanderbilt University until the T. W. Phillips Memorial was completed in 1958. The PhillipsMemorial is named after preacher, author, statesman and benefactor Thomas W. Phillips. The Phillips family was quite generous toward Disciple schools, seminaries and the like.
