Gazetteers and county histories, even as they detail the secular lineaments of Edinboro, make mention of its four Protestant churches. In the 1884 history, for instance, these are named as follows: Methodist Episcopal, Presbyterian, Close Communion Baptist, and Advent -- all housed in "neat frame buildings." In point of time, the Presbyterian Church, subject of this monograph, was the first of the four congregations to be organized, commencing its institutional history in July 1829 when 32 communicants at a celebration of the Lord’s Supper determined to organize themselves into a church.

Prior to this concerted effort on their parts, the citizens of the community and the neighborhood had been the recipients of occasional visits from ministers settled in Meadville, Waterford, and Fairview. Alerted of their arrival by a boy riding out on horseback, the religiously disposed gathered at the Culbertson grist mill and after 1815 at a log house used as a school during the week. It was perhaps at the school house site that the first celebration of the Lord’s Supper with 12 communicant members took place in 1816. And, very likely, that 1829 communion was celebrated here. One of the two ministers who officiated on this latter occasion was the Rev. Samuel Tait, who, with the Rev. Pierce Chamberlain, employed by the Presbytery of Erie as a Home Missionary, formally organized the Presbyterian Church of Washington in April 1830. Its 26 communicants elected 3 elders -- John Campbell, Robert S. McClenathan, and James Reeder. They were ordained by the Rev. Chamberlain, who preached at least part of the time to the newly formed congregation.

Chamberlain had only recently dissolved his pastoral relationship with the Springfield church to commence his missionary labors, preaching throughout the Presbytery -- as he had done in Edinboro — in school houses, private homes, or wherever he could gather believers. According to a biographical profile in an early history of the Erie Presbytery, he was eminently fitted for this work, "for although usually a taciturn man, he had a wonderful faculty of attracting children to him, and was always provided with books and tracts to distribute, and he had a word of kindness and advice for all classes of people." Perhaps it was under his leadership that in November 1834 the congregation began its first serious fund raising effort to erect a meeting house on the Waterford road.

to attract its first resident pastor, the Rev. Jared Spicer. Barely was he established in his charge, however, than the Presbyterian Church split on the national and local scene into the New and Old School branches, and for the next thirty years there were two Presbyterian congregations in Edinboro. Until 1854 both worshipped in the Waterford road meeting house, though occupying it at alternate hours or on alternate Sundays. With the details of the controversy we need not concern ourselves save to note that the divisive issue in Edinboro very likely concerned the ecumenical versus the denominational approach to national and foreign missions.

Numerically, at least, the congregation seemed fairly evenly divided by the controversy for, of the 66 communicant members, 2 of the 3 elders, together with 28 others, became the nucleus of the New School church, which in 1854, at a cost of $2,400, erected the building so long identified locally as the Presbyterian church. The Old School, on payment of a stipulated sum, retained the meeting house both had so long used jointly. But then, in 1855, they razed that structure and at a cost of $1,800 erected a new church of their own on the same site. This structure they occupied until the two congregations were again united locally in 1870, at which time the New and Old Schools mustered jointly 182 members. The decision being made to worship in what had been the New School building, the Old School structure was sold in 1871 to the Baptists. If any factionalism prevailed in the wake of the reunion, there is no record of it that has survived.

Sources

The history of the early religious life of Edinboro is, to be sure, touched on in the county histories referred to earlier; however, the most authoritative account of the founding and early years of the Edinboro Presbyterian church is "Synopsis of a Historical Sermon Preached in the First Presbyterian Church. . . on Sabbath 9 July 1876," collections of The Presbyterian Historical Society, Philadelphia. Delivered by the Rev. Robert Christison, State Supply, it details the local story from the occasional visits by itinerant ministers up until July of 1876 when the church numbered 220 members. In his discourse, Christison acknowledges drawing on "a sort of Preface" to the first Session records that was written by the Rev. Chamberlain. Unfortunately, this preface, together with the Session records prior to 1892, have long been missing.

The church building erected in 1854 by the New School congregation at a cost of $2,400 was reminiscent of those structures that still distinguish scores of New England villages. That is to say, it was a local adaptation of the style of the English Renaissance, which owed its handsome lines to a mingling of the post Colonial manner and Greek Revival classical -- the latter evidenced in the treatment of the pilasters distinguishing the principal entrance and the entrance to the lecture room addition of 1905.

The oblong structure, set off by a bell tower and octagonal steeple, measured 36 feet, 8 inches by 103 feet, 1 inch. The worshipper, entering through the principal entrance doors at the building’s western extremity, found himself facing the pulpit and communion table. Four kerosene lamp candelabrums furnished light and the building was heated by perhaps as many as four wood burning stoves. As no adequate description of the interior survives, it is a matter of some dispute whether or not there was a balcony directly over the western entrance. The latter does, however, seem a distinct possibility as the feature characterized various of the community’s early religious edifices--at least as they were recalled by the late Wilbur Billings, a long time resident with an abiding interest in local history.

The 1854 facility evidently served the congregation’s needs until 1905 when a lecture room 14 feet, 3 inches by 20 feet was added to the northern side of the building at a cost equaling that expended on the original structure. At its eastern extremity the addition contained a primary classroom and a kitchen. Apparently, too, the time was ripe for other efforts at remodeling. The balcony, assuming there had been one, was torn out and the entrance area improved by the addition of sliding doors to make a vestibule. Cathedral windows were added and the pulpit was repositioned in the center of the south wall once an alcove had been built to house it. Of necessity, the pews were repositioned and the opportunity was taken to replace those that had been so long in use with the seating that served until the church’s demolition in 1973. To celebrate the completion of the modernization, a rededicatory service was held on January 16, 1905, at which time an "Historical Review," prepared by Isaac Reeder, was read.

In the years between 1905 and 1911, the occasion of the next major effort at remodeling, the grounds were graded and seeded, the exterior was painted, and a walk and railing up to the west entrance were undertaken. However, in 1911, the congregation, once more feeling cramped -- even with the added space provided by the lecture room -- made the decision to raise the entire building on its foundation some 25 inches. With the church furnishing the blocking, the cost, as noted in the Session records, was $50. It was in 1911, too, that the church fathers made the decision to redecorate the interior, carpet the floor, and replace the original hand-pump organ with a pipe organ costing a reported $2,400. Its installation necessitated the enlarging of the alcove constructed in 1905 to house the pulpit. At the completion of these various improvements a rededicatory service was held on November 5, 1911.

It appears that the motive force behind the raising of the building on its foundations was to secure additional space for the Sunday School. However, it is not clear just how much -- if indeed any -- of the new basement area was actually excavated at the time the foundation was raised. Witness the fact that early in 1914 a committee from the Sunday school appeared before the Trustees asking them to have prepared a complete plan for finishing the basement for their use. Evidently the work went forward over the next several years as Charlie Lodge, a newly joined member in 1918, remembers being put to work digging out the ground beneath the lecture room. Just how much he and his fellow workers accomplished is not clear, for a congregational meeting was called in January 1922 to consider the advisability of completing the basement for use by the church school. At this same meeting the idea of constructing a new church was raised and referred to a committee.

Their report led to the calling of yet another congregational meeting on April 14, 1922, at which time it was resolved to remodel yet again the existing facility. Most importantly, this decision led to the addition of a two-story Sunday School wing 26 feet, 6 inches by 49 feet, 9 inches on the building’s eastern end. As well, the vestibule was modified to provide for a choir room in the southwest corner and the lecture room, broken up by partitions, was given over to the junior department.

The basement area was refurbished to house the primary department in the area directly beneath the lecture room and the kitchen was relocated in the space beneath the sanctuary, even as that portion of the basement beneath the new wing became a banquet room. Session records give the cost of these efforts at modernization, which also involved a new roof, a new floor throughout the entire church, together with the painting of the interior and the addition of cement steps and sidewalks, at $21,200. To mark the occasion, rededicatory services were held on April 22, 1923, and in anticipation of them Clarence A. Knowlton prepared a pamphlet titled "Historical Sketch."

In noting the event the Edinboro Independent called attention to one curious feature in the architectural plans. This was a motion picture booth to have been located in the lecture room balcony. Though the balcony itself was not constructed, a booth on stilts was raised against the room’s north wall and in November 1923 a committee was appointed to investigate the possibility of the Men’s Bible class securing a motion picture machine. In due course they were successful and at least a limited number of religious and temperance films were shown over the years. Long after the practice was abandoned, the booth continued as an adjunct of the room. Not until after the formation of the parlor committee in April 1947 was it torn out so that the ladies of the committee might redecorate the room as a church parlor.

Milford W. Castrodale, who accepted a call to the church in 1939, remembers the financial difficulties of the Depression years which resulted in both the manse and the church edifice being sadly in need of repair. In particular, he writes, "The steeple was listing so precariously that I feared to park my car in the place provided. So one of our first projects was the complete renovation and improvement of the properties." Dr. Biron Decker, a moving spirit behind the various efforts at restoration, notes the steeple was anchored in place by the use of specially made steel rods and that a new carpet was put down even as the pews were cleaned and revarnished. As had become the custom, a rededication service was held on April 25, 1940, at which time Arch Bristow wrote in an area paper: "And today, the newly silvered spire, chaste and beautiful, with a cross on its summit, rises among the great green maples, and the pretty church and homelike attractive manse next door is one of the most attractive spots in attractive Edinboro."

Sources

The story of the physical church survives in the Session records and in the minutes of the Board of Trustees, prior to the adoption of a unicameral board. Unfortunately, these records tend to be little more than enumerations of alterations accomplished. The Individual memory is more informative, especially in the persons of Dr. Biron Decker and Roscoe Billings. The former Is particularly knowledgeable of the physical church in the 1930’s and 40’s, the latter of the structure in the final two decades of its life.

Since 1837, when the Rev. Jared Spicer became the first resident minister, the Edinboro New School congregation has been served by twenty-four pastors. The earliest of these -- James F. Reed (1841-48), John Taylor (1849), William Ottinger (1851-52) and Eli W. Beebe (1852-62) -- remain only names in the church register. Not so the Rev. William E. Grassie (1863-75), the church’s senior minister in point of service. A graduate of Amherst College and of the Andover Theological Seminary, he began his ministerial career at the Wattsburg Presbyterian Church. Thereafter, he accepted a call to the Edinboro Church, remaining until 1875 when he elected to serve Presbyterians in Cambridge Springs until his retirement in 1900.

Something of Grassie’s Edinboro experiences are preserved in a tribute to him titled "Fifty Years a Minister." In part, this pamphlet reprints the sermon he delivered at Wattsburg, October 1, 1905, on the fiftieth anniversary of his ordination. In it he recalls his salary on coming to Edinboro was $700, "which when it took three dollars in script to equal one in gold, soon showed it to be quite inadequate." Subsequently, according to his own account, the Edinboro congregation raised his stipend to $1,000 and then to $1,200. Moreover, it was during his pastorate that the church manse was built, a then commodious home by local standards. But Grassie was appreciative of more than purely material considerations. In particular, he spoke of his numerous contacts with Normal School students, which made his situation "exceptionally pleasant and profitable."

Grassie was followed by Robert Christison (1875-76), George C. Bush (1876-79), Robert G. Williams (1 879-85) and Henry Cooper (1885-88) of whose ministries nothing survives in the church archives. However, the Rev. James Gray Rose’s tenure (1888-92) is documented in the earliest sessional record that can be found, and there are those in the congregation today who remember his returning to preach at the rededicatory service on August 25, 1940.

Rev. Rose, a graduate of Grove City College and of Western Theological Seminary, was well launched in his first pastorate when he became unavoidably involved in a judicial investigation, conducted by the Session, into the Christian character of J. A. Cooper, then principal of the Normal School. The latter had been charged by the school’s board of trustees, the most vocal of whom were also prominent church members, with mishandling funds (an allegation never substantiated in a court of law) and acting out of harmony with the board. Charges and counter charges disrupted not only the peace and good order of the school but the community and the church, as well. Rose, as the moderator of a Session that had determined to prosecute the embattled principal for pursuing a course calculated to create a division in the church, could not but become identified with the anti-Cooper faction. Feeling the effectiveness of his ministry imperiled, he regretfully resigned his pastorate on September12, 1892, only weeks before the Presbytery trial that found the defendant guilty of falsehood and unchristian conduct.

From Rose’s leaving, until 1896, the pulpit was filled by supplies. Then on March 17, 1896, the congregation reached the decision to call George D. Harvey, who had been the "stated supply" since September 1, 1894. A quaint survival of his ministry is the terms of the call he received. In part it reads: "And that you may be free from worldly cares and avocations, we hereby promise and oblige ourselves to pay you the sum of $750 in regular weekly payments, and in addition to the above amount to give you the free use of the parsonage belonging to the church, and further to grant you a vacation each year of four weeks as shall suit your convenience."

Harvey’s successor, the Rev. R. H. van Pelt (1900-09), inherited a divided congregation, but one he was largely successful in reuniting before his untimely death in the wake of an emotion-charged Easter service in which twenty-one individuals were taken into the congregation. Included in that number were Rose Cochran and her son Alfred, both of whom recall the occasion vividly. Vivid, too, are the recollections that the Cochrans have of the ministry of Frank B. Bonner (1910-20), who in his first year’s ministry added sixteen names to the rolls. This brought the church membership to 202 communicants and that number, under his leadership, rose to 289 in 1911-12 and 302 in 1913-14, Evidently the Presbyterians had chosen wisely.

That others beyond the bounds of the community agreed is evidenced by a communication the church received in February 1918. It requested that Bonner serve for three to six months as a Religious Work Director in one of the many camps that had sprung up in response to the American involvement in World War I. The Session promptly granted him a leave of absence and though Bonner had returned to Edinboro by August, he offered his resignation in September to accept a commission as an army chaplain. The Session, rather than acting to accept his resignation, moved to lay the table and to grant him a three month’s leave. Evidently he had not returned by the Annual Meeting April 1919, on which occasion a motion to remove his resignation from the table was defeated -- evidence of strong desire many felt to retain him as their pastor. Bonner himself was in Edinboro shortly thereafter to report that he expected to be home permanently in July. Once more he took up his ministry, but then in December 1920 he resigned to accept again a proffered commission as an army chaplain.

Upon Bonner’s departure the pulpit was filled by supplies until late 1922, when the congregation reached a decision to call Joseph Lindsay (1922- 1926) and it was in his pastorate that the church undertook the extensive alterations, to include the addition of a Sunday School wing that is discussed elsewhere. Strange as it may today, there appears to have been major reservations to Lindsay on the basis of his being a Canadian citizen. How real this objection was is difficult to define, but John A. Stuart (1927-33), who followed Lindsay in the pulpit, was an Erie boy educated at the Western Theological Seminary. Serving his church, the young minister was soon launched into what was described as a full schedule: Sunday morning service at 10:30, Sunday evening service at 7:45, and Wednesday prayer meeting at the same hour.

That he worked with a will seems evident from his report to the Session that during his first ten months in Edinboro he made 600 calls, brought 19 new members into the church, conducted 6 funerals and 1 wedding. But perhaps Stuart is remembered most vividly as a young bachelor who met his future wife, Phoebe Brugh, when she was singing in the choir. Their romance was followed closely by the congregation and, when they were married, it was an event many yet recall nostalgically.

Unfortunately the individual and collective memory has been a good deal less kind to Robert C. Johnston, (1933-39). A church member who knew him well describes Johnston at once as a sincere man and yet as man unfortunate in his relations with the congregation. "A nice man but. . ." was a phrase another used to describe him as was the epithet "humorless." Unquestionably Johnston’s ministry was headed for trouble, and this was soon evident from the falling attendance at Sunday services. One who did attend summed up the situation: "So few went to church that those who did were soon counted."

Not only did a substantial number stop coming but of no less importance in depression-haunted times, there were many who all but ceased contributing to the church, and in consequence the church fathers were able to pay Johnston only a fraction of the salary stipulated in his call. The Trustees, convinced that the situation could be resolved in only one way, took matters into their own hands and in a meeting with Johnston told him firmly that he had to go. However, before the pastoral relationship could be dissolved, Presbytery insisted that all monies owed to the departing minister, as well as the church’s contribution to his pension, had to be paid in full to August 31, 1938. Forthwith, a special campaign to raise the funds needed was launched and with its successful completion Johnston departed to serve another congregation in neighboring Ohio.

Fortunately for the well-being of the congregation, Johnston’s successor, Milford W. Castrodale (1939-43), was equal to the challenge of bringing back to church many of those who had been alienated by his predecessor. One who returned, in describing her response to Castrodale, affirmed: "When he came, something nice happened." However, Castrodale stipulated he would accept the call only if the church abandoned such fund raising devices as church-sponsored dinners, an almost monthly feature of the depression years. And whether or not the congregation could meet the agreed upon salary of $2,000 a year was a matter of some concern, especially as they had fallen behind in meeting a $1,200 a year commitment to Johnston. That they were able to do so, of course, is a matter of record.

How solidly the congregation was behind the pastor and how desirous they were to keep him seems evident from their response to the interest of other churches in securing Castrodale for themselves. The first of these instances occurred in September, 1940, when the minister announced to the Session that he had received a call from a much larger church in Texas. Capitalizing on what seemed to them his indecision, a group met with Castrodale within days to express their appreciation of his ministry. In response, he made known four days later, near the end of the Sunday morning service, that he had decided to turn down the call. Then, in October 1942, Castrodale announced not only that he had received but had accepted a call to the Presbyterian Church in Evans City, where in the spring of 1941 he had conducted a Bible conference.

A Congregational meeting was called on October 14th to dissolve the pastoral relationship, but those present refused to accept a motion to that effect, and by a rising vote all present pledged themselves to support the pastor better in the future. They then passed a motion to postpone indefinitely the date of Castrodale’s resignation. The following day he announced his decision to remain and did so until the fall of 1943 when he again tendered his resignation to accept a call to the Presbyterian Church in Rochester, Pa. On this occasion it was accepted as was a resolution citing him for raising the church from a state of discouragement to one of physical and spiritual prosperity.

Castrodale was followed by J. Calvin Winder (1944-47) and by James A. Walther (1948-50), both youngish men in the first years of promising careers to which a country pastorate was only the prelude. In Winder’s case opportunity presented itself when members of a Pittsburgh area family heard him preach on their summer visits to the community. So impressed were they by him that when their own pastor resigned to become the Executive of the Presbytery of Cleveland, they were the prime movers behind the call Winder received in the fall of 1947 to the thousand member Brentwood Presbyterian Church. 

James A. Walther, today an Associate Professor New Testament Literature and Exegesis at the Pittsburgh Theological Seminary, writes of the brevity of. his Edinboro experience: "I was fresh from graduate study in Canada, and I hoped that eventually I might get a teaching position. At almost the very time I moved to Edinboro I got a communication.. . asking me whether I might be interested in teaching at Grove City College. I assured him (Dr. Ketler) I was spoken for at the time, but he inquired again a year later. Then Dean Calderwood died, and a third opportunity, including the teaching of his Latin courses, came to me. I asked to be relieved of my place in Edinboro although I had originally intended to stay there longer." Dr. Walther then adds: "I was hardly there long enough to become a very important part of the life and history of the church."

Such a judgment cannot be made of Leonard Hogenboom (1950-58), the most important, at least in an historical perspective, of those ministers to serve the church in the twentieth century. At the very least, the statistical record of his pastorate is impressive; 53 new members added in his first full year’s ministry and a total membership of well over 400 communicants by the end of the decade. Walther, in noting a three-fold division of the congregation into townsfolk, college people and farmers, had sensed an "us and them" division among the various parties. This divisiveness, enunciated by members of the congregation as well as a former pastor, was largely annulled by Hogenboom’s personality. He was, as the testimony of so many bears witness, able not only to talk to anyone but to handle any situation. Very evidently he was that rare individual to whom the community, not alone church members, felt they could turn, convinced that he was a man with a compassion for human frailty who would listen, love and never judge.

Hogenboom, recalling his Edinboro days, describes the Edinboro congregation on his arrival as essentially an old folks’ church. And it was his particular realization that if the church was to meet the needs of returning veterans and their families, a place must be made for them. Thus he was instrumental in introducing the idea of a nursery during the morning worship service and subsequently a junior church. He also was the moving force behind the formation of the young parents into a couples club, a social entity geared to meet their interests. And of some note is the fact that many of the present leadership of the church were among the most faithful members of that organization.

Very evidently he was going to be a hard man to replace and those who followed him in the pulpit have found themselves measured by his example. Certainly William Allman (1959-64) felt this situation to be so. Unlike his predecessor who had placed a premium upon fellowship, he saw himself as a teacher whose first imperative was instruction. Thus he was the moving spirit behind the schools of religion that involved not only the Edinboro congregation but Presbyterians in Cambridge Springs and Union City. And though he may have possessed, as was said of him, more religion in his little finger than many of his predecessors in their entire bodies, his intellectual frame of reference as well as his compunction to make the church more religious than it wanted to be soon imperiled his ministry and he chose to accept a call elsewhere.

With his abrupt departure voices were heard calling for a younger man, one who could relate in particular to the mushrooming college population. The pulpit committee’s choice was Richard Morey (1964-66). A young man serving his first church as pastor, he possessed both intelligence and sensitivity, but without his quite realizing it, he soon found himself grappling with problems at once personal and professional. These made it increasingly difficult for him to use his very real abilities to minister to a congregation puzzled and wary of the imperatives, at once social and spiritual, that he saw so clearly. And when he participated with other area ministers in the Selma, Alabama, march, he did so without the wholehearted support of the Session and many, it should be added, in the congregation. Feeling himself increasingly at odds with both, Morey resigned his calling to enter the business world.

Many of those voices that had formerly called for a young pastor now made it known that a more mature individual was needed. The choice of the pulpit committee that barnstormed the country for more than nine months was George W. Day, who at this writing has served the Edinboro congregation for over eight years. In his outgoing friendliness, he recalls something of Hogenboom and in his evangelical spirit something of Castrodale. Yet he is very much a personality in his own right. And whatever judgments will in time be made of his ministry, it does seem evident that he will be remembered as the man in the pulpit who presided over the transition from a country to a suburban church, from a building on which considerably less than a hundred thousand dollars had been expended in its one hundred years and more of service to a church plant costing in excess of four hundred thousand dollars. No building -- whatever its cost -- can measure the spiritual well being of those who worship with it. Mindful of this fact, George W. Day can say and has said on numerous occasions, "I’m excited about the future."