Happy Birthday - Cumberland Presbyterian Church

If my facts are correct, the Cumberland Presbyterian Church as a denomination celebrated its 213th birthday a couple of days ago.   The denomination grew rapidly during the 19th century.   With a focus on missions, the church planted many new churches as the frontier west of the Mississippi opened up.   There were churches planted as far west as Oregon.   By the end of the 19th century, there were many churches established in Missouri and Arkansas.   

In December of this year, 2023, the Cumberland Presbyterian Church in Calico Rock will celebrate its 100th anniversary.   For that celebration, I have been working on a project to compile the biographies of the original 17 charter members of the church.   There were 3 key men that were the core of the group.   They were Robert H. Wayland, Lucas H. McSpadden (my great-grandfather), and Leonard E. Evans.   

I began with Robert H. Wayland and that is when I fell into the rabbit hole.  I fell in deep and spent the entire weekend researching Uncle Bob's immediate family and then his extended much larger Wayland family.  I am writing this now on Monday night so I am obviously still down the rabbit hole.  Thanks to old issues of The Izard County Historian,  Ancestory.com and various histories of the Cumberland Presbyterian Church, I believe I have compiled a pretty good short bio of Uncle Bob.   

I will post the complete work when I have it completed.

Notes from trip to Dad's house.

I went to Calico Rock last weekend.  Here is an interesting item:

Dad found this sermon by David Morrow while going through mom's stuff.  Here is the story:

After dad retired from the drug store he and mom bought a RV and hit the road. One of their trips was out to the northwest.

David Morrow is the son of famous Cumberland Presbyterian pastor and theologian, Hubert Morrow.  Early in his career, Hubert was the pastor of the Cumberland Presbyterian Church in Calico Rock. He wrote a brief history of the Calico Rock Cumberland Presbyterian church while living in Calico Rock. I have an autographed copy but that is another story.

David became a Cumberland Presbyterian pastor and served at least one church in Arkansas before he went to South America on the mission field. While in South America he fell in love and married a Mennonite girl and subsequently joined the Mennonite church.

While on their RV trip to Washington mom and dad visited David's church. Attached is the sermon he preached that day.


Click here to read the sermon