Welcome to Ulster Worldly, a blog about the history of Presbyterianism. Many of these stories come from my own family, many others come from my own denomination.

Tim Hopper
Raleigh, NC

Eclipse in Congo

The recent solar eclipse reminded my dad that his grandfather had seen the 1919 eclipse in Congo. My great grandfather recounts the story in his memoir:

One day in mid-afternoon I was teaching a Bible class in the grass-roofed chapel. The roof was rather low at the edges, so most of our light was reflected from the ground. It grew darker and darker, until we could not see to read. I told the students we had better get home before the storm broke. We stepped outside, but to our great surprise there was no storm. But it continued to grow darker and darker. There was a total eclipse of the sun.

Mr. Stilz got a photograph showing a perfect corona. Some days later I started on my homeward journey, but I was to go out of my way to visit Bibanga station. I arrived there in four or five days. A few days out from Lusambo a village chief asked me in all seriousness whether it was true, as he had heard, that a white man reached up his hand, and covered the sun.

Posted on by Tim Hopper

Free eBooks on the History of Presbyterianism

There are a number of free ebooks on the history of Presbyterianism. Here are some of them:

History of the Presbyterian Church in the state of Kentucky: with a preliminary sketch of the churches in the valley of Virginia by Robert Davidson (1808-1876)

History of the Presbyterian Church in South Carolina by George Howe (1802-1883)

The centennial history of the Associate Reformed Presbyterian Church, 1803-1903

History of the Reformed Presbyterian Church in America: With Sketches of All Her Ministry, Congregations, Missions, Institutions, Publications, Etc by William Melancthon Glasgow (1856-1909)

J. Gresham Machen: A Biographical Memoir by Ned B. Stonehouse (1902-1962)

The Presbyterian Conflict by Edwin H. Rian (1900-1995)

The History Behind the Reformed Presbyterian Church, Evangelical Synod by George P. Hutchinson

History of the Cumberland Presbyterian church by Benjamin Wilburn McDonnold (1827-1889)

History of the Southern Presbyterian Church by Thomas Cary Johnson (1859-1936)

A history of the Presbyterian church in Georgia by James Stacy (1830-1912)

A history of the Presbyterian churches in the United States by Thompson by Robert Ellis (1844-1924)

The Constitutional History of the Presbyterian Church in the United States of America by Charles Hodge

History of the Presbyterian church, in the state of Illinois by Augustus Theodore Norton (1808-1884)

A popular history of the Presbyterian Church in the United States of America by Jacob Harris Patton (1812-1903)

Concise history of the Presbyterian Church in the United States of America by William Henry Roberts (1844-1920)

History of the Presbyterian Church in the United States of America by Ezra Hall Gillett (1823-1875)

The Reformed Presbyterian Church in Scotland : its origin and history, 1680-1876 by Matthew Hutchison

A history of the new school, and of the questions involved in the disruption of the Presbyterian church in 1838 by Samuel John Baird (1817-1893)

History of the Associate Reformed Synod of the South, to which is prefixed a history of the Associate Presbyterian and Reformed Presbyterian Churches by Robert Lathan (1829-1896)

History of the Secession Church by John M’Kerrow

A history of the Presbyterian church in America : from its origin until the year 1760 by Richard Webster (1811-1856) and Cortlandt Van Rensselaer (1808-1860)

History of the Presbyterian churches of the world : adapted for use in the class room by Richard Clark Reed (1851-1925)

Southern Presbyterian leaders by Henry Alexander White (1861-1926)

A History of the Reformed Presbyterian Church by Nancy Elizabeth Clark (pub. 1966)

Benjamin Morgan Palmer: Southern Presbyterian Divine by Christopher M. Duncnan (pub. 1988)

Posted on by Tim Hopper

The Higgins

My grandfather's brief history of his paternal grandmother's family.   Read More

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Hopper Antecedents

After his retirement (which was in 1986), my grandfather wrote this preface to the genealogical research he did on his own family.

While waiting for Sunday dinner in the home of the Hong family of Oo-nam Myun Imsil County, North Chulla Province, Republic of Korea, we saw a tall stack of books in the corner. The father of our host, an elderly gentleman, answered our question about them by showing us that they were the records of his family going back for over a thousand years. Mr. Hong said that every thirty years, those with his surname gathered and updated this registry. They planned at their next meeting to send a printed record with names and photographs of all the Hong clan members to the national libraries of every nation on earth, so that in future generations their descendants who migrated to those countries could trace their family ancestry.

Unfortunately no such system has been in existence for most Western families, including our own. I never knew my two grandfathers who died long before I was born, and my grandmothers died when I was very young so that I have only the dimmest memories of them. An attempt to trace our antecedents more than a couple of centuries would now be difficult, if not impossible. In our case, interest would center in the family tree of my father (the Hoppers of Kentucky) and my mother (the Barrons of South Carolina), and for Dot that of her father (the Longeneckers of Pennsylvania) and her mother (the Hauharts of Missouri). This would result in a blend for our own children of blood from England, Scotland, Ireland, Germany, and Switzerland… so far as we know.

One common factor in all of these is that they were strong Christians (at least in recent generations and perhaps before that) and represent Presbyterian, Methodist, and Mennonite backgrounds. Another common feature is that all our ancestors of two generations ago (that of our grandparents) were farmers, living in rural areas, who during their lifetime moved to urban areas. All of them were hard-working, decent, respected members of their communities. There is no record of any “black sheep” nor of any who failed in their family, community, and church relationships.

Posted on by Tim Hopper

Longenecker Family

My grandfather's brief history of his father-in-law's family, the Longeneckers of Pennsylvania.

My grandfather's brief history of his father-in-law's family, the Longeneckers of Pennsylvania.   Read More

Posted on by Tim Hopper