Wednesday, June 06, 2007

Yet More Misc

So the material I was taking from the Manford's Monthly disappeared into a blogger void.....
.... which means I have to re-go through all these issues....
Rev Manford was snarky back before snarky was a term....you do have to know some stuff to know who he was talking about when he mentioned a "bogus new testament translation" - the same family he thought slandered his wife and insulted Mary Livermore in "Our Women Workers"....
stuff i recall was a brief mention of SC preacher S.M. Simons' finical problems after the war (the 1860s war). He described Simons as an Union man during the war. I know most of his wife's family was not.....
Manford mentioned an Universalist Hearld report in the 1870s of an unknown to me black Universalist preacher (ordained?) in Mississippi (I think Mississippi). the first in the south, Manford said.

A nice Librarian at Harvard says they will look at Edgar Halfacre's ministerial file for me.
I will report back when I do. My spouse (a former research librarian ) says all librarians are nice.

I was interviewed by someone from UU World about S. H. Quinn. While I was just one of many, I hope that i presented Quinn accurately - I havent been interviewed in 25 years - I hope it's more accurate these days......

I do read other stuff than Universalist material. I just got through reading " Unitarianism on the Pacific Coast" and "the Secret Six". I have to admit to being startled when I started reading Secret Six - a book about the Unitarians who funded John Brown's raid on Harper's Ferry. I had never heard of such..... i might review this book on the other blog, if I can get a good handle on what spin to take. Of course, now I really want to know what happened to Theodore Parker's brain? and I mean that quite literally.

Reading some fiction too - on a noir kick, so reading some of the HARD CASE CRIME BOOKS; and I just picked up a Manly Wade Wellman's children's book I didnt have (I believe I have all of his fiction for adults). Wellman is best known nowdays as a southern fantasy-horror writer. But write lots of kids books and non-fiction. A realative of mine is mentioned in his non-fcition "Dead and Gone". Not sure I can figure out a way to put a story about Wellman's connection to Thomas Merton here (I will mention that I, my father, and my grandfather all three met Wellman).

2 comments:

Boy in the Bands (Scott Wells) said...

Many preachers weren't ordained, but he might have been licensed or otherwise referenced by the state convention. That said, I don't think I've ever seen Mississippi records from that period.

Steven Rowe said...

Oops, not sure which term Manford used. And this is one of those things that we laypeople often do - we use a specific term incorrectly. or rather we use a term that we think covers what we want it to mean, but may not.