Archives Creates New Discussion about Columbia’s History
October 12, 2019—With the recent release of Erskine Clarke’s To Count Our Days: A History of Columbia Theological Seminary, many are becoming acquainted with names, places, ideas, and events that shaped this institution for several generations. The C. Benton Kline, Jr. Special Collections and Archives (CBKSCA) proudly supported Dr. Clarke’s work on his project by allowing access to numerous primary sources and digitizing several thousand pages of manuscript documents.
To further support readers interested in Columbia’s history and development and promote the use of primary material related to it, the CBKSCA is pleased to announce an upcoming opportunity for you! This opportunity will allow you to read through the first eleven chapters of To Count Our Days, covering the first 100 years of CTS, with an eye towards placing these pages into a documented and visual history. If there are persons, ideas, letters, or events discussed within the book, you will be sent photographs and links to digitized documents or information about related collections. The CBKSCA contains a multitude of personal letters, ephemera, lecture notes, photographs, diaries, church records, presbytery records, and much more that speak to the history of Columbia Theological Seminary and the South. These range from the curious and fascinating to the mundane and painful.
If you are interested in the history of Columbia Seminary and its relation to the Southern States throughout 19th and early 20th centuries, you will want to join this opportunity. The project will begin the week of October 14 and will go through the end of March. Each chapter will be covered over a two-week period, excluding holidays, allowing you to follow the text closely and access related materials. If you skip weeks, start later than October 14, or decide to follow only for particular chapters, that will work just as well. Material will be made available chronologically over six months but will include searchable hashtags and stable links to documents and information about collections covered in each chapter. If you are interested in participating in this project, please start following @CTSarchives on Twitter and on Facebook, or if you are interested in receiving the information by emails from October through March, please send a request to archives@ctsnet.edu.
Below is a schedule of chapters corresponding to dates in which material for each chapter will be publicly released. The amount of material related to each chapter will vary according to related collections available within the CBKSCA. In all of these, the limitation of focus does not indicate limitation of material. The material that will be publicly available through this project is but the tip of the iceberg. Efforts in this project are made in the hope of promoting responsible use of primary sources as exemplified in the work of Dr. Clarke and to promote the remarkable source material found within the CBKSCA.
Chapter 1 Oct 14-Oct 25
Chapter 2 Oct 28-Nov 8
Chapter 3 Nov 11-Nov 22
Thanksgiving Break
Chapter 4 Dec 2-Dec 13
Chapter 5 Dec 16-Dec 20
Christmas Break and New Years
Chapter 6 Jan 6-Jan 17
Chapter 7 Jan 20-Jan 31
Chapter 8 Feb 3-Feb 14
Chapter 9 Feb 17-Feb 28
Chapter 10 March 2-March 13
Chapter 11 March 16-27
Excited about the group read! Thank you!