Church History Trip - part 7 (Brush Run and God's Acre)

Well, we're back home. We just off the bus last night around 7 pm and jumped in the Cruiser. After a good night's rest and some sleeping in, we're back in business on Saturday afternoon. I wanted to grab a few minutes and get the rest of the pictures from the trip up and on my blog for those of you who are faithfully checking back the rest of the pics...

Here there are:


We started off Thursday morning with some time in Washington, PA. Downtown in a company that has now become part of the "Observer Reporter," we found a printing press similar to the one used by Thomas Campbell to print the "Declaration and Address." In fact, it was printed and distributed by the company that merged with the "Observer Reported" and was printed behind where I was standing.





This is a picture of that style of printing press. This is NOT the press contrary to what Bethany College says. But it is similiar.













This is the house, at least the right hand side of the house, that Thomas Campbell was living in when he wrote the "Declaration and Address." In fact, the original fireplace that was in the house when Thomas lived here is still in the house. We were supposed to go inside, but the lady who lives here wasn't home.









We moved on from Thomas' house and visited several other sites.

On our way to the Brush Run Church site, we stopped by a site that "may" have been the baptismal site for the Brush Run Church. No one from our group was willing to journey into the water... there was some ice on the water... for a baptism.







Brush Run Church was organized by Thomas and Alexander Campbell in 1811. It was one of the first churches organized under the Restoration movement.









This is a picture of the site of the Upper Buffalo Presbyterian Church. The current building is off to the left. This was the site where Thomas Campbell was placed on "trial" by the Presbyterian Church and officially asked to stop preaching restoration ideals. Thomas... thankfully for us... refused and continued to preach.







We moved on from there and traveled for quite some time and arrived in Bethany, WV. Bethany was the home of Alexander Campbell, after his father-in-law John Smith gave him and his wife Margaret 3000 acres to keep them from moving to Zanesville, OH.

After lunch, we visited "God's Acre." "God's Acre" is the site of all of the Campbells graves and all of those directly related to the Campbells.

The first marker that we viewed was Thomas'. This isn't his original... the original will be later. It was stolen and thrown in a field in Ohio... Only to be recovered by a teenager and returned to Bethany.


We viewed the site of Alexander Campbell's grave. A.C. doesn't have a head stone... only a small foot marker and head marker.

This is A. Campbell's foot marker.










This marker is also located in God's Acre. This is the marker of Archibald McLean. Archibald was the fourth president of Bethany College, the college that Alexander Campbell started.













We moved over a couple of feet and found the marker for W.K. Pendleton. W.K. was an influential leader of the second generation.













A few feet over was the final resting place of Robert Richardson. Richardson was asked by Alexander's second wife to write down the story of Alexander after his passing. He wrote 2 volumes that were extremely influential in informing us about Alexander's life and history.










This picture was the final picture taken of God's Acre. It shows the final resting place of the Campbell family... Thomas, Alexander, Margaret, and the remainer of the family.









Moving on from God's acre, we returned to Bethany (the Campbell mansion) for an extensive tour. The next post will contain those photos.

Jim