History of the Presbyterian Churches and Schools in Cache Valley

Presbyterian Day School in the Valley

Presbyterian Mission Schools were established in Utah before Presbyterian Churches. By action of the General Assembly of the Church, they were largely supported through the Women's Board of Home Missions, and the teachers in them were women. Schools were to be established only where the people could not be reached by churches and where public schools were not likely soon to be set up.

Between 1875 and 1879 eleven schools with eight-hundred day pupils were established in Utah. Duncan J. McMillan, district missionary for the whole Mormon territory, had in mind an academy in the major town in each valley, surrounded with primary schools in the surrounding villages. Schools would be located around Logan at Millville, Hyrum, Wellsville, Mendon, Smithfield and Richmond in Utah, and in the Idaho area at Franklin, Malad, Samaria, Montpelier and Paris. Over thirty-six schools and six academies were contemplated.

A Presbyterian school of six pupils was started in Logan in September of 1878 by Rev. Calvin M. Parks and his wife. The schoolroom and chapel was under a furniture manufactory in the Lindquist Building on First North Street.

Rev. Calvin M. Parks summarized the picture for Cache Valley when he wrote in 1883:

The Presbytery of Utah, meeting in Logan in 1880, commissioned fifteen young ladies from eastern states as teachers and recommissioned ten girls and two men. By 1883 there were two-thousand children enrolled in the thirty-three schools in Utah and Idaho. These early schools used the McGuffey readers and the Robinson arithmetics, and obtained maps, bells and organs from the East for their schools. By 1884 there were one-hundred seven pupils in the day schools in Hyrum, Wellsville and Mendon, and many were soon going on to colleges here and in the East. Albion, Idaho, was clamoring for a school, new chapels had been begun in Samaria and Montpelier and there was an average daily attendance of 1,155 students throughout the area.

The Wellsville, Millville, Smithfield, Franklin and Mendon schools were established in 1881, the Mendon day school the next year, the one at Richmond in 1883 and the one at Preston in 1903. The Wellsville school operated from 1881 to 1907 under various missionary pastors like. Rev. Philip Bohbeck of Hyrum, Rev. E.W. Green of Logan and Oscar S. Wilson of Mendon. Misses Mamie Shail, Russell and Lottie Stevenson were among its teachers.

Miss Nannie J. Hall was the first teacher at Millville. The chapel, built in 1882, was leased for public school use after 1909 when it was closed. Miss Carrie Nutting, writing from Hyrum in 1883, indicated how busy a school teacher could be in a frontier community, while Miss Anna Noble ten years later reported even more crowded conditions, with a number of "grown-up pupils" having left the school because there was nobody to hear them recite. She reports ou using Brook's Life of Abraham Lincoln and Venable's Story of Columbus in her reading classes and says:

Miss N.M. McCracken of Pennsylvania, the first mission teacher in Mendon, began her work in 1882 in an old log schoolhouse which kept out neither wet, cold, nor heat. The town had between eight-hundred and one-thousand people. The new chapel-school and brick manse built in 1887 was named Parks Memorial Hall. Rev. William R. Campbell and his wife were in charge of the work there from 1889 to 1897. He was a graduate of Lafayette College in Pennsylvania, of the Seminary in New York its and had a Master's Degree. Tuition was fifteen cents a week for the older students and five cents for the younger. One of the students reports how she frequently forgot her nickel and had to borrow it from her grandmother, who lived next to the school. The usual subjects were taught, but Rev. Campbell even taught Latin. Students went from this mission school to do advanced work in the New Jersey Academy in Logan or to the Collegiate Institute in Salt Lake City. The school was carefully graded and four were taking high school branches in 1884. Between 1884 and 1895 about one-hundred twenty-five pupils were enrolled. In the later year three were taking advanced courses, others were preparing for academy and two of its graduates were teachers. The school closed in 1910.

The work at Smithfield opened in 1881 and closed in 1909. Miss Nellie E. Bartlett started with one pupil and a chapel was built the following year on South Main Street.

The day school in Franklin began in 1879 in the home of William T. Wright about three blocks east of where the Presbyterians later built their schoolhouse. This old log building was used until the memorial chapel was built in 1882. Early teachers included Miss Hodges, Mr. Martin and Mrs. Shirley (Rev. Parks' daughter). Miss Anne Noble was assisted here by Miss Tilly Kelley from Springville in an overflow room rented half a block east of the school. She was followed by Miss Jennie Simonds. Ray's arithmetic and the Independent Reader were taught. The property was sold to Tom Howarth after the school closed in 1908. Four-hundred fifty dollars which Michigan ladies hoped to use to build a church here later went into the building at Mendon in 1886. Franklin, Samaria and Oxford were essentially Presbyterian outposts. However, their teachers were carefully supervised and we read of unsatisfactory teachers at Franklin and Smithfield being dismissed by the Mission Board.

Rev. Park opened school in Richmond in a log house in 1883 and Miss Campbell taught there in 1884. During the period of Rev. and Mrs. W.E. Rewnshw, a chapel was built in 1888. The school closed in 1895, reopened in 1900 and finally closed in 1907. The difficulties were well expressed by District Missionary Martin in 1887:

However, it is not without significance that in this elementary day school in Richmond music instruction was being given to twenty people as late as 1906. The property was not sold until 1931 when Alfred Ljungman bought it for ^$225 and the ^$3,000 mortgage made upon it in 1903 was released by Presbytery of Ogden. Most of the properties of abandoned mission schools were rented for some years, but the returns were usually insufficient to keep them in shape and good money was sometimes wasted upon old plants that had outlived their day and were quite difficult to dispose of.

In Preston a chapel was started in 1900 and a school opened in 1908. It closed the same year and its property was deeded to Ogden Presbytery.

In 1885 there were sixty pupils in the day school at Franklin, thirty-eight in the school at Smithfield, ninety-one in the school in Logan, twenty-two at Millville, probably about forty at Hyrum, fifteen at Wellsville and twenty-three at Mendon. There were thus over two-hundred seventy-five pupils attending these seven schools. However, Presbyterianism was retrenching, competition was strenuous with other Protestant churches and good teachers were not always easy to secure and to keep. Missionary Martin visited sixteen places in northern Utah and southern Idaho in 1885, reporting attendance up to previous years, but wishes workers were available for Oxford, Soda Springs, Gentile Valley and Pocatello. With an average daily attendance in the schools of 1,296, he was asking for ^$54,000 for 1886. Three teachers were being employed in Logan in 1886 and a new school started in Samaria, Idaho, the next year; but Rev. Martin saw the changes that the public schools would bring. For 1887 he reports 2,013 pupils attending the day schools, of whom five-hundred twenty were from Mormon homes, two-hundred eighteen from one-half Mormon homes and eight-hundred three from apostate Mormon homes. From his report of 1886 to 1887, which gives the enrollment and the number of teachers for each school in Cache Valley, we learn one-hundred ninety-three students were listed in the seven day schools. Of them 13.5^% were gentiles, 52^% of them from Mormon or half Mormon homes and 34.8^% of them were from apostate families. Over 90^% of the children were also enrolled in Sunday schools and most of them were attending. More chapels and more schools were needed and Paradise, with twenty-five pupils, was asking for a school, but there seemed to be no possibility or suppling either money or building. (Miss F.C. Coyer and Mrs. Renshaw were teaching at Richmond, Misses M.J. Cort and Miss Jennie Simmons at Franklin, Misses S.E. DeGraff, Jennie McGintire and Daisy Woods at Logan, Mrs. N.J.H. Norman at Millville, Miss Anna Noble at Wellsville, Miss S.L. Brown at Mendon and Miss Mary Clemens at Hyrum.) The Methodists had just erected a chapel and established a school in Hyrum.

By 1886-1887, ^$8,290 was needed for the schools in Cache Valley. Seven of these were in Utah and two in Idaho. No mention is made by 1891, however, of a school at Millville and Wellsville is listed without a teacher. Virtually all of the teachers were Misses.

The beginning of public school system was causing serious debate, and it was felt that the Presbyterians should emphasize more the Academies and a new college to be established in Salt Lake City. Nevertheless, for some years the mission schools even increased in size. There were 2,414 pupils in thirty schools in 1896, with some seventy-one teachers and matrons. Four of these were academies with over five-hundred pupils. When Sheldon Jackson College opened its doors in 1897 the Mission Board announced that 50,000 children had passed through the mission schools in the twenty-two years of their operation. By 1908 the smaller schools were being closed to strengthen the larger ones, and Logan Academy was made a boarding school for girls to fill in the gap between the closing day schools and the coming public school system.

The financial cost of Presbyterian schools in Cache Valley for the period from 1881 to 1911 is not known. By 1917, however, about one-fourth of the expenses of churches and schools was raised on the field. Early records of the Board of National Missions do not list the amounts given to schools. We do know, however, that ^$64,601 was put into the churches in Logan, Smithfield, Hyrum, Mendon and Richmond between 1878 and 1915, and a total of ^$457,573 into Utah churches. We also know that between 1878 and 1948 this board put a total of ^$108,951.05 into the Cache Valley churches, including Franklin and Preston.

But by far and away the greatest giver to these schools was the Women's Board of Home Missions. Over a twenty-year period between 1895 and 1915 it gave the schools in Utah and Idaho amounts ranging from ^$30,644.99 in 1913-1914 to ^$59, 376.78 in 1904-1905. The total is ^$873,394.86. It seems possible that ^$500,000 may have been spent in the seventeen years preceding the establishment of the Logan Church. If so, the costs of Presbyterian education in Utah may have reached a million and a half dollars.

Teacher' Institutes were an annual feature of the Presbyterian missions from the first one in 1883 when Rev. Calvin M. Parks led the choir. (Present were Miss Kate Best from Wellsville, Miss Carrie Nutting from Hyrum, Mrs. E.E. Knox and the Van Wurmer sisters from Malad, Miss Nannie J. Hall from Millville and Miss H.R. McCracken from Smithfield.) A report on libraries indicated that twenty-five of the schools had the latest editions of Webster's unabridged dictionary contributed by Eastern friends and should now try to secure a good encyclopedia, a biographical dictionary, or other books of reference.

At the Institute inn Logan in 1885 questions were discussed like "The Tonic Sol Fa Method" in music, the "Grube Method" in mathematics, and the "Quincy Method" in geography, as well as "The System of Education we should labor to secure for Utah." By 1894 they were discussing "How Shall we bring mission schools in closer touch with public schools?" By 1899 it came to be the practice to require teacher excuses for non-attendance, along with the statistical record regarding one's teaching.

The New Jersey Academy

Logan Academy, a Presbyterian school for girls which existed in Logan until 1934, began as a day school on September 6^th, 1878. First called Cache Valley Seminary, it was established by Rev. Calvin M. Parks. Tuition rates were ^$2.50 per term of ten weeks for primary, ^$5.00 per term for junior and ^$7.00 per term for the senior class, payable either in cash or in produce. Modern languages and music were extra. Not only were the usual basic courses offered in reading, writing, mathematics, history and science, but also courses in vocal music, philosophy, Greek and bookkeeping.

The name was changed to the New Jersey Academy in 1890 when ^$11,000 was contributed for a new building by the Women's Synodical Society of New Jersey. It was built on Second West, and north of Center Street The early principals were Mrs. Susan V. Parks, Miss S.E. DeGraff and Rev. J.A. Livingston Smith. Both day school and a boarding department were maintained, the latter coming to be more important after 1921 when the Logan High School opened. There was an enrollment of one-hundred fifty in 1893 and one-hundred thirty-nine day pupils in 1907.

The teachers throughout the period were college trained and quite a few had master's degrees. Principal I.N. Smith (1900-1905) was a graduate of Illinois State Normal, a special student at the University of Michigan, and had had teaching experience at Salt Lake Collegiate Institute and Hungerford Academy. His assistant principal was a graduate of Westminster College in Pennsylvania. Although teachers' salaries were only ^$300 per year in the early period, excellent teachers were secured. The graduates of 1903 included Herbert Stoops and Noble Stover. The former became an able artist, working on the Saturday Evening Post, Collier's Magazine, and the San Francisco Chronicle. The later, an early reclamation engineer, later graduated at the University of California and his sister Margaret, who graduated at New Jersey Academy, took her doctorate and taught at the University of California.

By the early 1900's the Academy was divided into departments. The primary department of the first six grade was as fine as in the best public schools anywhere; the preparatory work covered grades seven to nine; the academic work took one through the twelfth grade. A pupil could take the Latin-Scientific course if he planned to go on to collage or take the English-Scientific course if he did not. Bible courses and four years of Latin were given, as well as pedagogy for those who planned to teach. A music department was opened in 1903. In 1911 the Academy became distinctly a girl's boarding school, and boys were accepted only as day students. Domestic science and laboratory courses gradually replaced the English-Scientific courses for those not going to collage. In 1914 physical education was added to the curriculum.

A new dormitory was built in 1907 and named Honeyman Hall by the women of New Jersey and in 1916 the Blanchard property cater-cornered from the Presbyterian Church was purchased and the house was remodeled and renamed Parks Hall. Boys were no longer accepted as day students after 1918 and only grades seven through twelve were taught.

By the time that Logan High School graduated its first class in 1921, co-education and more social freedom were beginning to win out over the idea of a private, denominational college for girls only. Although the school was renamed the Logan Academy in 1925 its enrollment continued to drop. The great depression finally forced the closing of the school in 1934 after fifty-six years of existence. Over one-thousand students had studied within its walls by 1922. Some ^$247,202.29 was spent on this institution by the Women's Board between 1917 and 1939. The yearly cost was between ^$10,000 and ^$18,000. While we do not know the cost of Logan Academy in the early days, it is not unlikely that almost half a million dollars was contributed by women of the East for the training of Utah children in Logan Academy during the fifty-six years of its existence.

Like Brigham Young College, which discontinued its high school work in 1924 and its college work not long after, the Logan Academy closed in 1934 and merged with Wasatch Academy at Mt. Pleasant, Utah.

Presbyterian mission schools reached their height in the early 1890's and began to decline as the public schools took over. Dr. D.J. McMillan started that it never was the purpose of the Presbyterian Church to compete with other schools that met the requirements of a community. Dr. George Davies has pointed out that the results of the conflict between Protestantism and Mormonism were three social changes– statehood without polygamy, free public schools and the decline of Protestant schools, the majority of which were Presbyterian. By 1904 the state system was fairly well established and mission schools closed rapidly.

The Superintendent of Salt Lake City Public Schools in 1915, a Mormon educated in a mission school, said that the educational system in Utah was advanced by at least ten years through the work of these schools. The coming in of a state system of education meant the end of both L.D.S. schools and Protestant schools as such. The setting up of a system of L.D.S. Seminary training outside the public schools after 1912 was paralleled by the establishment by the Presbyterian Church in 1944 and 1947 of classes in religion for high school and college students which would give credit at those respective institutions.

Another factor in the closing of the Protestant missions and schools was the obvious consolidation brought about by the coming in of modern transportation methods. Just as the one room rural school was replaced, through consolidation of the schools of many rural communities in 1908, by something better, so Presbyterian churches and schools were consolidated or replaced by better institutions. The academy movement had ended; the day of the public schools had come. One cannot say that the day schools and academies were failures. Far from it. They were but a phase in the development of the educational movement, and "…by carrying the course of study into the academy grade and preparing boys for the best colleges, performed a work here twenty years before the free public school system was established which prepared the way for that system and greatly hastened its coming."

Early Presbyterian Churches in the Smaller Communities

Most of the Presbyterian mission stations were not set up as organized churches, or else existed in an organized form for only a few years. Rev. Philip Bohback of Hyrum also ministered at Millville and Wellsville, but was pastor of Hyrum from 1884 until 1904, almost the lifetime of the church. (Rev. Philip Bohback preached not only in English, but in Swedish, Danish and Norwegian. He was born in Sweden, had a background of training and travel in Europe, knew Greek, Latin and Hebrew, and was a graduate of Davidson College and two theological seminaries in the South.) Organized as Emanuel Presbyterian church at 46 North First West Street on June 19, 1887, it was consolidated with the Logan Church in 1925.

A Smithfield Church, established. In 1888, was active under Rev. James Thompson, 1890-1898, but had declined by 1909. There were also churches at Mendon from 1889 to 1901 under Rev. William R. Cambell and at Franklin between 1884 and 1911.

A church was started at Preston in 1903 by missionary Hana Waaler. Revived by Logan pastors from 1925 on, services were held several times a month. In 1944 Missouri Synod Lutherans were also conducting services in Preston. In 1953 a Preston Presbyterian church was re-established as a branch of he Logan Presbyterian Church, with Ronald Kragthrope as its pastor. Since his entrance into army service, the church has continued to hold regular services under Logan sponsorship.

As the non-Mormon element declined in the rural communities, the General Assembly adopted the "Utah Plan" in 1914– of concentrating the mission work in the larger centers and of consolidating the smaller churches. The coming of modern transportation made this possible. The Great Depression gave the deathblow to Presbyterian expansion in Cache Valley, and by 1936 only the Logan church and the Preston work remained. By 1916 the Board of Home Missions had put into the Presbytery of Ogden since 1878 a total of ^$149,743 of which ^$65,495 was expended on the Cache Valley churches. By 1948, when the Logan church became self-supporting, a total of ^$148,322.58 had been spent by this Board in the Valley alone.

The Logan Presbyterian Church

The Logan Presbyterian Church began, as did so many other Presbyterian Churches, in the mind of Dr. Sheldon Jackson, who is best known as Superintendent of the Alaskan Missions, and as General Agent of Education in Alaska for the United States Government. However, as Superintendent of Missions for one-fourth of the present United States, he organized scores of churches and induced Calvin M. Parks, a Patent lawyer and a ruling elder in the Metropolitan Church in Washington, D.C., to come to Logan. Arriving with his family on July 17, 1878, Rev. Parks rented a furniture wareroom from Mr. Lindquist on the north side of Tabernacle Square and used it, with a paint shop at the rear, for chapel, schoolroom and residence. The first service was held August 20^th, and the church was organized on December 4^th, with eleven members.

Rev. Parks establishes eight Sunday schools and seven Mission Schools in Cache Valley and during his pastorate of eight years, he added sixty-four persons to the Logan membership. A new frame building was completed in 1880 on Center Street at Second West which remained until 1924, and was the oldest church and school building in existence at that time. It is worthy of note that its foundations were laid by the same men who laid the foundations of Logan Temple, for there are on record letters between Rev. Parks and Charles O. Card indicating the cost of the job as ^$43.50.

Rev. Elijah W. Green was pastor of the Logan Church from 1877 to 1892. A graduate of Hamilton College and Hartford Theological Seminary, he purchased land and built the New Jersey Academy established during his pastorate to an enrollment of one-hundred fifty pupils. A printed invitation to the Decennial celebration of the church is owned by Miss Rebecca Evans, a pupil of St. John's Academy, now known as Mrs. I.P. Stewart.

Even in these early days the Logan church was as cosmopolitan as it is today. It had Methodists, Baptists, United Brethren and Congregationalists in its membership, received members from Scotland, Sweden and Louisiana and dismissed members to Hyrum and New York City.

Rev. Newton E. Clemenson became pastor in 1895 and was in charge of the church for fourteen years. Puritanism was strong in the church in those days. The Presbytery of Utah, in session in Logan in 1894, condemned the "fashionable amusements of dancing, card playing and theater going" –The worldly and carnal amusements of the Mormons. It opposed horse racing and said that dancing was "entirely unscriptural. "Moderate drinking and progressive euchre parties also fell under condemnation. Yet Miss Rebecca Evans in her scrapbook records an invitation given to her by Mrs. A.C. Barrett of the Episcopal Church to attend a "Progressive Euchre" at her home, and one is puzzled by the narrowness of the Presbyterians, or by the broad mindedness of the Episcopalians! This opposition against amusements and Sunday sports persisted in the Presbyterian Church until 1914. The 1890's were also the period of the polygamy struggle, and Rev. Clemenson, a former Mormon, was vigorously anti-Mormon. To him the struggle was between Christianity and Mormonism, between the claims of Christ and the claim of Joseph Smith. Nevertheless, he said that There was probably not two brighter, more intrepid or independent men in the Church than Apostle Moses Thatcher and B.H. Roberts. Irving L. Brangham was ordained an elder in 1899, and the session frequently met at the office of the Utah Morage and Loan Corporation, and occasionally at Mendon or the county court house. A new building was greatly needed by 1905.

Rev. William H. Crother was pastor from 1909 to 1993. There were three Protestant churches in Logan, which had a population of eight-thousand by 1912, but the Methodists had no pastor, and occasionally all three churches met together in joint services.

Rev. A.F. Wittenberger served one year as roving pastor to Cache Valley and two years in Ogden before becoming pastor of the Logan church where he ministered until 1916. He married Miss Tucker, one of the teachers in the New Jersey Academy, which by this time had seven teachers and property worth ^$25,000. Rev. Wittenberger writes:

Between 1910 and 1917 the Protestants in Utah saw the folly of working against each other and by 1914 established the Utah Interdenominational Commission and the Utah Home Mission Workers Council. Dr. George E. Davies of the Salt Lake Presbyterian Church led in getting the Congregational, Episcopal, Methodist, Baptist and Presbyterian churches to work together. The Presbyterian Church was spending more money in the state than the total expended by the four other denominations. The Presbyterians decided in 1913 to vacate Corinne if the Methodists vacated Brigham City; the Methodists would vacate Logan is the Presbyterians would vacate Tremonton. It was agreed that where a community had one or more churches, a third would not enter; that a feeble church should be revived rather than a new one started; and that the preferences of the Protestants in the area should always be respected. In nineteen places in Utah adjustment between the five denominations was agreed upon, with the smaller churches consolidating with the stronger. A survey was made of Tremonton, Cache Junction, Trenton and other places. By 1920 the Disciples of Christ had joined what was now a single body called the Utah Home Missions Council. Results of this cooperation were not only the closing of the Logan Methodist Church in 1921, but increasing cooperation over the years.

Rev. Harris Pillsbury was pastor of the Presbyterian Church from 1917 to 1926. Between 1920 and 1924 a new manse was built at a cost of ^$5,432.26 without a grant or a loan from the Mission Board. About ^$800 of this came from the closing out of the churches at Smithfield, Richmond and Mendon. Parks Hall, a new dormitory, was built at the Academy. Both Presbytery and Synod supported appeals of aid for a new building. The Board of Home missions agreed to give ^$15,000 and the Board of Church Erection ^$10,000 for a new church plant, provided ^$5,000 could be raised locally. Without this agreement, Rev. Pillsbury would have accepted a pastorate in Omaha, Nebraska. More that ^$32.500 was expended upon the church and furnishings, and over ^$8,000 was raised on the field. The corner stone was laid in 1924 by the Grand Lodge of Utah Free and Accepted Masons with Dr. George E. Davies, Mayor Joan A. Crockett, President Robert Anderson of the Chamber of Commerce and President J.E. Cardon of Cache Stake as speakers.

The church was dedicated March 15^th, 1925 in three services. In the morning Dr. A.B. Keeler and Dr. M. Willard Lampe of the National Boards spoke and the Utah Agricultural College Choir furnished the music. In the afternoon Prof. S.E. Clark played the organ and Dr. Keeler and Dr. William M. Paden were the speakers. The evening services featured talks by President E.G. Peterson of the College, Mr. Alma Sonne, and Dr. Lampe, with the Imperial Glee Club furnishing the music. Dr. Lampe was the founder of the Westminster Foundation work in the United States and helped Rev. Pillsbury with a small expense account for work among college students in Logan.

Rev. William F. Ehmann was pastor from 1926 until 1930. The church, with well over a hundred members, was one of the best organized churches in the West. There were three young people's societies, the college group having recently been formed. Fifty out of fifteen hundred students at the Agricultural College were Protestants and there were forty students in the Academy. Among organized groups were the Light Bearers, Friendly Indians, Junior and Senior Christian Endeavors, Camp Fire Girls and the Boy Scouts, who had been recharged at Troop One in 1929.

Both the Logan High School and the Agricultural College were presenting Little Theater Plays in Westminster Hall at the church. Leora Thatcher, Donna Jones and Mrs. Ruth Moench Bell were directors of the Little Theatre and were aided by Rev. Pillsbury, Ira N. Hayward, Miss Thelma Fogelberg and the Thatcher Music Company, which was sponsoring both the Periwig Club and the Campus Players. This movement began about 1915-1916 with a Miss Huntman, but some two-hundred Loganites were interested in these achievements. If Rev. John D. Nutting, the Wagon Missionary of the Utah Gospel Mission from Cleveland, who frequented Logan so many years during the summers, felt disheartened that no issue was made with Mormonism, as he indicated, it only served to indicate that old antagonisms were dying out, and that cooperation and friendship were the better way. For some two months the Thatcher Bank donated the Church Bulletins, and other business concerns did likewise for other months. Rev. Ehmann was a graduate of Princeton, and during the three years he lived in Logan was commander of the American Legion, a member of Rotary (as had been Rev. Pillsbury), of the Chamber of Commerce, and of the Masonic Order. During this period there were two-hundred thirty-four Gentiles in the ten-thousand people in the city and one-hundred forty-eight in the valley.

Rev. T. Ross Paden of Western Theological Seminary was pastor from 1930 to 1935, and Irving L. Brangham continued as church clerk from January 1900 until shortly before his death in December, 1933. New elders, however, were taking his place, among them Dr. David E. Madsen, Dr. Frank B. Wann, Professor Harold R. Kepner, Mr. Richard W. Jones, Miss Margery Frink of the Academy, and Mrs. W.E. Skidmore. Women elders were a new institution in Presbyterian churches, Mrs. Skidmore being commissioned to the General Assembly in 1933 and Miss Fink being elected moderator of the Presbytery of Ogden in 1934. Mrs Frank Wann began the task of leading the Girl Scouts and Westminster Forum was organized in 1932 for college students.

When Logan Academy merged with Wasatch Academy at Mt. Pleasant in 1934, the church suffered grievously, for it lost its choir, a good part of its Sunday school and staff, and about half of its congregation. Rev. Paden resigned in 1935 to accept a California pastorate.

Rev. William F. Koening, who had been assisting Rev. Paden and serving as missionary pastor in the valley, replaced Rev. Paden as minister. He also conducted services at Preston and Brigham City, and worked with two-hundred eighty non-Mormons students at the College by 1941. His program the "Larger Rural Parish" had been planned at the University of Chicago under Dr. Arthur E. Holt.

It was for these reasons that Rev. Koening was active in the cooperative movement with Dr. Joseph R. Geddes, and aided the relief program of the depression years. He felt also that Protestants should have a student center near the college, and that a community program under the "Larger Parish" program should developed. He kept the services at Preston and Brigham City going with the help of Elder Richard Jones and Elder Langhor, but the growing responsibilities caused by the approach of war weakened his plans.

In 1940 there were on one-hundred fifty-four Protestant students at the collage; in 1942 some one-thousand radio men were expected, along with three-hundred marines and seven-hundred mechanic learners. Later came the Army engineers. Rev. Koening had begun by holding services at the C.C.C. camp in Blacksmith Fork Canyon, but from 1943 on special services were held for these special groups at the church and at the L.D.S. Institute. He served as chairman of Russian relief; he helped with the United Service Organization on East Center Street. His last year at the Logan Church was 1943.

The new pastor, Rev. Miner E. Bruner, who has served from June, 1943, to the present (1956), inherited these problems, which did not cease when the war ended and the influx of veterans and their wives began. By 1953 the church had four-hundred twenty-four communicants, not counting infants and baptized children, and Protestants in the community who were not members. Perhaps the greatest of Rev. Bruner's accomplishments was in making the Logan church, which had received ^$67,819.05 from the Home mission Board since 1878, a self-supporting body by 1944. The money saved went to the support of the Brigham church. In 1946 a Men's Club and a Mariners' Club for young married couples were established, and Westminster Foundation began to contribute secretarial help in connection with student work at the college the next year.

In 1947 the Mariners' Club started an organ fund which led to the purchase of a ^$3,500 Baldwin organ by 1949. In 1953 Memorial Chimes were added that could be played through the tower and which were in honor of Elder William Epps who died in an airplane crash in the Pacific. The chimes were dedicated during a three-day celebration of the seventy-fifth anniversary, December 4-6, 1953, with Rev. Pillsbury as the principal speaker and with Rev. Wittenberger and his wife present. A pagenant dramatizing the growth of the church was put on. By 1955 the budget was something over ^$14,000 a year and contributions to benevolence between ^$2,000 and ^$2,500. One feature of the anniversary celebration was the re-establishment of the Preston church, officially created as a branch of the Logan church on December 4^th.

During Rev. Bruner's pastorate, adult, junior and primary choirs were an essential part of the worship services. An adult choir of twenty to forty voices sang "The Messiah" on several occasions and regularly provided special music at Christmas and Easter. It also helped sponson visits to Logan by choirs from Princeton University, Whitworth College, the San Francisco Theological Seminary, Hastings College, Westminster College and others. Capable choir directors like Stanley MacLeon, Edmund Berry, Mrs. Dorthy Cross and Mrs. William Sigler provided outstanding direction.

In 1944 a New Testament course giving High School credit was offered in Logan High School. A college course giving credit at Utah State was begun in 1947, which eighteen persons took for credit and thirty-two audited. Two years later courses in Old Testament, New Testament and Church History were all receiving credit at the college, and over five-hundred college students were on the church mailing list. At graduation time in 1950 over one-hundred Protestant college students and their wives left Logan, of whom forty-five were regular church attendants at the Presbyterian Church. The growth of the church was also reflected in the creation of a Hobby and Workshop for youngsters, in its three nurseries and in the addition of fifty-seven new members on a single October day. Twenty-two people have gone out from this church since 1943 to study for the Christian ministry and to do other Christian work.

This growth made necessary a new educational unit which was built in 1956 by a committee headed by Dean Lewis R. Turner and David Sakai. With a seating capacity of four-hundred fifty in its recreational hall and space for thirteen additional Sunday school rooms, almost ^$60,000 was involved in the building. ^$15,000 was loaned by the National Missions Board, and ^$2,240 was given by the Elks Lodge, as Boy Scout Troop Number One, which had been very active since 1944, had a special room in the building.

During the thirteen years Rev. Miner Bruner has been pastor of the local church, it has received over six-hundred members into membership. It has been essentially a transient church, for few have remained more than four or five years. But it has been truly an interdenominational organization, with about sixty different sects represented in its membership in 1949 and about thirty-nine in 1953. All races, colors, and creeds and persons from different lands, have been active in its organizations.¹

J. Duncan Brite

1. History of the Presbyterian Churches and Schools in Cache Valley, J. Duncan Brite, 1956.