Vilas County news. [volume] (Eagle River, Vilas County, Wis.) 1896-1927, 1898-03-21
MARRIED IN PRISON.
Ancestors of am Honored Southern
Family Claimed This Distinction.

Of the immigrants to this country
during the last century none was more
sturdy than the rugged Scotch Irish,
whose notions of personal and religious
freedom caused them to forsale their
own country and seek homes on this
side of the Atlantic. Among the num-
Der who thus came to America was
Rev. DR.. Thomas Clark, a Scotch Press
byterian, who was educated in the Uni
versity of Glasgow, but who from 1851
to 1854 was the pastor of congrega-
ton in Monaghan county, Ireland. In
the last-named year DR.. Clark, with
about 800 of his congregation, came to
America. They landed at New York,
where they separated and went, part
to Salem, in Washington county, New
York, and the rest to Cedar Springs,
in Abbeyville county, South Carolina.
DR.. Clark accompanied the party that
went to Salem, and there became pas
tor of the first church that was erected
in the state of New York north of Al
Eany. He resigned from the pastor
ate of the Salem church, however, in
1882, and joined his brethren in South
California, where he was installed as
pastor of the Cedar Springs congrega-
ton in Abbeyville county, a position
which he retained until his death in
1892.
While DR.. Clark was a pastor in Ire
land he refused to take the prescribed
cath of abjuration, because the oath
recognized the king as the head of the
church; and for such refusal he was
imprisoned in the county Jail of
flied in Jail Dr. Clark OBLIGATED at one
and thirteen baptisms. The
marriage thus celebrated in the
Monaghan county Jail was performed
in the year 1854, and the parties to it
John Harris and Eleanor Rendels-
preceded their pastor to America, and
settled in South Carolina. The de-
scendants of this couple, whose nup-
tials were thus solemnized in a Jail,
have been numerous and distinguished.
Twelve of the ministers of the Asso-
ciate Reformed Presbyterian church
of the south are descended from that
couple; twenty-five of the ministers OF
that church have obtained wives from
among the descendants of that couple,
and many of their descendants have
filled the offices of elder and deacon in
that church.
The members of the church still OBJ
serve much of the severity of faith
and practice that Characterized their
in Scotland, and the term
'<seceders,," by which they are COM
monty known, did not arise from any,
thing in this country, but was given
to them in their origin, when Ebene-
ger Erskine and his coadjutors in 1888
seeded from the Church of Scotland.
These secessionists declared that the
church from which they parted had be-
come corrupted under the efforts
Of the English kings to inject prelacy
and episcopacy into the Presbyterian
ism of Scotland. When the "Seceders,
who have since spread into all the
southern states, established classical
school for the education of their boys
at Due West, S. c., they called 1t Clark
and Erskine seminary, and it was this
seminary which grew and developed
into Erskine college, with which the
history of the Associate Reformed
church in this country is
so closely identified, and the gentle
man who for twenty-five years has pre-
sided over that institution and to
whom the educators of the state re-
Gently paid such admirable tribute is
himself a descendant of the couple
whose hands were united in the jail OF
Monaghan county, Ireland, in 1854
Washington Post.