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Re: What do you say? esp for C&U archivists



O.K., I'll bite on the seminary records and genealogist/family member
researcher.

At our institution, we are forthright to descendants of deceased graduates,
but extremely factual.  If their grandfather flunked out, we state that fact
along with information about the requirements for graduation at that time
and the percentage of students of that particular era who did not graduate,
but went on to ordination.  We also provide a summary of church canon on
requirements for ordination.  Most people think that seminary graduation is
and always has been a requirement for ordination to the ministry in all
denominations.  Since that is not the case, the researcher/descendant
usually gets hung up on the question of how did great grandfather get
ordained if he flunked out, not the actual flunking out. Documentation on
non-academic reasons for leaving seminary are not usually in our records,
but that of the sponsoring diocese, to which we refer the researcher, albeit
expressing little hope that they will be given such information by the
diocese.

My most amazing moment with a descendant came when confronted by a young man
"searching for his father."  The twenty-something young man was a late life
child of a non-graduate of my institution and Daddy had died when Sonny was
quite young.  Luckily, or unluckily, I had already researched Daddy's life
in available public denominational sources and presented the Sonny with the
documentation I had uncovered.

Daddy had not returned for his final year of Seminary because during the
summer he had married without his bishop's permission and was removed from
the ordination process.  To me, that smelled like military (shotgun)
wedding, but I certainly had no proof.  A few years later Daddy was
readmitted to the ordination process without a seminary degree and ordained.
About fifteen years after that, Daddy was divorced (at a time when divorce
among clergy was rarely tolerated), remarried, but remained a minister in
the church.  About fifteen years after that Daddy was deposed (removed from
the ministry), at about the time I supposed the young man in question to
have been born (another big red flag for me).  This looked like an
interesting delicate discussion in the making!

I presented him all the documented facts (no interpretation or personal gut
reaction) I had from my investigation of public sources.  Sonny then
revealed to me that he was the child of a THIRD wife (my sources had not
revealed a third marriage).  Sonny knew all about Daddy's first wife and
personally knew the children from the first marriage. Until that moment,
however, he had known nothing about wife number two to whom the public
record showed Daddy was married to until shortly before the third marriage
would have to have taken place.  The son was toally mystified by this
revelation!

Then, seeing the dates and churches at which Daddy served, Sonny became very
excited.  It turned out that one of Daddy's last cures was the the church
his mother (the third wife) had attended while married to someone else.
Wasn't it remarkable that she had named the child from that marriage born at
that time for her subsequent husband.  Sonny thought that was just so cool
and amazing!  Maybe it was me, but I saw other possibilities which I kept to
myself!

Finally, Sonny, in either complete or feigned innocence, asked me why his
father had been deposed almost exactly the time his elder sibling by the
third wife been born! Public denominational sources available to me did not
give that information, so I referred him to the appropriate diocese,
cautioning him that such information is rarely made public. Eventually the
young man went on his way, baffled about the fact that Daddy had been
deposed the same time his sibling was born.  By the way, Sonny did not know
the year in which his parents had married.

It was a truly interesting afternoon for me!

Julia E. Randle
Archivist
Virginia Theological Seminary
Bishop Payne Library
3737 Seminary Road
Alexandria, VA  22304-5201
(703) 461-1850


-----Original Message-----
From: Lisa May [mailto:LMAY@DIOCESE-GAL-HOU.ORG]
Sent: Friday, March 30, 2001 9:47 AM
To: ARCHIVES@LISTSERV.MUOHIO.EDU
Subject: Re: What do you say? esp for C&U archivists


It's especially interesting when you have seminary records - fortunately
(so far - knock on wood), the families have already known the story ("Oh,
he met this girl, my great-grandmother....").

Lisa


Lisa May
Archivist
Diocese of Galveston-Houston

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