|
According to the session records in March 1936, there were thirty-nine members and Sunday school attendance was forty-two. There were three elders and no deacons. They contributed to foreign and home missions, Christian education, ministerial relief, the Assembly’s Training School, religious education taught in the public schools, orphan homes, educational institutes, Presbytery home missions and benevolence. The session records were very brief. It met most of the times in homes and never recorded any order of business other than receiving or dismissing members. Occasionally there would be notice of ordaining and installing a minister. The attendance continued to be small and it seemed as though the ministers did not stay long. In the early nineteen thirties the membership was thirty-nine and continued that way for several years. The church officers struggled to keep the church going. It was during these times that the Theodore Van Doren family joined the church in 1935. He was very active as an elder and Sunday school superintendent. Mrs. Van Doren taught Sunday school and played the piano. These were the parents of the late Elizabeth Ankers. The piano in the choir room was a memorial gift in their memory. In 1936 and 1937 the Reverend Joseph Hagan was the supply pastor but he had to retire for health reasons. The Reverend Hoover Bear was pulpit supply from 1937 to 1943. He was the pastor of Trinity Presbyterian Church in Herndon. The membership in 1940 was thirty-seven and the church sponsored a Boy Scout troop at this time and continued to do so sporadically thru 1996. In the minutes of September 14, 1941, W.C. Wilson was asked to call upon Judge Alexander for information in regards to the trustees selling burial lots and giving deeds to the same. Lots were sold but later the records were lost. Only families, which can verify ownership, can be interred in the cemetery even now. The April 3, 1942 statistical report stated a membership of thirty-two. On October 11 of that year four trustees were elected with only one a member of the church. The Reverend John Bowman became the supply pastor after Reverend Bear resigned to go into the service of his country. The attendance was only twenty-nine in April of 1945. The Reverend Henry L. Willis became the supply pastor in 1948. He was pastor of the Waterford Presbyterian Church where he lived with this wife and two children. He had served as a chaplain during the war.
|
