WITNESSED (Seen and Heard)
Some of our Donegal members who were here as early as the Sixties will remember the John Risser family. They had left the family farm near Elizabethtown at that time and moved to Dillsburg. John’s wife Pat died recently and was buried in their family plot at Donegal where their son Peter had been buried. Peter died of leukemia in 1962 at age seven. A few Donegal members were at the burial service, which was conducted by their youngest son Paul who is a part-time minister. John and his family, also including Mitzi, Polly, Susie and a number of grandchildren, appreciated seeing the church and our spacious new addition.
About that same time, Donegal’s pastor was the Rev. Richard Todd who has stayed in touch with Donegal members and had asked to receive our monthly Witness. His recent e-mail Christmas letter told of his wife Beverly’s illness. She has nephrotic syndrome with only 12% kidney function. They want to be included in our prayer list. Members who knew them will be especially glad to pray for Bev as she continues weekly sessions of dialysis. The Todds retired several years ago and continue to live at Newport Beach, California.
Older members also will remember the Rev. Harry Freebairn who was pastor of Donegal and the Mount Joy congregation, 1965 to 1968. Our church magazine Presbyterians Today lists him as retiring from the position of field education director at Princeton Theological Seminary. After leaving here, Pastor Freebairn served Presbyterian churches in the Pittsburgh area and also at Easton, Pennsylvania.
A new desk for the library in the conference room was recently donated by Lisa Kuzdro. Our thanks to Lisa. We suppose that it is commonly known that materials in that library may be borrowed on your honor. There is much good reading there. A recent addition is a set of Bible videos given by Polly Wardrop.
Some additions to our Donegal archives have been made by Margaret Heisey. There are four excellent color pictures taken May 1991 when a sudden severe windstorm had caused a very large oak tree to fall on our church roof. Margaret said the pictures were taken by Bob Spangler. Because of the damaged roof, worship services were held all that summer in our fellowship hall. Repairing done by Restore and More revealed the need for replacement of much of the wooden structure of the roof. This was very probably the original framework material from the early 1700’s.
Another interesting item from Margaret Heisey was a collection of dozens of picture postcards and many brochures from a 1925 trip to Scotland. These were saved by the traveler, Bertha Gramm who had been Margaret’s elderly neighbor. Visit the archives room to see these and also newly acquired photos from Donegal’s 1979 pageant in celebration of the 250th anniversary of the founding of Lancaster County. See how many of our members in costume you can identify.
We continue to receive requests (mainly by e-mail) for information about the early families at Donegal. One from Anchorage, Alaska was for a photo of the gravestone of the Rev. James Anderson, our first pastor. This was taken and sent electronically by our technical expert Scott Mickievicz. The man from Alaska is a descendant through the pastor’s son, John Anderson. He then sent us information we had never known, as follows:
The Rev. Anderson’s parents’ names back in Scotland, and names and birth dates of all fourteen children in the family. Rev. Anderson was born in 1678 to John Anderson and Susanna Hamilton, living in Glasgow, Lanark, Scotland. He was ordained by Irvine Presbytery, November 17, 1708 and came to America 1709 with a view to labor among the Virginia settlements. Because of opposition by the Virginia government, he went to New Castle and soon became pastor of the Presbyterian church there. Later he was called by the first organized Presbyterian church in New York and served there until called by Donegal in 1726, and installed in 1727.
There followed the whole family line of this Anderson branch down to the present. It is said that John Anderson was a Revolutionary soldier in the battle at Yorktown, Virginia and died of injuries received there. We are grateful for this data from our Alaskan friend.
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Last Edited on
04/24/2009