A place in history

Archivist Mark Duffy and Bonnie Adams at the
Episcopal Church Archives exhibit at General Convention

General Convention is a place for making connections, and Bonnie Adams, wife of Bishop Skip Adams, made a connection this week with the Archives of the Episcopal Church on behalf of her friend, 83-year-old Professor Hillyer Rudisill III of Charleston.

A book from the professor’s collection, an 1864 collection of prayers handwritten during the Civil War, is now part of the Archives’ collection, delivered by Bonnie on Hillyer’s behalf.

Hillyer is a retired educator who most recently served as professor of philosophy and humanities at Trident Technical College. As a young student, he attended Porter Military Academy (the forerunner of Porter-Gaud School in Charleston). The school was clearing out old volumes from its library, and let each student choose a few to take home.

Hillyer picked a volume called “The Church Loyal and True” on the cover. Its title page says: "The Services of the Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States of America as ordered by The Bishops During the Civil War". Each page is a lithographed reproduction of handwritten prayers that were written by northern bishops of The Episcopal Church during the Civil War.

The carefully inscribed pages call to mind the painful separations that occurred in the church in that period. After 1861, Episcopalians in states that seceded formed their own separate organization, but the General Convention chose to mark those dioceses as “absent” at the 1862 convention, and welcomed them back after the war ended.

Hillyer thought the book might be of historical interest, and he asked Bonnie to reach out to the Archives of The Episcopal Church to see if they would like it in their collection. She learned that while the Archives hasd one copy already, they would very much prefer to have two.

So at the Archives exhibit at General Convention on July 10, Bonnie met Mark Duffy, the Archivist of The Episcopal Church, and Pan Adams-McCaslin, Chair of the Board of Archives and a Deputy to GC79, and presented the book in person on Hillyer’s behalf.

Mark told Bonnie that he remembered seeing the other copy once and thinking it might be an actual manuscript, because the reproduction of the handwriting is so clear. The Archives are truly grateful for the valuable addition to their collection, he said, and he plans to write to Hillyer personally to express their gratitude.

See more photos here.