Edith A. Lowther meeting notes for Presbyterian Women’s Home and Foreign Missionary Societies

This notebook from Edith A. Lowther (1874-1948) contains her meeting notes for the Presbyterian Women’s Home and Foreign Missionary Societies circa 1895. Although Lowther lived in Henry Clay, Delaware, most of her notes relate to a meeting held at Manokin Presbyterian Church in Princess Anne, Maryland.

Lowther attended meetings or made reference to a number of Presbyterian churches on the Delmarva Peninsula including those in Snow Hill, Ocean City, and Princess Anne in Maryland, and Rehoboth, Hanover, and Green Hill in Delaware. Lowther frequently recorded the names of officers at these meetings but does not appear to have been an official secretary.

In addition to matters of business such as collections, elections, prayers, and hymn singing, Lowther reported on the missionary activities of the societies, both foreign and domestic. Her meeting collected funds for domestic recipients in Juneau, Alaska, the Asheville Farm School (later Warren Wilson College) in North Carolina, and the Harlan Courthouse in Kentucky. The Presbyterian societies may have supported a mission to the Ute Indians, about whom Lowther wrote, “The Utes live in South Colorado they are about 1100 in number & they are the most degraded and ignorant of the Indian tribes.” Lowther also described Presbyterian missionary trips to China, Korea, and Japan.

Lowther devoted a large portion of her notebook to the Annual Meeting of the Women’s Home and Foreign Missionary Societies, held at Manokin Presbyterian Church in Princess Anne, Maryland, on November 6 and 7, 1895, where it appears she was a delegate. She recorded the instructions given to the delegates, which not only included taking notes and gathering ideas, but also going “home charged with information and ready to give off the electric spark any time you may be touched.”

Laid in the front of the notebook is a handwritten letter from Mrs. S.[?]P. McDowell of Octorara, Pennsylvania, dated Mary 21, 1890, and addressed “Dear Edith.” McDowell described her one-year-old son, Lowther’s studies, and the Lower Brandywine Presbyterian Church in Wilmington, Delaware.

The notebook is top-bound with cloth and has stiff, brown paper covers. The front cover of the notebook reads “Royal Note Book No. 62 Trademark Patented Jan. 23, 1890” and features a crown, feather plumes, and an eagle. There is a purple stationer’s ticket on the front cover that reads “E.S.R. Butler & Son Booksellers and Stationers, 420 Market St. Wilmington, Del.” Laid into the notebook is a letter written in black ink. The notebook contains 30 leaves (60 pages) of lined paper. The last leaf has been partially excised. The text is written in cursive in pencil throughout. While the author wrote only on the rectos in the first part of the notebook, she began to write on both the rectos and versos approximately half way through the volume. The notebook includes 25 blank pages.