The Rev. Dr. John Anderson, Absentminded Scotsman

Here we are again at the famed Service Church in Beaver County.   Notice how the cemetery rises steeply up the hillside beyond.  The two little outbuildings on the right are indeed outhouses.

Since my last posting, I've learned a bit more about the history of this place--which was founded in 1790, just one year before the start of the Whiskey Rebellion.  The current structure (aside from the ugly white addition) was built in 1800.  From 1790 until 1800, the congregation and seminary met in log structures.

The Rev. Dr. John Anderson came over from Scotland with his aging mother, who died crossing the ocean and was buried at sea.  Anderson tried to land himself a parish in the Philadelphia area, but despite the lack of clergy in those days, he couldn't get hired.  Folks didn't like him.  He was a small, scholarly man with a high-pitched voice.  Most found him too otherworldly.

And so he made for the furthest frontier, where he eventually got a position at the fledgling Service United Presbyterian Church.  Since he was such an academic type, his superiors asked him to teach classes for clergy in training.  (Up to this point, clergy training had been done under the apprenticeship model.) And so he lectured four hours a day in addition to his parish duties.

It's said that he was an absentminded professor.  Once, while riding on horseback to an ecclesiastical convention, he was engrossed in a book, and he allowed the horse to simply follow the road in front of it.  As the sun began to set, he looked up and realized that he was lost.  He hurried to the door of the nearest house and knocked.  His wife opened the door; it was his house at Service Church.  Left directionless, the horse had walked in circles for hours and never taken the dithering Scotsman far from home.