Henry Preserved Smith papers, 1864 -- 1925
Summary Information
Abstract
At a Glance
- Bib ID:
- 4492493 View CLIO record
- Creator(s):
- Smith, Henry Preserved, 1847-1927
- Repository:
- Burke Library at Union Theological Seminary
- Physical Description:
- 4.25 linear feet (4.25 linear feet; 9 boxes )
- Language(s):
- English .
- Access:
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The collection is open for research.
The following boxes are located offsite: Box 1.1-1.5 and boxes 2.1-2.4. Please note that requests for use of boxes held in offsite storage must be made three business days in advance.
Description
Scope and Contents
This collection contains scrapbooks as they were assembled by Smith to document his heresy trial, as well as the contemporaneous trial of Charles Augustus Briggs, which include clippings, notes and pasted-in correspondence detailing the trial and its coverage in periodicals and newspapers at the time, as well as three scrapbooks on Hebrew literature. The collections also contains nine of Smith's notebooks, correspondence, speeches, trial materials, lecture notes, and other materials maintained by Smith during his work as a professor and librarian.
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Series 1: Scrapbooks, 1881 -- 1925
This series contains scrapbooks as they were assembled by Smith to document his heresy trial, as well as the contemporaneous trial of Charles Augustus Briggs. The first five volumes of the collection include scrapbooks of clippings, notes and pasted-in correspondence detailing the trial and its coverage in periodicals and newspapers at the time, followed by a scrapbook of articles dated 1881 to 1900, and finally three scrapbooks on Hebrew literature.
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Series 2: Writings and notes, 1864 -- 1924
This series contains nine of Smith's notebooks, correspondence, speeches, trial materials, lecture notes, and other materials maintained by Smith during his work as a professor and librarian. The first box consists of speeches delivered in the proceedings of Smith's heresy trial, while the latter three boxes contain lecture notes and course plans. While the institutional affiliation of these courses is unavailable in the materials themselves, the subject matter of these materials suggest they span Smith's entire teaching career at Amherst, Meadville, and Union Theological Seminary.
Burke Library record group:
Union Theological Seminary Archives: UTS 1, papers of faculty and students
Arrangement
This collection is arranged in two series: Series 1: Scrapbooks; and Series 2: Writings and notes.
Using the Collection
Conditions Governing Access
The collection is open for research.
The following boxes are located offsite: Box 1.1-1.5 and boxes 2.1-2.4. Please note that requests for use of boxes held in offsite storage must be made three business days in advance.
Conditions Governing Use
Some material in this collection may be protected by copyright and other rights. Information concerning copyright, fair use, and reproduction requests can be consulted at Columbia's Copyright Advisory Office.
Preferred Citation
Item description, UTS1: Henry Preserved Smith papers, series #, box #, folder #, The Burke Library at Union Theological Seminary, Columbia University in the City of New York.
Related Materials
UTS1: Charles Augustus Briggs papers, The Burke Library at Union Theological Seminary, Columbia University in the City of New York.
UTS1: Preserved Smith papers, The Burke Library at Union Theological Seminary, Columbia University in the City of New York.
Custodial History
This collection was among a large group of unprocessed materials that were organized in 2017 with the support of the Henry Luce Foundation and the E. Rhodes and Leona B. Carpenter Foundation.
Immediate Source of Acquisition
The exact provenance of this collection is unknown.
About the Finding Aid / Processing Information
Columbia University Libraries, Burke Library at Union Theological Seminary
Processing Information
Some materials were cataloged by Lynn A. Grove on 1988-07-13. Metal clips and staples were removed from materials and folded items were flattened. Materials were placed in new acid-free folders and boxes. Acidic items were separated from one another by interleaving with acid-free paper as needed. Scrapbooks with damaged boards with secured with cotton ties and housed vertically to protect the text block. The painting was placed in a Mylar envelope. The finding aid was created by Rebecca Nieto in 2017 with the support of the Henry Luce Foundation and the E. Rhodes and Leona B. Carpenter Foundation, and edited by Leah Edelman in 2024.
Revision Description
2024-02-23 PDF converted to EAD and description updated by Leah Edelman.
Biographical / Historical
Henry Preserved Smith was a Presbyterian educator, scholar and librarian at Union Theological Seminary. Smith was born in Troy Ohio, on October 23, 1847. The son of Lucy Mayo Smith and Preserved Smith (himself a prominent historian of the Protestant Reformation), Henry Preserved was poised from an early age to pursue a career in the ministry. He earned his A.B. from Amherst College in 1869 before going on to pursue religious studies at the graduate level, first at Lane Theological Seminary in Cincinnati from 1869 to 1872, then at the Universities of Berlin and Leipzig from 1872 to 1874 and 1876 to 1877, respectively. During his stay back in Ohio between academic terms in Germany, Smith was ordained in the Presbytery of Dayton on June 8, 1875. While there, he also served as an instructor in church history at Lane from 1874 to 1875 and instructor of Hebrew from 1875 to 1876. He remained at Lane for much of his career, serving as assistant professor (1877-1879) and later professor (1879-1893) in Hebrew and Old Testament exegesis there. Contrary to Smith's conservative upbringing in the church, he was preeminent among Presbyterian scholars of his day for being open to historical criticism when interpreting the Bible, an inclination that resulted in Smith's being charged with heresy by the Presbytery of Cincinnati in 1892. This trial came on the heels of Charles Augustus Briggs' well-known trial on charges similar to those brought against Henry Preserved, which included "holding that a minister could abandon essential tenets of doctrine and yet retain his ordination; teaching 'that the Holy Spirit did not so control the inspired writers in their composition of the Holy Scriptures as to make their utterances absolutely truthful'; and denying the inspiration of Scripture 'in the sense in which inspiration is attributed to the Holy Scriptures, by the Holy Scriptures themselves and by the Confession of Faith". Found guilty of the latter two charges, Smith was stripped of his ordination and his teaching position in Ohio. The following five years were marked by considerable struggle as Smith was unable to regain a teaching position without his ordination license for several years. Eventually, Smith obtained a post as professor of Biblical Literature and pastor at Amherst College, where he remained from 1898 to 1906 before going on to teach at Meadville Theological School from 1907 to 1913. Smith's scholarship regained its vigor in the years following his heresy trial, and established his role as a forerunner in Biblical scholars interested in criticism of Biblical texts, an evolution from his puritan education. All told, Smith's publications included Inspiration and Inerrancy (1893), The Bible and Islam (1897), The Heretic's Defense: A Footnote to History (1926), and various encyclopedia entries on exegetical commentary and Old Testament history. In 1907, Smith became Union Theological Seminary's librarian, a post he would hold until 1925 concurrent with his role as Davenport Professor of Hebrew and Cognate Languages from 1917 to 1925, and later as professor emeritus from 1925 until his death in 1927. Like Briggs, Smith was unhindered by his trials in the Presbyterian Church, becoming an eminent figure in critical and historical investigations of the Bible in his time. He was recognized with honorary Doctorate of Divinity degrees from Maryville College (1883), Amherst College (1886) and the College of New Jersey (now Princeton University) in 1888. After a singular career in his scholarship and teaching, Henry Preserved Smith died in Poughkeepsie, New York on February 26, 1927.
Subject Headings
The subject headings listed below are found in this collection. Links below allow searches for other collections at Columbia University, through CLIO, the catalog for Columbia University Libraries, and through ArchiveGRID, a catalog that allows users to search the holdings of multiple research libraries and archives.
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