Book Description

Excerpt from The Pilgrims of Iowa One of the closing paragraphs of the author's annual report for 1906, read at Dubuque, was as follows: Somebody ought to write a history of Congregational Iowa, and do it pretty soon. We have a few fragments, but no straightforward, connected history. The material is abundant; the record is grand, heroic, inspiring. And the time is passing. We are already asking questions which nobody can answer. As a sequence of this report and the occasion - the seventieth anniversary of home missions in Iowa - the following resolution was adopted: Resolved, That, reminded by this meeting of the kindly, beneficent influence of home missions during the past seventy years, and recognizing the value of the services rendered by the faithful workers on the field, and by those who have superintended the work, particularly that of our present Home Missionary secretary, to whose devoted and faithful service the progress of the work for the past twenty-four years is largely due, we render devout thanksgiving to God for what has been wrought, and hereby register our hearty appreciation of the value of home missions and look into the future with hope and good cheer. It was also voted, "that Secretary Douglass be invited to write a history of Congregationalism in Iowa." The task came to me undoubtedly because of my unique position in the Pilgrim ranks. I was the oldest man in our fellowship, not too old for the service, and, as superintendent of home missions in the state for a quarter of a century (not a century, as some have declared), I had had exceptional opportunities to know our ministers and churches and all our institutions and our whole history. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.