Kenneth H. Bitting — 1918 A glimpse of some Bitting family history given to me by Dad. In a separate folder is some history of the Mom’s family, the Capens. wc tom bitting - 1998    By 2009 much new material from the 19th & and 20th centuries was to be found online due to financing of mas­sive digitization projects by Google, Microsoft, founda­tions and others to digitize materials in librar­ies, muse­ums, schools & univerities, organiza­tions, societies, pri­vate col­lec­tions, po­lit­ical entities, and others. As a re­sult I've uncovered some sig­nif­icant biograph­ical, genea­logical & other informa­tion searching on vari­ous Halliday Capen & Bitting names with others not yet explored. (April 2009) Photo circa 1918, France during World War I of Dad at age 20 holding one French girl on his shoulder and her sister by the hand.                       April 2009 additions Henry L. Halliday Home in Cairo, IL(circa 1895) dining room & library main room, to & from piano Newly uncovered information on: Cairo IL, NYT May 20, 2007 Halliday Capen Bitting ...more

The Teaching Pastor Published October 1923, comprising six “lectures delivered in March, 1923, by the Reverend William C. Bitting, D. D., pastor of the Second Baptist Church, St. Louis, Missouri. Few pastors are better qualified to present the material contained in the volume; and it is issued with the conviction that it will be helpful to others in ‘the ministry of the Word.’” MILTON G. EVANS, President Crozer Theological Seminary “God never gave us our intellectual powers that we might insult them in the name of Christ.”                                                        Matt: 6: 22, 23 — page 14.

Reminiscences of War Times Reminiscences of War Times - WCB, 1925. Recollections of The War Between the States; of school and of forty-four years as a pastor. I was born in 1857 and ...was, therefore, a very small boy when the war broke out. Some things, however, were vividly impressed upon my mind... These men, confined in jail, were ...divided into halves, and every other day one half was ridden on a railroad train ...to prevent Colonel Mosby’s famous gorillas from wrecking the train or firing into it. ...The last three trips on which they compelled father to go, they made him ride all day long on the cowcatcher of the locomotive.

Reminiscences concludes with a very powerful statement of his optimism and beliefs. In part:

“...only I would try to make it thoroughly adapted to the growing, unfolding, developing human life all around me and would not try to crush an evergrowing world with its ever increasing knowledge, with its changing viewpoint into any outgrown, obsolete or obsolescent moulds of the past.”

Acrobat (pdf file) version of Reminiscences

The Religion of Christ

“The Religion of Christ” - an extemporaneous sermon delivered by W. C. Bitting in January, 1926, and later dictated from recollection. It appeared in the September 18, 1926, issue of  “The Baptist,” including the introduction paragraphs on greatness, perhaps added by the journal’s editor. It was subsequently reproduced in pamphlet form two days following W. C. Bitting’s death, perhaps following his wishes to again bring its message to family and friends. Could it be that in his closing paragraph of “Reminiscences”, written in 1925, that the seed of this sermon was planted?

Acrobat (pdf file) version of Religion of Christ

Articles Noting WCB’s Death
(early Saturday morning, Jan 10, 1931)

In a front page article, Saturday, January 10, 1931, one of the banner headlines of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch read,

THE REV. WILLIAM C. BITTING,
NOTED BAPTIST PASTOR, DIES.

In the lead into the article the Post wrote of Dr. Bitting:

He was "one of the most widely known
clergymen in the United States."

In the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Monday, an article on his funeral service quoted this from the eulogy delivered by Dr. Shailer Mathews, Dean of the Divinity School, Unversity of Chicago:

The national scope of Dr. Bitting's influence was recognized in the memorial address of Dr. Shailer Mathews, dean of the University of Chicago Divinity School, who said, "From the Atlantic to the Pacific, he was the herald of the intelligent religious faith that will make a better tomorrow."

In the New York Times, Sunday, the day after he died, a brief article noted:

Dr Bitting ...once said in an address that “creeds are merely intellectual guesses at the infinite. I am bound by no creed. Personally, I am a Metho-formed, Presby-gational, Bapto-palian.

• I am not trying to get men into Heaven; I am trying to get Heaven into men.
• Nor am I trying to keep men out of Hell, but to keep Hell out of men.”

The article went on to say, "For the last twenty-three years Dr. Bitting had been corresponding secretary of the Northern Baptist Convention. A graduate, class of 1880, of the Crozer Theological Seminary, he held the degree of Doctor of Divinity from three institutions, Richmond College, Howard College and Brown University. The University of Chicago made him a Doctor of Sacred Theology in 1916."

A week later in Time Magazine

Died. Dr. William Coleman Bitting, 73, pastor of Second Baptist Church in St. Louis from 1905 to 1924; in St. Louis, Mo. Known as a liberal, his most famed statement was: “I am bound by no creed. Personally, I am a Metho-formed, Presby-gational, Bapto-palian. I am not trying to get men into Heaven; I am trying to get Heaven into men. Nor am I trying to keep men out of Hell, but keep Hell out of men.”
Milestones, Jan 19, 1931. http://tinyurl.com/dzl8xa

In response to an internet inquiry a copy of this sermon, preached on Feb 17, 1907, by Rev. William C. Bitting, D.D., turned up in Jerry’s mailbox in Rhode Island in the late spring or summer of 2006 if my notes are correct. About a year later I tracked down the sender, and also began the project to type a word document to closely match the style of the printed sermon. Now a modest two years later, I've finished up that project, and you can inspect the outcome in the below linked pdf file. Recently I called the St. Louis City Library, and they sent me a machine copy. See the pdf file for more information on that.

The occasion for the sermon was the celebration of the 175th anniversary of the birth of George Washington. It is quite an amazing sweep of history, of religion, of biblical history, of language, of the special role of the United States in the world, of opportune men and women in history, and of George Washington as one of those opportune men! On the second page I added a brief biography of Grandfather which included these remarks from his 1925 Reminiscences of War Times noted above:

To me God is revealing himself today through
all processes of life, physical, intellectual,
social, religious, moral, as truly as he ever
revealed himself in any age of the history of
the world: Revelation comes through life....

And he pursued life with great enthusiasm and vigor employing fully his wonderfully gifted mind and talents! Think of it. He'd just turned fifty not quite two weeks before giving that sermon. His scholarship would later be acknowledged and recognized in a special way twenty-two years later when in April, 1929, as an alumni he was awarded the first (as Dad told me many times) gold Phi Beta Kappa key given by the newly formed PBK chapter at his alma mater, Richmond College, by then the University of Richmond. That was fifty-two years after he’d graduated! On the second page of the pdf file I included a few brief details of his life.

Acrobat (pdf file) version of The Opportune Man

Other Items

Letter to Arthur Lieber - WCB, 1925

A Pastoral Letter to the Mount Morris Baptist Church, Oct. 31, 1905.

C.C. Bitting a Crozer trustee, 1894-1899,
as well as Crozer information on W.C. Bitting.

Mystery solved! WCB did not forget to mention his Phi Beta Kappa key.

WCB & AMB’s Certificate of Marriage, Nov 17, 1886. Image from the “ceremony book.”
Annie Biedler’s Family

Bitting Family Lore - KHB, 1967

Ken & Esther Bitting family roster with b'day & cousins lists.

George D. Capen (St. Louis, MO)
                        family roster.
                        cousins roster.

Richard Bitting’s letter of April 24, 1998, requesting genealogical information. This flier sparked my effort to pull together what is here! ...wcb2

Links to files on other sites.

“In 1853 a new and larger structure was built. Then came the War Between the States. Most congregations halted services, but First Baptist Church, led by Dr. C.C. Bitting, continued regular corporate worship.” Quoted from the heritage file at the web site of the First Baptist Church in Alexandria, Virginia. You will find this reference just over half way down the page.

First Baptist Church, Alexandria,Virginia home page

Richard Bitting’s Bitting Genealogical Information web page.

Can America come to grips with slavery? by Dr. Paul F. Bitting, 12/14/97. [link no longer works. 10/19/00]

WmC Tom Bitting (WCB II), St. Louis, MO
wbitting@yahoo.com Last changed on 7/25/2011 (started 8/28/98).