Bitting Family Lore
by
Kenneth H. Bitting

May 15, 1967

My beloved children have asked that I provide them with an outline of my branch of the Bitting family. I will attempt to record here a few of the highlights as unfolded to me by my wonderful father, William Coleman Bitting, while they are still fresh in mind, and to supplement this data with information obtained from authentic sources.

Two Bitting brothers, Ludwig and ?? arrived in America in l732. They came from the small hamlet of Bittingheim in the Rhinish Palatinate. They were Alsatian Huguenots. Tiring of persecution they came to America for religious freedom. One settled in North Carolina, the other in Pennsylvania. Unfortunately, the family tree was consumed in a fire which gutted the American Baptist Publication Society’s building in Philadelphia at the turn of this century. My grandfather, Rev. Dr. Charles Carroll Bitting, had become the building manager following his retirement from a lifetime of active ministry.

My grandfather was born in the city of Philadelphia. After finishing his education at Madison University, now Colgate University in New York, he went to Murfreesboro, Tennessee, to teach in a school for young women. Then he went to Virginia and was pastor of two large country churches in Hanover and Louisa County adjoining. He was a States Rights Democrat, therefore sympathized with the Southern Confederacy, not on its position on the slavery question, but because of his Jeffersonian political view. He believed in the emancipation of the slaves and urged the slave owners in his country churches in Virginia to practice manumission, the personal emancipation of their slaves. On the political aspects of the times he was silent in his public utterances. At this trying juncture, grandfather married Miss Caroline Shadinger. She was a truly lovely and a saintly woman. I had the pleasure of visiting her briefly in Philadelphia on two occasions when I was a small boy. At the age of 89 she knitted a spread for me which I still have.

My wonderful father was born in Hanover County, Virginia, February 5, 1857, the eldest of six children, 2 brothers and 3 sisters. In 1859 grandfather moved from Hanover county to Alexandria, Virginia, to be pastor of the First Baptist Church. My father was a little over eight years old when the Civil War ended in 1865. Alexandria was the first place in Virginia captured by the Federal Army. I urge you all to read again Reminiscences of War Times by W. C. Bitting, copies of which I handed to each of you, a few years ago. It is a real thriller and will give you a vivid portrait of the character and talent of your stalwart forebears. Grandfather continued to live in Alexandria, Virginia, until 1867. Then he went to Greenville, South Carolina, where for two years he was Secretary of the Sunday School and Bible Board of the Southern Baptist Convention. He then went to Lynchburg, Virginia, for a pastorate there. In Lynchburg my father joined the church when he was about twelve years old. There, father attended the first-class Preparatory School. In 1871, grandfather went to Richmond, Virginia, as pastor. Dad was fourteen years old. Grandfather stayed in Richmond until 1876, when he moved to Baltimore, Maryland, as pastor. When I first met Senator W. Stuart Symington, prior to W.W.II, he was quick to recall being dragged into grandfaher’s church in Baltimore when he was a little boy.

Father attended:

Dad also received, in addition to AB end MA degrees, the following degrees:

Doctor of Divinity (DD) from:

(As you know, I have no degrees. I’ve been studying all my post-college days, and still strive to fathom the paradoxes of the space era! Luckily, you and your smart mother are clothed with degrees, so maybe I don’t need one, after all !??)

Dad was ordained into the Baptist Ministry eighty-six years ago today, May 15, 1881, as pastor of the Baptist church, Luray, VA having served as supply in the Lee Street Church in Baltimore following his graduation from seminary. What a blessed coincidence that Christopher Culver Bitting should arrive on this anniversary. Father had been away from his family for four years, one at Richmond and three at Crozer Seminary. Grandfather was then pastor of the Franklin Square Baptist Church in Baltimore. He left that church to become an officer of the American Baptist Publication Society, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Father went to the Lee Street Church with the express understanding that he should be only a supply, and should not be considered in any sense a candidate for the pulpit. Nevertheless, the church voted to call the green twenty-three-year-old at a salary of $2,500. The church had 500 members. Father would not let them extend the call to him, and reminded them of the condition upon which he had agreed to be their permanent supply. On February 5, 1881, his 24th birthday anniversary, Dad preached his first sermon as pastor of the church in Luray, Virginia, in the Blue Ridge Mountains. He was likewise pastor of the Baptist Church at Front Royal, Virginia, thirty miles away. Dad alternated between these churches and preached every other Sunday in each one. On May 15, 1881, father was ordained in Luray, his father preaching the ordination sermon. Twenty four years old is very young to begin such a pastoral work. He resigned the church at Front Royal after a year and shortly thereafter was called to the pastorate of the Baptist Church at Riverton, Virginia, for one Sunday in the month, as a salary of $125 a year. The other three Sundays he gave to Luray, and they increased his salary from $300 a year to $400. The fifth Sunday in every month he gave to Riverton. There he built the church which I believe still stands. He begged trees from the farmers. He begged hauling to the saw mill. He begged all kinds of materials for construction. He begged money. As much as he could he worked with his own hands on that building. He was always very proud of it. At Marksville, Page County Virginia, he likewise put up a building.

Now comes a bit of a romance. During the war there was a surgeon with a regiment of the Union Troops who lived in New York City. He had been in Alexandria during the war. He was a member of the Mount Morris Baptist Church in New York City. He had often held Dad on his lap when he visited grandfather’s home. Mount Morris Church had called grandfather to the pastorate, but he had declined. While grandfather was preaching at the Mount Morris Church one Sunday, Dr. Smith, the war surgeon, asked him about Dad and expressed the desire to see him. Dr. Smith secured from the church an invitation to Dad to preach two Sundays in the New York church. On a salary of $525 a year, which was his total income from both the Luray and Riverton churches, he could not afford to take many railroad trips. Here was a chance to go to New York, a city which he had never seen, and to visit his father and mother and sisters who were all living in Philadelphia. When the invitation came, the country parson accepted it, and on October 21st and 28th Dad preached morning and evening in New York City at the Mount Morris Church, spending the intervening weekdays of both weeks with his father in Philadelphia, and was back in his Luray pulpit again November 3rd. The Mount Morris Church extended him a call, which he accepted November 22, 1883. Within two hours after the telegram announcing the call had come, a few days previously, Dad received a call to St. Joseph, Missouri, offering him $2,800 a year and a parsonage. Dad chose the call to New York at $2,000 a year. In January, 1884 he began his pastorate in New York City. It ended October 31, 1905, after 21 years and 10 months of continuous service.

Messers. Francis H. Ludington, Joseph D. Bascom and Stephen A. Bemis, deacons of Second Baptist Church of St. Louis, and members of the committee to find a new pastor, had invited Dad to become pastor. On November 1, 1905, Dad and Mother and I arrived in St. Louis and were met at Union Station by Mr. Ludington and driven in his carriage to his home at 3636 Lindell Boulevard, where the Pope Pius XII Library now stands. I was seven years old. I remember vividly our warm reception at the station and the Ludington’s cordial hospitality and my first Sunday in the old stone church which was located at Beaumont and Locust Streets. The church had no parsonage and we lived in the Ludington home for several weeks until Dad bought a red brick residence at 5109 McPherson Avenue, (later named Waterman Avenue) and shipped his furniture and belongings from our 3-story brownstone house on Mount Morris Park, West, New York City. In New York City I attended the Barnard Military Academy for boys, wore a gray uniform, and looked very much like “The Philip Morris Kid.” My brother, William Charles Bitting, was a sophomore at Brown University in Providence and did not accompany us to St. Louis.

In mentioning the romance of Dad’s transfer to New York City in January 1884, I should have stated that during his pastorate in Luray he met and fell in love with Miss Anna Mary Biedler of Luray, a graduate of Hollins Institute, Virginia, where she spent four years. Annie, as father always called her, was a beautiful, brown-eyed Southern belle with very fair skin. Her father was a farmer in the hilly terrain of Page County, Virginia, owned a country store and had six sons and two daughters, one of whom, Lelia, died at a tender age, leaving my mother as the youngest child. I visited mother s brother Hubert, a doctor and general surgeon in Baltimore, on several occasions when I was a small boy. How well I remember uncle Hubert, a bachelor, recounting how he and his five brothers were always at Annie’s beck and call to hitch up the horses and drive her wherever and whenever she wanted to go. On November 17, 1886, Mother and Father were married at the little church where Dad had been pastor in Luray and took his bride back to New York. My brother William was born in 1887 and died in St. Louis on ? He and his wife, Gladys Smith Bitting, had driven up from their home in Biltmore Forest, North Carolina, to have Christmas with us at 14 Hortense Place. He bad been ailing for some time and was unable to join us at the table for Christmas dinner. He died in De Paul Hospital and is buried in the family lot in Bellefountain Cemetery. My other brother, Frank Milton, died in infancy in 1896 while Mom and Dad were on their summer vacation in the Thousand Islands, New York. Following Mother’s death at the Embassy Apartments, Union Boulevard at Washington Avenue in St. Louis on ?? we brought Frank’s remains to Bellefountain Cemetery for interment beside mother.

I was born on December 8, 1897, at our home, 27 East 127th Street, New York City. My father was a real dynamo, worked like a beaver, seven days a week. He was brilliant, scholarly, very witty, friendly, popular, always good-natured, an exceptionally powerful speaker, one of the really top manufacturers of short stories which never failed to bring laughter, ever kind and considerate, especially so to the poor, the sick and the outcast who were his special care. He was at least a hundred years ahead of his time in terms of genuine love of mankind, and in religious thinking and Christian living. He was poison on bigotry, dogmatic theology, sectarianism, creeds, long gloomy sermons and poor music in church services, which were all too prevalent in his times. He never mentioned “sect” without following immediately with the word “insects”. Sects and insects were synonymous. In those days most businessmen worked six days a week, or until noon Saturdays. He often would say from his pulpit, when the weather was nice, that too many men were present who would be better off playing golf, or strolling the countryside with their families. He firmly believed in tithing for the support of one’s church and local eleemosynary institutions. We lived comfortably. Mother kept a bounteous table, indeed overly so. Our living was tops, neat, clean, and orderly. But, my parents were frugal, little was wasted, and nothing squandered. Dad would walk a mile to save a streetcar fare which was a nickel. His only bad habit was cigar smoking. Friends kept him well supplied! Mother was always after him about this. By the end of November of each year father had accumulated $1,000 to $1,500 out of his own salary and fees from lecturing and speaking. All household bills had been paid, savings had been impounded for emergencies and contingencies and Dad felt like a millionaire. He was devoutly grateful to the Lord for his blessings and bounty. But, he was concerned greatly with how to give this surplus away where it would do the most good for the needy. He would call me into his study and show me his books and explain how this windfall had come to him. After much thought he would finally determine the beneficiaries of his benevolence. By the end of the year he had wiped himself clean and he was very happy.

On his debut in St., Louis in 1905, Dad was very pleased with his church and the board of deacons and the city. He was filled with enthusiasm and the challenge for Christian service throughout the community. He soon discovered that the atmosphere was polluted with religious sectarianism and excessive bigotry, which he deplored as anti-Christian. Quickly, he made friends with leading clergymen of all denominations, gathering them together in his home for fellowship, a cup of soup and a sandwich. 0ut of this became “The Sandwich Club,” which met bi-monthly in various parsonages or rectories. Here informal discussions took place on local religious, civic and social problems of common concern, yarns were swapped, and seemingly mountainous barriers were dissolved into mole hills. Out of this The Metropolitan Church Federation was founded, and cooperative effort instituted for the first time in this city. His great talent as a public speaker, his wit and friendly concern for his fellow man, and for the whole community, soon commanded the admiration and respect of the entire community, Protestants, Catholics, Jews, and agnostics alike. Many times I heard him say “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.” He was widely recognized throughout the nation as a liberal exponent of Christian living. He was bound by no creed. He held that “creeds are merely intellectual guesses at the infinite.” When people would ask what denomination are you, he would invariably answer: “I am a methocated, batha, catha, presca, piska-palian. That was as close as he could come in describing his philosophy and belief. For these liberal utterances he was often denounced. Nasty and sometimes threatening letters would come in from people reading published excerpts of his sermons and speeches. Cranks were furious, ignoramuses prayed for his salvation. He strove to acknowledge many of these blasts, always with warm appreciation, but used most of them to ignite the furnace, or fireplace. He found these condemnations quite amusing while deploring the stark ignorance or stupidity manifest in the authors. He would say to me, on occasions, that the greatest dearth of talent was in the ministry. This saddened him.

Dad did not subscribe to the idea expressed in the bible that it was easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle then for a rich man to enter the Kingdom of Heaven. He would say that if you could satisfactorily answer these three questions (comprising his “money test”) then the more you had the better:
1. How did you get it?
2. In what spirit do you hold it?
3. What use do you make of it?

At the organization of the Northern Baptist convention in 1907 in Washington, DC, father made a strong appeal for unification of the Baptist Societies and the need for a general organization. Following some discussion, the meeting approved a resolution contained in father’s address which set up a Committee of Fifteen to work out a provisional plan, with a constitution and by-laws to be acted on at Oklahoma City the next year. In this way the Northern (American) Baptist Convention was born, Father donated his services as its Corresponding Secretary for more than twenty years. This position gave him large opportunity for wide service nationally and made his name known throughout the Christian World, At the 1957 convention in Philadelphia, American Baptists commemorated what father and other leaders did in 1907 to unify witness of free churches, and in guiding the church in steady growth. His quick interest and wise counsel helped countless young people through difficult decisions. His lucid explanations brought professional men, grown worldly and skeptical, to a new and a renewed understanding of the Bible and restored their Faith.

For 17 years Dad was president of the Baptist Ministers’ Home Society, which aids dependent ministers and their families in New York and two other states. He begged money for it and he managed it, in addition to his pastoral and civic duties in New York. John D. Rockefeller, Senior, gave him $1,500,000 for the endowment fund, of which Mr. George Bovenizer, a Kuhn Loeb partner, was Chairman of the investment committee. Some 40 years ago, I dropped into Kuhn Loeb, introduced myself to Mr. Bovenixer, a staunch Baptist and great admirer of father, and was informed that this fund then exceeded $50 million!

Father was a builder. In addition to the country churches he built in the Blue Ridge Mountains (Page County, Virginia) in his early twenties, he built the church building for the Mount Morris church in New York City, and two years after starting his pastorate in the Second Baptist Church in St. Louis, construction of its new building at Kingshighway, Washington to McPherson was begun. This was completed at a cost of $700,000 and dedicated without a cent of debt against it! Every member of the congregation, and some non-members, contributed. Among the larger donors were Francis H. Ludington, who gave the campanile, 216’ tall ($40,000), Joseph D. Bascom, Stephen A. Bemis, Thomas H. West. There were many sacrificial gifts, including $1,500 by Mom and Dad, Incidentally, Second Baptist Church, now located at Clayton and McKnight Roads, is the oldest Baptist Church in St. Louis. In it is the Bitting Fellowship Hall, dedicated May 10, 1964. Bishop Ivan Lee Holt (Methodist) preached the dedicatory sermon. Much of the Litany of Dedication was written by father and used in the Dedication Service of the building at Kingshighway and Washington Boulevards, October 18, 1908 when Rev. Dr. Harry Emerson Fosdick, Pastor of the Riverside Church, New York City, gave the sermon of dedication. The largest contributor to Bitting Fellowship Hall was Mrs. Grove F. Newhard, ever a devoted friend of Dad’s. Attached is the program of the Dedication Service of the William Coleman Bitting Fellowship Hall, “Come Unto Me” words and music written by father, was the choral response to the Morning Prayer, as shown in the program.

Father kept in his library a book containing all the catalogs of all the schools he attended, and also the catalogs of Hollins Institute during the four years Mom was a student there. This book is in my library at 7444 Widow Boulevard. In addition to these school catalogs and records of his addresses, Father kept five or six large scrapbooks filled with clippings from newspapers concerning his work and with articles which he had contributed to newspapers. Father meticulously kept a chronological record of every public address he ever made after August 5, 1877 when he preached his first sermon in the Academy of Music, Baltimore, Maryland, for the First Baptist Church which was then holding its meetings in that place during construction of an edifice. This record showed the date, the hour, and if it was a sermon, the text, and certain other interesting details. His last recorded address was delivered in Seattle, Washington, August 30, 1925, is numbered 10,591. He felt that that was entirely too much talking for any man to do. If these addresses had been printed in the usual form of volumes, allowing 10 pages to an address and 400 pages to a volume, he estimated that they would amount to 264 volumes containing about 106,000 pages and some 40 million words. He felt that such records would be of value only to his wife and sons, particularly the personal and confidential comments in the margins. Accordingly, after carting these records from 5056 Westminister Place to 24 Clermont Lane to 14 Hortense Place, I finally surrendered and reluctantly burned the collection before moving to 2 Edgewood Road. I only wish I had tape recordings of some of his sermons and speeches made before large civic gatherings. He was at home on his feet and could control an audience of thousands with the same ease as a handful of friends in his parlor.

His hobbies were music and church architecture. He could play the piano. He wrote the words and music to two hymns. Every fourth summer he visited the famous churches and music festivals of Europe. Other summers he would relax and fish in simple places in Maine, New Hampshire and New York. When I was two years old we went to White’s on Lake Kezar, in the foothills of the Adirondacks, some five miles out of Keesville, which was on a single track branch shuttle from Port Kent, NY, on the Delaware and Hudson RR bordering the west side of Lake Champlain approximately midway between Fort Ticonderoga and Plattsburg, New York. The small-mouth black bass in these small lakes and the brook trout in the little streams which connected these ponds were hungry and full of zip. I think that White’s Family Inn charged $2.50 per week for room and board. We fished daily except Sundays when we attended church in Keesville. This took most of the day because we were driven to and from town in a surrey with a fringe on top over a narrow macadam road. It was at White’s that I got my first bellyache eating little green apples. It was here that in ensuing summers I made my first money catching and selling live bait, tiny frogs, minnows, crawfish, helgamites, worms and grasshoppers to the fishermen. The ponds were crystal clear, loaded with weeds, lillypads and fish. A few years later we summered at Benny Brown’s camp on Lower Kezar Lake, Maine, some 6 miles on a narrow sandy road out of Freiburg, Maine, on a branch line railroad 90 miles west of Portland, Maine. To get there was an all-night ride on a Pullman from New York to Portland via Boston. Arriving in Portland Dad would always relish a couple dozen little neck steamed clams, which he would drench in melted butter and shower with lemon juice, and wash down with clam juice or clam broth at the restaurant in the railroad station. I recall vividly my amazement how anybody could stomach such awful looking things as these detestable clams stuck to dirty crusty shells and with those dark black necks, or strings attached. I would have a small sandwich and glass of milk. Mom and Dad would top off with fresh apple pie, then rush to board the day coach on the small train for Freiburg. At Freiburg. Benny Brown would meet us with an old dilapidated stage couch drawn by two scrawny-looking horses. After strapping mother’s large trunk on the coach and loading it up with our baggage we would be driven through the pine forests on a very narrow sandy and windy road to the camp where Father had leased a small frame cottage on the shore of that beautiful lake, bordered with boulders and tall pines. I recall Dad paid $2.00 per day per person for the cottage with board and skiff thrown in. The cottage on one side of us was occupied by Mr. Frank Remick, managing partner of Kidder, Peabody & Co. of Boston and on the other side by Dr. Peabody, who was dean of the Divinity School of Harvard University. All the guests at Brown’s camp, perhaps 15 or 20 in all, were high-minded, simple, intellectual types who obviously were fishing addicts or bent upon meditation and relaxation. There were plenty of hammocks strung across the front porches or under the nearby pines, the grub in the common mess was plain but good, the atmosphere and climate was invigorating, the cranes and herons were fat and boisterous and the bass and trout and salmon were hungry. But there was no booze, bustle, music or frolicking, no movies, no drama, no recitals and no high-jinks. In the lodge was a pool table and two bridge tables, seldom exercised. But there was discussion and debate on the larger issues and yarns were unfolded. At this father excelled. His jovial nature and brilliance made him the popular feature of the encampment. Here again I added to my savings by corralling and selling bait for a penny a frog and 10 cents for a bucket of minnows or a can of fresh-dug worms. Even after we moved to St. Louis we twice returned to Brown’s camp for the summer - a long trek it was via railroad. It was shooting pool with dad over at the Lodge when I was barely tall enough to get the cue up to the table, standing upon a soap box, that I let out my first cuss words. In his effort to conceal his amusement it was with difficulty that he mildly censured my outburst before he broke out into a broad grin. That was my debut to the pool table. Father started me on checkers and backgammon when I was eight years old. We would play about once a week after I had finished my housework and when he was not officiating at some meeting. He was keenly interested in baseball and took me to Sportsmen’s Park to see the Browns or Cardinals once or twice a year. He had busted the last joint on the index finger playing first base on the Richmond College team.

Dad published a couple books: Earthly Blooms from Heavenly Stems, 1900, Foundation Truths, 1902, and in 1923 Crozer Theological Seminary published. The Teaching Pastor comprising several lectures he had presented to the seminarians. I have a copy of The Teaching Pastor but have not seen the other two books since I was a small boy.

Dad enjoyed his ministry at institutions of learning where he either preached on Sundays, or spent days in lecturing to the students and also meeting them for personal conferences on religious matters. Among the institutions he thus visited ware Harvard University, University of Edinborough, Brown University, Colgate University, Rochester Theological Seminary, Vassar College (three times) Oberlin College, Cornell University (three times), University of Chicago (about 20 times), University of Illinois, Vanderbilt University, Stephens College, University of Missouri, Stanford University, Washington University (about 25 times) and many others.

It was on the 17th day of November 1886, at 8:30 a.m. that Annie Mary Biedler and William Coleman Bitting were married at the home of Mom’s brother, William T. Biedler, 94 North Calhoun Street, in Baltimore, Maryland. According to a local newspaper clipping and a small bound book entitled “Wedding Chimes” Dad’s father, the Rev, C. C. Bitting of Philadelphia, performed the ceremony. The newspaper article headed Bitting-Biedler leads off: “Conspicuous among the “Home” weddings of the present season in this city must be placed the of the Rev. William C. Bitting, an eloquent young preacher of the Baptist denomination, and Miss Annie M. Biedler. The marriage was celebrated at the home of the bride’s brother, William T. Biedler, Esq., No. 94 North Calhoun Street. He is a popular wholesale dry goods merchant, whose name was recently and prominently connected with the Mayoralty of the city. The hour was 8:30 a.m., on Wednesday last, the 17th instant, and the officiating minister was the Rev. Dr. C. C. Bitting, of Philadelphia, father of the groom, and a few years since the beloved pastor of the Franklin Square Baptist Church. The wedding was strictly private, only the immediate families of the bride and groom being present, with the exception of a few of the warn personal friends of the bride’s brother. The bride, a beautiful brunette, wore a magnificent velvet, en traine. This was exchanged immediately after the ceremony for a handsome traveling costume of brown broad-cloth, in which the lovely bride looked equally charming. From the parlors the company repaired to the dining-room, where they partook of a sumptuous wedding breakfast. The gifts were numerous and costly, and among them may be mentioned a handsome gold watch and chain from Mr. and Mrs. W.T. Biedler, a solid silver service from the Misses Bitting, and a set of superb diamonds from the groom. Among those who honored the festive occasion with their presence were: Mrs., S. A. Biedler, mother of the bride, who wore a rich black velvet and diamonds, Rev. C.C. Bitting and wife of Philadelphia, Misses Niriam, Ruth and Nannie Bitting of Philadelphia, (“Nannie’s” name was Naomie) Mr. and Mrs. A.J. Biedler, of Washington, DC, Mrs., W. T. Biedler, the latter in a brocade velvet and satin, and diamonds, which well became her handsome face and queenly figure, Mr. and Mrs. Charles E. Biedler, Prof. H. H., Biedler, of the Baltimore University of Medicine, (my uncle Hubert) Mr. and Mrs. Frank R. Biedler, Mr. A.L. Biedler, of Florida (uncle Ashby Lee) Mr. and Mrs., E.M. Burraker, Mr. and Mrs. S .R. Tregallas, Mr. and Mrs. Levi Witz, Mr. Claude Badgely, Mr. Willie Stinson, Misses Bell, Lelia, Edith and Flora Biedler. Masters Milton and Wilbur Biedler. The groom received many congratulatory telegrams during the morning, expressive of the high regard in which he is held by the members of his congregation. Upon their return from the bridal tour, Mr. and Mrs., Bitting will reside at Harlem, Mew York, where he has the pastoral care of a prosperous and devoted congregation, The Richmond Dispatch, the Christian Herald and the Page County Times also carried announcements of the wedding, the latter saying: “Rev. W.C. Bitting, formerly pastor of the N.S. Baptist Church of this place, was married in Baltimore, on Wednesday last, to Miss Annie Biedler. The many friends of bride and groom in this county, wish them a pleasant sail down life’s stream.” The Christian Herald: “We rejoice greatly at the blessedness which has come to Rev. W.C. Bitting, one of New York’s most faithful and successful pastors. And we are all the more glad because we know very well the good woman who becomes his assistant pastor.”

1. WCB's "Reminiscences" does not mention this degree. Nor is it reflected in the 5/8/98 email from Crozer.
2. Roughly in 1998 in an email (now lost) I inquired to the University of Chicago about the award of the Doctor of Sacred Theology degree award. They could not provide a list of those who had this award. Our family records are very clear on this, so I will soon (?) follow up an email to Dean of the Divinity School where I hope they will have a list of those who were awarded this honorary degree (this note updated 12/2/2011, wcb2).

Reminiscences of War Times - WCB, 1925

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Wm C. Bitting II, St. Louis, MO
wbitting@yahoo.com

last changed on 12/02/2011 (prior 10/19/00, 5/18/98).