Rev. Henry Rodney Raymond Papers

Collection

Identifier: MSS-14

Staff Only

Scope and Content

Collection contains materials documenting the life and professional work of Henry Rodney Raymond as well as his daughter, Marcia Elizabeth “Bessie” Raymond Owen and son-in-law Jesse Thomas Owen. Includes correspondence, photographs, sermons, manuscript copies of church services and marriage ceremonies, photographs, scrapbooks, and other materials.

Dates

1850 - 1947

Biographical Note

Rev. Henry Rodney Raymond, son of N.H. Raymond and brother of Rev. C.H. Raymond, was a lawyer, educator, and Presbyterian minister. He was born in Bethany, Genesee County, New York on June 4, 1825, and moved to the South as a young man. He studied law in Tennessee, and later became a minister. He began his teaching career in 1845 at Centreville Academy in Tennessee, and in 1847 he was licensed to practice law in the courts of Tennessee. In 1850, after studying theology privately, he was licensed and ordained as a minister. He later received a doctorate of divinity (D.D.) from Erskine College. His career as a minister took him all over the South; he served in churches in Whahlak, Dekalb, Macon, and Smyrna, Georgia from 1850-53; was a pastor in Marion, Alabama from 1853-85 and Weatherford, Texas 1886-88; and finally in Starkville, Mississippi, 1888-1909.

In additional to his activities as a pastor, Raymond served President of Marion Female Seminary for four years in the 1880s; was moderator of the Synod of Alabama in 1860, and a member of the convention which met in Atlanta, Georgia, August 15, 1861 to advise respecting the formation of a General Assembly in the Confederate States. He was Stated Clerk of the Presbytery of South Alabama for twenty years, of the Presbytery of Tuscaloosa for some years as well as of the Synod of Alabama, and served as Moderator of the General Assembly which met at Houston, Texas in 1885.

He married Elizabeth Ware of Starkville, MS in 1848 and they had five children: Marcia Elizabeth “Bessie” Owen, Julia, Helen, Henry R., Thomas Ware and William Henry. He died on December 4, 1917 in Starkville, MS.

Jesse Thomas (J.T.) Owen, Illinois Central agent, was born in 1868 and died in 1955. Marcia Elizabeth “Bessie” Owen, was born in 1868 in Marion, AL, and married Jesse Thomas “J.T.” Owen in 1890. She was an author, musician, and clubwoman, most notably a founding member of the Starkville chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution.

Source for Henry Rodney Raymond: Souvenir of the General Assembly U.S., compiled by Rev. S.M. Tenney, D.D., 1924, p. 55, Historical Foundation, Montreat, N.C. December 21, 1933 at https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/97188119/henry-rodney-raymond and obituary for Marcia Elizabeth (Mrs. J.T.) Owen, Clarion Ledger, October 1955.