bwaughThe state of South Carolina is rich with Presbyterian and Reformed history because it was settled by Presbyterians from Ireland and Scotland along with French Reformed Huguenots seeking freedom from persecution and a new land with better opportunities. The extensive influence of these settlers is represented currently in a number of historic sites, cemeteries, and churches in the state. One site is that of the Salkehatchie Presbyterian Church which is located about three miles north of Yemassee on US Highway 17. The significance of the church is explained on a state historical marker by the road which reads as follows:
This was formerly the site of a Presbyterian church organized in 1766 by the Reverend Archibald Simpson, minister from Scotland. The church was incorporated on December 17, 1808. Serving the church were the Reverends Simpson, Edward Palmer, and J. H. Van Dyck. In the cemetery are the graves of early Scotch-Irish Settlers.
A section of chain-link fence and abundant shade trees protect the scattered grave stones. Though not mentioned on the historical marker, Colin McIver was ordained and installed in the Salkehatchie Church for his first pastoral ministry, he began his call in a humid and isolated location having very different topography and climate than his homeland.
Colin McIver was born in Scotland on the Isle of Lewis of the Hebrides in the village of Stornoway March 9, 1784. The name Stornoway is an Anglicization of the Viking name for the well-sheltered port city which in Norse meant Steering Bay. Unfortunately, there is little known about McIver’s years in Scotland, his education, and his earliest days in the United States. He moved to America in about 1809 to teach school while preparing for ordination to the ministry. He was received as a candidate by Harmony Presbytery April 6, 1810, licensed April 1811, and then on April 29, 1812 he passed his trials, was ordained, and became a missionary for a period of three months along the Atlantic coast extending between Charleston and Baltimore. He was then installed the pastor of Salkehatchie Presbyterian Church, which initially had been an independent or dissenting church that transitioned to Presbyterianism. Andrew Flinn, the pastor of Second Presbyterian Church, Charleston, presided over the service and gave the charge to the new minister, and Henry Kollock, the minister of Independent Presbyterian Church, Savannah, preached the sermon. McIver served only briefly in the church because he was dismissed to the Presbytery of Fayetteville in North Carolina May 19, 1814. McIver had relatives living in the area of Fayetteville, so the new call brought his family closer and established him in an area populated with many Scots.
McIver’s new call was to serve the Chesterfield, Pine Tree, and Sandy Run churches which had a total communicant membership of just under one hundred fifty. At his second meeting as a member of Fayetteville Presbytery he was elected stated clerk. One of his first contributions to the work of presbytery was delivering the charge to Jesse H. Turner for his installation in First Church, Fayetteville. Much of his pastoral work was for brief calls or as a temporary stated supply. By April 1817 his call changed because he was pastor of the Sardis and Smyrna congregations which had both been recently organized. Between the years 1819 and 1821 he served short calls and/or supplied the Brown Marsh, St. Paul’s, and Elizabeth congregations. From 1822 to 1828 he was listed in the annual reports for Fayetteville Presbytery as “without pastoral charge,” which means that he was not a called pastor nor had he been assigned to supply a particular church in presbytery. When the Presbyterian Church in the United States of America (PCUSA) divided into Old and New Schools in 1837, Fayetteville Presbytery was, along with a considerable majority of Presbyerians in the South, a member of the Old School. McIver supplied the Galatia, McPherson, and Mt. Thuron churches for a few years after the division and beginning in 1842 he ministered to the sheep in the Galatia and Barbecue churches continuing until 1847. For some reason he is not listed as a member of Fayetteville Presbytery, 1848-1850, and a different minister was serving the Galatia and Barbecue churches for those years. However, he continued the scribal work for his presbytery and synod as their stated clerks. During his years of ministry he was for at least one term a Director of Union Theological Seminary, which was the Old School seminary under the direction of the synods of North Carolina and Virginia.
It may be hard to believe given the importance of organization and effieiency for Rev. McIver’s work as clerk, but it seems he was quite absentminded. A case in point has been provided by James McKenzie in his history of the Barbecue Church. One Sunday morning Pastor McIver was travelling in his wagon to the Barbecue Church to lead worship. The congregation was gathered in the yard of the church by the road awaiting his arrival as they always did. He was punctual arriving as expected, but the trouble was he was so deep in thought with his eyes fixed on the road that he rolled right past the congregation as they saw him disappear over the next hill. The congregants waited. As expected, he soon returned, entered the church as though nothing had happened, and led the service. Maybe, the members failed to shout to get his attention because they knew he would be back due to previus incidents of absentmindedness experienced by McIver.
Father McIver, as he was often called, spoke and preached in both English and Gaelic. When he was on his death bed he spoke in Gaelic asking to be buried in his time-honored silken gown and Geneva bands. Pastor, Clerk, and Father McIver enjoyed a stable ministry as the pastor of the Galatia and Barbeque Churches until his death on January 18, 1850. When Fayetteville Presbytery received the report of his death, the moderator, who was Archibald McQueen, appointed a committee of two to compose a memorial for “Father McIver.” He was buried in Cross Creek Cemetery, Fayetteville, North Carolina in a grave marked by a plain and simple stone purchased by his friends. He was survived by his wife Sarah.
Rev. Colin McIver was not only a devoted keeper of minutes at different levels but was also a frequent participant in prosecuting discipline cases which resulted in his publication of a few items related to those cases. One issue that particularly concerned him was the marriage of a widower to his deceased wife’s sister; the crux of the case was application of a statement in the Westminster Confession of Faith, 24:4, to such marriages. He spearheaded the disciplinary pursuit of two such marriages that occurred in Fayetteville Presbytery. The first one resulted in him publishing his views in a pamphlet with a lengthy title even for the era but it will be abbreviated here, Ecclesiastical Proceedings, in the Case of Mr. Donald McCrimmon, A Ruling Elder of the Presbyterian Church, who was Suspended from Sealing Ordinances, and from the Exercise of his Office, by the Session of Ottery’s Church…[etc.], published in Fayetteville in 1827. Then just fifteen years later another case occurred in McIver’s presbytery but this one involved Archibald McQueen. The case went all the way to the general assembly, created extensive debate, considerable press coverage, and such a frenzy that some were concerned about the Old School Presbyterians splitting. The driving force behind the McQueen case was, once again, Father McIver. In order to bolster his presentation before the highest judicatory, McIver published contemporaneous with the first year of the McQueen proceedings Essay Concerning the Unlawfulness of a Man’s Marriage with his Sister by Affinity; with a Review of the Various Acts of the Highest Judicatory of the Presbyterian Church in the United States of America, Touching This and Similar Connections, Philadelphia, 1842.
Barry Waugh
The memorial composed for Colin McIver by Fayetteville Presbytery has been transcribed from the minutes and is available in PDF by clicking HERE. Additional publications are available for PDF download on the Log College Press site at “Colin McIver (1784-1850)”.
Notes—The header image is a composite of two pictures taken by the author of the Salkehatchie Church site. The portrait of McIver was suplied by Wayne Sparkman of the PCA Historical Center. For further information about Colin McIver, Archibald McQueen, and near-kin marriages download the author’s PDF dissertation on the Log College Press site The History of a Confessional Sentence, 2002, which studies the relevant sentence in the Westminster Confession, chapter 24, “Of Marriage and Divorce.” The Salkehatchie Presbyterian Church has several variations of its name including, “Salt Catcher,” “Saltketcher,” or “Saltcatcher,” as well as another variation “Saltkehatchee,” which was the name used when it was incorporated as “Saltkehatchee Independent Presbyterian Church,” December 17, 1808. There are some discrepancies regarding the dates of McIver’s candidacy, licensure, and ordination, as well as church names that are not always spelled the same. A brief article by the author of this site titled, “Carolina Scots, the Westminster Confession, and a Deceased Wife’s Sister,” was published in The Confessional Presbyterian 9, 2013, beginning on page 48. James D. McKenzie’s book is titled, History of Barbecue Presbyterian Church, Harnett County, North Carolina, which was self-published in 1965. Information related to McIver and the Fayetteville Church was found in both History of First Presbyterian Church, Fayetteville, North Carolina, by Harriot Sutton Rankin, 1928, and an earlier book by A. L. Phillips titled, An Historical Sketch of the Presbyterian Church of Fayetteville, February 3, 1889. George Howe published two volumes about Soutch Carolina Presbyterianism, History of the Presbyterian Church in South Carolina, By George Howe, D.D., Professor in the Theological Seminary, Columbia, South Carolina. Prepared by Order of the Synod of South Carolina, 2 vols., (vol. 1, Columbia: Duffie & Chapman, 1870, vol. 2, Columbia: W. J. Duffie, 1883), and they were reprinted by the Synod of South Carolina of the Presbyterian Church in the United States, vol. 1, 1965 and vol. 2, 1966. A valuable tool for the study of Presbyterians in the state is a Guide to Presbyterian Ecclesiastical Names and Places in South Carolina, 1685-1986, by Joseph B. Martin, III, which was published in South Carolina Historical Magazine, vol. 90:1, 2, January-April 1989. Also, R. H. Stone’s, A History of Orange Presbytery, 1770-1970, Greensboro, 1970, was helpful because North Carolina, Georgia, part of Tennessee, and South Carolina were originally the geographic area of Orange Presbytery. As the years passed, presbyteries were formed from portions of Orange Presbytery’s geographic area. For example, just about the time McIver moved to North Carolina, Fayetteville Presbytery was formed from Orange in 1812.
