bwaughSamuel was born to the William Waugh household in 1749 within the parish of Lower Marsh Creek Presbyterian Church in Adams County, Pennsylvania. Unfortunately, his mother’s name could not be determined with certainty. The pioneer settlers of the region were Scots Irish and if they attended church, it was Presbyterian. Education in preparation for college was received from a man named Dobbin who lived somewhere in the region of Gettysburg. He moved east to the College of New Jersey to begin preparation for the ministry. Languages were of particular interest for him and he excelled in learning their nuances. He found political comradery as a member of the American Whig Society, which was a debating society that followed the principles of John Locke through promoting virtue, the rights of citizens, and separation of powers. The year before he graduated he won prizes for reading Latin and Greek and for translating from English to Latin. Included among his thirty colleagues graduating with him in 1773 were, William Graham (Presbyterian minister and founder of what is currently Washington & Lee University), Hugh Hodge (the father of Princeton Seminary’s Charles Hodge), Harry Lee, Jr. ( “Light Horse Harry Lee” and father of Robert E. Lee), John Linn (childhood friend, ministerial colleague, and founding board member of Dickinson College), Presbyterian minister and educator brothers John Blair Smith and William Richmond Smith (brothers of Princeton University president Samuel Stanhope Smith and the three were sons of Robert Smith), and John Witherspoon, Jr. At commencement, Waugh demonstrated his linguistic skill in a debate using only the Latin language.
Returning to Pennsylvania, Waugh was tutored in theology by a local minister, then he was licensed to preach during the meeting of Donegal Presbytery, December 4, 1776, at the Upper West Conococheague Church in Cumberland County, Pennsylvania. The Cumberland frontier, Maryland, and northern Virginia had settlements sprinkled hither and yon with many needing worship leaders, so Waugh tested his gifts supplying remote churches by traveling on horseback into Maryland and Virginia. In Virginia he directed worship at churches in Turkey Run, Culpepper Court House, and Kittocktin. He was ordained May 1781 after more than four years preaching as a licensed missionary and he continued supplying churches as a minister.
In April 1782, he was installed pastor of the united congregations of East (or Lower) Pennsborough and Monaghan. His guaranteed annual salary was £150, and he was promised a gratuity of £75 from each of the two congregations with one paid shortly after his installation and the other when he had been minister for three years. It is unclear what constituted a gratuity, but it may have been given only if the storms didn’t come and the creeks didn’t rise to set back the local economy. By about 1783 Waugh’s church changed its name to Silver Spring Church. As often occurred for a single minister in his first church, he was attracted to one member of his flock particularly, Eliza, the daughter of David Hoge. They were married April 14, 1783. Samuel and Eliza moved into their home about the time Silver Spring Church completed its stone building to replace the rustic log meeting house in East Pennsborough.
In 1786 the bounds of Donegal Presbytery were changed to create Carlisle Presbytery with the organizational meeting held October 17, 1786. Waugh attended the meeting held in Lower Marsh Creek Church, which was his congregation when a boy. He was joined by eleven of the twenty-two ministers constituting the new presbytery. Ruling elders in attendance numbered five. Pastor John Craighead convened the meeting with a sermon from 2 Corinthians 5:20, “Now then we are ambassadors for Christ,” which was an appropriate text to remind presbyters of what the work of the church was about. Ten years later Carlisle Presbytery was divided to create Huntingdon Presbytery with Waugh continuing as a member of the territorially reduced Carlisle Presbytery.
Located about ten miles west of the Silver Spring Church was and is Dickinson College in Carlisle. The college was founded by Benjamin Rush and chartered in 1783, but since its founding and on into the early nineteenth century it suffered growing pains. A sample of troubles faced can be read in the biography of William Neill (1778-1860) as he worked to keep the college afloat. Waugh was on the board of trustees from Dickinson’s beginning until his death. Waugh and his lifetime friend John Linn were the only clergymen on the college board by the turn of the century. The two tried to improve Dickinson in 1796 by presenting a plan for the “Regulation of Classes” which they believed could ease some of the administrative-curriculum issues, but the plan was not adopted.
At the end of 1806, Samuel Waugh was stricken with pleurisy and confined to his home, however weakness did not stop him from following his calendar of ministry. A couple was scheduled for a wedding, so Waugh called them to his home so he could unite them in Christ. His daughter Eliza Waugh Burd, looking back on her father’s ministry and death, provided the following comments.
In season and out of season he met his engagements. His custom was to catechize at regular periods, throughout his charge, and not only the children but also the heads of families—households. This was done by announcing from the pulpit certain days in the week, to meet those of a particular district, at a place named, and so he continued from week to week until the whole congregation was visited, and instructed in a pastoral way.…
A little before he breathed his last (my brother Samuel having been sent for the physician, and not yet returned), he had his other children brought to his bedside, of whom my sister and myself were the oldest present. He looked upon us all, and said, “My poor girls!” — paused, and then asked, “What is the chief end of man?” This question I answered, in the words of my catechism, “To glorify God, and enjoy him for ever.” After this, not another word was spoken by him; he closed his eyes, and soon calmly and peacefully expired. At the time, I did not feel that much had been said to me as I stood by the bedside of my dying father, as I had so often been asked, and answered that question before. Very different, however, has been my view, under a riper judgment and experience. A volume could not have embodied more. In no way could the momentous consequence of that weighty question have been presented to secure for it a more abiding remembrance and a deeper lodgment in the soul.
What a profound insight into the abiding influence of memorization of the catechism for her life. As a young girl she may have grudgingly memorized the answers to the Westminster Shorter Catechism because she had to, then at her father’s deathbed when she repeated the answer she was simply disappointed that he had nothing more to say. But as she aged the significance of those few words, “Man’s chief end is to glorify God and enjoy him forever,” provided the answer to that weighty question, “What is man’s chief end?” Job expresses Eliza’s experience, “Wisdom is with the aged, and understanding in length of days” (12:12).
On January 3, 1807, Pastor Samuel Waugh died after serving five years as a missionary on horseback and then twenty-five years from the pulpit of the Silver Spring Church. He was survived by his widow Eliza and at least one son and two daughters. He is buried in the yard of the Silver Spring Church where the severely weathered inscription cut into the marker offers but a brief remembrance, “He lived beloved and died lamented.”
Barry Waugh
Notes: Regarding the church see, Exercises in Commemoration of the One Hundred and Seventy-Fifth Anniversary of the Silver Spring Presbyterian Church, Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, Thursday, August 5, 1909. The quotes by Eliza are from Alfred Nevin’s, Churches of the Valley: or, an Historical Sketch of the Old Presbyterian Congregations of Cumberland and Franklin Counties in Pennsylvania, Philadelphia: Joseph M. Wilson, 1852, pages 73-74. Charles Coleman Sellers, Dickinson College: A History, Middletown, 1973; Centennial Memorial of the Presbytery of Carlisle (1889), 2 vols, regarding the changes of the name of Silver Spring during Waugh’s pastorate see vol. 1, page 285, and the header image is from vol. 1. See also, History of Cumberland and Adams Counties, Pennsylvania. Containing History of the Counties; their Townships, Towns, Villages, Schools, Churches, Industries, etc.; Portraits of Early Settlers and Prominent Men; Biographies; History of Pennsylvania, Statistical and Miscellaneous Matter, etc., Chicago, 1886; and Richard A. Harrison, Princetonians, 1769-1775: A Biographical Dictionary, Princeton, 1980.
