Saturday 31st October 2009 - A Little More About Ezekiel

           I stopped in what is now my usual spot in Beaver Falls for breakfast.  As I settled into my book, a group of young men, accompanied by an older man, sat down at a nearby table.  When their food arrived, they indulged in an unnecesarily loud grace.  Well, it's a free country.  When they finished, the older man led them through a bible lesson, at "preacher" volume.  They seemed, otherwise, nice enough people, but it's really the people who assert their rights like this who help form the constituency which ultimately acquiesses in their removal, isn't it?

 

           Then it was off to the Historical Centre in the Carnegie Library to see what I could dig up about the Rev. Ezekiel Glasgow.  Saturday seems to a day for gentlemen volunteers.  There wasn't a grown-up lady in sight.  Gentlemen just like to help in a different way, don't they?  It's all a bit more, how can I put it, competitive, isn't it?  One of them liked to tell stories about the 18th century Pennsylvania frontier wars (it said so on his card).  He knew this wasn't what I wanted to hear about, but, just sometimes, a switch got tripped, and he couldn't stop himself.  Of course, it was very interesting, practiced, and enjoyable.  But I kept having thoughts about it being Saturday, and them shutting early.

          Ezekiel was appointed minister of the Beavertown and Salem (Presbyterian) church in 1813, and promptly upped and died in eight months.  But he was a 'licenciate' of New Lisbon (where I've just come from in Ohio) presbytery.  And he ministered among the people throughout the area, including, in particular, Ohio Township, where Glasgow was to come into being, for some 12 months before his appointment.  Glasgow Presbyterian Church was founded and built some 35 years after his death, on land donated by George Dawson, who platted Glasgow back in the 1830s, when the canal was coming.  It was attached to the New Lisbon Presbytery. 

          George and Ezekiel would have been the same age.  They must surely have met.  When George laid out the town, petitioned for it to be a borough, and formed a church, where else could he have got the name?  And what impression must George have carried through the years of a friend fated to be forever young?

 

          Later that night, in the local cafe, I was joined by the owner.  The cafe specialises in 'kolaches', a Czechoslovakian delicacy.  It is a high-carb cross between a cake and a pasty.  Not having quite made the full thirty-one days yet, I was unable to try one.  I deflected criticism by making him choose whether it was, in the modern world, Czech or Slovakian.

          But what he really wanted to know was whether I knew what a "Glasgow Kiss" was.  I'm not sure whether he was checking out the veracity of some tale he had been told, or thought I might not know.  So I entertained him with the Music Hall preamble of "Can your mother sew?"