Photos of Interest at Pleasant Hill on Eve of 100th Anniversary Celebration

Group photo shows Mrs. Daisy Nugent, Mrs. Bob Bridgford, Mrs. R. T. Vaughn and T. Ed Murphy, four of the five members in charge of the Centennial Program. Walter Bridgford, the other member of the committee, was not present when the picture was taken.

Center left photo shows the tombstone of the first man to be buried in the cemetery. Directly under the date line, but now showing in the photo is a statement to this effect.

Center right photo is of Mrs. Lou Bridgford, oldest resident member of the church congregation, and her granddaughter, Ruth Bridgford, daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Bob Bridgford, who by a strange coincidence, is the youngest member of the congregation on the eve of the centennial.

County's Oldest Presbyterian Church Host to Throng From Near & Afar

The 100^th anniversary of the organization of Pleasant Hill Presbyterian Church, on Highway 26 six miles east of aris, was appropriately celebrated Sunday.

The church was filled to overflowing when the meeting was called to order at 10:30.

People from Paris, Perry, Santa Fe, Mexico, Moberly, Shelbina and other towns were in evidence as the crowd filed into the house of worship.

From nearly every car boxes and baskets of good things for the dinner were produced and carried to tables that had been set on the east side of the building. Practically every person present had one or more relatives buried in the nearby cemetery.

Mrs. Belle Crutcher Peterson served as organist during the rendition of hymns and special numbers.

A song by a quartette from Paris, composed of J. T. Sproul, Hugh Bridgford, Mrs. Robert Sproul, and Mrs. James Threlkeld, was a program feature.

Eight girls from the Pleasant Hill community—Mary Lindsey, Lillian, Vivian and Ruby Bridgford, Frances and Leta Blanche Scott and Dorothy Tipton, Frances and Isabel Wills—also sang.

The only preacher that has gone out from the Pleasant Hill congregation during its century of history, Dr. C. F. Richmond, was one of the speakers of the day. By a happy coincidence the Paris church, of which he has been pastor for a generation, was organized by Presbyterians from Pleasant Hill.

The opening address of the day was by Rev. T. M. Barbee, of Mexico, present pastor of the historic church.

The principal address of the day was by Rev. J. Orton Reavis, of Nashville, Tenn., a Monroe county man who has attained to national prominence and leadership in the Presbyterian denomination.

A program number of unusual interest was the reading of the history Mrs. R. T. Vaughn had compiled from the records of Pleasant Hill, from which history much of the matter in this special Appeal edition was taken.

During closing hour in the afternoon talks were made by A. T. Stuart and Senator Whitecotton, of Paris, and George Trimble, of South Fork.

The Pleasant Hill community was the original home of the McKameys, the Bridgord, the Vaughns, the Smitheys, the Nugents, the McGees, the Murphys and the Sprouls. The hundreds of names published elsewhere in this paper, all taken from markers and monuments in Pleasant Hill’s city of the dead, gives a fair idea of the families on which the community has held special ties during the last hundred years.

A remarkable thing in connection with the Sunday’s exercises was the reading of letters from Rev. L. P. Bowen, aged 96 years, a former pastor, and one from Mrs. Popham, aged 94 years. Rev. Bowen was a former and his home is now in Berlin Maryland. He also wrote the special Centenniel song that was sung. Mrs. Popham now lives in Montana but retains her membership at Pleasant Hill.