CRANSTON PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH
The New Richmond Anti-Slavery Society held candlelight meetings at this location as early as 1836. In 1842, Amos Dresser, one of the Lane Seminary Rebels and anti-slavery martyr was appointed pastor. Dresser had become a martyr to the abolitionist cause in 1835 when he was caught traveling in Nashville, Tennessee with anti-slavery pamphlets and punished with 20 lashes with a bull-whip. While pastor in New Richmond, Dresser and Dr. John G. Rogers penned a letter to the Cincinnati Presbytery vowing “to dissolve all connexion (sic) with any and every Ecclesiastical organization which fellowship Slavery”. The New Richmond Presbyterian Church shared its pulpit with several anti-slavery speakers including James G. Birney, John Rankin, Harriet Beecher Stowe’s husband Calvin Stowe and her brother George Beecher. The church was organized in 1821 and the present chapel was built in 1856. Following the Great Flood of 1937, the Methodist and Presbyterian Churches of New Richmond merged and named their congregation in memory of Methodist Bishop Earl Cranston.
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