Samuel Reynolds House was born in Waterford, New York, Oct. 16,
1817, being the second child of John and Abby Platt House. His
parents both united with the Presbyterian Church of that village
upon profession of faith, in 1810. At that time the Waterford
congregation was in collegiate relation with the congregation of
Lansingburgh, located eastward across the Hudson River, under the
pastorate of Rev. Samuel Blatchford, D.D. In the next year John
House was elected an elder in the collegiate church; and when the
Waterford congregation became a separate organisation, in 1820, Mr.
and Mrs. House became charter members of the new organisation, and
Mr. House was continued as an elder—an office which he held till
his death, April 27, 1862.
The active interest of Mr. House in the spiritual work of the
church is indicated by the fact that he conducted a Sunday school
for coloured children in a room in a carpenter shop, and when the
young church erected a house of worship, in 1826, this Sunday
school was transferred to the gallery of the church. He is also
recorded as having been the superintendent of the regular Sunday
school of the church after it was established. His interest in the
church continued active up to the close of his life. In his later
years, when the congregation was considering the construction of
a new “session house” for the use of the Sunday school and prayer
meeting, John House sought the privilege of erecting the building
at his own expense; and that fine building, erected in 1859,
remains today as a memorial to his love and zeal for the church.
Abby House was one of the original members of the “Female Cent
Society” of the Waterford church, organised in 1817. The object of
this society was to “afford assistance to poor and pious young men
pursuing their studies in the theological seminary at Princeton.”
The quaint name of this society was double with meaning. Each
member was pledged to contribute one cent a week to the fund, which
was then placed in the hands of the moderator of Presbytery to
dispense. Later the society co-operated with the American Education
Society until the General Assembly forbade that organisation to
operate within the denomination in competition with the new Board
of Ministerial Education. The word “female” suggests that the sex
was about that period emerging into the self-consciousness of a
separate work for religion and was not content to keep its labours
hidden behind the mask of the male portion of the families.
If we were to seek for the motives that led young Samuel to
dedicate himself to foreign missions we would not be surprised to
find that the mother had some of the credit. He says that he was
prompted to become a missionary because his mother dedicated him
to God for foreign missions from his infancy. Out of that maternal
inspiration came also the prayer of his youth:
“Make me a good boy
And a blessing to my parents
And a blessing to all the world.”
The ambition thus early implanted was nurtured during the boyhood
years by stories of missions. When in later years he visited the
Hawaiian Islands on his way to Siam he recalls those stories:
“How little did I dream I was ever to see them, when that
dear mother of mine used to tell me such interesting stories
about the missionaries there and show me, out of her
treasures kept in that always-locked drawer of her bureau,
the precious bit she had of native cloth made of the bark of
a tree. And when she took me to the ‘Monthly Concert,’ as she
always did, how much I used to be interested in news from
those far away isles.”