The PCA Historical Center has opened its newest collection, the Janet L. Sparkman Collection for Presbyterian Women. Named after the late wife of PCA Historical Center Director Wayne Sparkman, the collection will primarily include works by and about women in Presbyterian history and will serve as a gathering point for resources that the Historical Center had on hand as well as new resources that the center obtains.

After Janet’s death in September 2023, the center received a number of donations in her memory, including a large donation given for the purpose of establishing a collection in her name. Housed in this collection will be the papers of Presbyterian women like Presbyterian missionary Emily Gallaher Russel along with founding women in the PCA, including Georgia Settle and Jeanne Patterson. Wayne Sparkman continues to add to the collection works that the Historical Center already owned as well as acquiring new works by Presbyterian women. 

The collection also highlights contributions by women in other Presbyterian denominations like the Orthodox Presbyterian Church, Associate Reformed Presbyterian Church, Presbyterian Church in the U.S., Presbyterian Church (USA), United Presbyterian Church of North America, Puritan writings, and some writings from Asia and Africa. 

Works in the collections span centuries. One of the earliest works is Thomas Ken’s 1682 “Sermon Preached at the Funeral of the Right Honourable the Lade Margaret Mainard.” Ken was best known as a hymn writer who penned the doxology sung in most PCA churches to the tune of Old Hundreth. The collection just acquired a copy of James Huie’s “Records of Female Piety” published in Edinburgh, Scotland, in 1842.

Wayne Sparkman also added the works of living PCA writers like Susan Hunt, Kathleen Buswell Nielson, Sarah Ivill, and Erin Pettingill, along with the writings of Kara Tippetts, the late wife of PCA Teaching Elder Jason Tippetts. 

The PCA Historical Center is a ministry of the PCA Stated Clerk’s Office, located in St. Louis, Missouri, on the campus of Covenant Theological Seminary. Its mission is to preserve the records of the PCA along with those of four predecessor denominations. The center also holds the manuscript collections of over 150 people connected with those denominations, plus history materials for some 700 congregations. It also contains a research library, with focus on American Presbyterianism.

The full contents of the Janet L. Sparkman Collection can be perused through the Historical Center’s online library.