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After having been thrown from his carriage the Sabbath before, Presbyterian minister Robert Annan went to his heavenly home on this day in history: December 5, 1819. One of the founding members of the Associate Reformed Presbyterian Church in 1782, he was also the author of one of the earliest American commentaries on the Westminster Confession of Faith.
A man of many interests, he carried on a debate through the newspapers under the pseudonym Philochorus with Benjamin Rush over the legitimacy of capital punishment (opposed by Rush). He also received a visit from George Washington once during the American War of Independence to discuss what were presumably mastodon bones found on Annan’s farm, an account of which Annan later published.
A leading force among the dissenting wing of colonial American Presbyterianism, Robert Annan is remembered two hundred years to the day that he entered his eternal rest.
