City Directories and History: “In the Fall of 1869, the Board of Missions of the New York Presbyterian Church sent the Rev. Samuel Loomis, a white minister, on a mission to upper South Carolina with instructions to establish churches and schools among the freedmen, at such points as seemed advisable, to begin religious and educational work.
After pioneering through the section, Rev. Loomis chose Chester as the most favorable location from which a far-reaching work could be inaugurated. He began with the work which the two women were operating and spread out to the adjoining counties of York and Fairfield.
Rev. Loomis was designated by his church as a Home Missionary. Born in Twinsburg, Ohio on February 3, 1829, he earned an A.B. degree in 1849 (college unknown) and was graduated from Union Theological Seminary, New York, in 1853. The same year he was licensed by the Fourth Presbytery of New York. In 1856, he was ordained by the Presbytery of Pataskala, New York and began preaching. He and Mrs. Loomis, in December 1868, started the parochial school which soon developed into Brainerd Mission. The name Brainerd was chosen in honor of David Brainerd, a man Rev. Loomis knew and admired as a pioneer in mission work among the Indians. Historians recorded that “light began to dawn.” The work of Brainerd Mission began to grow more noticeably and soon Brainerd Institute was established and recognized.
A church was organized by Rev. Loomis in the Fall of 1869 and the school work continued with Mrs. Loomis and Miss Kent as teachers. Both the school and church were moved to a new location then known locally as the “Old Commissary.” Rev. Loomis is remembered as a dedicated and dignified person. He always wore a black broadcloth Prince Albert with trousers to match the coat and vest, and a tall silk hat.
Among the clergymen Rev. Loomis trained and sent out to preach were the Rev. Baker Russell, the Rev. I.A. James, and the Rev. Reuben Nance. To meet the growing needs of the school, in 1882, Professor H.A. Green came from New Jersey to work with the Loomises. The Freedmen’s Board purchased the “De Graffenreid Place,” ten acres of land and a house east of the railroad and on a hill. In 1888, Centennial Hall was begun. The main part of the building was thirty-five feet by seventy-six feet, the ell on the west was twenty-five by fifty-five feet, all two and one-half stories high.”
(Information in part from: Chester County Heritage Book, Vol. I, Edt. by Collins – Knox, Published by the Chester Co Hist. Society – Jostens Printing, 1982)
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