Cairnwood, the Bryn Athyn, Pennsylvania, home of John and Gertrude Pitcairn, was dedicated on May 22, 1895. During the dedication service, the Word (i.e. the Bible) and volumes of the Writings of Emanuel Swedenborg were placed in the chapel in a special cabinet called a “repository,” and also in the private rooms of members of the family and household staff. Several decades later, in 1939, Raymond Pitcairn, John and Gertrude’s eldest son, moved the repository to the chapel of Glencairn, the castle-like home that he built for his family. Finally, in 2005, after an extensive renovation of the Cairnwood chapel, this historic repository was restored to its earlier location in Cairnwood. It has now been used continuously for more than one hundred years.

For more information about Cairnwood’s chapel, repository, and the New Church tradition of family worship, see this article: “Family Worship at Cairnwood and Glencairn.” Since the article was written in 2003, the original receipt for the repository has been located in the John and Gertrude Pitcairn Archives. The receipt, dated January 31, 1888, reveals that the repository was made to the Pitcairns’ specifications by the Philadelphia company of G. Vollmer & Son for their home on Spring Garden Street in Philadelphia. A reference to it in the College Letters makes it clear that 1) the Cairnwood repository was made especially for the Pitcairns, beginning in the year 1886 (it was “not yet ready” for the dedication of the house on November 1^st, 1886), and 2) when the repository was ready it was placed on the east wall of what was probably their living room/parlor. According to the College Letters,

“The Academy met at 2008 Spring Garden Street, November 1^st, 1886, to hold a Memorial Service on the occasion of the departure of Dr. David Cowley, of Pittsburgh, to the Spiritual World. Before the Memorial Service there was a preliminary service, which consisted in the dedication of the house of Mr. John Pitcairn, where the meeting was held, and which had just been finished, and into which the family had just moved. The Chancellor opened with an appropriate address concerning the use of a New Church home, following which he requested Mr. and Mrs. Pitcairn to indicate the place where they wished to have the Repository for the WORD. They did so by lifting a small table from a central position in the room and placing it against the east wall, in lieu of the Repository, which was not yet ready” (College Letters, Philadelphia, Pa., Academy of the New Church, no. IV, Dec. 10, 1886. Italics added.). Photo: David Hershy.