KEY, JOSEPH STAUNTON, 1829-1920.
Sermons, 1886-1915.

MANUSCRIPT NUMBER 232

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REPRODUCTION: Bound volume may not be photocopied due to preservation concerns.

COPYRIGHT: Information on copyright (literary rights) available from repository.

CITATION:  Joseph Staunton Key Sermons, MSS 232, Archives and Manuscripts Dept., Pitts Theology Library, Emory University. 

Joseph Staunton Key was born in Lagrange, Georgia, on July 18, 1829.  Both his father, Caleb W. Key, and grandfather, Joseph Key, were itinerant Methodist preachers.  Key converted to Methodism in 1847 and graduated from Emory College in Oxford, Georgia,  in 1848. He was received into the Georgia Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South the following year.   At the division of the Georgia Conference, Key joined the South Georgia Conference and spent most of his time in the Macon and Columbus Districts.  In 1867 Key was awarded an honorary Doctor of Divinity degree from the University of Georgia.  He was elected bishop in 1886 and moved to Sherman, Texas, where he presided over the Texas Annual Conference.  Key visited China and Japan in 1892, and made numerous official visits to Mexico.  He remained active until his retirement in 1910.  Bishop Key died on April 6, 1920 at his home in Sherman, Texas.

Joseph Staunton Key was married twice.  He married Susie M. Snyder in 1851.  They were married for forty years until her death in 1891.  In 1893 Bishop Key married Lucy C. Kidd, a noted educator.  He and his second wife founded the Kidd-Key College at Sherman, Texas.

This bound volume consists of eighty-one sermons handwritten in ink and pencil.  Some sermons have newspaper clippings attached.  The sermons are one to three pages in length and appear to be an outline of the major points from which Bishop Key would extemporize.   A table of contents at the front of the volume lists the first seventy-eight sermon titles along with the bible verse used as the text.  The last three sermons appear at the end of the volume and are not listed in the table of contents.  Along the bottom margin of several sermons there are lists of church or conference names, some of which have dates.

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