Rare Hymnals Displayed at Leland Speed Library

Lewis Oswalt

The year was 1632 in England when its ruler Charles I issued a charter for the colony of Maryland in a place we know today as the United States.

It was the same year that a commonly used congregational songbook for English worship was printed. In a sheepskin binding, a copy of the songbook is part of a display of rare hymnals at Mississippi College’s Leland Speed Library.

On display through early May, the noteworthy collection belongs to MC music professor Lewis Oswalt. The Clinton resident began collecting hundreds of historic hymnals as a doctoral student at New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary in the 1980s.

Oswalt’s impressive collection is proving invaluable to library visitors at Baptist-affiliated Mississippi College. “We were so pleased to have Dr. Oswalt agree to have the library feature a select group of his rare hymnals as an exhibit,” said library director Kathleen Hutchison.

“We hope that the student body as well as faculty and staff will go see these significant materials relating to our Christian heritage,” Hutchison said.

Other items in the collection include an 1832 printed copy of “The Sacred Lyre,” that contains a significant number of hymns popular in early 19^th Century revivalist settings.

There’s also a copy of “The Baptist Psalmody,” the first hymnal by and for Southern Baptists. It was printed in 1855 at a time when America was in a state of unrest, a few years before the start of the Civil War. Reports show it was an unstable time for religion in America with Christianity being challenged by the world of science and discoveries.

A total of seventeen items from Oswalt’s collection are located in a display case in the library’s lobby just a few steps from the building’s coffee shop.

Many of the items in the professor’s collection were obtained from rare booksellers.

“I’d be considered a hymnologist,” he said.

The aging hymnals stay in pretty good shape year-round.

“They are kept in a good climate-controlled environment,” Oswalt said.

His doctoral emphasis at New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary had a hymnology connection and that’s how the Hammond, Louisiana native first got interested in starting a collection.

Bigger collections of rare exist around the United States, including one at the Pitts Library at the Candler School of Theology at Emory University in Atlanta. There’s a major hymnal collection at the Library of Congress in Washington, among others.

But for Jackson area residents unwilling to pay steep gas prices to reach those destinations, the collection at the Leland Speed Library is certainly worth making the trip to the Clinton campus.

A 1975 Mississippi College graduate who joined the music faculty in 1989, Oswalt is a man with many hobbies. He enjoys outdoor activities such as hiking, running, kayaking and cycling. He serves as the radio announcer for the Clinton High Arrows football team and for various high school and college sporting events.

He and his wife, Lisa, also stay busy as the parents of three children. Music runs in the Oswalt family. Their daughter, Leah Oswalt, is a member of the MC Singers. The MC freshman joined the group for a concert at New York City’s famed Lincoln Center in January 2012 with choruses from New York, Texas, South Carolina, North Carolina and Mississippi.

For more information on the collection of rare hymnals, contact MC special collections librarian Heather Weeden at 601.925.3434 or at Weeden@mc.edu.