Evening Republican, Volume 20, Number 110, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 8 May 1916 — Philadelphia Church Is Built of Grindstones [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

Philadelphia Church Is Built of Grindstones

PHILADELPHIA.— The dedication of Tacony Baptist church, Disston and Hagerman streets, marked the completion of the only church edifice in the world built of worn-out grindstones and finished a chapter of self-sacrifice

on the part of the pastor in securing enough stones to finish the building. The pastor is Rev. George W. Tryon. It was through his own personal sacrifice that the church was ■fnade possible and a building erected large enough to accommodate the greatly increasing number of members. With hip boots and pick and shovel the hustling pastor, in water to his knees, helped dig the old grindstones which had been buried for sev< eral years under great piles of dirt

The stones, which were used for the grinding of saws, were thrown to one side after they no longer were of use in the business to lie in a waste pile until Mr. Tryon, seeing that the available stones, would not complete the structure, proceeded to locate the buried stones and thereby finished his church. It required approximately 2,500 grindstones to complete the edifice, and all the hauling and the setting of the stones was done under the direct supervision of the pastor,,who attended to the operation every day in order that the best materials would be placed in the structure.