Bro. W. P. Harvey died at his home in Louisville, September 29, at the age of 88. When I was born, my father and mother were great admirers of J. P. Boyce amd named their first-born son for him. When I was a boy big enough to want another name besides Boyce I added William to my name and for some years was W. B. Taylor. When I was 16 years old W. C. was born. My father and mother decided they would like to name him W. C. Taylor, Jr., for my father. As I had put the William on my own name, they suggested that I take it off, so there would not be two Williams in the family. And the William was dropped.About that time W. P. Harvey came to Mayfield in the interest of Georgetown College. He sat up with my father and stayed in our home and I fell in love with him and added Harvey to my name. About that time my father took cold at a meeting of the General Association and out of that cold he developed bronchitis, from which he never recovered. Bethel College was my father's alma mater and when he got in poor health he moved to Russellville to put his boys in school. Bethel College then had the name of being one of the best Baptist schools in the South, with a full four years, classical course and a very strong faculty.
W. P. Harvey was for many years associated with T. T. Eaton as business manager of the Western Recorder. Through the kindness of W. P. Harvery I was Seminary reporter on the Western Recorder for one year. In the days of the noted Whitsitt controversy, T. T. Eaton and W. P. Harvey made sacrifices in friends and positions and money, that only the inner circle knew anything about. When the Seminary crowd thought they had things going their way and the stockholders of the Recorder, who were for Whitsitt, were trying to force Eaton and Harvey to sell to the Seminary crowd, W. P. Harvey and T. T. Eaton both had to sell a farm or other property to get money to buy out the Seminary stockholders on a give or take proposition by which the Whitsittites thought to crush them, but they reckoned without God. When they bought the stock of Whitsitt's friends, who were stockholders in the Recorder, one of the wealthiest distillers or liquor men, who had put up the money to buy Eaton and Harvey out, said that Whitsitt had lost, for said he, when they sold their farms and borrowed heavily to buy out the rich liquorites and worldlings in Walnut Street and Broadway churches, he said he knew Eaton would win and Whitsitt would have to go. And he did, though the fight was far from being over.
The Unionists and Modernists and Worldlings might remember that experience in the present fight. They too have got to go. Up to the time it was Kentucky against the South. J. N. Hall, then editor of the Baptist Flag, was lined up against Whitsitt. He had a big following among the common people, but he had no standing with the leaders of the organized work. All of the other papers in the South were either supporting Whitsitt and fighting Eaton or non-committal. But W. P. Harvey had close ties binding him like hooks of steel to B. H. Carroll. Carroll had told Harvey that because of Truett and Gambrell being on Whitsitt's side, it was not best for him to say anything unless it was absolutely necessary for him to speak, but if it ever became necessary for him to line up and speak out, that Eaton and Harvey could count on him.
The whole Seminary and machine crowd in the South wrere making it unbearably hot against Eaton and the Recorder. Then W. P. Harvey got on the train and went to Texas to see Carroll. The next week Carroll came out in the Texas Standard against Whitsitt. Then Mississippi began to show her colors. Then the District Associations began to pass strong resolutions against Whitsitt and then the fight was over.
Next to T. T. Eaton Southern Baptists owe W. P. Harvey a debt of gratitude for the truth being established in the Whitsitt controversy that they owe no other man, living or dead. Selah!
========== [From H. Boyce Taylor, News and Truths, Murray, KY, October, 1929, pp. 3-4. Document provided by Ben Stratton, Farmington, KY. - Transcribed and formatted by Jim Duvall.]
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