[Note: In the Arrangement section, the notation "folder 2-5" means box 2, folder 5.]

Arrangement: Alphabetical by folder title, most of which correspond to document types (such as Bible study, sermon notes, etc.)

Date range: 1882-1983, n.d.

Volume: 2.57 Cubic Feet, Boxes: 1-5

Geographic coverage: United States, China, Australia, New Zealand, Japan, Korea, Tasmania, India, Germany, France, England, Scotland, Ireland, Wales, Canada

Type of documents: Diaries, sermon notes, Bible studies, Sunday school lessons, newspaper clippings, correspondence, passport, Bible, photographs, publications, and audio tapes

Correspondents: R.A. Sr. to family members, including daughters Edith and Margaret, granddaughter Elizabeth and wife Clara; also a letter from Clara to Margaret and postcards to Margaret from Clara and others.

Notes: The materials in this collection are not the papers of RA. Torrey, Sr. as kept by him, but are documents created by him or his family collected by the Archives from a variety of sources. This collection documents Torrey's evangelistic, preaching and teaching ministry. There are also some items relating to his ministry in Los Angeles as dean of BIOLA and pastor of the Church of the Open Door.

One large segment consists of sermon notes, both handwritten and typed. Folder 1-9 contains a sermon notebook and folders 1-10 through 1-48 contain individual sermons. The sermons in folders 1-12, 1-13, 1-22, 1-37, 1-40, 1-46, 1-47, and 1-48 are part of a collection of Torrey sermons found in the book, Soul Winning Sermons God Has Used in Saving Myriads of Sinners All Around the Globe. Perhaps the texts in these folders were used to prepared the printed versions. Folders 1-49 and 1-50 contain a collection of clippings from sermons Torrey preached during his Philadelphia campaign in 1906. Other sermons can be found in folder 1-8 (Orlando, 1927) and 2-2 (New Zealand, 1902). This last folder has a copy of The Outlook, Illustrated Memento of the Torrey-Alexander mission in New Zealand, August-September 1902. Its fifty-six pages document with sermons, articles, biographies, and photographs the meetings in New Zealand conducted by Torrey, Charles Alexander, and other evangelists.

Boxes 3 and 4 consist of four diaries of R.A, Senior (folders 3-1 through 3-4) and ten by his wife Clara (folder 3-5 through 4-8). They are extremely valuable for the insight they give into R.A. and Clara as people and also for much incidental information of R.A. evangelistic ministry, particularly during his 1902-1903 world tour.

The diaries of R.A. Torrey covering the years while he was a university student in Germany, held evangelistic meetings worldwide, and events in the last years of his life. The first diary (folder 3-1) begins in July 1882 while Torrey was in the US and describes his daily life, including the texts and title of the Sunday sermons he preached, the books he was reading, people he met with, and daily events in the life of his wife and first child, Edith. He describes his voyage to Germany (Oct. 19-Nov. 2), impressions of the country, his life as a student attending the University of Leipzig, the people of Leipzig, the visit of the King and Queen of Saxony, and the prevalence of dueling in Germany (May 9, 1883). When asked why he didn't drink beer he answered ...ministers in America only drink tea, coffee, milk and water... (May 2, 1883). The diary ends in July 1883 while Torrey was still in Germany. The flyleaf of the second diary (folder 3-2) which begins in August 1906 lists dates and places that Torrey visited during that time period, including his evangelistic campaigns in Buffalo, New York and Montreal, Canada and his visit to East Northfield, Massachusetts. Torrey described his daily life, references to the weather, and his Buffalo and Montreal missions, evangelistic meetings including the texts he preached on and the number of people who committed their lives to Jesus Christ. Two phrases he often used to begin an entry were "A blessed day" and "A good day." The handwriting in this diary is very difficult to read. The entire year of 1926 is covered in the third diary (folder 3-3) which describes Torrey's daily life with references to the weather, people and places he visited, and his physical condition.

Torrey's final diary (folder 3-4) covers the last four months of his life, June-October 1928. His last entry on October 23rd was recorded just three days before he died. Entries dated October 24-26 are not in Torrey's handwriting and were probably written by his wife.

There are ten diaries of Clara Torrey which cover the time period 1902-1936. She describes in detail the events that she observed or heard about and her feelings about some of these. She refers to her husband as "Archie" and her son as "Reuben." Most of her diaries describe her travels with R.A., accompanying him on his evangelistic trips around the world.

The first diary (folder 3-5) begins in March 1902 Shanghai, China, and ends in Rose Bank, Australia, on August 1902. The next diary (folder 3-6) continues where the first left off covering her time in Australia, New Zealand, India, Paris, London, Scotland, Ireland during the Torrey-Alexander meetings. It ends in London in May 1903 and is continued with the third diary (folder 4-1) which covers her travels with R.A. to Germany, Scotland, the US and return to England in June 1904. The next diary (folder 4-2) begins in England in July 1904 and records travels to Switzerland, France and finally ending in Germany in August 1905. Mrs. Torrey continues with her fifth diary (folder 4-3) while in Germany, including travel to England and returning to the US by May 1907. There are gaps in this diary with no entries for days, weeks and some months. The sixth diary (folder 4-4) covers the period when Clara was in the US from June 1907 to September 1908 and a two-day entry for November 1910. Nine years later the seventh diary (folder 4-5) begins covering the period June to October 1919 with Mrs. Torrey first in the US and then her travels to China and Japan and then it covers the period July to September 1921 beginning in Japan then Korea and ending in China. The entry for August 1, 1919, is written in shorthand. A five-year diary (folder 4-6) covering the years 1922 through 1926 (including the death of daughter Margaret) contains several pages of memoranda at the end of it in which Clara recorded her review of the previous years. This diary and the last two cover events in the US. The ninth diary (folder 4-7) begins in January 1927 and ends on October 26, 1928, the day R.A. died. The last diary (folder 4-8) begins May 4, 1934, and ends April 19, 1935. There are several loose pages inserted into the diary which cover entries dated December 11-28, 1936. This diary also records the death of daughter Blanche.

Besides the diaries themselves, many interesting documents are stuck between the pages. Some have letters, plants with seeds, newspaper clippings, brochures, menus, passenger lists, and various other items either pasted, sewn or inserted loose into them. Items tied to a diary needed to be cut loose when the material was microfilmed in 2003, but all items were kept between the pages as they were originally found and leaves and flowers were put in plastic envelopes. In some cases, items were obvious carefully placed in the diary to be between particular places. In many other cases, though, items were obvious placed between pages haphazardly, either by Clara or someone else. Often these items are dated many years after the date of the diary pages they are between. Among the items in the diaries are: (folder 3-5); a handbill from New Zealand celebrating the 1902 coronation of Edward VIII and a program from a Launceston, Tasmania service praying for his recovery from illness (note that the New Zealand brochure has the original June 26 date of coronation, which was postponed of the illness), an example of the card filled out by converts at Torrey's meetings, a magistrate's card from China, (folder 3-6), a booklet of Charles Alexander's evangelistic talks, a brochure about the Woman's Union Missionary Society, a tract containing excerpts from R.A. 1889 diary on how God answered prayer, a booklet explaining how a patient should gather information on her or his symptoms to tell the doctor, clippings about the Torrey-Alexander evangelistic campaign in Scotland, a clipping about Gypsy Smith's 1904 meetings in South Africa, a handbill from Torrey's 1902 meeting in Madras, India, a poem from the 1902 meetings in Christchurch, New Zealand; (folder 4-1) instructions for knitting a cable twist sweater, a clipping about R.A.'s comments on dancing in Australia; a brochure about China by F. C. H. Dreyer; (folder 4-2) a wedding invitation, diary entry and newspaper clipping about the 1904 wedding of Charles Alexander who was Torrey's song leader on his mission trips and met his wife during their meetings in England, advertisements for German tourist attractions, bills for purchases, a clipping of Mrs. Alexander's rendition of a supposed Negro spiritual, a testimonial to R.A. by Robert Honeyman of the Montrose Bible Conference; (folder 4-3) some Oxford postcards, a brochure for the Liverpool Christian Workers' School of Bible Study; (folder 4-4) clipping about the 1905 London mission, clippings describing their daughter Blanche's birthday celebration and wedding, clipping about the 1908 Detroit mission; and (folder 4-9) a page from a letter apparently written during the Torreys' 1919 tour of Japan.

Apart from the sermons and diaries described above, other materials in the collection include (sometimes handwritten, sometimes typed) a series of Sunday school lessons Torrey used from January to May 1916 (folders 1-51 through 1-66); Bible studies of Ruth, Judges, and I Peter (folders 1-3 through 1-6); and an account of the Torrey campaign in Scranton, Pennsylvania, in 1909 entitled "A City Lifted" (folder 1-2). Incoming correspondence was found on the backs of some sermon notes. Copies of these letters are found in the correspondence folder 1-7. Reminiscences of Torrey's leadership of the Montrose Bible Conference by one of his converts (folder 1-1), Torrey's passport (oversize drawer 14), a Bible presented to Torrey by Moody Church and signed by his staff (folder 1-3), and a souvenir book (folder 1-67) of the Torrey mission in Cleveland, Ohio, are also found among the collection items. Folder 1-8 contains a clipping with a very full text of one of Torrey's sermons from his meetings in Orlando Florida in 1927, the last meetings he held before his death.

The bulk of Torrey's correspondence in folder 2-1 is written to his wife Clara, during two trips to China in August-September 1919 and September 1921. They give some details of his evangelistic schedule, including visits to China Inland Mission stations from a base at Hunan Bible Institute, the China Department of the Bible Institute of Los Angeles (BIOLA), of which Torrey was dean at that time. Letters also comment on his appreciation of China's scenery and provide a more intimate view of Torrey's affection for his wife and family, contrasting with his austere public demeanor. There are two letters to his daughter Margaret written in June 1898 during the time he was ministering as an Army chaplain during the Spanish-American War to soldiers in Georgia, two written in 1906 while on speaking tours in Cleveland and Omaha, and one (1918) in which he wrote on the topics of eternal security, dating Christ's return, the Tribulation, and World War I. A photostat of a 1919 letter to a friend in India tells of the blessings of the meetings he and Charles Alexander recently conducted at BIOLA, his plans to travel to China, and his physical health. Though I am now sixty-three years old, I never was stronger in my life or able to do more hard work. I usually get to bed about midnight or after, and get up at about six or a little before, in the morning. Sometimes I get a little rest in the afternoon, but I do not seem to need more than six hours rest. I am practically never tired. I do take one day a week however, for absolute rest, that is to say rest from my ordinary work. I sleep out doors practically every night, in a tent.

Folder 5-2 contains one letter from Clara to daughter Margaret and five postcards addressed to Margaret, two from Clara and three from other family members.

Folder 5-3 contains miscellaneous materials on Torrey including newsletters, Tabernacle Tidings, of the Tampa Gospel Tabernacle, Tampa, Florida, one of which (January 1926, No. 7) announces a three-week Torrey campaign for the following month, two issues of the Torrey Family Chronicle, 1988, n.d., a 1983 Montrose Bible Conference newsletter and brochure, three articles about Torrey published in Moody Monthly, 1956, Today's Christian, 1973, and Good News Broadcaster and a 1903 newspaper clipping.

Also included are two audio cassette tapes the first one (T 1) with a sermon by Torrey A Reason Why I Believe The Bible to be The Word of God and the second one (T 2) contains remembrances of Torrey by two of his granddaughters, Margaret Shank and Jill (Helen) Renich Meyers, and by a friend and missionary to China, Miss Edith Dreyer, and also a history of the Montrose Bible Conference.

Several folders contain biographical materials relating to Torrey, written after his death. One example is the photostat of a bound set of newspaper clippings (folder 1-68) titled "Life of R. A. Torrey," written by Oscar Sanden. The clippings were published serially in the Mission Friend in 1959, although they were written some years earlier. This compilation was cut and pasted onto sheets of paper by Sanden himself and then was sent, bound, to his friend Wilbur M. Smith. It includes a photostat of a Montrose Bible Conference Fiftieth Jubilee celebration brochure, 1958. A memorial issue of the publication of the Bible Institute of Los Angeles, The King's Business, January 1936 (folder 2-3) is dedicated to Torrey and his career, which included being dean of the school between 1912 and 1924. Articles include reminiscences by friends and colleagues of Torrey, among them William Bell Riley, fellow evangelist and president of Northwestern Bible School. Folder 2-4 holds a small number of clippings, dated between 1928 and 1936, and one pamphlet on prayer with a photograph of Torrey on its cover. The clipping published in the Wheaton Record, 1928, was written by Edith Clare Torrey, Torrey's daughter and a Wheaton College professor, describing his last illness. Torrey's personal Bible is found in folder 5-1 with his notations written in it. The Bible includes a section on "Suggestive Helps for Christian Workers" by R.A. Torrey.

Boxes 3-4 contain excerpts from Torrey’s diaries in which Torrey described a busy day preaching in Dwight L. Moody's hometown. Blessed day. Rushed over to Mt. Hermon [Northfield, Massachusetts] & spoke at 10:30 am on "What it costs not to be a Ch'an [Christian]." A young fellow accepted Christ & many stood up for absolute surrender. 4:30 pm I spoke at the Northfield Seminary on "Heros & Cowards." There was 15 or more decisions. 7:30 pm meeting at the church...I spoke on "What shall I do with Jesus." God gave me great liberty. There were 18 or more decisions. God is answering prayer. Sunday, Feb. 24, 1907.

Two years before he died R.A. was still actively preaching the Gospel. This entry from Sunday, Jan. 31st 1926, describes one meeting he held in New York: The last day of our meeting in Brooklyn. Oh how it poured...all day. The church oh was about full up stairs & down in spite of the rain. I spoke on "Hindrances to Prayer." God greatly blessed the Word. Many came with various invitations, e.g. to confess sin in their lives & to renounce it... Clara's entry for the same date reads: Archie said ch [church] was full & quite a number of conversions.

Clara commented about not spending more time with her children when they were small. This is Elizabeth's birthday she would have been fifteen today. It makes my heart ache when I look back and realize how much joy with the children, I lost by letting my time be too much taken up with care, sewing etc. That had to be done but now I feel that I let it keep me too worried. I might have let some things go and taken time to be more at leisure with the children when they were small. But no use to regret. Now I try to make the most of each day and to fully appreciate Archie and the four who are left. I only wish we could be all together all the time. I don't like these separations. I shall never cease to miss Elizabeth. Archie keeps well and Edith is improving all the time. I have so much to be thankful for." March 5, 1905.

His love for his wife is evident in the October 22, 1928 passage written four days before he died: Clara's & my 49 wedding anniversary. 7:30 p.m. Oct. 22nd 1879 we were married in Garrettsville, Ohio. It was one of the wisest steps I every took. There have been 49 years... I knew I was getting a treasure... Clara's diary entry for the same day shows her mutual love and concern for Torrey: This is our 49th wedding anniversary and it does not seem possible and I do not feel 69 years old. I thank God for the 49 happy years Archie and I have had. How I long to have his voice restored and his throat made strong & well.

Mrs. Torrey recorded events of R.A's last two days. Thursday, Oct. 25, 1928: Poor Archie in bed all day...He read his Greek & German testaments and had me read Jonah to him. Then we had prayers about four before Dr. R. came....I hope he will have a good night. Friday Oct. 26, 1928: He did "God's finger touched him: and he slept" and awoke in heaven to be with his Saviour whom he loved and served for fifty years. He just peacefully stepped across the threshold into the Father's house between four & six a.m.”