News

Sept 15, 1799.  A Sunday School was established by Samuel Slater, the first one in the United States.  It was started for the benefit of children employed in Slater’s cotton factory in Pawtucket, Rhode Island, teaching them to read from the Bible.  The first class was composed of seven boys.  It began as a secular enterprise, but soon was placed under the care of the First Baptist Church, and began religious instruction. ABHS has minutes from many Sunday School (or Sabbath School) societies from all over the country.

Sept 14, 1791.  The Warren Association in Rhode Island/Massachusetts founded the Massachusetts Baptist Education Society.  Warren Association was very active and vocal about religious freedom.  The Education Society was formed to raise funds to educate promising young men for the ministry.  They had to be educated in local schools.  ABHS has the records from the Warren Association dating back to 1767.

Sept 13, 1651.  John Hazel, of Boston, was one who supported Obadiah Holmes (see September 5), even after he was whipped.  Hazel was arrested and jailed for showing compassion.  He refused to pay the fine of 40 shillings.  In court he repeatedly asked what crime he was being charged with, and managed to refute each charge the court named, like comforting a criminal.  (Since Holmes’ whipping had satisfied the law, is guilt was removed.) Hazel was returned to jail, but when it was clear he would not pay the fine, was finally released.  He wrote of this episode on this day, and a few days later died from illness and age.

Sept 11. ABHS has over 7000 pamphlets dating from the mid 1500s. Pamphlets were a means of public discourse, sort of the Facebook of the time.  We have arguments on theological and political issues, with responses to specific people named in the title.  You can now browse the titles on our on-line catalog, avilable from our homepage ABHSarchives.org.

Sept 9, 1832.    Isaac McCoy organized a Baptist Church in the Creek Nation three miles north of the Arkansas River and about eighteen miles west of Port Gibson. He wrote: “On the 9th of September, I constituted the Muscogee (Creek) Baptist Church, consisting of Mr. Lewis and wife, Mr. Davis, and three black men who were slaves to the Creeks. In the afternoon we worshipped in another place in the neighborhood. This was the first Baptist church formed in the Indian Territory .”  ABHS has correspondence from McCoy, as well as many books and articles about him.

Sept. 5, 1651:  Obadiah Holmes was brutally whipped for his religious beliefs, but gave a brief sermon as he was being stripped before his whipping.  Convicted with three others, Holmes refused to pay the fine levied by the courts, believing it would be an admission of guilt.  Such incidents prompted a discussion of civil and religious rights that would eventually be included in the Bill of Rights.  ABHS has many editorials, correspondence, and books on the topic of religious freedom.

Sept 2, 1845.  Sarah Boardman Judson, second wife of Adoniram Judson, passed away after twenty years of missionary service in Burma.  Sarah and her first husband, George, worked among the Karen tribes of Burma. Sara’s Burmese translation of The Pilgrim’s Progress is still in use today. She also translated the New Testament into Peguan.   Judson asked Emily Chubbuck to write Boardman’s biography.  ABHS has a copy of Sara’s Catechism and collections of correspondence of both George Boardman and Adoniram Judson.

Sept 1, 1803.  The first issue of Massachusetts Baptist Missionary Magazine, the precursor to American Baptist Magazine was published.  It is the oldest extant religious magazine.  ABHS has every issue of this magazine, which has changed names several times.

August 31, 1817.  1688.  John Bunyan died in England.  He may most widely known as the author of  Pilgrim’s Progress but he was also a great preacher.  He authored about 60 other books and sermons.   Following the English Civil War, Bunyan was arrested as a non-conformist, and spent the next twelve years in jail as he refused to give up preaching.  Bunyan’s later years, in spite of another shorter term of imprisonment, were spent in relative comfort as a popular author and preacher, and pastor of the Bedford Meeting. He died aged 59 after falling ill on a journey to London and is buried in Bunhill Fields. ABHS has many books and articles by and about John Bunyan including several editions of Pilgrim’s Progress.

August 29, 1840.  Ellen Cushing was born in Kingston, MA.  Cushing was first an educator who assisted freed slaves in entering post-way society.  Later she went as a missionary to Burma with her husband, Josiah, where they collaborated on an English-Shan dictionary.  In the late 1890s, she started the Baptist Training Institute in Philadelphia to train single women missionaries.  The BTI moved to Bryn Mawr and became known as Ellen Cushing Junior College.

 

August 27, 1944.  The Greenlake Conference Center, the American Baptist Assembly was dedicated at Greenlake, WI. This area around Green Lake, the deepest lake in Wisconsin, has been considered holy land since the Winnebago Indians camped there, believing the Water Spirit lived in Green Lake.  In the mid-1840s Chris Briswold and his family constructed a Log Cabin there. It still stands in the back of the property. When you see the size of this one room cabin, you wonder how Chris, his wife, and five children could ever exist in such a small area!  The conference center became a key meeting place for great Baptist leaders. Many missionary conferences were also held there.  Recently, the missionary artifacts from Greenlake were transferred to the ABHS archives.

August 24, 1832.   Northumberland Baptist Association in Pennsylvania resolved to found a university in Lewisburg, PA because it was “desirable that a Literary Institution should be established in Central Pennsylvania, embracing a High School for male pupils, another for females, a College and also a Theological Institution.” In 1846, the “school preparatory to the University” opened in the basement of the First Baptist Church in Lewisburg. Known originally as the Lewisburg High School, it became, in 1848, the Academic and Primary Department of the University at Lewisburg. In 1886, the name was changed to Bucknell in honor of William Bucknell, a member of the Board of Trustees, whose large donation kept the institution from collapse.  ABHS has a collection of correspondence and historical catalogs from Bucknell.  We also have biographical information and an image for William Bucknell.

August 21, 1773.  A warrant for the arrest of Nathaniel Sanders was issued by Culpepper County, VA.  Sanders and William McClannahan had been granted a license (by the county) to preach in limited areas, but they found that this limitation was contrary to their call to preach anywhere against the inconsistencies of the established church’s clergy.  Sanders was convicted and served an unknown period of time in the Culpepper jail.  One of ABHS’s oldest reference books (Asplund’s Baptist Register, 1790) shows Sanders at the Mont Poney church in Culpepper County with a membership of over 270.

August 19, 1770.   Reverend Hezekiah Smith of Haverhill, MA, founded the Baptist Church in Stratham, NH.  Smith was a chaplain in Washington’s army during the Revolutionary War, and he traveled extensively in New England on evangelistic tours.  ABHS has some of the Stratham’s original church records, and several books that contain biographical information about Smith.  One reference books notes that he baptized 35 people in one month in the area around Stratham.

August 17, 1855.  Pennsylvania’s Northumberland Baptist Association took a strong stand against slavery.   While many associations merge or change names, Northumberland is still in existence and has been sending ABHS their association minutes since 1822.  Association minutes have a great deal of information about individual churches and their pastors.