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If you are quarantined at home, and suddenly find yourself homeschooling, perhaps you can draw some inspiration from this story found in our archives.

American Baptist missions in Tokyo and Yokohama, Japan were disrupted by the Kanto earthquake of September 1, 1923. Much of the mission activity in Japan centered around educational programs from kindergarten through college. The missionaries in Japan generally spent their summers at Takayama, near Sendai in the Tohoku province. Because many of the schools and houses of the missionaries were damaged or destroyed by the earthquakes and subsequent fires in Tokyo and Yokohama, the missionary families stayed at Takayama in the fall. In the ABHS collection is the written reminiscence of Felicia Gressitt Back. This is what she writes about that fall:

With so many families bereft of their homes there was nothing for them to do but remain at Takayama until a place could be found for them. Thus the mothers got together to plan lessons for the children so they would not get behind in school. Carol Noss taught the older ones, others took the tiny tots and Edna Gressitt taught her own and others of similar age. There was reading, numberwork and some lessons in natural history. Having studied Zoology in college, Edna was pleased when someone caught a snake out in the sunny hollow back of the house. She promptly got a sharp kitchen knife, slit the shake open and pinned it to a surfboard. As she pointed out its still active circulatory system, Phil and Elizabeth German stared in awe at the dead snake that was still alive! Lin watched the whole procedure in silent wonder. 

Image: Edna Gressitt, Japan Baptist Convention, 1930

Links to the collections: 

The recollection comes from the Charles and Grace Tenny Papers, Folder 3

https://libraries.mercer.edu/archivesspace/repositories/2/resources/567

The photo is from the BIM picture files, Japan, Box 3, Folder 3

https://libraries.mercer.edu/archivesspace/repositories/2/resources/681

April 4, 1968:  Martin Luther King, Jr. minister and civil rights leader was assassinated in Memphis, TN.  ABHS has a record of his attendance at Crozer Theological Seminary, from which he graduated in 1951 and where he was elected president of the student body.  ABHS also has many books and magazine articles about his life and ministry, books by him and a tape of a sermon he preached.

April 3, 1871 The Woman’s American Baptist Foreign Mission Society was organized in Boston.  Two hundred women came together to form the society which sent women as missionaries to women in foreign lands.  The WABFMS joined with the Woman’s American Baptist Foreign Missionary Society of the West (Chicago), to form the Woman’s American Baptist Foreign Mission Society.  ABHS is the official repository for the minutes, correspondence and magazines of WABFMS.

April 2, 1667.  Three Baptists were fined for ‘absence from the Ordinances of publicke worship’ in Cambridge, MA.   Church attendance was required of all residents.   ABHS has original church records for Broadway Baptist church in Cambridge for the years 1862-1967.  ABHS also has several books published in 1667 and 1668 that deal with the necessity for people to attend church and hear sermons.  There is also one, by Sir Charles Wolseley promoting the idea that force should not be used to attend church.

March 31, 1836.  Philadelphia Baptist Association granted a charter to Haddington Theological and Literary Institution.  Haddington was the only school belonging to the Baptist denomination in Pennsylvania and is the first established by the oldest association in the United States.  It was originally located about 4 miles west of Philadelphia, but in 1838 it was moved to Germantown and renamed the Germantown Collegiate Institution.  In another few years it went out of business.  But, the Association’s interest in education resulted in the rise of Sunday schools and other educational institutions.  ABHS has records of the Philadelphia Baptist Association from 1707 and many pamphlets and reports on Sunday or Sabbath School.

March 30, 1974, Rev. G. P. Vins was arrested and, in January, 1975, he was sentenced to five years in concentration camps followed by five more years of exile in Siberia.  His ‘crime’ was to be desirous of and fight for the principle of religious liberty.  He refused to have the local churches and their pastors controlled by the (Russian) government.  He was arrested in 1966, and again in 1970, and after serving his sentences, he went underground to carry on his ministry covertly.  In 1980 Vins was one of five dissidents exchanged by the United State, for two Russian spies.

March 28, 1665.  First Church Boston was organized with seven men and two women in the home of Thomas Goold.  Three years later Goold was banished from the state (see posts on March 6 and 7).  ABHS has Boston First Baptist records from 1771-1960.

March 25, 1783. Luther Rice was born in Northborough, MA.  He sailed with Adoniram Judson, but returned to the United States to raise money to support the Judson mission to Burma.  Through his work, the Triennial Convention first met in 1814 and then every third year.  This first national organization of American Baptists was called the General Missionary Convention of the Baptist Denomination in the United States of America for Foreign Missions.  The picture above is a drawing of the Triennial Convention.  ABHS has board minutes, artifacts, and correspondence from the successor organizations, which now is known as International Ministries.

March 24, 1638. John Clarke (a physician, Baptist minister), with Anne Hutchinson, William Coddington,  Philip Sherman, and other religious dissenters settled on Aquidneck Island (thereafter known as Rhode Island), which was purchased from the local tribes.  Clarke was the author of the charter, which founded Rhode Island on the principles of religious freedom.  Roger Williams who was forced out of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, founded Providence Plantation (now known as the city of Providence) as a free proprietary colony seeking religious and political tolerance.  ABHS has records of First Baptist, Providence, dating from 1638-1903.

March 19, 1893, Tremont Baptist Temple burned for the third time.  Originally built as a theater, in 1843 Baptists in Boston purchased it and remodeled it as a church which would also provide ‘free seats’ for the poor and strangers coming into the city to seek work, and were not able to rent pews (which was the common practice then).  In burned for the first time in 1852, was rebuilt, and burned again in 1879.  After the third fire in 1893, it was rebuilt again and still serves the people of Boston.  ABHS has many items in the Congregational Files from Tremont Temple.

 

March 18, 1913, Reverend Edward W. Clark passed away after serving, with his wife, as a missionary for forty- two years in India.  In 1868 he took charge of the mission printing press in Assam, India. Clark developed the language into writing, translated some of the Gospels and printed many books for use in the schools.  His last work was the Ao-Naga-English Dictionary.  ABHS has 13 folders of correspondence between Clark and the mission board, including one folder of correspondence from his wife, Mary, pictured here.

 

March 15, 1843.  Richard Henry Boyd, publisher for the National Baptist convention, USA, was born in Shelby, NC.  ABHS has issues of the National Baptist newspaper 1865-1894, and the National Baptist convention Series for 1900, 1902, and 1936. National Baptist Convention) is the largest predominantly African-American Christian denomination in the United States. It is headquartered at the Baptist World Center in Nashville, Tennessee.  The denomination claims approximately 31,000 congregations.  The Convention reports having an estimated 7.5 million members.

 

March 13, 1764:  The Philadelphia Baptist Association voted to extend voting privileges to women.  ABHS has association records from the Philadelphia Association, and recently received a banner celebrating the 300^th anniversary of the Association.

March 11, 1796.  Francis Wayland, professor and president of Brown University was born in New York City.  He was also the pastor of the first Baptist church in American in Providence, RI.  In Washington, D.C., Wayland Seminary was established in 1867, primarily to educate former slaves, and was named in his honor. ABHS has about 100 items, books, magazine articles or newspaper articles by or about Francis Wayland.

 

March 9, 1780:  A letter to the Continental Journal attacked Baptists for their opposition to state-supported religion.  The Journal was published in Boston from 1776-1787.  ABHS has many tracts and other publications that document the Baptist struggle for religious freedom.   Brown University (started by Baptists in New England) has microfilm copies of the Continental Journal.

March 7, 1668 The Governor of Massachusetts ordered a debate on infant Baptist between Baptist and Puritan ministers.  Thomas Goold led the Baptist side of the debate against the formidable Congregational minister John Allen and others.   At the end of the debate, the court remained unconvinced and the magistrates banished Goold. Refusing to leave, he was again imprisoned. ABHS has many early papers which argued for religious freedom and believer’s baptism.

 

 

March 6, 1680 the Doors of First Baptist Church of Boston were nailed shut by court order because the Bay Colony was not tolerant of anyone who advocated for believers baptism.  Men and women were banished from the colony and others were put to death. The Baptists in Boston continued to meet outside in the freezing church yard for several weeks until one Sunday they found the doors unlocked so went in to worship with no repercussions.  ABHS has some of the original church records of First Baptist Church of Boston from 1771-1960.

 

March 4, 1681.  Britain’s King Charles II granted a charter to William Penn who founded Pennsylvania in order to offer religious freedom to those who settled there.  Baptists strongly upheld religious freedom and opposed a state supported church.  ABHS has many tracts and essays from early Baptists defending religious freedom.  The national headquarters of the American Baptist Churches USA is in Pennsylvania.  ABHS has several tracts written by William Penn, mostly about religious freedom.