Author: Jean McDaniel

Have you finished your to-do list and watched everything in your Netflix queue?  Then we have a great opportunity for you!

The American Baptist Historical Society has launched a pilot project to transcribe original church records and we need your help.  Transcribing these handwritten records will allow us to make them searchable in an online database. For our pilot project, we are transcribing the records of the First Baptist Church of Christ, Chautauqua (later Stockton), NY.  The pages of the record book have been digitized and uploaded to Zooniverse where you can see them and transcribe them.

You do not have to be a scholar to help us, though you do need to be able to read cursive handwriting.  All of the instructions are on the website at the link below. So check it out and find out what happened when the “Church met according to appointment and found a great division.”

https://www.zooniverse.org/projects/abhsarchives/pilot-project-of-the-american-baptist-historical-society

ABHS is applying for a grant to fund setting up a more extensive crowd-sourced transcription project than this pilot project.  It might help our funding chances to be able to point to interest shown for the pilot project.  Take a break from your usual and join the ABHS transcription community!

 

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.

 

March 3, 1854 marks the date that Martha Beecher died at sea while returning from Burma where she and her husband, John, were missionaries.  Although John was the one commissioned by the church, Martha, like many wives, felt called to mission work also.  In 1878 a marble plaque was dedicated to Beecher’s memory.  He was given  “the distinguished honor of establishing the first Christian school in Burma on the basis of the indigenous support.”  ABHS has two folders of correspondence between the Beechers and the foreign mission board.  The picture above is a depiction of John Beecher.