Author: Jean McDaniel

Nov. 11:  Veteran’s Day. Baptists have been ministering to veterans from the time of the Revolutionary War, when David Jones was a military chaplain and the Civil War, when Joanna Moore taught veterans to read and write.  WW I and WWII, the Vietnam War and more recent conflicts have seen Baptist chaplains and Baptist soldiers.  ABHS has the personal correspondence and diaries of David Jones and a Letterbook with two sets of letters (1865) and goodbye notes from soldiers of the 56^th US Colored Infantry in Helena Arkansas (from the collection of Joanna P. Moore).

 

Nov. 9, 1800.  Mary Webb organized the first missionary society called Boston Female Society for Missionary Purposes.  Women’s Missionary organizations started schools, training centers, community centers and other mission programs.  They also recruited and trained women missionaries to staff these programs.  Women’s Baptist Home Mission Society of the East, which was organized in Boston in 1877, was one of these. ABHS has minutes of the Home Mission Societies and their publications like Tidings.

 

Nov. 4, 1752.  Over 100 years after Williams’ banishment, Isaac Backus was still fighting the state church’s tyranny. His mother told of her persecution at the hands of the Puritans and it persuaded her son to fight for religious freedom. ABHS has Backus’ published sermons, correspondence and a journal of family data in our collections.

Nov. 3, 1635:  Roger Williams, was banished from the colony of Massachusetts because he preached ‘new and dangerous ideas’ to his congregants. The colonists had set up a Puritan theocracy and allowed no deviances.  Williams went to Rhode Island and began the settlement of Providence Plantations.  ABHS has many volumes by and about Roger Williams.

Nov. 1, 1812:  Luther Rice, the father of American Baptist of foreign missions, was baptized in Calcutta, India.  He was ordained and sailed with Adoniram Judson; like Judson he became convinced of the rightness of adult baptism on the voyage.  After his baptism, he returned to the USA to raise money for missionaries like Adonirum and Ann Judson.  ABHS has his journals and correspondence dating from 1803.

October 31, 1789:  John Mason Peck, pioneer missionary to the western frontier (Ohio and Illinois), was born in Litchfield.  Having secured funding as “missionaries to the Missouri Territory,” the Peck and his missionary partner Welch and their families traveled westward, arriving in St. Louis in December, 1817. Peck and Welch organized the First Baptist Church of St. Louis, the first Protestant church in the city, and baptized two converts in the Mississippi River in February, 1818. By year’s end, they also soon founded the first missionary society in the West: The United Society for the Spread of the Gospel. Peck became active in establishing Bible societies and Sunday School associations, distributing bibles as well as spreading literacy and Christian principles. Peck moved to Rock Springs, Illinois in 1822 to farm, and arranged a circuit to visit the various societies which he continued to establish, as well as isolated farms. On one trip, Peck visited Daniel Boone, then nearly 80, and later wrote a book about the frontiersman’s life.  ABHS holds Peck’s correspondence from 1833-1852 and a journal from 1854.

 

October 25, 1962:  Ralph Elliott was fired by Midwestern Seminary (an SBC affiliated seminary) in the midst of the controversy over his Genesis interpretation. The controversy erupted at Midwestern in 1961 when Ralph Elliott, the chair of the Old Testament department, authored a book published by Broadman Press titled The Message of Genesis. Elliott used a historical-critical method of interpretation to examine the first book of the Bible, arguing that it was not literal history, but that it could be religious truth nonetheless. Elliott assumed multiple authors for Genesis and concluded it was full of “symbolic stories” not to be taken as “literally true,” such as: Adam and Eve were not actual historical figures, the flood was local, and Abraham did not actually hear the voice of God commanding him to sacrifice Isaac.    ABHS has several of Elliott’s books and holds his personal papers.

October 24, 1826:  Ann Hasseltine Judson, one of the first American overseas missionaries, died of smallpox in Burma at age 37.  She was a teacher from graduation until her marriage to Adoniram Judson in 1812.  During the first Anglo-Burmese war (1824–26), her husband was imprisoned for 17 months under suspicion of being an English spy, and Ann moved into a shack outside the prison gates so as to support her husband. She lobbied vigorously for months to convince the authorities to release her husband and his fellow prisoners, but her efforts were unsuccessful. She also sent food and sleeping mats to the prisoners to help their time in prison to be more bearable.  After her husband’s release they both remained in Burma to continue their work. Ann wrote a catechism in Burmese, and translated the books of Daniel and Jonah into Burmese. She was the first Protestant to translate any of the scriptures into Thai when in 1819 she translated the Gospel of Matthew.    ABHS has her letters from Burma and the books she translated in the archives as well as books about her and her work.

October 22: Bethany Free Baptist Church in Pawtucket, RI, celebrated their 125^th anniversary under the leadership of Rev. Nikita McCalister.

October 21, 1795.  David Irish established the first Baptist church in Cayuga County, New York, in the Finger Lakes area.  He was sent out by the Massachusetts Baptist Missionary Society.  This was a frontier area at the time, and pastors like Irish helped settle and expand our nation.  The Massachusetts Baptist Missionary Magazine, published by the society, published a letter from Rev. Irish in the December, 1812, issue.   The MBMM became the Baptist Missionary Magazine,  which eventually evolved to the American Baptist.  ABHS has a complete set of all the issues of these magazines.

October 15, 1752.  Elizabeth Backus, a fifty-four widow and mother of Reverend Isaac Backus, was arrested and imprisoned for two weeks for failing to pay the church tax that went to the official (Congregational) church.  In 1728 an Act was passed by the General Court of Massachusetts, exempting Baptists from the tax, but that was the personal tax only, the property tax was still liable.  ABHS has many writings of Isaac Backus and microfilms of his personal papers.

October 14, 1774:  The Warren Association in Massachusetts petitioned the Continental Congress for religious liberty.  The Warren Association was in the vanguard of the battle for religious freedom in early America. Baptists had been persecuted throughout their history; their struggles to attain their “privileges” led to the insertion of the anti-establishment clause in the Bill of Rights. In 1774 the Warren Association sent a delegate to the Continental Congress in Philadelphia to plead for religious freedom. Two years later, when a Baptist meeting in Pepperell, Massachusetts, was broken up by a mob, the Warren Association published an account of the affair, and engaged the people of Pepperell in a pamphlet war until they “made the town ashamed of what they had done.” ABHS holds the Warren Association Minutes from 1767.

October 9: Affinity Missionary Baptist Church of Cleveland, OH, celebrated their 50^th anniversary under the leadership of Rev. Ronald E. Maxwell.

October 8: Mount Olive Church Ministries in Hartford, CT, celebrated their 100^th anniversary under the leadership of Rev. Dion J. Watkins.

October 11, 1665:  Four Baptists were brought before the Massachusetts court and told to cease ‘schismatical practices.’ Puritans in Massachusetts were not open to any other practice of religion, and Quakers, Baptists and Anglicans were not allowed to preach.  When King Charles II (of England) insisted, Massachusetts passed a law deliberately using the king’s language, allowing anyone “orthodox in religion” to practice in the colony; however, they also defined such orthodoxy as consisting of views that were acceptable to local ministers. This effectively negated the law, because there were probably no ministers in the colony who would agree that other protestants satisfied their idea of orthodoxy.  ABHS has pamphlets and other histories of the struggle for religious freedom.