Author: Jean McDaniel

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.

July 31, 1861  Helen Barrett Montgomery was born in Kingsville, OH.  She is known as an educator and writer, but was also a social reformer.  In 1921 she was elected the first woman president of the Northern Baptist Convention and the first of any religious denomination in the U.S. Before that, 1899, she was the first woman elected to the Rochester (NY) School Board, and any public office in the city.  This was 20 years before women had the vote.  She was also a scholar, publishing a translation of the New Testament from the original Greek, the first woman to do so.  ABHS has many articles written by Montgomery, and many books and articles about her.

July 27, 1707  The Philadelphia Baptist Association was founded as the first Baptist association in the U.S.  Five churches began the association which has grown to 124 congregations today. ABHS has records and minutes from this association beginning in 1769.

 

July 25, 1817, John Mason Peck and his family began their journey west in a small, one –horse wagon.  Over a thousand miles and four months later they reached St. Louis. Peck preached up and down the Mississippi Valley, starting churches, preaching to the Indians and pioneers alike.  He also founded what later would become Shurtleff College in Illinois and established a Christian periodical.  ABHS has a portrait of Peck, his correspondence (1833-1852), and several writings, including a memoir.

July 19, 1651.  John Clarke, Obadiah Holmes and John Crandall arrived in Lynn, MA, and began preaching illegally. Baptists were considered heretics and were banned from Massachusetts. He spent time in the Boston jail after preaching in Lynn.   Clarke eventually helped found Rhode Island and Providence Plantations.  Holmes was severely whipped for his heretical views. A year later he was named pastor of the Newport, RI, Baptist church where he stayed for 30 years.  Crandall was imprisoned and whipped, and eventually help found the Baptist church at Westerly, Rl.  ABHS has many articles and histories from the Baptist churches in Lynn.

July 16, 1759  Rev. Isaac Backus posted a notice at First Baptist Church of Middleborough, MA, that a list must be made of all who belong to the church.  This was so that they could be excused from the ‘church tax’ that each resident paid to support the Standing Order churches.  Backus spent a lot of time fighting to eradicate state support of churches.  He maintained that it robbed the local Baptist churches from building their own buildings, supporting their pastors, and establishing colleges to train preachers and expand their ministries.  Eventually the Religious Freedom Act was included in the Bill of Rights.  ABHS has a collection of Isaac Backus’s papers including sermons, correspondence, and a journal of family data.

July 13, 1813  Ann and Adoniram Judson arrived in Rangoon, Burma and began their mission work.  Ann died in 1826, but Adoniram worked in Burma for 37 years.  ABHS has several letters from Ann some of which deal with the change of views on baptism.  There are 5 linear feet of correspondence and other memorabilia of Adoniram’s.   There are artifacts in the Judson Memorial Room at ABHS including Adoniram’s trunk and desk which he used in Burma.

July 10, 1851  Marcia Dawes Ingalls, with her husband Lowell Ingalls, sailed for the mission station in Burma.  Even though Lowell died in 1856, Marcia continued her work  for 46 years.  She endured two fires that destroyed virtually all her personal property and feared for her life when the chief of a hostile tribe and his warriors approached her home.  She showed courage by confronting them kindly and told them stories about America.  They left without harming anyone.  ABHS has 16 folders of correspondence from the Ingalls.

July 1:  1777 The Continental Congress officially appointed Hezekiah Smith as chaplain in the U.S. Army. He started the Baptist church in Haverhill, PA, and from there 13 other churches were started by Smith and others in Haverhill.  ABHS has Smith’s  diaries (1762-1805), six addresses and sermons delivered by Smith to the army plus some correspondence (1776-1780) on microfilm.

May 30, 1792.  William Carey inspired the first modern mission movement when he preached a sermon on Isiah 54:2-3 (““Enlarge the place of your tent,     stretch your tent curtains wide,  do not hold back…”)  He also wrote a missionary manifesto in which he called for the formation of a Baptist Missionary Society.  Carey himself went to India as a missionary, where Adoniram and Ann Judson came to him for baptism.  In 1818, the mission in India founded Serampore College to train indigenous ministers for the growing church and to provide education in the arts and sciences to anyone regardless of caste or country. ABHS has correspondence between Judson and Carey, as well as other correspondence and articles by Carey.  There are many books and articles about him, too.

 

May 25, 1803.  The American Baptist magazine was formed by a vote of the Massachusetts Baptist Missionary Society.  Originally named The Massachusetts Baptist Missionary Magazine, the name was changed to The American Baptist Magazine in 1817 and to The Baptist Missionary Magazine in 1836.  In 1910 it combined with the Home Missions Monthly and the name was changed to Missions.  The ‘s’ was dropped in 1967, and  the magazine merged with Crusader in 1970 to become The American Baptist magazine.  ABHS has all the issues of this line of magazines.

May 24, 1878.  Harry Emerson Fosdick, pastor, theologian, and peace and justice activist, was born in Buffalo. NY.  Graduating from Colgate University in 1900, and Union Theological Seminary in 1903, he was ordained and served churches in New Jersey and New York, including Riverside Church in Manhattan.    Fosdick became a central figure in the “Fundamentalist-Modernist Controversy” within American Protestantism in the 1920s and 1930s and was one of the most prominent liberal ministers of the early 20th Century.  He presented the Bible as a record of the unfolding of God’s will, not as the literal “Word of God”. He saw the history of Christianity as one of development, progress, and gradual change.  ABHS has many books and articles about his life, and many more that he authored.