Author: Jean McDaniel

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.  Mrs Ingalls showed courage by confronting them kindly and telling them stories about America.  They left without harming anyone.  ABHS has 16 folders of correspondence from the Ingallses.

July 6, 1849   The first Baptist Church in California was organized in San Francisco (First Baptist) by Osgood Church Wheeler.  He also started churches in San Jose and Sacramento.  First Baptist has had 22 pastors, and when one of its previous buildings burned down in the 1906 earthquake, the congregation moved their facilities to what has now become the heart of the City, near Market and Van Ness.  ABHS has a large collection of directories, histories and articles about First Baptist, San Francisco.

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, as well as some correspondence (1776-1780).

June 29, 1849.  William J. Simmons, a founder of the National Baptist Convention, was born in Charleston, SC. Born into slavery William J. Simmons served as the second president of what would later become Simmons College of Kentucky between 1880 and 1890. He was also a prominent historian and biographer of African American men.  When William was a child, he and his mother escaped to Bordentown, New Jersey.

June 23, 1798.  The Nova Scotia Baptist Association was formed.  It was the first organization of Baptists in Canada.  Many Baptists who supported the Crown in the American Revolution resettled in  Nova Scotia following the war.   ABHS has Association minutes from several places in Canada.

June 22, 1875. Dong Gong was ordained to ministry in Portland, OR.  He was the first Asian-American to be ordained by the Baptists. An immigrant from China, he was  converted to Christianity and baptized by Rev. John Francis in San Francisco.  Dong Gong started a Chinese mission in Portland about 1875.

June 19, 1808.  First Baptist Church in Philadelphia, offered “brethren of color” the use of its building.  Blacks could be offered membership in a ‘white’ church, but that didn’t mean they would be considered equal.  A researcher at ABHS recently found a record where a black member of a church was refused permission to bury his child in the church cemetery.  ABHS has many of First Church Philadelphia’s original church records.  Handwritten records go back as far as the 1750s.  The earliest records from First Church, Philadelphia, are now online, thanks to a group called Philadelphia Congregations. 

June 18, 1781.  Severns Valley Church was organized in Kentucky.  It was the first Baptist church west of the 13 original colonies.  ABHS has Association records from the Severns Valley beginning in 1899.

June 16, 1636.  Residents of Providence Plantations (R.I.) drew up a compact allowing religious freedom.  This only applied to the residents of the Plantations, but was a forerunner of the first amendment (see June 8 post).  Providence Plantations was a colonial plantation that was the first permanent European American settlement in present-day Rhode Island. It was established at Providence in 1636 by English clergyman Roger Williams and a small band of followers who had left the oppressive atmosphere of the Massachusetts Bay Colony to seek freedom of worship

June 15, 1784.  Isaac McCoy, foremost white advocate of Native American rights was born in Fayette County, PA. While still young, Isaac was inspired to become a missionary to Native Americans and determined on that work.  McCoy, his son John, his daughter Delilah and her missionary husband Johnston Lykins, worked together as missionaries to the Shawnee and Lenape (Delaware), following them to what is now Kansas City, Missouri, on the border of Indian Territory and near their reservations. The younger McCoy established a trading post at Westport, Missouri.  In 1840, McCoy wrote one of the earliest, most personally informed reports on the Midwestern Native American tribes, The History of Baptist Indian Missions. In 1842 he returned East to Louisville, Kentucky, where he directed the Baptist American Indian Mission Association. He wrote additional works on Indians and the missions. He died there in 1846 and was buried in Western Cemetery.    ABHS has many books by and about Isaac McCoy as well as 10 folders of his missionary correspondence.  His personal papers are also held by ABHS.

June 14, 1844.  The first issue of the Sabbath Recorder was published by the Seventh Day Baptists.  Seventh Day Baptists observes the Sabbath on the seventh-day of the week—Saturday—in accordance with the Biblical Sabbath of the Ten Commandments.  ABHS has issues of this magazine beginning in 1844 to present.  It is still being published

June 9, 1834.  William Carey died at age 72 in his 42nd year as a missionary to India. A British Christian missionary, Particular Baptist minister, translator, social reformer and cultural anthropologist, Carey is known as the “father of modern missions.” His essay, An Enquiry into the Obligations of Christians to Use Means for the Conversion of the Heathens, led to the founding of the Baptist Missionary Society in England.  See post on May 30.   ABHS has many books and articles by and about William Carey

June 8, 1789.  Baptists support James Madison’s First Amendment to the constitution.
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

ABHS has many books and tracts written by Baptists about the need for freedom of religion in the newly formed United States of America

June 4– In 1768 Five Virginia Baptists were imprisoned by the state for ‘disturbing the peace’. That could be anything from preaching in public to complaining about the lack of religious freedom, or any other number of offenses. Baptists were not free to preach, baptize, or meet together without government sanction.

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. 

May 21, 1814. The Foreign Mission Society, precursor to today’s Board of International Ministries, was founded in Philadelphia following the Triennial Convention (see May 18). ABHS is the official repository of the archives of the foreign mission societies and IM. It contains correspondence between missionaries in places like Congo, Burma and India and the sending agencies.

May 20, 1775. George Liele was formally ordained, the first black Baptist in America to be so. A slave in South Carolina, Liele was freed shortly after the beginning of the Revolution . He supported the British in the war for independence, and after the war, migrated to Jamaica in 1783. The following year he established the first Baptist church there which he named the Ethiopian Baptist Church. Liele also established a school in Jamaica. Deborah Van Broekhoven, ABHS’s Director Emeritus, is one of the editors of a George Liele’s Life and Legacy. A portrait of Liele by Averett Shannon hangs in the Reading Room at ABHS.