Category: Uncategorized

August 3, 1836.  August Hopkins Strong was born in Rochester, NY.  He was President of Rochester Theological Seminary in 1872-1912. A noted theologian, he was also a pastor in Massachusetts and Ohio.  The Rochester Theological Seminary merged with Crozer Theological Seminary  and Colgate Theological Seminary to become Colgate Rochester Crozer Divinity School.  ABHS has many records from all three schools and CRCDS as well as the papers of A.H. Strong, including his autobiography (4 volumes), lectures and sermon.  Part of the ABHS archives were houses at Colgate Rochester until about 2007.

August 2, 1786.  Stephen Gano was ordained into the ministry by his father, John and several other pastors in the Gold Street Baptist Church in New York City.  A medical doctor by profession, he had been captured at sea in the Revolutionary War, escaped from Turk’s Island where the British left him and 34 others, recaptured and repatriated in a prisoner exchange.  After his ordination he served at the First Baptist Church in Providence, RI where he served until his death in 1828.  He increased the membership of the church from 165 to 647.  ABHS has many articles on the life of Stephen Gano and several books on the Gano family.

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 the first woman to be elected president of the Northern Baptist Convention, and the first of any religious denomination in the U.S.  Before that, in 1899, she had been the first woman elected to the Rochester (NY) School Board, the first elected to any public office in that city.  This was 20 years before women had the vote.
Montgomery was also a scholar, translating the New Testament from the original Greek, the first woman to do so.  ABHS has many records related to Montgomery’s life and work.

August 29, 1840.  Ellen Cushing was born in Kingston, MA.  Cushing was first an educator who assisted freed slaves in entering post-way society.  Later she went as a missionary to Burma with her husband, Josiah, where they collaborated on an English-Shan dictionary.  In the late 1890s, she started the Baptist Training Institute in Philadelphia to train single women missionaries.  The BTI moved to Bryn Mawr and became known as Ellen Cushing Junior College.

 

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 1770.

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, founding churches and ministering to Indians and pioneers alike.  He also founded what later would become Shurtleff College in Illinois.  ABHS has a portrait of Peck, his correspondence (1833-1852), and several writings, including a memoir.

$500 will be awarded for the best essay in any area of Baptist history. The author must  not have published a major scholarly work and entries should be no more than 25 pages (excluding notes).  Manuscript must be double-spaced and citations must follow the Chicago Manual of Style.  This prize was established in honor of Robert G. Torbet to encourage development of young scholars in the field of Baptist history studies.  Send essays by September 1, 2020 to American Baptist Historical Society 3001 Mercer U. Drive Atlanta GA 30341 Electronic submissions: ABHS@ABHSarchives.org. For more information: TorbetPrize Flyer 2020.

 

 

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.  All three men suffered arrest and punishment for their Baptist convictions.

July 16, 1759:  Rev. Isaac Backus posted a notice at First Baptist Church of Middleborough, MA, that a list of church members was needed, 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 working to eradicate state support of churches, maintaining that it robbed the local Baptist churches of being able to build their own meetinghouses, support their pastors, and establish colleges to train preachers. Eventually freedom of religion was included in the Bill of Rights that was added to the U.S. Constitution. 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, while Adoniram worked in Burma for 37 years.  ABHS has several letters from Ann some of which recount their change in views on baptism, and 5 linear feet of correspondence of Adoniram’s as well as other artifacts in the Judson Memorial Room at ABHS including the trunk, desk, and chair which Adoniram 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.  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.