U^/!VERSITY OF 
 
 ILLINOIS LIBRARY 
 
 AT U/^.SANA-CHAMPAIGN 
 
 ^LU HIST. SURVEY
 
 REV. E. P. BRAND, D. D.
 
 ILLINOIS BAPTISTS 
 
 a History 
 
 By 
 EDWARD P. BRAND, D. D. 
 
 Price One Dollar 
 
 1930 
 
 Pantagraph Printing & Sta. Co., Bloomington, Illinois
 
 ^4- 
 
 To the memory of the author of this history, 
 
 DR. EDWARD P. BRAND, 
 
 for twenty-three years the beloved servant of the 
 Baptist Churches of Ilhnois as General Superin- 
 tendent of the Convention, this volume is 
 affectionately dedicated. 
 
 The ILLINOIS BAPTIST STATE CONVENTION 
 A. E. Peterson, General Superintendent 
 
 :::^
 
 FOREWORD 
 
 By Rev. Charles Durden, D.D. 
 
 On his retirement from the active labors of the leadership of the 
 Illinois Baptist State Convention, Dr. E. P. Brand was requested by 
 the Convention to prepare a history of Illinois Baptists. It was a labor 
 of love, and he tirelessly gave himself to the task of gathering historical 
 data and writing his book. He was called away before the work could 
 be finished. 
 
 The Committee appointed by the Convention to edit and publish 
 the history has felt strongly that the work should be given to the 
 denomination as it c^Tne from its author. It bears upon it the marks of 
 Dr. Brand. Intermingling witli its story of the years of struggle in 
 Illinois are the preachments of this stalwart laborer, who, for nearly a 
 quarter of a century, spent his life for Jesus Christ in Illinois. 
 
 The book is not published as an official history. It is better than 
 that. It is the outpouring of the rich mind of one whose life-root were 
 deeply embedded in the life and progress of the Baptists in this State. 
 
 Acting under the instructions of the Convention the Committee 
 publishes this work as a loving tribute to the great leader who so tire- 
 lessly built the kingdom among us.
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 A GLIMPSE THROUGH THE CENTURIES 
 
 From the time that Christianity became the rehgion of an empire, 
 there was a people that did not affihate with the established Church. 
 They were known by different names, as they were found in different 
 places, acknowledged different leaders, and were referred to by different 
 writers; but they uniformly agreed in holding scripture as their guide, 
 in distinction from the traditions of the clergy and the decrees of 
 councils. For this they were called heretics, and were always denounced 
 and frequently persecuted. We know them mostly from the descrip- 
 tions of their enemies. Quietness was their security. They kept records, 
 and had a devotional and doarinal literature, but it was destroyed by 
 the persecutor as fast as found. 
 
 In the Reformation these "scripture" people came to be called 
 "anabaptists," because they rejected infant baptism and baptized "again" 
 those who came to them. Persecution by civil governments still con- 
 tinued but the business of destroying writings was not so industriously 
 followed, so that from this time onward we possess Baptist documents. 
 One of the earliest is a Confession of Faith prepared at a conference 
 of pastors held at Schleitheim, a village in the cantonment of Schaff- 
 hausen, in the northern part of Switzerland, February 24, 1527. It 
 was addressed to "the children of light everywhere scattered abroad," 
 and the occasion was because "scandal has been brought in among us 
 by cenain false brethren so that some have turned from the faith." The 
 seven articles of the Confession are on baptism, discipline, breaking of 
 bread, separation from abominations, duties of pastors, political duties, 
 the judicial oath. It was practically a chart of Christian behavior. 
 "Baptism," they declare, "should be given to all those who have learned 
 repentance and change of life, and believe in the truth that their sins 
 have been through Christ, and to all those who desire to walk in the 
 resurrection of Jesus Christ and to be buried with him in death that they 
 may rise. By this is excluded all infant baptism, the pope's first and 
 highest abomination." The reason they felt so strongly concerning 
 infant baptism was that by it people were authorized to call themselves 
 Christians without forsaking their sins.
 
 8 History of the Baptists of Illinois 
 
 When at the Reformation the bible was unchained this people in- 
 creased with amazing rapidity, as in a smaller measure they were in- 
 creasing before. Two years before the Schleitheim conference a Re- 
 formed pastor, Balthazar Hubmeyer, was baptized on profession of his 
 faith, and a large part of his congregation with him. They became 
 essentially a Baptist church. Hubmeyer sealed his faith with his life 
 three years afterwards. 
 
 This was before the rise of modern denominations. The Lutherans, 
 our oldest protestant denomination, date from the Augsburg Confession 
 of 1530, but the Schleitheim Confession was read in the churches of 
 believers three years before the Augsburg Confession was signed. Bap- 
 tists are not therefore strictly protestants. The name Protestant comes 
 from the Protest of April 15, 1529, of the German princes and free 
 cities at the Council of Spires, against their emperor's edict command- 
 ing them under penalty to restore the old worship. But Baptists were 
 not represented at Spires, nor if they had been would they have been 
 allowed to join in the written Protest, for they rejected the infant bap- 
 tism to which the Protesters clung and waived the governmental inter- 
 ference to which the Protesters appealed. 
 
 After a long time the "Ana" in the title "Anabaptist" was dropped. 
 As to the Anabaptists of Munster, who brought the name into such 
 disrepute, they never were true Baptists at all. They professed to follow 
 the Spirit rather than the Bible, whereas Baptists invariably cling to 
 scripture and seek the Spirit as its interpreter. He who supposes he has 
 no more need of his Bible because he has the Holy Spirit, is deceived 
 by the Evil One. "He that saith, I know him, and keepeth not his 
 commandments is a liar. , . . Let no man lead you astray; he that 
 doeth righteousness is righteous, he that doeth sin is of the devil." 
 (1 John 2:4; 3:7,8.)
 
 CHAPTER II 
 
 THE EARLY RACES OF ILLINOIS 
 
 History nowhere goes back to the beginning. Wherever people 
 live others lived there before them, and others before that, so long ago 
 that records fail and traditions are silent. Before the white race came 
 to Illinois the Indians were in possession, fished in the rivers, chased 
 the buffalo over the prairies, and had their bark villages and patches of 
 corn in the edges of the groves. 
 
 But before their time another race was here, whom from the works 
 they left behind we have named the Moundbuilders. They were prob- 
 ably allied to the Aztecs of Central America and the Cliffdwellers of 
 Arizona. They were not hunters but cultivators. They inhabited chiefly 
 the bottom lands along the streams, and with incredible toil built great 
 earthworks for safety, or for worship, or for interment. After the 
 leveling of the centuries the larger portion of these are of course 
 obliterated, but thousands remain. A few years ago in a radius of 
 fifty miles from the mouth of the Illinois river there were five thousand 
 of these mounds. They were so abundant on the city of St. Louis that 
 it was called the Mound City. The name m.ight as appropriately be 
 given to hundreds of other river towns. Sixteen of our states have 
 postoffices named Mound or Mound City, and Illinois has both. On 
 the Mississippi river bottom above East St. Louis is a famous group, 
 one of them being the largest in the country. It is ninety feet high, 
 covers six acres, and is two acres in extent at the top. It is called 
 Monk's Mound from a colony of French monks to whom it was given 
 by its owner for the site of a monastery. They remained there twenty 
 years, supporting themselves by making splint-bottomed chairs, and then 
 abandoned it. It was purchased by T. Ames Hill, a Massachusetts 
 teacher, who in 1831 opened a school on the lofty summit. He died, 
 and was buried there, and by 1837 the building was a relic visited by 
 curiosity seekers. The traditions of the mound builders, and the graves 
 of the Trappist Monks and of the New England teacher, rest there in 
 peace. This mound group was perhaps the center of a district embrac- 
 ing most of Illinois and Missouri; one of the subordinate kingdoms 
 of the Moundbuilders' empire. Other centers were in the vicinity of 
 Cincinnati, of Prairie du Chien, in northeastern Arkansas, etc. Remains 
 
 9
 
 10 History of the Baptists of Illinois 
 
 of potteries, and of manufactories of tools and weapons of stone, are 
 also found, telling us of multitudes of people, agricultural and com- 
 mercial life, patient industry, barbaric splendor, rivers bearing canoes 
 and loaded barges, bordered by adobe villages and cultivated fields. 
 Some of the mounds, we might have noticed, were having their defenses 
 strengthened; from others the smoke of sacrifice ascended, while on 
 others the earth was freshly heaped over the grave of some departed 
 chieftain. 
 
 After this race came the races that were here when the Europeans 
 came. Judging from their languages there were half a dozen principal 
 races and fifty smaller ones, subdivided into tribes according to locality 
 or family descent. The eastern Indians were of the Iroquois stock; 
 the western of the Algonquin ; and west of the Mississippi river of the 
 Sioux and Athapascan races. The Algonquin tribes in Illinois were 
 chiefly the Pottawatomies in the northern part, the Illinois, Peorias and 
 Kickapoos in the central part, and the Kaskaskias and Cahokias, or 
 Tamaroas, in the southern part. The different languages all belong to 
 a common stock, the chief peculiarity being the use of bunch words 
 instead of true sentences. This is so unlike European languages that 
 it stands against the theory that our Indians had a European origin. 
 Thus as if in mockery of theories of social progress an agricultural and 
 commercial people were superseded by a race of savages. And the 
 world went on! 
 
 The historical novel attempting to account for this national tragedy 
 has not been written, but he who will read between the lines of the 
 story told by the earthworks may have a hint of the moral justification. 
 The largest of these works tell of a despotism strong enough to com- 
 mand unlimited labor, and cruel enough to use it without stint. It is 
 a story without doubt of irresponsible power, of a heartless priesthood, 
 of wrong and suffering and death, of the rights of man so outraged that 
 when extinction came, whether by pestilence or war or both, it was the 
 righteous judgment of God. 
 
 The Indians in their turn merited a similar divine judgment. In 
 their treatment of one another they were as cruel and implacable as 
 the wild beasts that shared the forests with them. The torture of an 
 enemy was their delight. The dreaded pestilence that devastated their 
 ranks was no more heartless than they. Their land was filled with 
 wrongs that cried for vengeance. This is no acquittal for the robbers who 
 robbed them, but it enables us to see a divine providence in the loss of
 
 History of the Baptists of Illinois 11 
 
 country which overtook them. We are indignant at the manner of the 
 ejeament of the Cherokees from Georgia. Yet they had treated others 
 as themselves were treated. Rev. Lee Compere, a faithful missionary 
 among them, relates that in his absence twenty of their slaves were 
 mercilessly whipped for attending a religious meeting conducted by the 
 missionary's wife. While the unfortunate tribe was exploited, and 
 those who did it will answer for it, yet like Adonizedek of old they 
 might have exclaimed, "As I have done so God hath requited me." 
 
 Unlike the race that preceded them the Indians were not builders. 
 They left behind no architectural works, but they have left us a richer 
 heritage in the poetic Indian names that cover the land. One half of 
 our states, and a large part of our towns and rivers bear Indian names. 
 They are far preferable to the names of imported saints that mark the 
 footsteps of the Frenchman and the Spaniard.
 
 CHAPTER III 
 THE FRENCH PERIOD IN ILLINOIS HISTORY 
 
 By the charter of a king of England to a London land and trading 
 company in I6O6, IIHnois belonged to Virginia; for the company was 
 granted four hundred miles of Atlantic sea coast, with all the land 
 west of it to the Pacific ocean. The company planted a colony on 
 Chesapeake Bay, namiPxg it Jamestown after the king who had been so 
 generous to them, and after a few years was dissolved. But tlie colony 
 continued to grow, increasing in sixty years to 30,000 inhabitants. 
 
 While the English were raising tobacco on Chesapeake Bay, French 
 traders stole in on them in the rear and preempted Illinois, 800 
 miles back in the wilderness. The first explorers were Joliet, a Quebec 
 fur trader, and Marquette, the Jesuit missionary at Mackinaw, who came 
 together on a canoe trip down the Illinois river in the summer of 1673, 
 sixty-six years after the founding of the Virginia colony. Six years 
 afterv/ards, in 1679, another wealthy Canadian trader by the name ol 
 Robert LaSalle, floated down the Illinois river with a large company, 
 and built a fort at Peoria, naming it the Broken Heart because of his 
 misfortunes. He also built a stockade on the top of Starved Rock, 
 across the river from the present town of LaSalle, where it is said 
 his lieutenant Tonti kept the French flag flying for ten years, waiting 
 for LaSalle to return. But he never returned. He was assassinated by 
 his men in Arkansas in 1687. 
 
 A few miles below the mouth pf the Illinois river was the head- 
 quarters of the Cahokia Indians, in a beautiful location on Cahokia 
 creek, v/ithin sight of the St. Louis Mounds; and there the LaSalle 
 explorers landed and left a monk to teach the Indians. It was the 
 beginning of the white settlement at Cahokia, one of the four earliest 
 historic places in Illinois, the other three being Kaskaskia, Peoria and 
 Starved Rock, all of them becoming historic by the efforts of Robert 
 LaSalle and his men to obtain a foothold here in 1679-82. While 
 he was doing this the infamous king, Louis XIV of France, was getting 
 ready by the repeal of the Edict of Nantes to drive his protestant subjects 
 out of his realm. His pensioner, the worthless Charles II of England, 
 was at the same time heaping up fuel for the fire of I688. The Jesuit 
 Allouez spent part of the summer of 1677 with the Indians near the 
 
 12
 
 History of the Baptists of Illinois 13 
 
 mouth of Chicago river. But it was rather a visit than the beginning 
 of an occupation. At Kaskaskia the oldest existing date in the parish 
 book is 1696. 
 
 From the coming of LaSalle until the battle of Quebec in 1759 the 
 French rule over this v/estern country lasted eighty years. They were 
 years of dreams of wealth, and of a western Catholic empire; but the 
 mines of wealth were never found, and the empire never rose above the 
 foundations. Soon after the departure of LaSalle there were log cabins 
 in the edges of the groves near the Indian cornfields at Cahokia and 
 Kaskaskia, cabins built not by settlers to shelter their families, but by 
 traders who had beads and blankets and powder and knives and whisky 
 to barter for furs. These points and others like them were chosen 
 because they were Indian centers on the line of river navigation. 
 
 Let us stop a moment midway of the eighty years of French rule, 
 in 1719; the year of the publication of Robinson Crusoe, and of Watts' 
 Psalms of David. Illinois is in district 7 of the 9 government districts 
 of the territory of "Louisianna." The Mississippi Scheme is filling 
 France with the hot fever of speculation. Unlimited wealth is expected 
 from the mysterious regions in the interior of the western continent. 
 Shares in the Trading Company are eagerly bought for forty times their 
 par value. Five hundred negro slaves from San Domingo are landed 
 at Kaskaskia to mine the gold which is on the point of being discovered. 
 It was the beginning of slavery in Illinois, and it continued for a 
 hundred years. On the Mississippi, sixteen miles north of Kaskaskia, 
 Fort Chartres is erected as the seat of governnient, named in honor of 
 the government charter that is so highly valued. But in a few months 
 the speculative bubble bursts and half a million shareholders lose their 
 savings. The Illinois settlements however were not deeply involved, 
 and every summer floated boat loads of grain and furs to the new 
 distributing center at New Orleans. In one season 4000 "deerhides" of 
 corn was thus exported. 
 
 But a papal empire in the west was not to be. In the providence of 
 God in this matter the experience of Europe is enough for the world. 
 
 The French of Illinois were guilty of no great national crimes during 
 their occupation here, but they were not available for God's purpose. 
 As the Hebrew was God's choice among racial types, so the Anglo 
 Saxon among modern peoples. Then the existence of slavery made the 
 settlements no place for a workingman. The immigration was confined 
 to adventurers and officials, nor settlers but transients. Again, they
 
 14 History of the Baptists of Illinois 
 
 were handicapped because of their religion. No papal country stands 
 in the front rank of nations to day, or ever will so stand, or ever could 
 so stand except in a semi-barbaric age. What God will have is men, 
 but a religious system that depends for its efficiency on suppressing indi- 
 viduality cannot produce men. A papal university may have the ablest 
 teachers and the finest apparatus, but in a large sense the result will 
 be disappointing. For this reason an elementary education wholly 
 parochial is a wrong to the child. He who accepts the will of the 
 church in place of the word of God is in a state of tutelage forever. 
 Society suffers an arrest of development. See that strange period in the 
 history of Europe when brilliant courts were thronged with brilliant 
 men and women. The arts and literature flourished, and the church 
 prospered. Yet the barometer of general intelligence, of human happi- 
 ness and of human value steadily sank, or in favored localities remained 
 barely stationary. Probably between the misery of human life under an 
 oriental despotism, and under ecclesiastical rule when Chaucer and 
 Dante were singing their songs and Petrarch was being crowned with 
 laurel at Rome, there would be little to choose. 
 
 It was decreed that the common man should not be educated, for if 
 he was educated enough to aM^aken the man within him he must be 
 educated enough to repress the man within him. It is safer therefore 
 not to educate him at all, and that course in papal lands is pursued 
 wherever possible. When the first Americans settled in Illinois they 
 opened a public school, and John Seeley was their first schoolmaster; 
 but the only school having historical mention among the French here 
 for a hundred years was the priests' school at Kaskaskia. "Not the 
 fiftieth man can read or write," wrote Gov. St. Clair in his report as 
 governor of Northwest Territory. 
 
 In 1764 Great Britain took formal possession of Illinois, and Spain 
 of Missouri, and the French empire passed. Leaving little behind it 
 save the remains of its settlements in three counties, and the names of 
 saints and apostles bestowed on towns and features of the landscape. 
 The English retained possession less than twenty years. Spain held on 
 for forty years; then restored it to France at the sword's point, and 
 France sold to the United States. It was 121 years from the time when 
 LaSalle took possession of the Mississippi valley, naming it after his 
 king, Louisiana, to the time when the flag of the true western empire 
 floated over all.
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 FIRST AMERICAN SETTLERS IN ILLINOIS 
 
 The state of Illinois has had many masters. In 1682, so the records 
 tell us, it was farmed out to Robert LaSalle for "one fifth of the crop," 
 and he governed it from Starved Rock. In 1690 the lease reverted to 
 LaSalle's lieutenant, Tonti, and a partner named La Forest. In 1693 
 the latter sold half his right to Michael Acau for $1200 worth of beaver 
 fur, delivered at "Chicagou." Acau was a son-in-law of the chief of 
 the Kaskaskias. In 1712, by the favor of the king of France, the 
 wealthy Crozat succeeded to the western monopoly. He was followed 
 in 1717 by Renault, under the famous charter of John Law and the 
 Mississippi Scheme. The seat of government was changed from LaSalle 
 county to Randolph county, and the new fort in honor of the charter was 
 named Fort Chartres. The state became a district of Louisiana. From 
 1759 it became a part of Canada. The transfer was formally made and 
 the census taken in 1764. Laclede had built a log trading post across 
 the river from Cahokia, naming it St. Louis, and a number of French 
 families fleeing from British rule in Illinois settled around him. That 
 is how St. Louis started as a village and not as a mere trading post. 
 
 It was while we were a part of Canada, in 1769, that the chief 
 Pontiac while drunk was killed in Cahokia, and the Starved Rock tragedy 
 that followed was one incident in the furious revenge that was taken for 
 his death. What a story it would be if all was recorded and all records 
 had been kept! And at the bottom was the trader's whisky. 
 
 The first American settlers with families came in 1781, from 
 Virginia and Kentucky, and it came about through an episode in the 
 revolutionary war. Col. George Rogers Clarke was authorized by the 
 Virginia legislature to lead an expedition against the British forts in 
 Illinois, and he set out with 153 men, all he had been able to secure. 
 Floating down the Ohio river to the old site of Fort Massac, he sank 
 his barges in the mouth of a creek and set out for Kaskaskia, a hundred 
 miles away. Their route lay through Johnson, Union and Jackson 
 counties, and on July 3, 1778, they camped at the mouth of the Kas- 
 kaskia river, where Chester penitentiary now stands. A marble monu- 
 ment marks the spot. That night they marched up the north bank of 
 the river and surprised Fort Gage, while part of the force crossed the 
 river at the ferry and captured Kaskaskia. So much for promptness of 
 
 15
 
 16 History of the Baptists of Illinois 
 
 decision and quickness of movement! Cahokia and Vincennes sur- 
 rendered in their turn. When the British commander at Detroit heard 
 of the surrender of Vincennes he sent and retook it, intending to proceed 
 to the IlHnois country in the spring. That delay was his undoing. 
 Col. Clarke gathered 170 men and again marched on Vincennes, and 
 again captured it by surprise. That winter journey of 200 miles, fording 
 creeks, wading swamps, rafting swollen rivers, sleeping on the ground, 
 subsisting on pioneer soldier's rations of dried meat and parched corn, 
 was perhaps the most desperate march of the revolutionary war. The 
 commandant was sent a prisoner-of-war to Virginia, and the garrison was 
 paroled and allowed to return to Detroit. The state of Virginia assumed 
 control of the conquered territory, but in 1784 ceded it to the United 
 States. By the famous ""Ordinance of 1787" Illinois was a part of the 
 Northwest Territory, and sent delegates to the territorial legislature 
 at Gainesville, O. Gen. St. Clair was the first governor, and in 1790 
 organized St. Clair county, naming it after himself. In 1800 we were 
 a part of Indiana Territory; and in 1809 became a territory in our own 
 right, with the seat of government at Kaskaskia. 
 
 We come now to the American settlers. Some of them were Clarke's 
 soldiers, and were so well pleased with the country that they returned 
 in 1781 and settled here. They settled on the Mississippi river bottom 
 and the adjoining upland, in what is now Monroe and St. Claire 
 counties. The Monroe county settlement they called New Design — a 
 name which has become famous in Illinois Baptist annals. 
 
 Among those who came at that time were Shadrach Bond, Larkin 
 Rutherford, James Moore, James Garrison, Robert Kidd, James Piggott, 
 John Doyle, Robert Whitehead, Mr. Bowen. Mr. Moore was the leader 
 of this colony, and settled with part of them at New Design. Others 
 settled on the bottom, in what is now the township of Harrisonville, 
 and it was called from them the American Bottom. Mr. Piggott built 
 a blockhouse, known as Piggott's Fort, as a defense against the Indians. 
 Mr. Bond was known as Judge Bond; his nephew became the first 
 governor of the state of Illinois. The colony was one of weight and 
 respectability, not adventurers but home seekers. Yet none of them 
 were professing christians, except Mrs. Bond who had belonged to a 
 Presbyterian church! 
 
 It was to most of them a new and strange world into which they 
 had come. The French settlements represented a civilization as old as 
 their own, but different. The Frenchman yoked his cattle by the
 
 History of the Baptists of Illinois 17 
 
 horns, scratched his ground with an iron pointed stick, and rode in a 
 cart without tires. His hat was a colored handkerchief; his coat a 
 cape and white blanket, with a hood for cold weather. This was his 
 capot or "cappo," and cost $5.50 each at Gratiot's store in Cahokia. 
 Linen shirts, $2.00. The year the Americans came Gratiot married 
 Victoria Choteau, and moved his store to St. Louis. They were the 
 grandparents of Mrs. E. B. Washburn. 
 
 Indians were as numerous as the French, and gave more trouble. 
 The Frenchman and the Indian got along together fairly well, but the 
 American and the Indian never could agree. After 1781 new settlers 
 came in every year. By 1784 there were fifty American families in the 
 settlements in Monroe and Randolph counties. Some, as John Edgar, 
 were fugitives. He was a British officer in the revolutionary war but his 
 sympathies were with the colonists, and he fled to save his life. He 
 opened a store and a land office in Kaskaskia and in a few years was 
 the richest man in the territory. It was at his house that Lafayette was 
 entertained in 1825. Edgar county was named after him, in 1823. 
 But a more important event was the opening of the first elementary 
 school, in 1783, in an abandoned log cabin at New Design. It was 
 taught by John Seeley. The benches were round logs, and a log was 
 taken out of one side of the building to admit light; yet the coming 
 of that humble school was the token of the coming of a new empire. 
 The settlement might have consisted only of scattered cabins whose 
 occupants were struggling for their daily bread, the bulk of the nation 
 far away on the eastern ocean, but the schoolhouse showed the relation 
 between the settlement and the nation. AJl honor to Schoolmaster 
 Seeley' s log school!
 
 CHAPTER V 
 JAMES LEMEN 
 
 Among the new arrivals from Virginia in 1785, was Capt. Joseph 
 Ogle. He had been an officer in the revolutionary war, then just closed 
 and was commander of the American forces at the battle of Fort Henry 
 in 1777. His ancestors traced back their genealogy to William the 
 Conqueror, if that is any honor. It is more honor that they were 
 puritans, and fled from a country that persecuted them. The great 
 grandparents of Joseph Ogle emigrated to Delaware in 1666. After 
 the war he removed to the Illinois country. He chose the New Design 
 settlement because he approved of its principles, and because being on 
 the high road between St. Louis and Kaskaskia it had not so much the 
 appearance of being out of the world. His family was with him, except 
 his oldest daughter Catherine who three years before had married James 
 Lemen. But so favorable was the report sent back that the next season, 
 1786, his son-in-law and family followed to the new land. These two 
 men became one the first Methodist and the other the first Baptist, in 
 the state of Illinois. And not only first numerically but in moral 
 weight, exemplary character. The two denominations originated side 
 by side, and both at New Design. 
 
 Two centuries ago, in 1708, a young man named James Lemen and 
 his two brothers emigrated from Scotland to Virginia. From these 
 have descended all the families of Lemens in this country. James 
 Lemen's son Nicholas was born in 1725, and married in 1747. His 
 youngest son was born November 20, 1760, and was named James after 
 his Scotch-Irish grandfather. With him begins Illinois Baptist history. 
 He served two years in the revolutionary army, and was in the action of 
 White Plains. In 1782 he married Catherine Ogle. It was a "happy 
 union. There was on the part of both of them an impression that they 
 were destined for each other from the first. They decided to follow 
 their friends to Illinois; and in the spring of 1786, with their two little 
 children, Robert and Joseph, they embarked in a flat boat down the 
 Ohio river. On the way down they tied to the shore one night over 
 a submerged smmp, and by a sudden fall of water in the night one side 
 of the boat was caught on the stump and overturned. It was with great 
 difficulty that Mr. Lemen rescued his family, but his possessions were 
 
 18
 
 History of the Baptists of Illinois 19 
 
 lost. They reached Kaskaskia July 10, and settled at New Design on 
 a beautiful claim in the edge of a maple grove, near a lake which then 
 covered forty acres. From that time New Design has been associated 
 chiefly with his name. The old farm is on the line of the Mobile & 
 Ohio R. R., halfway between Waterloo and Burkesville. The postoffice 
 at Burkesville is still called New Design. The name probably refers 
 to the hope of founding a new commonwealth on free labor rather than 
 on slave labor. It is a name coined by southern abolitionists, for such 
 the Ogles and Lemens and others were. One cause of their willingness 
 to leave Virginia was their desire to get away from slavery. Plainly 
 they saw that it made the rich richer and the poor poorer. A strong 
 antislavery sentiment was rising in Virginia at the time. In the fifteen 
 years between 1782 and 1797 10,000 slaves were liberated in that state 
 alone. Why then did not slavery die out of itself.^ It was because 
 of the opposition of the large owners, especially when the invention 
 of the cotton gin in 1792 enabled cotton to be raised at an immense 
 profit by slave labor. It was the old story of Demetrius and the silver- 
 smiths: "By this craft we have our wealth." If left alone money 
 will always beat sentiment, for its devotees will stand together and 
 will carry their politics in their pockets ; but sentiment is readily divided 
 on minor issues. If those who have the right would be as firm as those 
 who have the wrong slavery would have perished before the 19th 
 century began, and the infamously cruel liquor traffic would have fol- 
 lowed before the century closed. The greed for money without honest 
 labor, regardless of human suffering, is the spirit in all evil traffic. The 
 influence of James Lemen was, probably, the controlling factor in 
 making Illinois a free state, though the final battle was not fought until 
 he was in his grave. He died a year and a half before the famous 
 election of 1824 settled the matter forever.
 
 CHAPTER VI 
 JAMES LEMEN'S CONVERSION 
 
 Neither Mr. Lemen nor his wife were professing christians, but they 
 respected the Bible and the Lord's day and from the first their home 
 was a place for religious gatherings. Sunday was a day for horse 
 racing and other sports, so to offset this Mr. Lemen invited the neigh- 
 bors to meet at his house on Sunday mornings for a religious meeting. 
 No man in the settlement could pray, but the Bible was read, hymns 
 were sung, and sometimes a sermon or an extract from a religious book 
 was read. Mr. Bond was generally the reader, for he was regarded as an 
 educated man. This was assuredly a remarkable matter. Where else 
 do we read of a frontier community, none of whom were Christians, 
 without a preacher, meeting regularly for Sunday morning worship? 
 Social gatherings on Sunday were common enough, but they were for 
 feasting and frolic. We must see in it the hand of God, preparing 
 that family and that community for larger measures of the Spirit, and 
 larger service. 
 
 In 1787 Eld. James Smith, of Kentucky, visited New Design; the 
 first Baptist preacher and the first preacher of any denomination to enter 
 the present state of Illinois. He held a series of house meetings which 
 were abundantly blessed. Among those who believed the word and 
 confessed Christ were James Lemen and Joseph Ogle and their wives, 
 and Shadrach Bond. And a goodly number of others! Then a new 
 element was introduced into the New Design meetings; there were 
 many who could pray and the Sunday morning meetings were opened 
 with prayer I And some learned to exhort as well as to pray, and to 
 explain the portion of the Bible which they read. Family worship 
 became a practice in some of the Christian homes. Let us find here 
 some explanation of the fact of the large number of preachers that 
 went out from these families. Wisely conducted family worship will 
 not fail to make its mark on the character of the family. No amount 
 of personal piety or public service can be a substitute for it. The rush 
 of business and the hurry of modern life is no excuse for its neglea, for 
 all the rush and all the hurry is, after all, to do the thing that is wisest, 
 and that will pay us best to do. 
 
 The Lemens were quickly introduced to the sterner side of frontier 
 life. The very summer of their arrival Mrs. Lemen's sister and her 
 
 20
 
 History of the Baptists of Illinois 21 
 
 husband, James Andrews, were killed by the Indians, and their two 
 little daughters carried captive to Prairie du Chien, Wisconsin. There 
 one died. The other, a reward being offered, was recovered through 
 French traders. Tragedies like this were frequent for several years. In 
 the two years, 1789-1790, one tenth of the total American population 
 perished by Indian wars and murders. The hostilities were caused by 
 the determination of the Indian leaders that the Ohio river should be 
 a boundary which no white settler should cross ; north and west of that 
 should be an Indian Empire. The battle over that question was taken 
 up and fought year after year. In one battle out of a total of 1400 
 Americans, 890 were killed. The hostilities were aggravated too by 
 the foreign traders who wanted the country preserved for a trapping 
 ground. It makes little difference whether it be the slave traffic or the 
 fur traffic or the liquor traffic, whatever brings large profit with little 
 labor steels the heart and brings out the demon in the man. 
 
 In 1795 the subjugated Indians abandoned the struggle, and peace 
 was made in the treaty of Greenville. The central and northern part 
 of Illinois was still recognized as Indian territory, but reservations six 
 miles square at Chicago, Peoria, and at the mouth of the Illinois river 
 were ceded to the government. And for a little season the land had 
 rest from war! 
 
 There is something also to be considered here as to the type of 
 conversion. The case of James Lemen was not that of a sudden change 
 in a thoughtless man, but of the coming of joyful life to a serious man. 
 It was to him the fulfilment of Matt. 11:28: "Come unto me all ye 
 that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest." He had 
 been a faithful laborer under the moral law, and we may well believe 
 that there were times when he was wearied with his own spiritual 
 endeavors. He is not the only man nor the first man who passed that 
 way. And the years of striving after peace of soul and perfeaion of 
 character are not in vain. It furnishes to the new life a stability that 
 comes in no other way. We may see in the apostle Peter a man of 
 that stamp ; and he was chosen to be the first of the apostles. 
 
 Furthermore, the truth preached by James Smith was no mere appeal 
 to the emotions, but an appeal that men obey the truth. Yet some in 
 his congregation had been for years searching for the truth. They 
 needed now only that the word of the preacher be supplemented by the 
 teaching of the Spirit. The following extract is from a book published
 
 22 History of the Baptists of Illinois 
 
 in 1764; it was an old book in 1778. It may be accepted as a sample 
 of the gospel preached at New Design : 
 
 "To those that are enquiring the way to Zion, and crying out, What 
 shall we do to be saved: Art thou, O soul, under the Apprehensions of 
 Guilt? Art thou lost and undone without an interest in the Saviour? 
 Art thou sensible that Jesus only can deliver thee? And art thou saying, 
 How shall I come to him? I am altogether unworthy of his Notice; 
 I deserve his everlasting Frowns; I have nothing to say to urge him 
 to look upon me, unless this will do it, that I am miserable, wretched, 
 blind and naked: And will he receive such a creature? — Thus come, 
 O inquiring Soul; this is the best frame thou canst come to thy Re- 
 deemer in. Come thus, and thou shalt find Acceptance. Art thou 
 unworthy ; come and tell the Mediator. Let him know thy wants ; tell 
 him of thy Desires ; give up thy all into his Hands, and plead his own 
 free, gracious Promise that he that comes to him he will in no wise cast 
 out, John vi, 37. This is to come aright. This is the Temper, the 
 Spirit of the Gospel, and be assured thou shalt meet with an hearty 
 Welcome. Jesus will take thee into his Bosom, open all his Heart to 
 thee ; give thee his Presence here, and make thee ^eternally happy with 
 himself." 
 
 Three years afterwards, in 1790, Elder Smith again visited New 
 Design, and through his preaching others were added to the converts. 
 Quite probably a church would have been established at that time, but 
 in the midst of the work Elder Smith was captured by the Indians. In 
 the party was a Mrs. Huff and with her little child. She had been 
 under spiritual concern for some time, and while the savages were 
 putting her to death Elder Smith fell on his knees praying for her, and 
 in that attitude he was taken. On this account, and because of his 
 praying and singing while they traveled, the Indians were afraid of 
 him. He was taken to Vincennes, from whence word came through the 
 traders as usual that he would be returned for a suitable ransom. 
 Thereupon $170 was collected out of the poverty of the settlers, and 
 Elder Smith was set free. One wonders in reflecting on these events if 
 the white traders were not as guilty as the Indians in these murderous 
 forays, encouraging them for the sake of a liberal share of the profits. 
 How large a share of Indian warfare from the beginning has been 
 caused by the demon of avarice in unprincipled white men will be 
 known in the judgment day! Elder Smith on his release returned to 
 Kentucky, and visited Illinois no more. The following year James 
 Lemen and seven others had a pitched battle in the timber with a band 
 of Indian horse thieves, and killed five of them.
 
 History of the Baptists of Illinois 23 
 
 In 1793 the settlements at New Design and the Mississippi Bottom 
 were strengthened by the arrival of another Kentucky colony, among 
 whom were Joseph Kinney and William Whiteside and their families. 
 In later Methodist annals the name of Whiteside is as prominent as 
 Kinney among Baptists. Mary Kinney afterward became the wife of 
 Joseph Lemen, while Catherine Lemen married Joseph Kinney, Jr. The 
 most noted of the family was William Kinney, who was twelve years 
 old when the family came to Illinois. He learned to read after he was 
 married, his wife being his teacher. He opened a store in Belleville 
 with a few bolts of cloth which he had brought before him on his 
 horse from St. Louis, and in a few years he was a wealthy merchant. 
 Before he entered on his mercantile life he was a farmer and teamster. 
 He drove the first wagon over the route from old Fort Massac to 
 Kaskaskia. He became a Baptist preacher, and in 1826 was elected 
 lieutenant governor of Illinois over a Methodist preacher who ran 
 against him, though the candidate for governor on his ticket was 
 defeated. 
 
 One of his brothers while building a mill was so injured that he 
 was confined to his house for years. At last he predicted the day of his 
 death, some months ahead, and set his house in order accordingly. On 
 the day appointed a large number of his neighbors and friends gathered 
 to see what they should see. The result proved that he was no prophet, 
 for not only did he not die but from that hour he began to recover and 
 was a sound man until his death in old age.
 
 CHAPTER VII 
 THE FIRST BAPTISM IN ILLINOIS 
 
 One Lord's day in January, 1794, while Judge Bond was conducting 
 the meeting at James Lemen's, there came into the assembly a large, 
 portly man, with dark hair, florid complexion, and dress somewhat in 
 advance of the deerskin shirt and moccasins of the settlers. From his 
 appearance the leader of the meeting judged him to be a believer, per- 
 haps a preacher, and said to him at the close, "We invite you, sir, if you 
 are a praying man, to offer a closing prayer." The stranger kneeled, 
 the others kneeling with him, and prayed very devoutly and impressively. 
 The story is that a Methodist brother was present who always responded 
 to a Methodist prayer, but was more cautious concerning Baptist 
 prayers. The stranger's prayer, however, was so earnest that he soon 
 gave him the benefit of the doubt and cried, "Amen, at a venture!" 
 
 The stranger proved to be Elder Josiah Dodge, from Kentucky. He 
 was on a visit to his brother. Dr. Israel Dodge, of St. Genevieve, Mo., 
 and hearing of a religious neighborhood across the river entirely desti- 
 tute of ministerial instruction he decided to make them a visit. He 
 remained there for some time preaching, and visiting from house to 
 house. He found James Lemen and his wife desirous of receiving 
 baptism. On inquiry two others, John Gibbons and Isaac Enochs, were 
 found who were likewise waiting. Notice was accordingly given that on 
 a certain Lord's day in February the ordinance of baptism would be 
 administered in Fontaine creek, a stream flowing from a remarkable 
 spring near Waterloo, the county seat of Monroe county. 
 
 On the appointed day a great multitude gathered from all parts to 
 witness the first baptism in Illinois. It was cold weather, and a place 
 to baptize was cut through the ice. At the water's edge a hymn was 
 sung, the scripture authority for the proceeding was read and explained 
 by the preacher, and prayer was offered. James Lemen was first 
 baptized, his wife Catherine next, followed by the two others. As 
 they came up out of the water another stanza was sung, the benediction 
 was pronounced, and the multitude dispersed. 
 
 These baptisms were without direct church authority, other than that 
 of the church of which Elder Dodge was a member; but that in the 
 circumstances, and in all such circumstances, is regarded among us as 
 
 24
 
 History of the Baptists of Illinois 25 
 
 sufficient. Baptism is an ordinance committed to the local church, to be 
 administered by church authority ; but where no church exists the gen- 
 eral authority given to a brother by an ordaining church is accepted as 
 ample. It was so when Dr. Sears baptized Oncken and his associates 
 in Hamburg, and it is so in the case of missionaries on foreign fields. 
 An ordinance is merely a matter of order, not of life. It is sometimes 
 the duty of an employe to act on his own responsibility, but he who 
 should claim the right to do so always would come into collision with 
 his employer. 
 
 Thus was introduced into our state the ordinance of believer's 
 baptism. We observe it on scriptural grounds, because we are so com- 
 manded; that is all, and that is enough. It is not a saving ordinance. 
 We are not saved by baptism but by faith: "justified by faith without 
 the deeds of the law," viz, deeds of the law as the reason for our 
 salvation. That is sufficient. 
 
 By infant baptism, bringing to baptism little children too young 
 to make a confession, the entire community is brought into the church, 
 and made "religious." Mr. Hubbard, in an election sermon preached 
 at Boston in 1676, said, "It is morally impossible to rivet the christian 
 religion into a nation without infant baptism." It is supported by a 
 misunderstanding of scripture. Abraham had two sons but only one 
 heir. He does not represent christian parents but Christ and his 
 spiritual children. "If ye are Christ's THEN are ye Abraham's seed;" 
 Gal. 3:16, 29. There is considerable confusion here. It is not settled 
 whether infants are born christians, or whether baptisms makes them 
 christians, or whether they are baptised on the agreement of their 
 parents to see that they become christians. 
 
 An imitation of infant baptism was at one time common among 
 Baptists in some places. The child was brought to church for the 
 minister to lay on his hands, pronounce the child's name and pray. It 
 was called "devoting children to God," and by outsiders "the dry 
 christening." A similar practice was the "laying on of hands" in the 
 welcoming of members after baptism. In the old church of Providence, 
 R. I., this was practiced from the beginning, and was only gradually 
 dropped. Practices founded on tradition are harder to drop than scrip- 
 tural practices, as weeds are more tenacious of life than useful plants. 
 Isaac Backus, the Baptist historian, says of himself: 
 
 "I was a dull scholar in Christ's school, for I was thirty-two years in 
 learning a lesson of six words, viz, "One Lord, one faith, one baptism."
 
 26 History of the Baptists of Illinois 
 
 It took me ten years to get clear of the custom of putting baptism before 
 faith." 
 
 A pathetic illustration of the force of early habit is seen in the case 
 of the Mennonites, a branch of the old German Baptists. They do not 
 now immerse. In the days of government persecution they were so 
 much in prison where water for baptism was not to be had, yet they 
 continued to be faithful and made converts even in their bonds, that 
 they finally came to pour water on the heads of those they would baptize, 
 as a temporary expedient. They did this so long that the expedient 
 became the rule and gradually acquired for itself the support of tradi- 
 tion. In the case of a divine command it is always better to wait until 
 obedience is possible, rather than attempt to obey by doing something 
 else. Like a deformed limb, the Mennonite pouring tells a story of 
 past suffering. 
 
 In a similar manner some Baptist churches have had no singing in 
 their worship. David Benedict tells us that in his travels among the 
 Baptists of Rhode Island he was often asked, "Are you a singing 
 Baptist.''" That also dated back to persecuting times when dissenters 
 were obliged to conduct their worship as quietly as possible for fear of 
 discovery and arrest. Thus they omitted singing altogether, and at last 
 the practice adopted from necessity became fixed in a rule. 
 
 For some reason which we do not now know Mr. Lemen and his 
 company were not constituted into a church at this time, but were left as 
 an unorganized band in the wilderness. They could be depended on 
 however to be faithful, and to maintain their meetings for worship. 
 At these meetings no doubt prayer was continually offered for the 
 coming of an "under shepherd," and after two years he came.
 
 CHAPTER VIII 
 THE FIRST BAPTIST CHURCH IN ILLINOIS 
 
 During 1794-5 many new families from Virginia, Kentucky, and 
 Tennessee joined the American settlements in Illinois. Among them 
 was Joseph Chance, an unordained Baptist preacher, or "lay elder." 
 It was the custom in some Baptist churches to appoint such officers as 
 pastor's assistants. The father of Richard Fuller, who for thirty years 
 was a pastor in Baltimore, was a lay elder. 
 
 Another of the new arrivals in the spring of 1796 was Elder David 
 Badgley, of Virginia; an energetic man of active mind and sincere 
 piety. He was the first Baptist minister to make Illinois his home. On 
 his arrival he held a protracted meeting of three weeks at New Design, 
 and the Holy Spirit was present in power. On May 28, 1796, Fontaine 
 creek was again visited and fifteen were baptized. On the same day, 
 in the house of James Lemen, these, with those baptized before by 
 Elder Dodge, and a number who had with them their church letters, 
 twenty-eight persons altogether, were constituted a Baptist church. The 
 names of the men as given by John M. Peck, were: James Lemen, 
 William Whiteside, Larkin Rutherford, Isaac Enochs, Joseph Griffin, 
 John Simpson, James Gilham, Thomas Todd, George Valentine, Solo- 
 mon Shook, Mr. Teague, Joseph Anderson, Joseph Ryan, Joseph 
 Chance. 
 
 The formation of the church was a simple proceeding. Elder Badgley 
 and Mr. Chance read the scriptures and offered prayer. The purpose 
 of the meeting was stated, and the nature of a Baptist church was ex- 
 plained. The names were taken of those who wished to unite in church 
 capacity, and they formally voted to become a gospel church for the 
 maintenance of the ordinances, the edification of one another, and the 
 evangelization of the world. No ceremony of prayerbook or ritual, no 
 presence of bishop or priest, was required. Articles of faith were read, 
 considered, and adopted. Perhaps also an agreement or covenant with 
 each other to maintain a holy life. No authority save that of their 
 Lord Jesus Christ was needed or recognized. And as the church was 
 self constimted it was also self governed, since the authority that con- 
 stitutes a body must be the authority that controls it. 
 
 There are four theories of church government. The catholic theory 
 vests it in one person, the pope; the episcopal theory vests it in the 
 
 27
 
 28 History of the Baptists of Illinois 
 
 clergy; the presbyterian theory vests it in chosen elders; but scripture 
 vests it in the whole church. "The church; the whole church;" Matt. 
 18:17; Acts 15:22. We have no Church in the sense of a territorial 
 organization. When we refer to the denomination we may say 
 "churches," but not "church." It is plain that there can never be 
 ecclesiastical oppression among us, for the machinery for such oppres- 
 sion is wanting. This fact is no small item in the evidence that our 
 form of church government is from God. It is essentially the form of 
 political government under which we live in this country. And there 
 is current tradition that Thomas Jefferson got his idea of a government 
 by the people from the little Baptist church near his residence in 
 Virginia. 
 
 It is very suggestive too that Baptist churches in Illinois began in 
 revivals. Three fourths of the membership of this first church were 
 converted and baptized on the spot. It is a fitting symbol ; may it ever 
 be a welcome one. Our true dependence for growth is not immigration 
 but evangelization. 
 
 Others had come with Elder Badgley to see the Illinois country, and 
 they were so pleased with it that they returned to Virginia and began 
 to gather a colony to emigrate the following spring. Morgantown, 
 W. Va., was appointed the rendezvoux. The promoters were so suc- 
 cessful that in May, 1797, 154 persons launched on the Monongahela 
 river on flatboats, bound for Pittsburg and down the Ohio river to 
 Illinois; a journey of about 1300 miles. Then rather than pull their 
 heavy boats against the Mississippi current for the 135 river miles from 
 Cairo to Kaskaskia, they landed at old Fort Massac and struck out 
 through the wildnerness of woods and swamp. They were three weeks, 
 and endured great hardship, in accomplishing that 100 miles. It was a 
 rainy season, streams overflowed, weather hot and oppressive, provisions 
 gave out, and then strength gave out. They had not provided for such 
 an emergency. They arrived at the settlements exhausted and with 
 many sick. The settlers with their single room cabins had neither 
 accommodations nor food for such a large company. There was plenty 
 of venison and other game to be had, but they had not salt enough to 
 cure the meat, and the weather was so hot that it would spoil before it 
 dried. Sickness increased among them until it became epidemic, and 
 half of the colony died. None of the old settlers died. The survivors 
 were so disheartened that as many as were able made their way back to 
 Virginia. All sorts of stories got abroad. It was believed that Illinois
 
 History of the Baptists of Illinois 29 
 
 was a sickly country. It was reported and printed that the immigrants 
 of 1797 died of yellow fever! In Morse's American Gazetteer for 
 1804 New Design received this notice: 
 
 "NEW DESIGN, in Louisiana, a village of about forty houses and 
 two hundred souls ; twenty miles from the Spanish village of St. Louis, 
 and fifteen miles from the Mississippi river. It stands on high ground, 
 but is surrounded by ponds. In 1797 fifty seven of its inhabitants died 
 of yellow fever." 
 
 Dr. Morse supposed that the fever was among the regular settlers, 
 and that it was caused by the ponds! It is no wonder, after that, that 
 immigration was checked for several years. 
 
 Elder Badgley and family remained, and he became the first pastor 
 of New Design church and the first protestant pastor on the soil of 
 our state. He was born in New Jersey in 1749, and ordained in Vir- 
 ginia in 1795. He preached thirty years in Illinois, and died in 1824. 
 
 Three of the twenty-eight constituent members of New Design 
 church became ordained preachers, viz, James Lemen, Joseph Chance, 
 and John Simpson. The latter was an Englishman ; came to Kaskaskia 
 in 1789 and the following year removed to New Design. He died in 
 1806; preached at Judge Bon's in the morning and died in the evening 
 while sitting in his chair. This raising up of ministerial gifts from so 
 small a number and so inconveniently situated, in the midst of sur- 
 rounding vice and profligacy, is a remarkable fact. Yet it is only what 
 in substance had been taking place in our pioneer settlements every- 
 where. The Spirit of the Lord has mightily helped — has chosen to help 
 — in laying the foundations. That is how God saved America. 
 
 Another English preacher, John Clark, reached New Design in 
 1797. He had been a Methodist, but dissatisfied with their form of 
 government and with his own baptism, he had withdrawn and was now, 
 like Joseph Lillard, independent. He traveled on foot and preached 
 all the way from Georgia to Illinois, stopping a year in Kentucky and 
 teaching school. He was a good teacher, governing by comradeship 
 rather than by fear. As one of his Kentucky scholars exclaimed, long 
 years afterwards, "I never seed the like on't!" He was the first gospel 
 preacher to set foot on the Spanish side of the Mississippi, in 1798, in 
 the face of the edict of the Spanish government that, "No preacher of 
 any religion but the catholic shall be allowed in this province." The 
 clerical hand is clearly seen in the further enactment that, "Liberty of 
 conscience is not to be extended beyond the first generation; the chil-
 
 30 History of the Baptists of Illinois 
 
 dren of the immigrants must be catholics." Elder Clark counted it his 
 duty to preach the gospel of Christ everywhere, but to avoid arrest he 
 sometimes was ferried over the river in the evening, met his appoint- 
 ments at night and returned before daylight. In 1803 himself and 
 another independent Methodist preacher baptized one another in Fon- 
 taine creek, after he had preached to a large congregation on the banks 
 of the stream. He became a Baptist and about 1815 united with the 
 Bethel church, and continued diligent in his ministry until his death 
 in 1833.
 
 CHAPTER IX 
 
 PERPLEXING QUESTIONS 
 
 Some of the members of the New Design church lived on the 
 Mississippi bottom land, and because of the distance between the settle- 
 ments after some time a branch, called an Arm, was constimted on the 
 Bottom. It was to sustain public worship, but without church authority 
 to administer the ordinances. (But revival meetings were held there 
 by brethren Badgley, Chance and Simpson, and out of the revival came 
 another church. It was organized April 28, 1798, and was called the 
 Bottom Baptist church. There were now two churches in Illinois, on 
 the outmost border of christian civilization. There were also four Bap- 
 tist churches in Ohio and one in Indiana ; seven altogether in the entire 
 Northwestern Territory. There were in the United States seventy 
 thousand Baptists, one fourth of them being in Virginia. Population 
 of the country, five millions.) 
 
 For the sake of the church fellowship our Illinois churches became 
 "corresponding" members of the Green River Association Kentucky; 
 they were expected to be represented annually by letter rather than by 
 delegate. These little churches in the wilderness began at once learning 
 wisdom by experience, as v/e all have to learn. One thing they experi- 
 mented with was majority government. By self government it is not 
 meant that every individual must agree with every other, but that when 
 a vote is taken the majority of votes must control. This is no arbitrary 
 rule but is according to nature; for so each individual governs himself 
 when of two courses he chooses the course that appears to him to have 
 the greatest number of sound reasons in its favor. It would be an 
 ideal church that should always be unanimous ; as it would be an ideal 
 individual who was so clear of apprehension that he never needed to 
 weigh evidence. But the Creator sees it to be better for us to strive 
 after our ideals than to have them ready-made to our hand. 
 
 However, it was a theory of Elder Badgley that church action should 
 always be unanimous, and under his direction the New Design church 
 adopted a "rule of oneness." No business could be done until all were 
 agreed. Under this rule if one member stood out he controlled the 
 church. That was government by the minority. The only resource 
 was that the obstinate member might be disciplined by the majority, 
 and led either to cease his opposition or be excluded from the church. 
 
 31
 
 32 History of the Baptists of Illinois 
 
 But the way the rule was repealed was as bad as if they had let it 
 stand. At a business meeting in 1801, in the absence of the pastor, the 
 church repealed the rule of oneness in order that thereafter the way 
 might be open for unbaptized believers to be invited to the Lord's 
 table, and the invitation was given. The invitation however did not 
 long remain in force. It was opposed by the pastor, and by the Green 
 River Association whose advice was asked, and thereupon it was per- 
 manently dropped. 
 
 This matter of "strict communion has been, at least until recently, 
 pretty well settled among the Baptists of this country; and it became 
 so by long discussion and by the practical test of experience. The New 
 Design experiment is only one of many in our state history. When the 
 old Northern Association, including Chicago and vicinity, was formed, 
 in 1834, an open communion agitation was kept up for several years. 
 Pastor I. T. Hinton was its chief advocate. But he failed to win the 
 churches to his views. The copy of the Association Minutes bearing 
 the expected resolution never appeared. In 1850 one of the churches 
 of the Salem Association voted as New Design did in 1801, but like 
 New Design soon returned to the old path. Let baptism be made 
 optional and the ordinance will perish. John Bunyan was an open 
 communion Baptist, and his church had no Baptist pastor for a hundred 
 years after his death. Pastor Hinton might have gathered wisdom from 
 the experience of his father. James Hinton was pastor of the Oxford, 
 Eng., Baptist church, and resigned his pastorate because if he preached 
 on baptism many in his church did not like it, not having been them- 
 selves baptized, and if he was silent the ordinance itself was in danger 
 of being forgotten. Very rarely does an unbaptized member of such a 
 church express a desire to be baptized. It is like admitting the un- 
 converted, hoping that their church membership will lead to their 
 conversion. 
 
 Associational communion has sometimes been attempted by Baptists, 
 as by the vote of one of our local Associations in 1862, and once or 
 twice in Chicago. But it never rose to the dignity of more than an inci- 
 dent. The truth that it is a church ordinance is too well grounded 
 among us. In some of our colored churches the bread and wine has 
 been carried to the bedside of the sick, and to the houses of absent 
 members, but such practices have generally ceased of themselves. It is 
 a church ordinance, and that essential character is as persistent in it as 
 the perfume in a flower.
 
 History of the Baptists of Illinois 33 
 
 (In the revival which resulted in the organization of the New 
 Design church, in 1796, Benjamin Ogle, Mrs. Lemen's brother, was one 
 of the converts, but with his father he joined a reorganized Methodist 
 class. In the year 1800 however he was baptized and joined the New 
 Design church. He was a Baptist preacher for forty years, adding 
 another to the list of able preachers who went out from that little 
 church.) (The same year, 1800, the Pulliam family from Virginia came 
 to New Design from Missouri, where they had lived four years and 
 where the mother died. One of the sons, James Pulliam, also became 
 a Baptist preacher. His claim, near the Badgley settlement in St. 
 Clair county, covered the present site of Belleville. He acquired more 
 wealth than most of the early preachers, and when he died he left 
 $2000 to ShurtlefF College as the beginning of a fund for the education 
 of needy ministerial students.) 
 
 (In 1800 also Ohio was dropped out of the Northwestern Territory, 
 and the remainder was organized as Indiana Territory; William Henry 
 Harrison was governor, and Vincennes the territorial capital. And so 
 the nineteenth century opened on Illinois as two counties, St. Clair and 
 Randolph, of Indiana Territory. Our two churches were in the lower 
 part of Randolph, which in 1816 became Monroe county.)
 
 CHAPTER X 
 SECTIONAL DIVISIONS 
 
 In reading the inscriptions on the banners of our historical Baptist 
 host we meet with various kinds of Baptists : Regular, Separate, United, 
 Primitive, General, etc. These are relics of former conditions. The 
 conditions have passed away, but occasionally the titles remain. Like 
 boulders on a plain, they are remembrances of the past, of mountains 
 that are far away and forces that are now at rest. We have seen that 
 the denomination in this state was not imported, but sprang like a plant 
 out of its soil. It was revival born. As to the inward life they were 
 believers ; as to the outward life they were Baptists. But men of older 
 churches came in, and brought their peculiarities with them. At a 
 meeting of New Design church in 1802 certain "Articles of Union" 
 agreed to by most of the Regular and Separate Baptist churches of 
 Virginia and Kentucky were considered, and the church voted to "sus- 
 tain the Union." The use of the terms "Regular" and "Separate" came 
 about in this way: 
 
 Baptist churches in our southern colonies date from about 1714, and 
 by 1750 they were there in large numbers. These we may call regular 
 Baptists. They descended from the Baptists of the past. In 1744 
 George Whitefield, one of the most marvelous evangelists in history, 
 made his second visit to New England, and the Spirit of God moved 
 mightily among the people. Among those brought to a new life was 
 Shubael Stearns. He joined the revival party among the Congrega- 
 tionalists. They called themselves Separates, separate from the world, 
 but by outsiders they were called New Lights. He became a Baptist 
 preacher in 1751, and in 1754 carried the gospel to the Carolinas. An 
 amazing revival followed his word everywhere. The field was ripe, 
 for it had long been a time of spirimal depression. Many of those 
 converted became preachers in turn, and scores of new churches sprang 
 up and were known as "Separates," bringing the name over from New 
 England. They rejoiced in God, and walked in the Spirit. They 
 differed from other Baptist churches chiefly in having more fervency 
 in their testimony and more zeal in their evangelism. In 1758 they 
 organized the Sandy Creek Association, the third in the country, the 
 first two being the Philadelphia and the Charleston. The meetings of 
 
 34
 
 History of the Baptists of Illinois 35 
 
 this Association were joyful seasons, and people came hundreds of miles 
 to attend. Within thirty years there were a dozen Associations of 
 Separate Baptist churches! 
 
 But the use of the name created a barrier between them and the 
 churches that had not sprung out of Shubael Stearns' ministry. In 
 Virginia in 1787 this was partly removed at a meeting of delegates from 
 the Ketoaon Association and six Associations of Separate Baptists, both 
 sides agreeing to be known as United Baptists. There were churches 
 however on both sides who refused to "sustain the Union." Some of 
 the Separates cherished the name for the recollections attached to it, 
 and some of the Regulars believed the Separates were not sound in 
 doctrine. So the result was as it always is in such cases: instead of 
 decreasing the sects another was added to the number. The New 
 Design church by being willing to be known as United Baptists were 
 helping as they hoped to promote unity among their brethren. But 
 the unity v/as not reached as expected. As an indirect consequence 
 the church itself ultimately was divided. After all the most precious 
 unity is that which comes from the presence of the Spirit. In Psalm 
 133 it is typified by oil and dew. 
 
 In 1802 brother John Messenger came to New Design. He was a 
 remarkable mathematician, and became one of the early teachers in 
 Rock Spring Seminary. In the same year Capt. Joseph Ogle removed 
 to Ridge Prairie, two miles west of O'Fallon, and there he died in 1821 ; 
 two years before the death of James Lemen. He was, as Peter Cart- 
 right called him, "the leader and pioneer of Methodism in the state 
 of Illinois." There were throughout the American settlements a num- 
 ber of Methodists, but no church organization or regular preaching. 
 After the gathering of the class at Capt. Ogle's in 1798 there was no 
 M. E. preacher in Illinois until 1804. In that year a third Baptist 
 church was added to the number. 
 
 The members composing this third church came in a body from 
 Barren county, Ky., and were organized as a church of eleven members 
 before leaving home, May 25, 1804. They brought with them their 
 pastor, John Baugh, whom they had licensed to preach but who had not 
 yet been ordained by a council. Thus they came out not only as a 
 colony but as a church; in the stately language of the day, "she 
 traveled with her constitution." Like many of the older immigrants 
 they were attracted not only by the better soil of the new land, but by 
 the desire to bring up their families in a free community. For a time
 
 36 History of the Baptists of Illinois 
 
 they remained at New Design, but finally settled near the Badgley and 
 Ogle settlements in the northern part of St. Clair county, giving their 
 church the name of Richland. For a time they were content to be an 
 "Arm" of New Design. Another Arm was located not far away, on 
 Silver creek, becoming an independent church about 1806. 
 
 In 1802 a colony of Irish Presbyterians from South Carolina settled 
 east of Kaskaskia, in Randolph county. They were known as "South 
 Carolina Irish," but in their faith they were true Scotch Covenanters. 
 They are not counted in the Presbyterian history of the state. The 
 honor of being the first Presbyterian church in Illinois is claimed by a 
 church in White county, organized in 1816. 
 
 It was in 1803 that Napoleon, having come into possession of the 
 territory of Louisiana, immediately sold his title to the United States 
 for half a cent an acre, on twenty years' time. This made the Rocky 
 Mountains, instead of the Mississippi river, our western boundary. The 
 village of St. Louis, which was part of the property purchased, contained 
 at that time one hundred and fifty houses, with a Catholic church in 
 the center. But with the raising of the American flag the spiritual 
 monopoly of the Church was ended. Henceforth father Clark needed 
 no more to cross the river at midnight to fill his appointments, and any 
 man was welcome to preach the gospel wherever he could gather 
 hearers.
 
 CHAPTER XI 
 
 GROWTH AND OUTWARD DIFFICULTIES 
 
 One of the things which astonished De Toqueville, French philoso- 
 pher and jurist, was the character of the American pioneer. He wrote: 
 
 "As soon as the pioneer arrives upon the spot which is to serve him 
 for a retreat he fells him a few trees and builds him a log house. 
 Nothing can offer a more unattractive aspect than these isolated dwell- 
 ings. The traveler who approaches one of them towards nightfall sees 
 the flicker of the hearth flame through the chinks in the walls ; and at 
 night if the wind rises he hears the roof of boughs shake to and fro 
 in the midst of the great forest trees. Who would not suppose that 
 this rude hut is the asylum of rudeness and ignorance? Yet no sort 
 of comparison can be drawn between the pioneer and the hut which 
 shelters him. Everything about him is primitive and unformed, but 
 he is himself the result of the labor and experience of eighteen cen- 
 mries. He penetrates into the wilds of a new world with a Bible, an 
 ax and a file of newspapers."— De- Toqueville's American Institutions, 
 p. 321. 
 
 In the early American settlements in Illinois, however, the Bible and 
 the ax were found, but the newspaper was more tardy in appearing. It 
 appeared in Indiana in 1803^ and in St. Louis in 1808, but not in 
 Illinois until 1814. 
 
 In 1803 the American Baptist Missionary Magazine came out of its 
 corner in the study of pastor Baldwin, of Boston. It represented the 
 Massachusetts Domestic Missionary Society, and contained letters from 
 the wilds of New Hampshire and New York, but none from the wilds 
 of Illinois, a thousand miles farther inland. The editor said in his 
 preface : 
 
 "We cannot at present determine whether we shall publish semi- 
 annually, quarterly, or oftener, until we know the success of this num- 
 ber. Those who encourage the work will be notified of the publication 
 of succeeding numbers." 
 
 But the postage on the magazine to the west would have been four 
 cents each copy, and the journey six weeks long from Boston to Cahokia, 
 which was the distributing point for that portion of the territory. Mails 
 came and went once a week on horseback. The school was in reality 
 a greater factor than the periodical in the intellectual life of the people. 
 The humble schools turned out men and women of mark. In a Monroe 
 
 37
 
 38 History of the Baptists of Illinois 
 
 county school taught by Edward Humphrey, in 1805, there were sitting 
 on benches side by side a future governor of lUinois, Thomas Ford; a 
 State Attorney General, George Forquer, Ford's half brother; and a 
 United States senator, Samuel McRoberts. 
 
 It was in that year that the Merrill excitement arose. Daniel Merrill 
 was pastor of the Sedgwick, Me., Congregational church, and himself 
 and 120 of his people were baptized and constituted a Baptist church. 
 It started a fresh controversy on baptism which continued for years. 
 The Baptist position was so thoroughly studied by the common people 
 that a pedobaptist minister exclaimed, ""Even the Baptist women talk 
 Greek!" Daniel Merrill's son, Moses Merrill, became in 1832 one of 
 Isaac McCoy's associates in the Indian Mission, and died at his post 
 in 1840. 
 
 Perils from the Indians still continued, and were vainly sought to 
 be prevented by frequent treaties. Sometimes when part of a tribe 
 refused their consent treaties only made matters worse. In 1803 at 
 Vincennes a band of dissolute Kaskaskies put their marks to a treaty 
 ceding to the government all southern Illinois. It was done merely to 
 prevent trouble, for the same territory had been ceded by the treaty of 
 Greenville eight years before. In 1804 at St. Louis part of the Sacs 
 and Foxes rubbed their marks on a treaty ceding all northern Illinois. 
 Out of this grew the Black Hawk war, 28 years afterwards. 
 
 The peril of slavery, too, still hung over the settlements like an 
 angry cloud. Gov. William Henry Harrison called a convention at 
 Vincennes, and memorialized Congress to repeal the clause in the 
 Ordinance of 1787 excluding slavery. Efforts to this end were con- 
 stantly being made. Petitions were circulated among the pro-slavery 
 portion of the Illinois inhabitants. But in the good providence of God 
 none of such efforts succeeded. 
 
 A peril that had less promise of success was Aaron Burr's proposed 
 Southwestern Empire. It is given as a matter of authentic history that 
 in the summer of 1806 Burr, on his journey from St. Louis to Kaskaskia, 
 called at New Design and tried to get James Lemen's name on the list 
 of promoters of his scheme. But Mr. Lemen repelled the idea. Even 
 had it been in his judgment a wise thing to attempt, which it certainly 
 was not, he would have had no confidence in it with such a man as Mr. 
 Burr at the head of it. 
 
 In 1806 Elder William Jones, from North Carolina, settled in what 
 is now Madison county, and the following year gathered the Wood
 
 History of the Baptists of Illinois 39 
 
 River church, of which he was the pastor for nearly forty years. About 
 1845 pastor and church passed away together. He was a devout and 
 peaceable man and faithful preacher, but conservative in his views, so 
 that he became a leader of the antimission party among his brethren. 
 In 1807 Robert Brazil was licensed by the Richland church to preach, 
 and he was ordained the following year. For a time he did good 
 service, but having unfortunately come into possession of a distillery he 
 fell into intemperate habits. 
 
 The sixth Baptist church to be constituted in our territory was Rich- 
 land Creek; in the northern part of St. Clair county. It had been an 
 "Arm" of New Design, meeting at the house of Isaac Enochs, one of 
 the two baptized with James Lemen and his wife thirteen years before. 
 It was recognized as an independent church, with 17 members, Sep- 
 tember 12, 1807, by a council composed of Joseph Chance, Robert 
 Brazil and Edward Radcliff. James Lemen and wife, having withdrawn 
 from New Design church, became constituent members at Richland 
 Creek ; drawn there undoubtedly because of the warmer antislavery senti- 
 ments in the new church. He probably hoped to find here a permanent 
 church home. But his journeyings were not over as the event proved. 
 He had yet "one more river to cross." Apparently another class of 
 settlers were coming in, a class with proslavery sympathies. And 
 always those in sympathy with an evil are intolerant of those who 
 oppose it.
 
 CHAPTER XII 
 
 OUR FIRST ILLINOIS BAPTIST ASSOCIATION 
 
 The Association is the most democratic of all denominational 
 assemblies. Others, even the Methodist Conference originally, are for 
 the clergy. The Presbyterian Synod is for official elders. But the 
 Association is for all, and the business is done by all. The purpose of 
 meeting is for fellowship rather than for legislation. The desire for 
 unity and fellowship is well expressed in lines written by Joel Butler 
 for the first meeting of the Otsego, N. Y., Association, in 1794: 
 
 "One is our God, who reigns above 
 And one our Savior whom we love. 
 One is the faith; the Spirit one 
 That brings us 'round Jehovah's throne. 
 One hope we have, one race we run 
 To our eternal, shining home. 
 One is our Guide, and one the way 
 That leads to shining fields of day. 
 And one the song of praise we bring 
 To our eternal, glorious King." 
 
 To those who knew the solitudes of the wilderness it was a joy 
 indeed to meet for a few days with brethren of like faith and service. 
 On the other hand the fear regarding Associations was that they would 
 encroach on the liberties of the churches. Baptists have been through 
 the ages sufferers from the persecutions and usurpations of the organized 
 clergy, and they have cause to fear such clerical organization or any- 
 thing that approaches it. 
 
 Our fathers learned too, from their experience with the Standing 
 Order in New England, that voluntary associations might be as oppres- 
 sive as hierarchies. For a long time in New England if Baptists re- 
 • fused to pay their assessment for the support of the Congregational 
 minister their goods were sold at auction, and often they themselves 
 went to jail. Says Backus: "Many Baptists could not for a long time 
 believe that associations of churches could be so conduaed as to be 
 serviceable in any way." Dr. Armitage in his Baptist History observes: 
 "There has always been a tendency in the voluntary bodies of christian 
 history to exercise authority, and for this reason Associations will bear 
 watching at all times." A Georgia Association, in 1826, appointed a 
 committee to visit a church and rectify some disorder, adding that, "If 
 order cannot be effeaed, then the committee to be clothed with authority 
 
 40
 
 History of the Baptists of Illinois 41 
 
 to expel all the disorderly part of the church." This was the Hephizabah 
 Association. A little after that a committee of the Flint River Associa- 
 tion visited a church, held their meetings in an adjoining grove, and 
 sent word for such of the members as recognized their authority to 
 appear before them. Seven or eight did so and were organized by the 
 committee as the church, and were so reported to the Association. — - 
 History of Georgia Baptists, 123, 174. The moderator of Ocmulgee 
 Association defended these proceedings, contending that "Associations 
 have the same power over churches that churches have over their 
 members." 
 
 Such organizations will bear watching ; and they are waiched by the 
 great body of our people. It is usual to formally state when Associations 
 are organized that they assume no authority over the churches. Some- 
 times even the word "delegate" is objected to, and "messenger" is sub- 
 stituted to emphasize the fact that a Baptist church can send representa- 
 tives but cannot delegate authority. 
 
 When William Jones and John Fridley and their company came to 
 Illinois they found besides scattered Baptists four organized Baptist 
 churches. But there seemed not to be among them much harmony of 
 feeling. There were frequent "distresses," petty jealousies, and failure 
 to see that all should be endeavoring to promote the common good. 
 Elder Jones set himself to bring them closer together. For that purpose 
 after much horseback riding over two counties a preliminary meeting 
 was held at Anthony Badgley's, on the bottom, January 9, 1807. Elder 
 Jones had taken care to provide himself with a summary of doctrine, 
 based on that accepted by the Regular and Separate Baptists of Ken- 
 tucky, at their union. This summary was discussed by all present, and 
 approved. It consisted of twelve Principles, in brief as follows: 
 
 1. There is only one true God; Father, Son and Holy Spirit. 
 
 2. The Old and New Testaments are the word of God; and the 
 only rule of faith and praaice. 
 
 3. By nature we are fallen away from God and are depraved 
 creatures. 
 
 4. Salvation, regeneration and sanctification are by the life, death, 
 resurrection and ascension of Christ. 
 
 5. The saints will finally persevere through grace to glory. 
 
 6. Believer's baptism is by immersion, and is necessary to the re- 
 ceiving of the Lord's Supper. 
 
 7. The salvation of the righteous and the punishment of the wicked 
 is eternal. 
 
 8. No ministers ought to administer the ordinances until they have 
 come under the imposition of hands.
 
 42 History of the Baptists of Illinois 
 
 9- It is our duty to be tender and affectionate to each other, to study 
 the happiness of the children of God in general, and to engage singly 
 in promoting the glory of God. 
 
 10. We believe in election by grace. 
 
 11. It is our duty to commune with orderly Baptists. 
 
 12. Each church may keep its own government as it may seem best. 
 
 The proposition to organize an Association or Baptist Union was 
 approved, and it was agreed to meet for that purpose June 24, at James 
 Downing's on Ridge Prairie. In the meantime the Wood River church 
 was organized, making five churches that were represented at the ap- 
 pointed meeting in June. They reported a total membership of eighty, 
 with three ordained ministers, besides a goodly number of exhorters 
 and preachers not ordained. They organized under the name of the 
 Illinois Baptist Association — though as yet there was not even an Illinois 
 Territory — adopted as their constitution the doctrinal summary approved 
 at the January meeting, and agreed to meet thereafter semi-annually, in 
 June and October. They remained together three days, during Friday, 
 Saturday and Sunday. The next meeting was appointed at Isaac Enoch's, 
 beginning October 9. 
 
 In one matter, which was not of official record, we may see the hand 
 of James Lemen. It was a custom of the time for Associations to be 
 represented at the meetings of sister Associations by messenger or by 
 letter. This maintained the feeling of fellowship. Part of the brethren 
 therefore desired to be in correspondence with the nearest Association 
 in Kentucky. But fellowship with Baptists in slaveholding states meant 
 fellowship with slavery, and made it easier for slavery sometime to 
 come into Illinois, and for that reason James Lemen and others were 
 opposed to it. A compromise therefore was effected. The general 
 principle of Associational fellowship it was agreed should be expressed 
 in this form: "Does this communion extend throughout the Union?" 
 Answered, "It shall extend throughout the Union." Viz, the new 
 Association wished itself to be regarded as in doctrinal agreement with 
 United Baptists. On the other hand it was tacitly understood that 
 "correspondence should not be carried into Kentucky." Practically it 
 amounted to this, that all should be agreed in the name United Baptists 
 provided no use was made of it in official correspondence with Associa- 
 tions in Kentucky or other slave states. But compromises are in their 
 nature transient. Where parties differ on questions of right and wrong 
 it is difficult to maintain peace, and in fact there should be no peace. 
 Moral issues are not for peace but for war and for victory.
 
 CHAPTER XIII 
 ASSOCIATIONAL EXPERIMENTS 
 
 During the summer of 1807 the Richland Creek church was con- 
 stituted, so that at the first semi-annual meeting of the Illinois Baptist 
 Union, in October, six churches were represented, besides the newly 
 organized Cane Spring church over the river in Louisiana Territory. 
 The six Illinois churches reported a total membership of 106; an increase 
 of 26 in four months. Twenty of the new members were by baptism. 
 Following are the names of the associational delegates: New Design: 
 William Whiteside, Stephen Terry, George Dement; Mississippi Bot- 
 tom: David Badgley, David Waddle, George Dement; Silver Creek: 
 Joseph Chance, Edward Radcliff, Abram Teter; Richland: James 
 Downen, R.obert Brazil, Valentine Brazil; Richland Creek: James 
 Lemen, William L. Whiteside, Isaac Enochs; Wood River: William 
 Jones, Isaac Hill, Joseph Cook. William Jones was chosen moderator, 
 and William Whiteside, clerk. The manuscript copy of the records of 
 this meeting thus begins: 
 
 "Minits of the Illenoy Association of Baptists, holden at Isaac 
 Enochs, in the Richland Creek church, St. Clair county, Indeanne Terri- 
 tory, on friday, the 9th of October, anado. 1807, and continued by 
 adjournment until Sonday ye 11th. 
 
 Friday ye 9th at 12 o'clock, Elder David Badgley deliver'd the en- 
 troductory sermon from John the 3d & l6th, for God so loved the 
 world, &c. After sermond business was opened with prayer. Elder 
 William Jones chosen Moderator. Letters from seven churches was read, 
 their messengers enrol'd, and a list of their numbers taken . . . 
 
 Eld. David Badgley, Eld. Joseph Chance, Eld. John Hendrixon, and 
 James Downen, with the Moderator and Clerk, was chosen a select 
 committee to arrange the business of the association & make report. 
 Adjourned till 3 o'clock. 
 
 Met according to adjournment at 3 o'clock. The select committee 
 made report. . . . The committee adjourned. The association met 
 according to adjournment. The Committee made their report, which 
 was taken up in order." 
 
 One peculiarity in the proceedings, it will be seen, was the double 
 mill through which they ground their business. First a committee to 
 consider what matters may properly come before the body. The com- 
 mittee adjourns, the association convenes, and the business is gone over 
 
 43
 
 44 History of the Baptists of Illinois 
 
 again in formal order. In this way unwelcome matters, as discussions 
 on slaverv, were shut out from the association. 
 
 The clerk was directed to furnish one written copy of the Minutes 
 to each church, and was allowed twenty-five cents a copy for his labor. 
 That was satisfactory to him for his labor, but as each copy required 
 eight cents postage for all distances under forty miles, he stipulated 
 at the next meeting that each church should fetch their own copy. The 
 year following William Jones became clerk, and made the further re- 
 quirement that each church furnish its own blank paper, sending it by 
 the messenger. These were pioneer times. William Jones lived a few 
 miles below the present site of Alton, and there was probably no supply 
 of writing paper nearer than Cahokia or St. Louis, twenty five miles 
 away, where foolscap was sold at two cents a sheet. 
 
 The first associational meeting of 1808 was held at James Lemen's, 
 Jime 10-12. The Illinois churches reported 136 members. During the 
 preceding winter 27 had been received by baptism and 12 by letter. On 
 the request of the Richland church John Baugh was ordained by a 
 council during the sessions of the association. 
 
 It was also voted to try the experiment of circuit preaching. It came 
 up in the form of a suggestion to see if something could not be done 
 to supply destitute points with preaching. So soon had the churches 
 forgotten the example of the early days of New Design, when they 
 waited for no preacher but came together regularly for mutual edifica- 
 tion. There was presented: 
 
 "A request to take into consideration some plan to supply every place 
 with preaching, that there be no lack in any place." 
 
 It was finally agreed to send the preachers out two and two, after the 
 example of Jesus in Matthew 10, and it was left with the clerk to make 
 the distribution and arrange the circuit. He did the best he could, and 
 paired them off as follows : Joseph Chance and James Lemen ; William 
 Jones and Joseph Lemen ; John Hendrickson and Benjamin Ogle; John 
 Baugh and Robert Brazle (Brazil). David Badgley and Thomas 
 Musick seem not to have been available owing to some difficulty about 
 their credentials. 
 
 It is interesting to note in the above list the young men who were 
 for the first time finding their places among the preachers. James 
 Lemen was probably James Lemen Jr. He was not yet twent}' years old ; 
 his brother Joseph was two years older. They were converted the year 
 before at a camp meeting conducted by their father, James Lemen Sr.,
 
 History of the Baptists of Illinois 45 
 
 John Clark and Bishop McKendree, near the present site of Edwards- 
 ville. Joseph united with the Richland Creek church, and James at 
 New Design. At the time they were paired off as preachers by the 
 clerk of the Association, in session at their father's house, they had not 
 even been licensed by their churches ; though that was soon done. At 
 the next church meeting at Richland Creek both Joseph and his father 
 were licensed to preach, and a year afterward they were ordained 
 together. 
 
 Benjamin Ogle was a man in middle life but a young preacher. His 
 first sermon, at the solicitation of his brethren, was preached at this very 
 meeting of the Association, in James Lemen's house. He had long felt 
 it his duty to preach, but had not before been able to overcome his 
 timidity. He lived however to preach his last sermon, forty years 
 afterward, in the same house in which he preached his first. Assuredly 
 this is one mark of the presence of God in the church, however humble 
 the church may be, that out of its membership he is raising up preachers 
 of the gospel. 
 
 But the plan of circuit preaching could not be made to work. At 
 the next meeting of the Association there came up "a remonstrance from 
 Wood River church against sending their preachers into the circuit." 
 In consequence of which, after discussion, "the motion concerning send- 
 ing preachers into the circuit was disannulled." The plan had two 
 drawbacks. First, it provided preachers but not pastors. Second, it 
 took responsibility from the churches and lodged it in a committee. 
 
 But the incident is interesting as being the first attempt among us 
 as a denomination to answer the question, "How may we most effeaively 
 carry the gospel to the destimte?" It was at least an acknowledgment 
 of responsibilit}^ It was the beginning of state missions in Illinois, 
 and William Whiteside was the first mission board. And it may be a 
 query whether in attempting to do the work through the churches and 
 their pastors direct he was not very near the scripmre plan. Other 
 denominations may find their greatest eflFeaiveness in organizations 
 above the churches; Baptists cannot. To stimulate the local church 
 to missionary activity is the highest form of cooperative organization. 
 
 The ordination of John Baugh suggests another use to which asso- 
 ciations have sometimes been put, but the example is followed but 
 rarely. One of our Associations in 1831 recommended a standing com- 
 mittee to have charge of ordinations, and the plan is still being tried in 
 various places.
 
 46 History of the Baptists of Illinois 
 
 In 1774 the General Association of Virginia, misinterpreting 1 Co- 
 rinthians 12:28, decided that the office of apostle was intended to be 
 permanent among the churches, and straightway proceeded to fill the 
 office by ballot, choosing Samuel Harriss and two others to attend to 
 ordinations and to oversee the churches. Mr. Harriss was an eminent 
 evangelist, in the same class with Shubal Stearns, a very Paul among 
 the churches, and not needing the ballots of his brethren. However he 
 exercised his new authority for half a year, and then prudently allowed 
 it to lapse, and the experiment ceased. The plan was well meant, but 
 as barren of results as the election of Matthias to the apostolic office 
 at Jerusalem. 
 
 Organization beyond the local church is helpful if it be for fellow- 
 ship or for preaching the gospel, but let it not be an apostolate over 
 the churches, a mistake we are very near making on our foreign mission 
 field. Better that churches be left on their own humble resources, than 
 that we carry them and govern them at the cost of spoiling them for 
 Baptist churches. 
 
 All this experimenting is in harmony with our claim that scripture 
 is our rule of faith and practice. The Bible is not a book of rules but 
 of life and precedents. A book of rules v/ould be too bulky to handle ; 
 the necessary indexes alone would make a volume. A necessity of life 
 is the opportunity and power of adaptation. One learns as much by 
 failure as by success. We agree with others that New Testament 
 precedent is purposely simple, and tliat details of proven usefulness may 
 be added to suit circumstances. But we will not allow such adaptation 
 to share the authority of scripture. That was the rock on which the 
 early churches lost their liberties.
 
 CHAPTER XIV 
 THE ASSOCIATION BROKEN UP 
 
 The fourth meeting of the Association was held with the Wood 
 River church September 30 to October 2, 1808. A second Missouri or 
 Upper Louisiana church — Feefee's Creek — was received. The Illinois 
 churches reported four baptisms and a total membership of 109. A 
 query was sent up to the Association concerning "brother going to law 
 with brother." It was postponed to the next semi-annual meeting, and 
 then was passed without an answer. It was probably too late to do any 
 good in the local case, and there was a reluctance to take sides in a 
 personal controversy. Professing christians were as reluctant then as now 
 to believe God's word and trust all in his hands. If the parties to this 
 litigation of 1808 had read 1 Corinthians 6:1-8, and laid it up for use 
 when the time came, they would not have been tempted to break a 
 statute law of the New Testament, and their church would have had no 
 need to ask wisdom of the Association. 
 
 In 1809 Illinois and Wisconsin were separated from Indiana, and 
 became the Territory of Illinois, capital at Kaskaskia. Ninian Edwards 
 was appointed governor by President Madison. The population of the 
 Territory was 9,000, of which 160 were slaves, besides, about 30,000 
 Indians. The settled portion was a tract along the Mississippi river 
 from Alton to Chester, twenty-five by seventy-five miles, including the 
 present counties of Randolph, St. Clair, Monroe and Madison. There 
 were yet however but two counties in the Territory, and they were sup- 
 posed to extend north to lake Superior. There were also along the Ohio 
 river on the eastern side of the state a few cabins opposite Vincennes, at 
 old Fort Massac, and at the salt wells near Shawneetown. A wagon 
 trail was opened this year from the Wood River and Ridge Prairie settle- 
 ments to the salt springs, crossing Kaskaskia river where Carlyle now is. 
 
 June 17, 1809, the Illinois Association met with the Silver Creek 
 church. The Looking Glass Prairie church, Randolph county, was re- 
 ceived. Also the Coldwater church of Missouri. The seven Illinois 
 churches reported 17 baptisms, eight received by letter, and a total mem- 
 bership of 153. Two deaths were reported from Silver Creek, the first 
 on the Association records. It was the last meeting of the united body. 
 The shadow of the slave fell across its path and it was blighted forever. 
 
 47
 
 48 History of the Baptists of Illinois 
 
 James Lemen came to the front. His abhorrence of slavery was not 
 lessening, and he was apprehensive that in spite of all opposition it 
 might yet be fastened on Illinois. The constitutional law against it was 
 in practice a dead letter, and the forces of covetousness and of pro- 
 fessional politics were pressing to have the law removed. It was a time 
 for every friend of humanity to cry aloud and spare not, and this James 
 Lemen did. And the powers of evil were watchful! 
 
 At the Richland Creek church monthly meeting, Samrday, July 8, 
 1809, Larkin Rutherford, an old friend, brought a "distress." He was 
 one of the constituent members at New Design, and when James Lemen 
 removed his membership to Richland Creek he went with him. But 
 their friendship was suddenly broken. Rutherford brought before the 
 church a "'distress' against his old friend for saying in a sermon. "I 
 have no fellowship for slaveholders, nor for those who fellowship 
 them." Yet this essentially was the position of Richland Creek church, 
 for it was written in the constitution of the church that slaveholders 
 were not eligible to membership unless legally unable to free their 
 slaves. Such an agreement had been entered into by a number of Ken- 
 tucky Baptist churches, and was called adopting Tarrant's Rules. When 
 a church adopted Tarrant's Rules it was known just what their position 
 was on slavery. Larkin Rutherford therefore had no case. But he had 
 sympathizers. The adoption of the Rules had probably been through 
 the influence of James Lemen, over the proslavery sympathies of other 
 of the members. These had now become bolder and entertained 
 Rutherford's complaint. The summary by the church clerk tells the 
 story: 
 
 "The question was put to the church to know whether brother 
 Rutherford had a right to be distressed with brother Lemen for so 
 saying. The church was divided in judgment, which threw them into 
 confusion. The church called two meetings to endeavor for a union 
 or fellowship, but all to no purpose." 
 
 Of course the only way there could be fellowship was for the church 
 to hold to its agreement of non-fellowship with wilful slaveholders. 
 Why did not Rutherford get Tarrant's Rules repealed before he pro- 
 ceeded.-* On Saturday, September 9, there being no prospect of agree- 
 ment, the two parties met separately, the Lemen party at James White- 
 side's, and the Rutherford party at Jacob Ogle's, and each party elected 
 delegates to the Association which was to convene the following month. 
 The latter party, regarding themselves as the church though outside of
 
 History of the Baptists of Illinois 49 
 
 their constitution, proceeded also to exclude "James Lemen Sr., for 
 rending himself from the church and drawing a party with him, and to 
 lay under censure all who justify his conduct." This precipitate ex- 
 clusion was evidently a shrewd move to take brother Lemen out of the 
 fight and thus weaken his side. 
 
 The Association convened Friday, October 9, 1809, with the Bottom 
 church "at the schoolhouse near James Garretson's." Both sides had 
 prepared for the conflict. It was in substance a return to the burning 
 question of church politics: "Shall we hold on to the name of United 
 Baptists, and fellowship slaveholding churches?" Two papers had been 
 drawn up for signatures. One was headed, "United Baptists," appeal- 
 ing to the name. The other bore that now famous title, "BAPTISTS, 
 FRIENDS TO HUMANITY." In this we see a straightforward deter- 
 mination to bring the issue up to every man's conscience. The title 
 was not invented by James Lemen, but seems to have originated in Ken- 
 tucky; he, however, gave it its place in history. 
 
 In the Association both sets of delegates from Richland Creek church 
 were refused enrolment, which might have preserved the peace of the 
 body if it had rested there. But it was decided after warm debate to 
 open associational correspondence with Kentucky, viz, to fellowship 
 slavery. This was contrary to the previous understanding, and it broke 
 the Association into three fragments. The antislavery party withdrew. 
 Those who remained found they were divided on the matter of taking 
 the name of United Baptists. The larger part favored this, but the 
 New Design and Richland churches clung to the old name of "Illinois 
 Union." 
 
 When the Association finally met for business only three churches 
 answered the roll call, — Bottom, Wood River and Looking Glass 
 Prairie. The clerk, William Whiteside, was also absent, and another 
 clerk was chosen. The preachers present were about equally divided. 
 Elders Chance, Ogle and Baugh went with the Lemens; Badgley, 
 Jones, Brazil and Musick stayed by the old ship, and immediately pro- 
 ceeded to lade her with a fresh cargo of the old traditions. They voted 
 to sustain "the General Union of the United Baptists at large." They 
 buttressed this declaration by adding to Art. 12 of the constitution of 
 the Association: 
 
 "No churches have any right to make any rule to cross the Union 
 of the United Baptists at large."
 
 50 History of the Baptists of Illinois 
 
 They proceded farther to refuse church fellowship to those who 
 were not agreed with them: "We beHeve it not right to commune 
 with those who have left the General Union at large." This simply 
 shows the heat of the explosion, for there is nothing in a mere title, the 
 result of local circumstance, to be made a test of fellowship for a 
 denomination. 
 
 So our first Illinois Baptist Association, after continuing two years, 
 was rent asunder over a moral principle and a name. Some would 
 have endured the principle if they could have had the name; others 
 would have accepted the name if it did not involved the yielding of the 
 principle. But as they who held the one must yield the other they lived 
 in outward harmony only until the tension became too great to be 
 longer borne. And James Lemen was accused of making all the 
 trouble!
 
 CHAPTER XV 
 
 SAVING THE FRAGMENTS 
 
 When the Association divided at its meeting in the Garretson school- 
 house, in October, 1809, the Richland Creek delegates were reproached 
 by some of their conservative brethren for excluding James Lemen on 
 account of his antislavery principles, charging that it would create sym- 
 pathy for him. This so troubled the church that at their meeting on 
 Saturday, October 14, they temporarily removed the exclusion thus: 
 
 "We have been accused of excommunicating brother Lemen for the 
 principles of emancipation, and in order to show the world and to 
 convince him and the rest of the members that went off with him that 
 we did not, we lay the excommunication of brother Lemen down and 
 set him on the same footing that he was before. That is, we hold him 
 under censure for some distress which is not occasioned by the aforesaid 
 principles which have not been removed. 
 
 Signed by order of the church, 
 
 William Kinney, clerk." 
 
 Yet there appears to have been no other charge against him, not 
 even the grievance concerning his sermon, than that "occasioned by 
 the aforesaid principles." No notice was taken of this church action. 
 It was of course useless to appear for trial before a tribunal which had 
 already tried him. 
 
 December 1, 1809, what was left of the Association met with the 
 Wood River church to consider the situation. Four churches reported. 
 A visiting committee was appointed, as follows : 
 
 "Association appoints D. Badgley, D. Waddle, Moses Short, Wm. 
 Brazil, Rob. Brazil, Thos. Musick, John Finley, Wm. Jones, to meet 
 with the different churches, to help them in their present distresses, to 
 establish those that want to live with the United Baptists, and if need 
 be to constitute churches." 
 
 The itinerary of this committee was made out as follows : 
 
 "Bottom church, Feb. 12, 1810; New Design, Feb. 13, Silver 
 Creek, 15 (a day allowed between here because the committee had 
 some 30 miles to travel from the lower end of the Association to the 
 middle) ; Richland Creek, 16; Richland, 17; Looking Glass Prairie, 
 18; Wood River, 19." 
 
 This committee of eight must have made an imposing appearance, 
 as with horses and saddle bags they rode up to the door of the humble 
 
 61
 
 52 History of the Baptists of Illinois 
 
 dwelling where the meeting was appointed. It involved more than a 
 week's time and considerably more than a hundred miles travel for each 
 of them, but it accomplished in some measure their purpose. They did 
 not succeed in bringing all the churches into line with the United 
 Baptists of Kentucky, but they so strengthened the conservatives that 
 the growth of the Friends to Humanity was slow for several years. 
 
 The authority given the committee to constitute churches must be 
 understood absolutely, but only that they were requested to sit as a 
 council on the call of any group of brethren and sisters who wished 
 to be recognized as a church. No such call however was made on them. 
 In only one case, Silver Creek, was the antislavery element strong 
 enough to divide the body, and there they withdrew and organized 
 themselves. 
 
 The Association took the name of the Illinois Union Baptist Asso- 
 ciation, and for several years met alternately in Illinois and Missouri. 
 In 1811 three new churches appeared: Ogle's Creek, Shoal Creek and 
 Turkey Hill. There was considerable sympathy with the antislavery 
 party, even where there was not the courage to stand with them openly. 
 At Ogle's Creek church this took the form of a request to "soften the 
 matter concerning the emancipation preachers;" probably meaning to 
 "lay down" their excommunication, and allow church fellowship with 
 them. This was not done, but it was explained that, 
 
 "To relieve the minds of any who may not understand us, we did 
 not nor do not mean die rule concerning the emancipating to extend 
 to any that have not departed from the General Union or given hurts 
 by disorderly conduct." 
 
 In 1813 the attendance at the Association was very small; only 
 
 three delegates were present from the Illinois churches, outside of the 
 church with which the body met. In 1814 William Jones was absent 
 for the first time. Two months before the meeting his settlement was 
 visited by roving Indians, and a mother and six children were killed 
 in their own house, six miles east of Alton. It was seen to be not 
 prudent to leave families unprotected. Skulking Indians were sus- 
 pected in every thicket. They were simply taking occasion of the war 
 between the United States and Great Britain to collea scalps and 
 plunder. In stealing the Indian was instigated by traders and renegade 
 whites. In 1812 the government agent at Peoria instigated bands of 
 Indians to steal the cattle of settlers from as far south as. Madison 
 county and he charged them to the government as Indian supplies.
 
 History of the Baptists of Illinois 53 
 
 Some of the thieves attended Gov. Edwards' Indian Council at Cahokia, 
 in April, and promised better behavior, but were able to be at the Fort 
 Dearborn massacre at Chicago in August. The most cruel of all savages 
 were the renegade whites and dishonest officials. It was these that made 
 the Indian a prowling thief and assassin, and made deliverance from 
 the fear of him the hoped-for industrial millennium before the settlers. 
 
 "Happy the country where the sheep, 
 Cattle and corn have large increase; 
 Where men securely work or sleep. 
 Nor sons of plunder break their peace." 
 
 New settlers continued to come in, notwithstanding the war. 
 Jonathan Boone, brother of Daniel Boone, settled in 1814 at the 
 mouth of Little Wabash river and built a blockhouse and mill, calling 
 the place New Haven. Two townships in Gallatin county contend for 
 the honor of identifying the locality and preserving the name. In 1812 
 Illinois was raised to a territory of the second grade, and three new 
 counties — Gallatin, Johnson and Madison — were formed. An election 
 was held for delegates to the territorial legislature. Two of the seven 
 elected were Baptists, viz, William Jones and Capt. Jacob Short, son 
 of Moses Short.
 
 CHAPTER XVI 
 THE FRIENDS TO HUMANITY 
 
 The adopting of the title "Triends to Humanity," by a few Baptists 
 in the territory of Illinois, in October, 1809, was the beginning of a 
 movement worthy of a place in the moral history of the world. This 
 is true even if the title was already in use in Kentucky or elsewhere, 
 for it is in Illinois that it became one of the forces that make history. 
 The intention plainly was to rally the antislavery sentiment on a plat- 
 form broad enough for all to stand on it, and yet explicit enough to 
 keep out the slaveholder and his sympathizer. The fact that the move- 
 ment did not become popular at once may be easily explained. The 
 average individual shrinks from unpopularity for that which involves 
 sacrifice. He would rather hold his views in secret, and live in peace. 
 There were friends to humanity in all the churches, but they were in 
 the minority. They were awed too, and their opponents strengthened, 
 by the traveling committee clothed with the authority of the Association. 
 
 Then there was the distrust usually felt towards a new thing. To 
 what would it lead? Would it be the beginning of a new denomina- 
 tion? There was here indeed a fine opportunity for James Lemen to 
 start a new sect. As fair an opportunity for him in Illinois in 1809 
 as for Benjamin Randall in New Hampshire to found the Free Baptists 
 in 1780, or for Jacob Albright in Pennsylvania in 1800 to found the 
 Evangelical Association, or for Alexander Campbell in Virginia in 1827 
 to found another sect of Disciples, or for John Winebrenner in Penn- 
 sylvania in 1830, of William Miller in Massachusetts in 1831, to lead 
 out the Church of God, or accept the leadership of the Adventists. 
 There was as fair an opportunity for the Friends of Humanity to become 
 a separate denomination in 1809 over the antislavery issue, as for the 
 United Brethren, or the Cumberland Presbyterian, over the issue of 
 revival preaching, of the Methodist Protestant in 1830, or the Congre- 
 gational Methodist in 1852, or the Free Methodist in I860, on the 
 question of church government. 
 
 But James Lemen had no intention of leaving the denomination, 
 and he had the patience to wait. He waited ten years. In the mean- 
 time he was not idle. James Lemen Jr. was ordained by the New 
 Design church in the spring of 1809, and on December 10, 1809, he 
 
 54
 
 History of the Baptists of Illinois 55 
 
 and John Baugh aided in constituting the Lemen family an independent 
 Baptist church, under the name of "The Cantine Creek Baptized Church 
 of Christ, Friends to Humanity." "Cantine" is a corruption of Quentin, 
 a city in the north of France after which the creek was named by the 
 French settlers. In 1849 the name of the church was changed to 
 Bethel, the first of the twenty Bethel Baptist churches in Illinois. The 
 meeting house is on the edge of the famous Ridge Prairie, two miles 
 southeast of Collinsville. It is now the oldest Baptist church in the 
 state. If we passed by the dead and wrote only of existing churches 
 we would begin here. 
 
 The constituent names on the roll on that second Sunday in De- 
 cember, 1809, were James Lemen Sr. and wife, Joseph Lemen and wife, 
 Robert Lemen and wife, and Benjamin Ogle. To these can be added 
 James Lemen Jr. and wife, for they joined in the evening of the same 
 day. Mr. Lemen Sr. was in the prime of life, 49 years of age. Mr. 
 Ogle was nine years younger. The Lemen boys were strong and able 
 young men: Robert, 26; Joseph, 24, and James 22 years of age. 
 Joseph and James were preachers. Their basis of church organization 
 was expressed in the following covenant: 
 
 "We whose names are hereunto subscribed agree to unite and be 
 constituted on the Bible of the Old and New Testaments, and to be 
 known by the name of the Baptized Church of Christ, Friends to Hu- 
 manity, denying union and communion with all persons holding the 
 doctrine of perpetual, hereditary, involuntary slavery." 
 
 Long afterwards, in 1828, when the Friends to Humanity churches 
 were flourishing, further explanation was given in a Circular Letter 
 written by James Lemen Jr. : 
 
 "Being accused by some of not having been sufficiently explicit in 
 our former addresses, relative to who and what we are as a religious 
 society, we will therefore simply reply that we profess to be scripture 
 advocates, or Bible christians, having adopted the word of God both as 
 our constitution and book of discipline. In our church records, and in 
 our circular publications, we subscribe our names, The Baptized 
 Churches of Christ, Friends to Humanity. We say Baptized Churches 
 instead of Baptist Churches because the word Baptized includes both 
 preachers and private members, while the word Baptist includes the 
 preachers only. We add Friends to Humanity because we believe it 
 to be our duty to extend our friendship (that is justice and mercy), to 
 human nature, let it appear in whatever dress or complexion God may 
 see fit to order, whether white, yellow or black, and not when it appears 
 in white only.
 
 56 History of the Baptists of Illinois 
 
 We are not tenacious however about names, neither will we stickle 
 for them, as they are only designed for temporary purposes. But as we 
 wish to be plainly understood, we believe : 
 
 1. That the church of Christ consist of believers, and therefore we 
 receive none into our societies but such as profess to have received a 
 change of heart and have faith in Jesus Christ. 
 
 2. That immersion is the only scriptural mode of baptism; there- 
 fore it ought to be administered only in that form, and that to believers 
 only. 
 
 3. That the Lord's Supper belongs only to the household of faith, 
 and ought not to be administered to any but such as have faith in Christ, 
 having entered the church through the door of baptism by immersion, 
 being opposed to slavery, intemperance, and every other violation of 
 the holy law of God, walking humbly before him as becomes little 
 children. 
 
 4. That washing the saint's feet is a scriptural command, and in- 
 tended by Jesus to be perpetuated by the churches through succeeding 
 generations. 
 
 5. That the church is the highest ecclesiastical authority; and that 
 annual meetings, associations, conferences, synods, &c., ought to be 
 under the control of the churches and not the churches under them. 
 
 The following from the same letter will give an illustration of the 
 manner in which they treated the question of slavery: 
 
 If not in each, yet in the majority of our former addresses, your 
 attention has been directed to the deplorable condition of the unpitied 
 descendants of Africa ; and this by some would be received as sufficient 
 apology for silence on such a subject in the present publication. But 
 how can we be silent while a number of human beings in our boasted 
 land of liberty are groaning under the most bitter oppression, such as 
 the pages of neither ancient nor modern history afford a parallel? . . . 
 It may be argued by some that as slavery is a political evil, it is there- 
 fore a subject which should only concern political men. But it is a moral 
 as well as a political evil, and therefore deeply concerns the christian 
 part of the community. . . . Said President Jefferson: "The liberties 
 of man are the gifts of God, and cannot be violated but with his dis- 
 pleasure. I tremble for my country when I reflect that. God is just, 
 that his justice cannot sleep forever, that — considering the number, 
 nature and natural means only, a revolution in the wheel of fortune, a 
 change of situation as among possible events, that it may become 
 probable by supernatural interference — the Almighty has no attribute 
 that can take part with us in such a contest." 
 
 Slavery has not only tarnished our political, but has stamped an 
 indelible blot on our religious character, and justifies the following 
 lines of an African:
 
 History of the Baptists of Illinois ■ 57 
 
 "Christians are our sore oppressors, 
 If it's right to call them so ; 
 Fellow mortals our possessors, 
 And the cause of all our woe. 
 Christian tyrants buy and sell us, 
 Make us labor, starve and bleed ; 
 Tear our wives and children from us, 
 Whom the God of heaven has freed." 
 
 Feetwashing, alluded to above, as a religious ordinance has never 
 been common among Baptists, and has been gradually dropped. It is 
 not now practiced except by some churches among Old School Baptists. 
 It never could be an ordinance like baptism and the Lord's Supper, 
 because it tells not of Christ but of social service. It is not burdened 
 with a divine death, but with human duty.
 
 CHAPTER XVII 
 THE BIRTH OF A STATE 
 
 At the close of the war of 1812-14 immigration from the border 
 slave states again poured into Illinois in a steady stream. Said a letter 
 writer of the day, "Every ferry on the river is busy, passing families, 
 negroes, horses, wagons, carts." That portion of Illinois Territory 
 lying between the Mississippi and Illinois rivers, and running as far 
 north as what was then supposed to be our northern boundary, a few 
 miles above Rock Island, was set apart as bounty lands for the recently 
 discharged soldiers of the war of 1812. It was therefore called the 
 Military Tract. Each soldier was given a government certificate, good 
 for a quarter section of unappropriated land anywhere in this Tract. 
 Many soldiers made choice of their land and made their homes on it, 
 but more than half of the entire tract was sold to agents and speculators 
 under "soldiers' warrants." Land speculation was the rage at this time. 
 The wealth the Frenchman failed to find in gold mines the American 
 looked for in town sites. Dr. Alexander, after whom Alexander county 
 was named, laid out "America," a few miles above Cairo, on the line of 
 a proposed cut-off between the Ohio and Mississippi rivers, and strove 
 for years to have it appointed state capital. The same distinction was 
 coveted by St. Louis speculators for "Portland," which they had laid 
 out under the river bluff at the mouth of the Kaskaskia river, but it 
 came to nothing at the time. A new start was taken in 1830 when an 
 Englishman by the name of Sam. Smith established a ferry there, and 
 named the place Chester in honor of the town in England where he 
 met his wife. And Chester it remained. The Cincinnati speculators 
 who "laid out" Vienna, the county seat of Johnson county, were more 
 fortunate than some others, for by donating the land they secured a 
 permanent town on their holdings. In 1817 George Flower and his 
 English colony founded Albion; the story is the romance of Edwards 
 county. His niece, Sarah Flower, was the author of the hymn, "Nearer, 
 My God, to Thee." 
 
 The birthday of the state of Illinois is December 3, 1818, for on 
 that day Congress declared Illinois to be "one of the United States of 
 America." It took a year to bring this about. In January our terri- 
 torial legislature submitted to Congress a petition for statehood, com- 
 
 58
 
 History of the Baptists of Illinois 59 
 
 mitting it to the care of Nathaniel Pope — after whom Pope county is 
 named. The northern boundary expected was a line running west from 
 the lower end of lake Michigan, but through the influence of Mr. Pope 
 it was extended fifty miles north to include the Galena lead mines; 
 thus giving Illinois fourteen additional counties. That it would give 
 us on the site of the government fort a great city like Chicago was then 
 unknown. The reason for the change that weighed most with Congress 
 was that Illinois would thus be a western keystone state, with her head 
 at the lakes and her feet at the junction of the rivers, so binding together 
 the Mississippi valley and the eastern seaboard. Aaron Burr's project to 
 divide the Union and set up a Southwestern empire was then fresh in 
 mind. 
 
 The new state contained fifteen counties and 40,000 white inhabi- 
 tants. There was a fear that the required number would not be found, 
 but by watching every road and counting every immigrant it was made 
 up and some to spare. Chicago was not in sight. Five years after this 
 Mr. Beck wrote of Chicago as "a village of Pike county, situated on 
 lake Michigan, at the mouth of Chicago creek; contains 15 houses and 
 70 inhabitants." James Lemen Jr. was one of the three delegates from 
 St. Clair county to the convention to draft a state constitution. At the 
 first election held under it Shadrach Bond Jr., the nephew of our 
 scripture reader at the Lemen meetings in New Design, was elected 
 governor. William Kinney, our old friend the clerk of the Richland 
 Creek Baptist church, and brother-in-law of Joseph Lemen, was chosen 
 state senator. 
 
 It was decided that the state capital should be removed from Kas- 
 kaskia "to some point on the Kaskaskia river as near as might be east 
 of the third principal meridian." Carlyle, eighty miles up the river, was 
 the chief frontier town, but had a rival in Pope's Bluff, twenty miles 
 farther up, owned by Nathanael Pope. Another twenty miles up the 
 river brought the explorer to the claim of an old hunter by the name 
 of Reeves. This was the point finally selected, and named Vandalia. 
 A two story frame statehouse was erected in a noble grove of white 
 oaks, but the commissioners, guided by their frontier instincts, cut 
 down the native oaks and planted black locust trees in their stead! In 
 1820 the state records were removed to the new location, a small load 
 for a one horse wagon. With the departure of that wagon departed the 
 glory of Kaskaskia, for more than a century the metropolis of Illinois.
 
 60 History of the Baptists of Illinois 
 
 The new state constitution recognized slavery under the name of 
 "indentured servants," and we were fitted out with a regular slave code. 
 Plainly, James Lemen was in a minority in that convention. On the 
 part of all friends of humanity there was cause enough for anxiousness. 
 The seriousness of the situation justified the stand taken by James 
 Lemen, Sr., at Richland Creek church. Quarrels over rights and digni- 
 ties are of the evil one, but separation for righteousness' sake is right. 
 As regards personal interests, blessed are the peacemakers, but there is 
 no peace for those who wrong others, as long as God's people live. 
 Churches usually die of spiritual disease, not of violence. History is 
 full of it, beginning with the Spirit's cry, "Ye have left your first love." 
 The early church councils were largely for the purpose of hearing and 
 settling differences between churches and "bishops." 
 
 Among the petitions sent in to the constitutional convention by 
 those who wished special provisions, was one from the colony of 
 Presbyterian Covenanters at Kaskaskia asking for the recognition of 
 Jesus Christ in the preamble, as the Ruler of nations. Until his 
 political supremacy is acknowledge they decline to vote. Their petition 
 was not granted. They never voted but once, in the slavery contest of 
 1824. Their mistake is in understanding Christ to be a political Ruler. 
 "My kingdom is not of this world." The same declaration disposes 
 of the theory that he is an ethical Ruler. Is the world obeying Him? 
 Let us follow Him as a spirimal Ruler, and His promised kingdom is 
 on the way! There are some Baptists who do not vote because they 
 belong to a rejected Christ, and have no part in the world's business. 
 But they forget that they do not truly represent their Lord if while 
 they wait for Him they are not champions of the oppressed. Let us 
 pray for His coming, and vote as we pray! 
 
 The Baptists of Illinois at the time of the organization of the state 
 numbered 10 churches and 200 members. The Friends to Humanity 
 were strengthened by the coming of Daniel Hilton, of Maine, the first 
 of the host of New England helpers that now began to come. He 
 settled near New Design, and joined hands at once with James Lemen 
 and his people. So 1818 was a year to be remembered for both state 
 and church. There was another New Englander also, looking thought- 
 fully over to the Illinois Bottoms from the St. Louis landing, and in 
 the providence of God he was to do more in the shaping of Illinois 
 Baptist history than any other man.
 
 CHAPTER XVIII 
 JOHN M. PECK 
 
 As the first section of Illinois Baptist history gathers around the 
 name of James Lemen of Virginia, so the second section gathers around 
 the name of John M. Peck of Connecticut. He was born in Litchfield, 
 Conn., October 31, 1789. His puritan ancestors had tilled the soil of 
 Connecticut since 1634. May 8, 1809, he was married to Sarah Paine, 
 and like the Lemens they set up a christian home, with family worship 
 morning and evening. They were both members of the Congregational 
 church. When their eldest child was a month old the question of his 
 "dedication in baptism" came before them. They had doubts about the 
 scripturalness of the practice, and a number of interviews with Dr. 
 Lyman Beecher, father of Henry Ward Beecher, failed to give relief. 
 In 1811 they removed to Greene county, N. Y., where they both united 
 with the New Durham Baptist church. By this church Peck was 
 licensed to preach, and was ordained by the Catskill Baptist church 
 in 1813. 
 
 In 1817, with James E. Welch, he was commissioned a missionary 
 to the "far" west, with headquarters at St. Louis. With his wife and 
 three little children in a one horse wagon, July 25, he left his father's 
 house for his journey of 1200 miles into the wilderness. They arrived 
 at Shawneetown October 6, and leaving his partner to bring his horse 
 and wagon across the country, he embarked with his family on a keel- 
 boat bound for St. Louis. He arrived there December 1, sick, and for 
 two months was confined to his lodgings, a single room on the corner 
 of Maria and Myrtle streets. 
 
 On Saturday morning, June 20, 1818, with his horse he was 
 ferried over the river for his first visit to Illinois. The occasion was 
 the monthly meeting of the Ogle's Creek church, in the Badgley settle- 
 ment. David Badgley was pastor of the church, and between the two 
 there sprang up a hearty friendship. Mr. Peck preached for them on 
 Saturday, and again on Sunday, and made a very favorable impression. 
 
 Two months after this visit, on a sultry August day, Mr. Peck had 
 business at the Illinois capital, Kaskaskia, and again crossing on the 
 great ferry, he turned his horse's head in the direction of New Design. 
 He dined at the blockhouse and residence of our former friend the first 
 
 61
 
 62 History of the Baptists of Illinois 
 
 clerk of the Illinois Association, William Whiteside. He died a year 
 or so before, but his widow made the traveling missionary welcome. 
 An hour before sunset he arrived at the story-and-a-half brick and fram.e 
 farmhouse and traveler's rest of James Lemen. It is still a serviceable 
 dwelling. A few rods away is the old cemetery with its marble monu- 
 ment ereaed by the donations of the Baptists of Illinois. It was the 
 first meeting of the two great m.en. Of Mr. Lemen's eight children all 
 were married, and himself and two of his sons were ordained ministers 
 of the gospel. Of these two sons one at this time was absent at Kas- 
 kaskia as a delegate to the constitutional convention. The two younger 
 sons were not professors of religion; another had fallen away. For 
 these, at family worship, the parents with tears requested the prayers of 
 their guest. It was an affecting season. Less than a year afterwards the 
 two unconverted sons were baptized, and in their turn became preachers. 
 
 From New Design south to Prairie du Rocher, 16 miles, there was at 
 this time, not a house, only a horse path through the brush and timber. 
 At Kaskaskia Mr. Peck stayed one night, rooming at the tavern with a 
 convention delegate from Gallatin county, from whom he says he 
 learned much about the state and the process of state making. He was 
 an omnivorous gatherer of knowledge on all subjects. 
 
 October 9, 1818, the first meeting of the separate Illinois association 
 was held with the Ogle's Creek church, St. Clair county, at the house of 
 Job Badgley. Mr. Peck was on hand, armed with the constitution of his 
 first missionary society. He called it the "United Society for the Spread 
 of the Gospel." His purpose was to aid the work of himself and Mr. 
 Welch, and Isaac McCoy's work among the Indians, incidentally also 
 to encourage better schools and teachers. Practically it was a society for 
 home evangelism. After the plan was explained to the Association it 
 was cordially received, and they voted to recommend it for the considera- 
 tion of the churches. 
 
 An enterprise on which Mr. Peck had set his heart was a school for 
 the elementary training of preachers and teachers. It was ten years 
 before this wish was realized in Illinois. In the meantime he pressed 
 his "United Society." He received for it in St. Louis a collection of 
 $26, at one time. But he relied more on the small amounts. Auxiliary 
 to the United Societies he organized Female Mite Societies. 
 
 A friend in St. Louis who was interested in Upper Alton property 
 obtained his promise that he would visit that point before deciding on 
 the location of the school. Accordingly late one afternoon, February
 
 History of the Baptists of Illinois 63 
 
 23, 1819, he crossed the river at a ferry three miles above Alton, reach- 
 ing Upper Alton after dark. There were about forty families on the 
 ground ; half were in cabins and the other half in wagons and camps. 
 The only boarding house in the place was so forbidding that he sought 
 shelter in one of the cabins, leaving his horse munching corn in an 
 uncovered hog-pen. The next morning he made a tour of observation 
 through the town, and decided that the outlook at Upper Alton for an 
 educational center was not encouraging. He thus humorously described 
 the situation: 
 
 "I found a school of some 25 or 30 boys and girls, taught by a wan- 
 dering backwoodsman, but the chance for a boarding school was small 
 indeed. There was the old settlement about the forks of Wood river 
 and Rattan Prairie that might furnish a few scholars. The Macoupin 
 settlement, real frontier rowdies, was 30 miles north, or a dozen 
 families ; then three families had ventured over Apple creek. The emi- 
 grants to the Sangamon country went there the preceding winter. Peoria, 
 on the Illinois river, was an old French village of 25 cabins. Morgan, 
 Cass, Scott, and all those counties along the Illinois river, were the 
 hunting grounds of the Indians, Major Wadsworth and half a dozen 
 families, had made their pitch in Calhoun county. The country to the 
 east and north was a vast wilderness. Where then could scholars be 
 found to fill a seminary at Upper Alton? After deciding such questions 
 I gave a man a quarter to clean the mud from my horse, and made my 
 way by another path back to Smeltzer's Ferry." 
 
 The school was finally located at St. Charles, Mo., and that became 
 Elder Peck's home for the next three years. 
 
 On Friday, March 10, 1819, a cold, raw day, Elder Peck was again 
 at Elder Badgley's and the next day he organized the "Ogle's Creek 
 Mite Society, auxiliary to the United Society for the spread of the 
 Gospel," the first organization of the kind ever formed in Illinois. On 
 Monday he started with Elder Badgley for a week's horseback tour. 
 Their course was east to William Padon's, of Silver Creek church ; then 
 north to Eld. Robert Brazil's, of Looking Glass Prairie church, where 
 he organized the Looking Glass Prairie Mite Society. Still north to 
 Mr. Seybold's of the Cantine Creek church, north of Troy, where was 
 formed the "Cantine Creek Mite Society." This was a second Cantine 
 Creek church, eight miles northwest of the first. The tour was closed 
 by preaching on Monday, March 29, in the cabin of the Collins 
 brothers, the first sermon preached on the present site of Collinsville. 
 
 Elder Badgley was appointed by the United Society the first mis- 
 sionary for Illinois, and gave two month's service during the summer
 
 64 History of the Baptists of Illinois 
 
 at $16 a month. The local societies paid their funds to him, and he 
 reported to the treasurer at St. Louis. But while the roses were being 
 planted in the garden, a pestilential breath was awaiting them. It was 
 the custom of the churches to send to the association any questions they 
 might choose, and the association answered them through a committee. 
 That fall, October 8, the association met with the Looking Glass Prairie 
 church, and Mr. Peck preached the introductory sermon. The pesti- 
 lential breath referred to originated with Elder Daniel Parker, Crawford 
 county, on the eastern side of the state. By much pressure he obtained 
 the consent of his church that he might send a question to their Indiana 
 association. The same question was sent to other associations. For the 
 Illinois association it was in charge of William Jones, pastor of the 
 Wood River church. Brother Jones quietly passed it to the proper com- 
 mittee. "Wood River: Is there any use for the United Society for the 
 Spread of the Gospel? If so, wherein does its usefulness consist?" 
 Answer to question one: "Yes." Answer to question two: "Its use 
 is to supply destitute places with preaching." Brother Wood goes home 
 beaten. But with an evil energy he will continue to agitate until the 
 association meets again.
 
 CHAPTER XIX 
 ELDER PECK'S REMOVAL TO ILLINOIS 
 
 At the same time that brethren Peck and Welch were commissioned 
 by the Triennial Convention to labor in the Mississippi valley, in and 
 about St. Louis, Isaac McCoy was commissioned by the same agency 
 to labor in the Wabash valley, in the neighborhood of Vincennes. He 
 was born in Fayette county. Pa., June 13, 1784. His father was a 
 Baptist minister. When Isaac was six years old the family removed to 
 Kentucky. He was converted in 1800, and soon began to preach. In 
 1803 he was married to Christina Polke. In 1804 they emigrated to 
 Indiana, settling first at Vincennes, and returning in 1805 to Clarke 
 county, on the Indiana line. There he united with the Silver Creek 
 church, of which his father had formerly been pastor, the only Baptist 
 church at that time in Indiana. By that church he received a formal 
 license to preach. In 1808 he removed to Bruce's settlement, now 
 Bruceville, near Vincennes, and worked at his trade as a wheelmaker. 
 In 1809 he aided in organizing the Maria Creek Baptist church, in 
 Indiana just across the Wabash river from Lawrence county, 111., and 
 became its pastor. There he spent eight years, tilling a farm, working 
 at his trade, preaching to the church, and doing what he might for the 
 spiritual destitution around him. In 1816 he presented to his brethren 
 the plan of a society for home and Indian evangelization, two years 
 before brother Peck proposed a similar plan in Illinois. 
 
 During 1817 he was an accredited missionary of the convention, 
 but the next year, casting himself on God, he gave himself exclusively 
 to the gospel among the Indians. He opened a mission at Montezuma, 
 90 miles away, and removed there with his wife and family of seven 
 children. In 1820 they removed to Fort Wayne, 180 miles distant, 
 where was located the Indian Agency. There they remained until 1828, 
 when to escape the whisky trader he secured from the government the 
 grant of the Indian Territory and led his people there. 
 
 It had always been Mr. McCoy's desire to have Mr. Peck for his 
 associate, and on removing to Fort Wayne he renewed his request. The 
 Board were favorable. It seemed to them at long range to be less 
 necessary on account of the number of churches and preachers already 
 on the ground. They did not realize the importance of giving character 
 
 65
 
 66 History of the Baptists of Illinois 
 
 to those churches while in their formative state. So it came to pass on 
 one fateful Saturday, two months after brother McCoy's arrival at Fort 
 Wayne, July 9, 1820, official intelligence came to the St. Louis mission- 
 aries that their mission was closed, "and brother Peck is directed as 
 speedily as practicable to remove to Fort Wayne and join Mr. McCoy 
 in his labors among the Indians." 
 
 But Mr. Peck was not at all of that mind. He knew better than the 
 Philadelphia Board the value of the work he was doing. He was as 
 certainly called of the Spirit to help lay the foundations in Illinois, as 
 Mr. McCoy was to be the apostle to the Indians in Indiana. In a letter 
 written three years afterwards he said: 
 
 "My mind is often deeply impressed with the thought that I am 
 laboring for the future generations. . . . Under what responsibility 
 should one act who lays the foundation in a new country!" 
 
 The result was that he resigned his connection with the home Society, 
 and for the next two years did his work and maintained his family as 
 best he could. It was a time of deep trouble for him. His eldest son 
 and his brother-in-law died within two days of each other. His whole 
 family were sick, and he was himself at one time given up to die. He 
 had led in organizing a church and erecting a meeting house in St. 
 Louis, and this now added to his burdens, for debt was incurred which 
 he could not pay. Ultimately the building was sold and the church — 
 the First Baptist Church of St. Louis — disbanded. In connection with 
 the church, and at St. Charles north of St. Louis, he had instituted 
 schools; now these also ceased. How during this period the mission 
 families subsisted it would be diffcult to tell, but they had a God who 
 had promised. "Trust in the Lord and do good ; dwell in the land, and 
 verily thou shalt be fed." — Is. 37:3. It is a promise as true at this hour 
 as when first given. 
 
 In 1822 he was taken up by the Massachusetts Baptist Missionary 
 Society, the first society in this country for doing home mission work. 
 It was formed in 1802. He was to receive five dollars a week, of which 
 he was to raise what he could on the field. A small support truly, but 
 a reasonably sure one. 
 
 On receiving his commission he removed, April 30, 1822, over the 
 river into Illinois, settling on a half section of fine land, unimproved, 
 in St. Clair county, and naming it Rock Spring, from a gushing spring 
 in the limestone about thirty rods from the house. It is sixteen miles 
 from St. Louis, on the straight road to Vincennes. The spring has
 
 History of the Baptists of Illinois 67 
 
 dwindled to a mere trickle, though the creek into which it sent its 
 waters still flows in the old bed. It was a Baptist neighborhood, largely 
 from Georgia, and they aided "the Elder" in his building and spring 
 work. On Sunday, May 26, there was constituted the Rock Spring 
 Baptist church. State senator William Kinney assisted in the organiza- 
 tion and preached. The church however did not long continue. In 
 1825 Rock Spring became a postoffice, superceding Cherry Grove. The 
 farmhouse that succeeded the first temporary cabin still stands, and is 
 a substantial dwelling. It shares with the Lemen farmhouse in Monroe 
 county the honor of being a place of Baptist pilgrimage. They are not 
 shrines, or sacraments in brick, but are memorials of two men who did 
 more than any other two men for the Baptist cause in Illinois. 
 
 So far, Elder Peck had been received in the most friendly manner 
 by the Baptists of the Illinois Association, and it was his purpose to 
 merit a continuance of the same. But in the associational Query from 
 Wood River church in 1822 a storm was lurking which within two 
 years covered the sky. At its annual meeting in 1824 the association 
 repealed its previous friendly action in this style: 
 
 "Resolved unanimously by this Association, that we view the general 
 conduct and proceedings in this country of those preachers, and espe- 
 cially that of John M. Peck, patronized by the Baptist Board of Foreign 
 Missions, to have been distressing to the brethren, and prejudicial to the 
 cause of Christ amongst the Baptist churches in this Union. 
 
 "Resolved, further, that no preacher who has been or shall be 
 patronized by the Baptist Board of Foreign Missions, shall hereafter 
 have a seat in this Association unless he shall have withdrawn himself 
 from their patronage and service." 
 
 What a change is here! It comes from Daniel Parker on the 
 Wabash, aided by antinomian Baptists of the east. The chief portion of 
 the Circular Letter of the Illinois Union in 1824 was copied from the 
 antimission Philadelphia Reformer.
 
 CHAPTER XX 
 
 THE ANTI-MISSION PERIOD 
 
 When the mission spirit began to spread among Baptists it came into 
 colhsion with the antinomian view of God. The result was anti- 
 missionism; the theory of Do Nothing developed into the determina- 
 tion that no one else should Do Anything. No one place has the un- 
 desirable honor of giving it birth. Wherever there was an antinomian 
 root beneath the soil, christian activity irritated it into life. In Illinois 
 it historically began with the coming of Daniel Parker into Crawford 
 county in 1818. It is a remarkable coincidence that the same year in 
 which the missionary Peck entered Illinois on the west, the antimis- 
 sionary Parker entered from the east. And the year in which Isaac 
 McCoy removed from the Wabash District to enter upon his Indian 
 mission, the name of Daniel Parker appears on the records for the first 
 time. 
 
 Daniel Parker was from Franklin county, Ga. He removed to the 
 heart of Tennessee, in Dickson county, in 1803, and was ordained there 
 in 1806. In 1817 he took up his journey for the "Wabash country," 
 and the following year settled in Lamotte township, Crawford county, 
 111., on the Wabash river. He was a small, keen looking man. On 
 the one hand intensely energetic, ambitious, fluent; on the other hand 
 illiterate, obstinate, nervous, visionary. He could read but could not 
 write, and was obliged to depend on others to do his writing for him. 
 He could not bear a rival. When he came to the Wabash valley he 
 found the influence of Isaac McCoy supreme, and war was on from that 
 moment. John M. Peck, who saw the whole matter rise from the be- 
 ginning, said: 
 
 "Parker was not the kind of man who would sufl^er another to hold 
 a more elevated place in the estimation of Baptists than himself. Hence 
 under the show of great zeal for the cause of Christ it became necessary 
 for him to undermine McCoy's influence and that of his friends. His 
 indefatigable zeal, which would have done honor to a good cause, and 
 the prejudices of the people, enabled him at last to accomplish his object 
 in part. This explains his attack upon the members of Maria Creek 
 church, where McCoy was formerly pastor; his maneuvering in the 
 Association; and the formation of an extensive combination among 
 churches and Associations in Indiana and Illinois." — From an Address 
 to the Baptists of Illinois, General Union Meeting, Winchester, Oct., 
 1832. 
 
 68
 
 History of the Baptists of Illinois 69 
 
 The persistence of Parker and his sympathizers kept the Associations 
 in a constant turmoil. From 1820 onward the Query was brought regu- 
 larly before every Association in the west until they took one side or 
 the other. In the Missouri Association it failed to carry. In 1822 the 
 Wabash Association spent five hours discussing whether one church 
 could properly have a grievance against another for supporting missions. 
 Parker with an inspirational frenzy — he believed himself inspired when 
 he preached — led the forces on one side, and William Polke on the other. 
 John M. Peck spoke an hour. It was a battle of giants! The Association 
 decided that if a church contributed to the cause of missions, it was no 
 other church's business. But the contest was renewed the following 
 year. 
 
 In December of the same year Peck and Parker met in Vandalia. 
 Parker was a state senator, and Peck preached in the hall of representa- 
 tives in behalf of Bible societies, and took a collection. Parker was as 
 hostile as ever, but said little, for it was not so easy to oppose Bible 
 circulation as some other kinds of gospel work. 
 
 When the Sangamon Association was formed, in 1823, "by a pre- 
 concerted movement to which few were knowing," the following called 
 the "tenth article," was adopted by a bare majority of one: 
 
 "It shall be the duty of the Association to debar from a seat any 
 United Baptist who is a member of any missionary society." 
 
 It was adopted as a by-law, requiring only a majority. Immediately 
 by the same majority of one it was placed among the Articles of Faith, 
 unchangeable except by a unanimous vote! In 1826 to get rid of the 
 obnoxious article the Association was dissolved and reorganized, but 
 two years afterwards it was again carried against missions. From that 
 time there was a conservative majority; so that in 1831 the Circular 
 Letter warned the six or eight churches to "beware of money hunters, 
 title sellers, supporters of the missionary spirit in any of its forms." 
 
 About that time the antimission party began changing their de- 
 nominational name from United Baptist to Regular Baptist, as a further 
 means of resistance to missionary influences. The Sangamon Association 
 did so in 1836, which led to the formation of the present Springfield 
 Association. 
 
 Morgan County Association was formed in 1830, and agreed not to 
 make missions a bar to fellowship; but in 1832, "in obedience to 
 Sangamon, which acted in subserviency to Wabash," it was voted that,
 
 70 History of the Baptists of Illinois 
 
 "The Association say by way of answer to the corresponding letter 
 from Sangamon, that she will have nothing to do directly or indirectly, 
 with the Foreign Board of modern missionaries, or any of its branches, 
 such as Bible societies, Sunday schools auxiliary to the Sunday School 
 Union, Temperance societies, so called, believing them all to be inven- 
 tions of men in their present operations." 
 
 During the debate occasioned by the above it was declared that, "The 
 church ought to have control of the money of its members." 
 
 In 1830 also the Spoon River Association was organized, and in 
 obedience to the same influence of the Wabash Association expressed 
 through Sangamon, refused correspondence with all "who have any- 
 thing to do with missions." Most of the brethren doing these things 
 would have done differently under different leadership. This is illus- 
 trated by an interesting experience that came to Elder Jacob Bower in 
 those days. He removed from Kentucky to Scott county, Illinois, in 
 1828. He came as James Lemen did, because he did not like the idea 
 of bringing up a family in a slave state. A few weeks after his arrival 
 the Winchester Baptist church, then called Sandy Creek, was constituted. 
 Two years afterward the Manchester Baptist church, at first called 
 Pleasant Grove, was organized. Of both these churches Elder Bower 
 became pastor. But in 1832 by the accidental discharge of a rifle his 
 foot was so lacerated that he was permanently lame. That summer the 
 Pleasant Grove church organized a Sunday school, and sixteen of the 
 scholars were converted and united with the church. This led to the 
 antimission resolution of the Morgan Association to which the churches 
 belonged, and the organization of the Blue River, now the Quincy 
 Association. But though the churches went into the new Association 
 they were still in fear of the old preachers, and of losing Baptist 
 fellowship; and thereon hangs the tale, written by himself long 
 afterwards.
 
 CHAPTER XXI 
 HOW AN ANTIMISSION CHURCH WAS CONVERTED 
 
 Daring the summer of 1833 two brethren of the committee of corre- 
 spondence at Alton, Elder J. M. Peck and Doctor B. F. Edwards, hear- 
 ing of my affliction, paid me a visit of sympathy and prayed with me. 
 The doctor was still of opinion that I would recover so as to ride and 
 preach. They inquired into my pecuniary matters, and found that my 
 family were on the eve of suffering, and that something must be done 
 for their relief, and that soon. The doctor himself advanced me $80, 
 a favor which will not be forgotten. They also wished to know if I 
 would accept an appointment from the Home Mission Society for $100 
 a year, and give myself wholly to preaching the gospel. I told them 
 it would be a great favor, indeed; yet I was resolved to do as I had 
 always done, preach as much as I could, pay or no pay. As for any 
 help from our antimission people, I expected none. And my own views 
 on the subject of missions, I said to Dr. Edwards, had not changed since 
 the time he was acquainted with me in Kentucky. They then gave me 
 to understand that I might expect an appointment from the Society, 
 and to hold myself in readiness to go to work. 
 
 On December 21 the appointment came to hand. I let the brethren 
 of Pleasant Grove church know that I had received it, and that I felt 
 myself under many obligations to the Society for their kindness, not 
 only to me as an individual but to the church, and to the people gen- 
 erally in the west. But the brethren took a different view of the subject. 
 They looked on it as an insult, and called me to account for accepting 
 such an appointment. 
 
 "Why," said one, "it will be reported all over the country that our 
 pastor is a missionary!" But it appears to have been no disgrace to have 
 it reported all over the country that their pastor and his family were 
 suffering for the necessaries of life! After long debate it was resolved 
 that I must send back my appointment to the Board without explanation 
 or thanks. I told them it would be necessary to give reasons why 1 
 could not accept, and the church agreed that I should do so. 
 
 I prepared the letter, stating the aa of the church in the case, and 
 submitted it for approval. They rejected it. It must not go in that 
 shape, for all the blame would fall on the church. I wrote a second
 
 72 History of the Baptists of Illinois 
 
 letter, and that was rejected. I framed a third, which they thought 
 would answer. The church then appointed one of the deacons to take 
 the letter and my commission to the postoffice and see it was safely 
 deposited, that the offending paper might go back whence it came. 
 
 Now came a trying time in the history of my family. I had bor- 
 rowed money at 20 percent to buy bread and meat, and now the question 
 was how I was to pay that money. One of the deacons started a sub- 
 scription among the members of the church, but got two names besides 
 his own. He said to me, "There is so much opposition to it that I 
 shall make no further attempt." "Burn the paper," I replied, "for I 
 see they are determined to starve me out. They would not be satisfied 
 until I sent back the commission which promised me $100, and now 
 they are unwilling a subscription paper should be circulated because it 
 looks a little like being missionary." 
 
 Six weeks after my commission had been returned it came to hand 
 again. I told one of my friends in confidence, and that I did not intend 
 the church should know it. But the church did know it, and at the next 
 meeting charges were preferred against me for receiving back my 
 commission, knowing the church was opposed to it. After discussion 
 the matter was laid over to the next meeting, and the two deacons were 
 appointed to labor with me and report. They let me know what night 
 I might expect a visit from them, and in the meantime I wrestled with 
 God, pleading the promise given me in the woods of Kentucky, before 
 I began to preach: "I will never leave thee nor forsake thee." 
 
 The evening came, and the deacons came. After prayer they com- 
 menced their labor, and I heard them patiently until they were through. 
 Then I made my defense: 
 
 "Brethren, both of you were acquainted with me in Kentucky, and 
 heard me all the time I preached there; and you know my views have 
 not changed on the subject of missions. You have heard me speak of 
 Judson and wife. You recollect when I went twice to a schoolhouse in 
 your vicinity and addressed the Sunday school. You know I approved 
 of the Bible society in Russellville, and though I was not a member 
 Elder Warden and Elder Tatum were, and they both distributed Bibles 
 and Testaments. Look here, deacon ; has not your wife got a Testament 
 with P. Warden's name on it, and "American Bible Society" stamped 
 on the cover? 
 
 "Yes."
 
 History of the Baptists of Illinois 73 
 
 "Again you know that Sandy Creek church, in which you, brother C, 
 had your membership, had every year a subscription paper for the benefit 
 of brother Talbert. And you know it was the custom in the churches 
 to pay annually a subscription for their pastors. What is the reason 
 that the same Baptists who used to do it in Kentucky dare not do it in 
 Illinois? 
 
 "You are wonderfully alarmed at the word, 'Missionary,' and I 
 doubt whether either of you know what it means. Here is Jones' Dic- 
 tionary; look for the word and see the definition. What do you read? 
 
 " 'MISSIONARY — One sent to propagate religion.' 
 
 "Very well; one sent to propagate religion. Do you suppose that 
 is a true definition?" 
 
 "I suppose it is," one of them replied. 
 
 "Jesus Christ was the first gospel missionary," I continued. "Hear 
 him: 'I am not come to do mine own will, but the will of him who 
 sent me. As the Father sent me, so send I you. Go ye into all the 
 world and propagate religion among all nations.' One sent to preach 
 is a missionary. You have often heard me say that if I did not believe 
 God had sent me to preach I would not preach another sermon. I am 
 a missionary for God sent me. Now if you consider me a preacher of 
 the gospel, and have no other charge against me than that of being a 
 missionary, you must report to the church that your labor with me 
 was unsuccessful, and if the church exclude me I shall have to stand 
 alone. The Presbyterians and Methodists are in favor of missions, but 
 they practice sprinkling instead of baptism and I cannot unite with 
 them on that account. The Campbellites teach remission in baptism, 
 and deny the agency of the Holy Spirit in conversion ; I cannot travel 
 with them. I cannot go with any church but the Baptist, and if they 
 exclude me I must stand alone; I have no alternative." 
 
 "No," exclaimed the deacons, rising to their feet, while tears stood 
 in their eyes, "you won't stand alone; we will stand with you, and if 
 the church excludes you they must exclude us!" 
 
 It was a weeping time ; the God of missions was in the midst. They 
 took their leave, assuring me they would stand by me. At the next 
 church meeting they made their report: 
 
 "We found Elder Bower steadfast. We can do nothing with him. 
 We found he was of the same mind as when he was our pastor in 
 Kentucky. He made it plain to us that he was right and we were wrong. 
 So if the church excludes him she will have to exclude us likewise!"
 
 74 History of the Baptists of Illinois 
 
 There was much consultation by the brethren, and by some of the 
 sisters, and then it was voted that the church was satisfied with Elder 
 Bower. There were but two dissenting votes, and these two suffered 
 exclusion rather than Hve with a church that had a missionary for a 
 pastor. The next question was to know what the Elder should do with 
 the commission from the Society. It was decided that he should keep it 
 and act under it. 
 
 Thus a whole church except rwo members were converted in one 
 day to be in favor of missions. And it was the only missionary church 
 in the state of Illinois that I had any knowledge of, except Rock Spring, 
 Edwardsville and Upper Alton." 
 
 (Viz, outside the Friends of Humanity, who numbered at this time 
 26 churches in Illinois, with 850 members and 25 preachers. They 
 comprised the great bulk of our missionary Baptist churches, but on 
 account of their radical position on slavery, their fervency and their 
 peculiar name, there was a lack of full sympathy between them and the 
 churches organized by Elder Peck.) 
 
 Elder Bower continued to be pastor also of the Winchester church, 
 which remained in the Morgan Association, but after the deliverance 
 against missions at the associational meetings in 1832, they dismissed 
 him as pastor for fear of exclusion from the Association. Yet the very 
 thing they feared came upon them, for being wrongfully accused to the ■ 
 Association as being missionary and in "disorder," the church was 
 dropped from fellowship. The thoroughly antimission part then con- 
 stituted themselves into a separate church, giving it the name of Friend- 
 ship, and were received back into the Association. The two churches 
 still exist side by side, but the younger has never prospered as has the 
 older.
 
 CHAPTER XXII 
 
 CAUSES OF THE ANTIMISSION MOVEMENT 
 
 When we look for the reasons for the wonderful spread of anti- 
 missionism among the Baptists of this country in 1820-40, we meet 
 among the first the extreme form in which some held the doctrine of 
 predestination. Such store did they set on this that many called them- 
 selves "Predestinarian Baptists." They contended that they were not 
 opposed to the spread of the gospel, and the translation of the Bible, but 
 they would let God do this work in his own time and in his own way. 
 When God saved the heathen he would save them himself; until then 
 all we can do for them is to civilize them, by secular means. "We 
 could bear with it," exclaimed Parker, "if it was not done in the sacred 
 name of religion!" Here he joined hands with the papacy, supposing 
 that God has some things too holy for humanity. He hoped that some 
 time God would have a purpose of grace for the heathen, and suggested 
 that it might be through some great persecution that gospel preachers 
 would be scattered among them. Referring to the pagan persecutions 
 he cried: 
 
 "The devil got mad, struck the fatal blow, and scattered the dis- 
 ciples of Christ ; and I should as soon think that somehow like this the 
 gospel will go to all nations, as anyhow else." 
 
 Antinomianism is opposition to the moral law. If we are saved by 
 grace we are delivered from law. Not so; we are delivered from the 
 moral law that we may obey it. We are saved "that the ordinance ot 
 the law might be fulfilled in us who walk not after the flesh but after 
 the Spirit." — Rom. 8:4. The antinomian does not relish the intimation 
 that he should "add" anything to his faith. — 2 Pet. 1:5. 
 
 Another element in the antimission excitement was the fear oi 
 ecclesiastical authority above the churches. This was a real fear, as 
 history shows. But Parker and his followers fell into the very pit they 
 would flee from, for they made a greater misuse of church and asso- 
 ciational authority than was ever seen in the Baptist denomination 
 before. They treated as aliens all who differed from them on this 
 matter of policy, teaching that in a church an antimission minority 
 might exclude the majority. It is said that in Georgia a member of an 
 antimission church was excluded for drunkenness, and afterward his 
 
 75
 
 76 History of the Baptists of Illinois 
 
 wife was excluded for joining with her husband a temperance society. 
 When an Association excluded a church for retaining members friendly 
 to missions, it was as truly a usurpation of authority as when a priest- 
 hood punished a man for having a Bible. In their effort to be primitive 
 Baptists they ceased to be Baptists. 
 
 Again, jealousy is a bad word, but that is what troubled many of the 
 preachers. There were other preachers who were uneducated, but they 
 did what they could with the resources at hand. Said Elder Peck: 
 
 "Many preachers in our state give, besides Sundays, fifty to a hun- 
 dred working days, with a horse, each year, and frequently ferriage and 
 other traveling expenses. A man and horse is worth seventy-five cents 
 to one dollar a day on the farm. Thus he really pays fifty to a hundred 
 dollars a year to support the gospel, while his brethren who get the 
 benefit of his labor pay nothing." 
 
 These brethren did nobly, and their reward is in the Lord's hand 
 when He returns, but by the presence of restless spirits among them they 
 were led to be jealous of men who had a little better education and a 
 surer stipend. 
 
 The Friends to Humanity were not carried away in this excitement. 
 They had a moral purpose outside of themselves which kept them steady. 
 None of their churches became antimission, and at one point they were 
 the only Baptist churches in the state that were not so. There is in it 
 a lesson of psychology. It was an excitement, and therefore unex- 
 plained. We cannot analyze a panic, or whatever has passed from the 
 judgment into the emotions. We recall the New England witch ex- 
 citement, which has never been explained and never will be. Good 
 men were in it, and were terribly sincere, yet afterwards most gladly 
 would they have undone what in their sincerity they had done. Re- 
 member our own Bible Union excitement, when the mere presence of 
 an agent of the opposite party would in some churches almost create 
 a panic. 
 
 Antimissionism was promoted by falsehood. One of its authorities 
 
 is Hassell's Old School Baptist History. He says, as if it was true: 
 
 "Missionaries use the poor heathen as mules or oxen; whipping 
 them if they travel too slowly, and hitching them outdoors like beasts of 
 burden. They send home false reports of success to their employers, 
 for the purpose of retaining their incomes. See the great increase of 
 vice, crime, dishonesty, theft, drunkenness, licentiousness, among the 
 heathen after the introduction of this spurious Christianity. . . . When 
 one scheme becomes a little stale they start another, so as to keep the
 
 History of the Baptists of Illinois 77 
 
 minds of the people sufficiently excited to part with their money to these 
 greedy beggars, who keep much of the money they get to pay themselves 
 for begging, and the object for which they beg is but little cared for." 
 
 It is plain that the purpose of the writer of this was not to get at 
 the truth but to carry his point. Brother Jacob Bower says on this 
 subject: 
 
 "The. opposers closed their eyes and ears against all information. 
 They reported that all who went to hear a missionary would be taxed — 
 by the missionary people — 25 cents for each sermon they heard, fifty 
 cents for being baptized, and a dollar a year afterwards. In 1834 
 seven ministers m.et at Winchester to hold a protracted meeting and 
 had but eleven hearers, such was the opposition to the mission cause. 
 A sister said to me, 'The people say you preachers are missionaries and 
 they are afraid of being taxed, is the reason they do not turn out to 
 hear you.' 
 
 "I had a similar experience in Greene county, where I had a station 
 to preach. A brother met me at the door and forbade me to enter, 
 for he had heard that I was a missionary and that all who heard a 
 missionary preach would be taxed 25 cents. Yet I found that as fast as 
 the case was understood much of the prejudice would cease." 
 
 The general prevalence of the revival spirit in the missionary 
 churches, in contrast with the others, is the most convincing answer. 
 In 1831 the Circular Letter of the Wabash District Association, the 
 home of Daniel Parker, said : 
 
 "Zion is almost forgotten. But little prayer for her, for sinners, 
 ourselves or our brethren, is now felt or done. Watching over each 
 other for evil becomes more common than for good. Church discipline 
 becomes more resorted to for the purpose of excluding than for the 
 object of reclaiming." 
 
 In the same year in the 25 churches of the Friends to Humanity 
 there were 173 baptisms, and "peace throughout their borders." 
 
 These things are past, but the record is for us. "The wise man will 
 hear and increase learning." If we profit by the experience of our 
 fathers they and we may yet rejoice together.
 
 CHAPTER XXIII 
 GROWTH OF THE FRIENDS TO HUMANITY 
 
 For two years the little Cantine Creek Baptized church, Friends to 
 Humanity, stood alone, though increasing slowly in membership and 
 having sympathizers in the other churches. Then a great day came. 
 February 4-5, 1810, there were three ordinations to the ministry. 
 Benjamin Ogle was ordained on Saturday evening, and Joseph Lemen 
 and his father on the next day. James Lemen Jr. and John Baugh were 
 the ordaining council. We may imagine what a tearful and happy time 
 it was! The Lord was in the midst. Three years afterwards, June 20, 
 1813, James Garretson was ordained at a meeting of the church at his 
 own residence on Ridge Prairie, and at the same meeting seven were 
 received for baptism. 
 
 In the meantime, February, 1811, the antislavery portion of the 
 Silver Creek church withdrew and were constituted a separate church, 
 with seven members. In place of a regular Association the two churches 
 met in semi-annual meetings, continuing three days. These meetings 
 were chiefly devotional and social ; much singing and prayer and preach- 
 ing and handshaking and heartiness. They were in fact revival meetings, 
 and it was hoped that conversions and baptisms would follow. 
 
 At the spring meeting in 1817 a letter of fellowship was read from 
 Howard county. Mo., two hundred miles up the Missouri river, from 
 Baptists in harmony with the principles of the Friends to Humanity, 
 and requesting some of their preachers to come over and assist them in 
 being organized into a church. The request was granted, and the long 
 journey by ferry and horseback was made by James Lemen Jr. and 
 Benjamin Ogle. The church was organized October 5, of 29 members, 
 and was named Providence. Within ten years there were six such 
 Baptist churches in Missouri, and in 1828 they formed a separate 
 Association. 
 
 But the movement was not to have the success that it had in Illinois. 
 In 1818 Missouri petitioned Congress for admission into the Union as 
 a state, and for two years the controversy went on whether it should be 
 slave or free. So fierce was the debate in Congress that it threatened to 
 dissolve the Union. It was finally admitted as a slave state on condition 
 that all future states north of the southern boundary of Missouri should 
 
 78
 
 History of the Baptists of Illinois 79 
 
 be free. This was the Missouri Compromise, repealed in 1854 in order 
 to make slave states of Kansas and Nebraska. It was a dark hour for 
 the "Emancipationists," as the Friends to Humanity were called, when 
 the news came that freedom was banished from Missouri. There were 
 those of the oppressors who gleefully said, "We will have Illinois next!" 
 And there was much prospect that it would be so. But in the mean- 
 time God blessed the Emancipation churches. There were additions 
 at almost every monthly meeting. May 2, 1819, Josiah and Moses 
 Lemen, James Lemen's youngest sons, were baptized in Cantine Creek. 
 Like their brothers they at once began preaching. They were ordained 
 together March 24, 1822. 
 
 In 1821 Elder Daniel Hilton gathered a company of Baptists in the 
 New Design neighborhood, some of them his old neighbors from Ohio, 
 and they were organized as the Fontaine Creek Baptized Church, Friends 
 to Humanity. That summer the work at Cantine Creek deepened into 
 the greatest revival ever known in Illinois up to that time. When the 
 annual meeting was held at New Design, September 7, forty- two had 
 been baptized, and others were being constantly added. Cantine Creek 
 became the largest Baptist church in the state. From this time the 
 Friends to Humanity became a power to be reckoned with. 
 
 And about this time the churches in the old Association began to 
 be antimission. In 1824 they closed the door. In 1822 it met at 
 Wood River, and Elder Peck preached at the outdoor "stand" while the 
 Association was doing business in the house. He was received with 
 coldness. He was in a difficult position. He could not affiliate with 
 the Friends to Humanity, for he could not but believe their radical 
 position on the slavery question to be unwise. Their manner of preach- 
 ing also, and their social meetings was too demonstrative. He said of 
 them: 
 
 "Too much stress on the grace equally given to all men, and the 
 whole result as dependent on the improvement which they make of it. 
 Too much disorder; too much singing and shaking hands." 
 
 He chose therefore, rather, the company of the "regular" Baptists; 
 and when they rejected him on account of his missionary principles, 
 as they had rejected James Lemen on account of his antislavery prin- 
 ciples, he was alone. After 1824 he was practically in church fellow- 
 ship only with his home church at Rock Spring. These isolated years 
 were filled up with itinerant preaching, and with Bible, Sunday school 
 and educational work up and down the land. To this he was called.
 
 80 History of the Baptists of Illinois 
 
 The fall meeting of the Friends to Humanity was held at Joseph 
 Lemen's, on Ridge Prairie. It was the last one attended by James 
 Lemen Sr. His work was done. He died January 8, 1823. He fre- 
 quently repeated to himself, in view of the conversion and great use- 
 fulness of all his family, and the revivals in the churches, "Lord, now 
 lettest thou thy servant depart in peace, for mine eyes have seen thy 
 salvation!" His funeral was attended by a great multitude of people, 
 and the funeral sermon was preached by his son, James Jr. He was 
 buried in the family burying ground. 
 
 Their Circular Letter that year, written by Benjamin Ogle, said: 
 
 "Among the worthies whom we have lost for a season is our vener- 
 able friend and father and brother in the gospel, James Lemen Sr., of 
 blessed memory. Though called by some rigid and austere because like 
 the prophet Micaiah he never would prophesy good concerning them 
 but evil, for most of them like Ahab were not willing to quit their 
 sins. As an evangelical preacher nothing could deter him from travel- 
 ing by day or by night, through heat and cold, wet and dry, to bear 
 the tidings of salvation to a world of dying men and women, doing the 
 work of the Lord faithfully, notwithstanding the many persecutions and 
 oppositions he had to encounter. None of these things seemed to 
 move him, that he might finish his course with joy; and so it appeared 
 that he did." 
 
 All the time that he was a member at Cantine Creek, thirty-six miles 
 from his home, it is said that he never missed a church meeting. He 
 observed the same punctuality in his home. Family worship was regu- 
 larly observed, morning and evening, and when he was absent it was 
 conducted by his wife. She survived him seventeen years. He served 
 for many years as Justice of the Peace, and for a time as County Judge ; 
 but he will be best remembered as a Baptist preacher, the beginning of 
 Illinois Baptist history, and as having done more than any other man 
 except Mr. Peck to give character to the denomination and to the state. 
 We may praise God for such living facts of heavenly grace in human 
 life!
 
 CHAPTER XXIV 
 THE BATTLE FOR FREEDOM 
 
 But for the clause inserted by Congress in the constitution of the 
 Northwestern Territory, in 1787, the first constitution of the state of 
 Illinois would have admitted slavery. The convention that prepared 
 that first Illinois constitution did not make slavery illegal, but legalized 
 it under the name of "indentured servants." The frenzied agitation 
 over the admission of Missouri into the Union, in 1822, brought the 
 question to the front in Illinois. In the state election of 1822 the 
 legislature and state government elect were proslavery, except the gov- 
 ernor, Edward Coles, and he was elected only because while the pro- 
 slavery vote was divided between two opposing candidates the anti- 
 slavery vote was concentrated on Coles. Even then he won by only 
 fifty votes. In a total vote of 8600 in the state, there was a normal 
 proslavery majority of 2000. How then shall Illinois be in fact a free 
 state? It was accomplished by the enemy himself, in a manner he did 
 not intend. 
 
 In his first message to the legislature Gov. Coles recommended the 
 emancipation of the French slaves and a revision of the slave code of 
 the state. That portion of the message was referred to a committee, 
 which ironically determined to grant the governor all the revision he 
 wanted. They recommended that there be submitted to the people the 
 question of calling a convention to revise the state constitution, sup- 
 posing that with the well known proslavery majority in the state the 
 result would be a proslavery constitution. The governor had not asked 
 for this, and he vetoed the measure, but by a two-thirds vote it was 
 passed over his veto. The occasion was celebrated by a procession and 
 banquet, for it was accepted as certain that Illinois would be a slave 
 state. One of the toasts drank was: 
 
 "The state of Illinois: the ground is good; give us plenty of 
 negroes and a little industry and she will distribute her treasure." 
 
 It is the tramp's desire of a good living and little work; but the 
 elements of true manhood are not in it. The campaign began in the 
 spring of 1823 ; election day was Monday, August 2, 1824. 
 
 The convention members of the legislature before adjourning sub- 
 scribed among themselves $1000 in aid of their cause. But their oppo- 
 nents went beyond them. The governor gave his entire salary for four 
 years — $4000. Contributions were made by all classes, and the money 
 
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 CHAPTER XXV 
 THE WABASH ASSOCIATION 
 
 The first Baptist Association in Illinois was on the western side of 
 the state, on the banks of the Mississippi; and the evil fought was 
 slavery. The second was on the eastern side of the state, on the banks 
 of the Wabash, and the evil contended with was antimissionism. The 
 first reached over into Missouri ; the second reached over into Indiana. 
 The first was organized in 1807; the second in 1809. The old Illinois 
 Association held its last meeting in 1859. The Wabash adjourned with- 
 out date in 1868. Its original ground in Crawford and Lawrence, ex- 
 tending north in Edgar, Douglas and Moultrie counties, is occupied by 
 the Palestine Association. The antimission sentiment here has largely 
 faded out. It is found farther south. Its main strength is in the 
 southeastern portion of the state, where a few years ago it had a hundred 
 churches and four thousand members. It still bears the impress of 
 Daniel Parker, and still more the impress of a one-sided theology, for 
 it writes "Regular Predestinarian" before its name. The same flag was 
 floated from the masthead of the Illinois Association in its old age. The 
 original title of the Wabash was plain "Wabash Baptist Association." 
 One thing that might suggest to our predestinarian churches that they 
 are theological wanderers is the fact that they have never been able to 
 agree on a name. One of their Associations, the Salem, in the vicinity 
 of Macomb, is known as "Old School." In the central part of the state 
 they have chosen the title of "Primitive" Baptists, and a little farther 
 south as "Regular" Baptists. Still others insist on being known as 
 "Regular Predestinarian" Baptists. 
 
 Wrapped up in this word, "predestinarian" is the assumption that 
 God, being almighty, will do his work without human aid. But the 
 New Testament is full of the fact that God commands his people and 
 works with them. It would seem as if some brethren did not have a 
 whole Bible, but a Bible in fragments. Saving faith is a gift from 
 God ; therefore to some the preaching of faith as a duty of men is like 
 profaning sacred things. By the same reasoning they would tell the 
 palsied man that for him to attempt to stretch out his palsied arm would 
 be blasphemy, assuming the prerogative of God. They would be 
 opposers of Jesus. Are they less opposers when the obedience involves 
 
 84
 
 History of the Baptists of Illinois 85 
 
 not the salvation of an arm but the salvation of a soul? "When had 
 the Kehukee Association," says Hassell, the historian, "found it neces- 
 sary before this to step forward in support of any work which the God 
 of heaven was carrying on?" The remark seems to be forcible, but 
 bring it to the test of scripture: "The Lord working with them." 
 "UP ... is not the Lord gone out before thee?" "WHEN thou 
 hearest the sound of a gong in the tops of the mulberry trees THEN 
 thou shalt bestir thyself." "They came not to the help of the Lord." 
 
 There is a misunderstanding also of the relation of the church to 
 Christ. The local church is not merely an infant to be fondled, but a 
 partner in service. Associated with the Lord in his work now, as truly 
 as in his glory when he returns. It is practical unbelief to accept the 
 parable of the Sheepfold, and ignore the parable of the Vineyard. It 
 is true that God has chosen his people before their repentance, but it is 
 not true that he has chosen them without repentance. "REPENT," is the 
 first word of the gospel cry; Mark 1:14; Acts 2:38. (See Coffey's 
 History of the Regular Baptists of Southern Illinois; 53.) 
 
 Besides this the rash and violent spirit manifested suggests that the 
 antimission movement was one of instinct rather than of reason. It was 
 on the part of the leaders a struggle of self preservation. "All that a 
 man hath will he give for his life," therefore the frequent use made of 
 misrepresentation, much as a man in defense of his life will seize the 
 weapon nearest at hand. Even so respectable an authority as Hassell's 
 History assures us that, 
 
 "Missionaries use the poor heathen as mules or oxen; hitch them 
 out doors like beasts of burden, while they go into the house to preach." 
 —Hassell, 839. 
 
 Perhaps the writer, living in a slave state, had seen a slave suffer 
 that treatment, and he transferred it to the heathen. But he does it 
 blindly and desperately. See also the use made of the Association to 
 coerce the churches. The leaders knew that the purpose of the organi- 
 zation was for fellowship, and not for legislation; yet they legislated 
 and tried cases. In the Minutes of the Illinois Association for 1867 
 we read: 
 
 "The report of the committee appointed to investigate the case of 
 Richland Creek church, report that we as an Association have no right 
 to deal with a church that belongs to our body."
 
 86 History of the Baptists of Illinois 
 
 Yet the same body in 1827 resolved that: 
 
 "The Clinton Hill church be requested to make such statements as 
 they may think proper to next Association, relative to a certain resolution 
 of said church published in the Edwardsville Spectator." 
 
 A record in this case made three years afterwards will be of interest. 
 
 "The reference from the Richland Creek church relative to a certain 
 publication over the signatures of the publishing committee of the Rock 
 Spring and Edwardsville churches, published in the Pioneer of February 
 6, 1830, directed to the eastern Baptists, taken up and answered as 
 follows: When the Edwardsville and Rock Spring churches have ac- 
 cused the Illinois Association of exercising power over churches and 
 individuals and have cast a stigma on the churches and Association in 
 saying they were influenced by a few leading brethren, we think those 
 churches have been mistaken in their views. The churches composing the 
 Illinois Association have always regarded themselves as independent, and 
 influenced by none, and the general contests of former Minutes were 
 their united voices through their messengers, and they never felt a dis- 
 position to remonstrate against their former proceedings; firmly be- 
 lieving those pretended liberal institutions of the present day to spread 
 the gospel to be without license from the word of God. And as the 
 love of money is the root of all evil we fear they will only tend to sap 
 the foundation of both our civil and religious liberties. We therefore 
 advise our brethren of the different churches to beware of their 
 stratagems." 
 
 Daniel Parker's church in the Wabash Association was Lamotte, 
 Crawford county. His teachings made a division, and then there were 
 two Lamotte churches. The section opposed to him helped to organize 
 the Palestine Association, in 1841. They were called "Effort Baptists" 
 by those who did not like the effort. A few years after this the church 
 disbanded, but the Liberty church, occupying nearly the same ground, 
 is an active member of the Palestine Association. It is a country church, 
 and has held its own through the years fairly well. Eld. D. Y. Allison, 
 who was raised, lived and died there, was pastor of this church for 
 fourteen years. In all that part of the state to day, where once the 
 antimission Baptists swept everything, they are outnumbered by the 
 others ten to one. The war is over ; only the ruins of the battle fields 
 remain.
 
 CHAPTER XXVI 
 THE MUDDY RIVER ASSOCIATION 
 
 The state of Illinois below Springfield is a Baptist country. There 
 are more Baptist churches than of any other denomination. But like 
 the stars in the sky they are more numerous in some places than in 
 others. One such constellation is in the three counties of Macoupin, 
 Greene and Jersey, on the western side of the state. In those three cotm- 
 tries of forty seven whole and fractional townships there are three Bap- 
 tist churches to every two townships, and one Baptist to each twelve of 
 the population. Towards the lower end of the state there is another 
 group still more remarkable. Of the same extent in territory, there is an 
 average of two and one half Baptist churches to each township, and one 
 in nine of the population is a Baptist. If Chicago were Baptist in the 
 same proportion there would be in the city 500 Baptist churches of 400 
 members each. If the same proportion prevailed throughout the state 
 there would be in Illinois six thousand Baptist churches. 
 
 In accounting for this we may consider that this district has not 
 changed as some are changing. It was settled with a Baptist population 
 at the beginning. Baptists were on hand early and they stayed through. 
 One link of connection between the lower counties and New Design 
 is furnished in the person of our friend William Jones, of Wood River. 
 When he and his company came from North Carolina to Illinois in 
 1806 he stopped for a time in what is now Pope county, though then it 
 was in the eastern part of St. Clair county. There he met Elder Stephen 
 Stilley, and together they searched out the Baptists in the several little 
 settlements and organized them, July 19, 1806, into the Big Creek Bap- 
 tist church. Pope count}'. It was the first church of any denomination 
 in that part of the state. Elder Stilley was one of the constituent mem- 
 bers, and was pastor of the church for several years. He died in 1841. 
 The church also has disappeared. It is harder for churches to hold on 
 to their spiritual life than it is to receive it in the beginning. Big 
 Creek church appears no more on the roll, but at the time it was organ- 
 ized one new church a year, on an average, was gathered, so that by 
 1820 there were some dozen Baptist churches scattered over what is 
 now as many counties. In Oaober of that year eleven of these churches 
 came together and organized themselves into the Muddy River Asso- 
 
 87
 
 88 History of the Baptists of Illinois 
 
 ciadon. The churches were Big Creek and Lusk's Creek, Pope county; 
 Bankston's Fork and Island Ripple, Gallatin county; East Fork of 
 Muddy River, and Middle Fork of Muddy River, Franklin county; 
 Bethel Creek, Saline count)'; Hopewell, Wayne county; Ten Mile 
 Creek, Hamilton county; Lick Creek, White county; Mount Creek, 
 Jefferson count}'. How these early settlers loved the creeks! The 
 ministers most prominent in this early Association were Stephen Stilley ; 
 Wilson Henderson, called familiarly "Daddy" Henderson; and Chester 
 Carpenter. Stephen Coonrod did not begin to preach for several years ; 
 then he removed to Bond county and was pastor of the same church for 
 forty years. 
 
 Muddy River Association came under the shadow of the anti-effort 
 excitement from its birth. It has always been an Old School body. 
 Provision was made in its constitution for the disciplinary use of the 
 Association, for it was foreseen that it would be needed. In Art. 3, 
 after conceding the right of the churches to self government, this 
 exception is made: 
 
 "Nevertheless it becomes necessary in some cases where an offense is 
 committed, either by a church or an individual member, . . . that the 
 church or individual so offending be brought to trial." 
 
 It was this fear of associational discipline that, more than anything 
 else, brought the churches in line with the policy of the leaders, and 
 kept them there. It was akin to the fear of the inquisition in Spain. 
 Not all the churches obeyed, nor all in any church, and this kept up an 
 unending dissatisfaction and frequent strife. In 1834 the offending 
 article in the constitution was put to the practical test. A series 
 of "advisory" councils was sent to "sit" with troubled churches, after 
 the manner of the traveling council that saved the Illinois Association 
 in 1810. It required two years in this case to finish the work. Three 
 churches were brought into line, and two were excluded. 
 
 In 1825 Muddy River Association divided; part going to form the 
 little Wabash Association. In 1829 it again divided; part of the 
 churches withdrawing to form the Bethel Association. The new bodies 
 followed in the steps of the old, and in the latter body in 1839 the 
 disciplinary power of the Association was again resorted to. The ques- 
 tion of fellowshipping "the Baptist Board of Foreign Missions" was 
 referred to the churches, whereupon three churches out of eleven de- 
 clined to answer, and were excluded. The Association decided that a 
 refusal to answer was "a breach of good order." Yet when queries
 
 History of the Baptists of Illinois 89 
 
 were put to the Association by a church it claimed the right to answer 
 or not as it saw fit. It was very common for queries from churches to 
 be dechned. Article five of the constitution of Central Association — 
 Crawford county and vicinit)' — expressly stipulated that, 
 
 ""Any church may present any question to the Association, and she 
 may answer or decline at her discretion." 
 
 In this claim for superior privilege of the Association over the 
 church we have the essence of priestly rule and immunity of the clergy. 
 This alone ought to alarm any thinking antimission brother, whether 
 there be not something fundamentally wrong in his system. 
 
 There is an Association of General Baptists in the state, in White 
 county and vicinity, and when we note how far they are from stria 
 Baptist principles it is not strange that they should have ereaed the 
 Association into an appellate coun. Article 11 of their constitution 
 provides that, 
 
 '"The Association possesses appellate jurisdiaion in all cases of diffi- 
 culty that may arise in the churches." 
 
 With the organization of Muddy River there were four Baptist Asso- 
 ciations in the state. From that time on they increased very fast, but 
 the churches were small. There was not one church in the state that 
 numbered as much as sixty members.
 
 CHAPTER XXVIl 
 
 THE SANGAMON ASSOCIATION 
 
 Times were flush and money was plenty when Illinois was admitted 
 as a state. It was due partly to the speculative spirit, more to the tide 
 of immigration, and still more to the liberal issue of paper money by 
 incorporated banks. By 1820 the reaction came, and times were hard. 
 To alleviate the distress the legislature resorted to more paper money. 
 A state bank was created at Vandalia, in 1821, and soon times were 
 rosy again. But again the whirlwind was reaped. By 1823 it required 
 four dollars of state money to buy one dollar of specie. Quotations of 
 prices had to be followed with the kind of money they were com- 
 puted in. The venerable "treasurer's report" at associations reported 
 so much "state paper," and so much "specie." It was during this 
 financial stress and confusion that the fifth Baptist Association in the 
 state was organized. By 1823 there were in the Illinois Association 
 twenty churches, scattered over nine counties. The territory covered 
 from north to south was a hard two days' journey on horseback. So it 
 was decided to divide. Eight churches in Sangamon, Greene, Mont- 
 gomery and Morgan counties were set off to meet at Lick Creek church, 
 in the southwestern part of Sangamon county, October 25, 1823, to form 
 a new Association. 
 
 The place of meeting was put so far north because "the Sangamon 
 country" was just then filling up more rapidly than any other section 
 of the state. It continued to do so until the inevitable chills and fever 
 brought up the usual bad name upon it. In the spring of 1825 in 
 three weeks 250 emigrant wagons passed through Vandalia, headed 
 north; nearly half of them for the Sangamon country. They were 
 searching for the "better country," having heard reports in their own 
 land. Sangamon soon became the most populous county in the state. 
 In 1830 the family of Abraham Lincoln were wafted in on the tide. 
 The immigration kept so far ahead of the resources of the country that 
 every fall numbers of the spring arrivals were obliged to go down to 
 the older portions of the state for supplies. In the popular phrase they 
 "went down to Egypt to buy corn," which gave the southern counties 
 the name of "Egypt." 
 
 The new Baptist Association was organized on the rising tide of 
 antimissionism. On the east was the Wabash Association, with Elder 
 
 90
 
 History of the Baptists of Illinois 91 
 
 Parker's eyes snapping fire. On the south was Muddy River and 
 Illinois Associations; one clean gone over and other ready to follow. 
 The Circular Letter of the Illinois Association in 1823 was written by 
 Thomas Rhea, of the Second Cantine Creek church, and was occupied 
 with "a few short hints by way of caution against the errors which 
 prevail." One mark of the errors referred to was placing "the salvation 
 of the soul in the hands of the creature." It was equally wrong as 
 this brother viewed it to do anything for the salvation of others, or to 
 awaken them to see their own need. "If sinners are led to believe 
 that anything depends on their natural free will, they will build their 
 hopes of heaven on their good intentions." He supposed that his mis- 
 sionary brethren did not believe in "sovereign grace," whereas they 
 believed in it more truly than he did. To him it was a doarine; to 
 them it was the very basis of the truth on which they trusted that their 
 LABOR was not in vain in the Lord. Through grace they would come 
 into FELLOWSHIP with Jesus Christ. 
 
 In the matter of the new Association a committee of five was ap- 
 pointed to meet with the dismissed churches and advise them in com- 
 pleting their organization. The character of the committee was a 
 prophecy of what they probably would advise. They were William 
 Jones, who had opened the antimission campaign there four years 
 before; Alexander Conlee, who in 1820 repeated the "Query" to the 
 Association, using the exact formula employed by Daniel Parker; 
 William Kinney, who became next to Parker the leading antimission 
 and anti-effort champion of the time; Thomas Rhea, the writer of the 
 cautionary Circular Letter which we have just been considering ; and our 
 old acquaintance, Joseph Chance, who had returned to the Association 
 three years before ; a fairminded man, but he was only one to four. 
 
 At the appointed place and time the delegates met, and a stormy sea- 
 son followed. The opposing forces were so evenly balanced that had 
 not the antimission party been supported by the advisory committee they 
 would have been beaten. They failed however in getting a constitution 
 to their mind, but succeeded by a majority of one in adopting the fol- 
 lowing among the "Rules of Decorum:" 
 
 "It shall be the duty of the Association to debar from a seat any 
 United Baptist who is a member of any missionary society." 
 
 Then finding they had a majority of one they took it out of the 
 Rules and placed it in the constitution, where it was unrepeatable except 
 by a unanimous vote! And so the new body started on its voyage in a
 
 92 History of the Baptists of Illinois 
 
 storm of its own making. The dissatisfaction was so great that in three 
 years the Association dissolved and reorganized with the obnoxious 
 "tenth article" left out. It was then understood that the mission ques- 
 tion should not be a bar to fellowship, but unfortunately the understand- 
 ing was not incorporated in the constitution. The harangues against 
 missions continued, so that there was no peace. This kept some away, 
 and gave others a majority. In 1836 the body changed its name from 
 "United" to "Regular" Baptists; that is, they went over officially to the 
 antimission ranks. The churches that disapproved withdrew, and in 
 1837 organized the Springfield Association. There were in the old 
 Illinois Association two Morgan county churches — Indian Creek and 
 Diamond Grove. These united with the new body, and Jonathan Sweet, 
 the pastor of Diamond Grove, was the first moderator. The old Sanga- 
 mon Association is truly one that has lost its opportunity. 
 
 In 1823 also Peter Cartright settled in Sangamon county, a few miles 
 north of the spot where the Sangamon Association was organized ; and 
 there was his home until he died in 1872. He was the most famous 
 Methodist that ever lived in Illinois, but liked the Baptists no better 
 than Daniel Parker liked missions. He was strikingly like Parker in 
 size, energy and temperament, but how different his employment! One 
 heeded the call of God; the other refused.
 
 CHAPTER XXVIIl 
 THE ROCK SPRING SEMINARY 
 
 By 1826 the division into counties reached three fourths of the way 
 up the state. Putnam and Henry were the frontier counties, and shared 
 the northern part of the state between them. Galena was a village of 
 one street, and was called Fevre River. A postoffice was established, 
 with a semi-monthly mail, and a traveling printer published the "Miner's 
 Journal." A cabin at the Rock river ferry, and another at Princeville, 
 were the only houses between Galena and Peoria. There were more 
 wagons than houses, for at the Dixon ferry that summer two hundred 
 wagons crossed in three weeks ; all headed for the lead mines. 
 
 In 1826 Daniel Parker's 'Two Seed" pamphlet appeared, in which 
 he took the ground that the saved and the unsaved are two different 
 races of mankind. Only the saved, or the elect, are the descendants 
 of Adam. God will call his own and the devil will have his own; 
 why use effort to preach the gospel to those for whom it never was de- 
 signed? The advantage of the theory was that it made a philosophical 
 basis for his theory of predestination, and its corollary antimissionism. 
 The publication of the book was a heavy burden on the author, and he 
 hoped that possibly some of his brethren would help him; but they 
 did not. It would have been giving money for the gospel. And he 
 feared to ask them for it was contrary to his own preaching. Further- 
 more, most of the antimission preachers did not accept the teachings 
 of the book, and thus another cause for division was introduced. The 
 small Okaw and Vermillion Associations in the eastern part of the state 
 are Two Seed bodies, relics of the split in the ranks by the weird fancy 
 of one who at times believed himself inspired. 
 
 In the political campaign of 1826 William Kinney ran for Lieu- 
 tenant Governor and was elected, though the rest of his ticket was 
 defeated. He had become a man of wealth for that day, and a skilful 
 politician; and as one historian observes, "the duties of his holy calling 
 were not a smmbling block in his way." As Lieutenant Governor he 
 was the presiding officer of the state senate, whereupon the chair cast 
 a shadow which modified Illinois Baptist history, as we well see. 
 
 One of the deepest desires of John M. Peck was for a training 
 school for preachers of the gospel. He hoped to have secured this in a 
 
 93
 
 94 History of the Baptists of Illinois 
 
 development of his school in Missouri, but the hasty action of the 
 eastern Board, and his removal to Illinois, put an end to that. After 
 coming to Illinois he kept the project alive by discussions, sermons, 
 letters, and articles in the eastern newspapers, until in his judgment 
 the time had come to act. It included a visit to the east, for the outfit 
 for such a school as he had in mind could not be had on the field. 
 
 On February 26, 1826, he took leave of his family, turned his horse's 
 head toward Vincennes, and was off for Philadelphia. He reached 
 Cincinnati March 14, after a muddy trip of 350 miles. There he put 
 himself and horse on board a river steamboat, for Wheeling; thence to 
 Washington, making stops and detours along the way. He reached 
 Philadelphia April 16, and spent three weeks there and in New York in 
 attendance on the May Anniversaries. Everywhere he was invited to 
 tell the people about the west. By the end of May he was in Boston ; 
 on the way visiting his aged and widowed mother at Litchfield, and at 
 Worcester evolving with Jonathan Going the rudiments of the future 
 Home Mission Society. 
 
 The months of June, July and August he spent in going up and 
 down in New England seeking money and materials for the western 
 school. He secured $750, all in small amounts, with promises of $500 
 more. September 13 he started on his return, taking his mother with 
 him in a carriage. They came by Buffalo and Cincinnati, and on Thurs- 
 day evening, November 23, he drew up at his own gate, remarking, 
 "This is the place, mother." He had been gone nine months, and had 
 traveled 4400 miles. 
 
 Monday, January 1, 1827, an important Conference was held at the 
 Rock Spring residence. The questions to be decided were. First, Shall 
 we have a school? Answered, Yes! Second, What kind of a school 
 shall it be? Decided that it must have two departments, academical 
 and theological ; and that there should be land attached so that students 
 may have the opportunity of paying their way by manual labor. Third, 
 Where shall it be located? Where land can be obtained, healthy loca- 
 tion, easy of access, for the sake of Missouri students it should be near 
 St. Louis. Plainly, Rock Spring was the place. Fourth, means and 
 management. Voted to offer one hundred shares of stock, payable in 
 cash, books, building materials or provisions. A board of ten trustees 
 was chosen, with James Lemen, president, and J. M. Peck, secretary. 
 Other trustees were: Dr. B. F. Edwards, of Edwardsville ; Eld. James 
 PuIIiam, of Belleville; Eld. Zadok Darrow, of Rock Spring. The latter,
 
 History of the Baptists of Illinois 95 
 
 from New York, had joined Mr. Peck in 1823, and was ordained the 
 following year by the Rock Spring church. He was a hardworking man, 
 supporting his family from his farm, and preaching as he had oppor- 
 tunity. Joshua Bradley, a teacher of Pittsburg, was first choice for prin- 
 cipal of the new school. Mr. Peck for teacher in the theological de- 
 partment, and John Messenger in the academical. Messenger was an 
 old settler, a classical scholar, a very genius in mathematics; just the 
 man for the place, except that in his anxiety to put the boys ahead he 
 was apt to get them into Latin and algebra before they had mastered 
 their elementary studies. 
 
 Elder Peck was appointed field agent and superintendent of con- 
 struction, and he went to work and set others to work at once. By the 
 end of summer three buildings were enclosed. Main building, 30 x 40, 
 hard wood frame, filled in with brick and clapboarded ; lower floor for 
 schoolroom and upper for sleeping rooms ; two one-story wings, one for 
 class room and the other for principal's room and library. Log board- 
 ing house; carpenter shop, used as a printing office. The heating was 
 by four open fireplaces; the lighting by candles. Total expenses of a 
 student for a year, $50. 
 
 School opened Thursday, November 1, 1827, with a public gather- 
 ing and twenty-five students. Before the month had passed the number 
 had increased to one hundred. Many of the students came with the 
 impression that they were to be made brilliant scholars in a very short 
 time. This was a disappointment, and soon operated to reduce the num- 
 bers; but the school was a success. 
 
 Mr. Peck's next desire was to secure a charter, that the school might 
 be able to receive endowments and hold property. So with his faithful 
 horse he wended his way to Vandalia, and spent some weeks of precious 
 time in the interest of his bill. It was reported favorably by the proper 
 committee, and passed the House. But in the senate it met the opposi- 
 tion of the presiding officer, William Kinney. He worked against it 
 with all his power. As many of the senators were from the south he 
 appealed to race prejudice. "These Yankees," he exclaimed in his 
 button hole interviews, referring to Mr. Peck and other New England 
 men, "are moving into our state very fast, and if we give them a 
 charter for all their monopolies our liberties will soon be gone!" When 
 the final vote was taken there was a tie, the presiding officer gave his 
 vote against the charter, and it was lost. Thus by the influence and act
 
 96 History of the Baptists of Illinois 
 
 of one man, himself a Baptist, "Rock Spring Theological and High 
 School" never obtained its charter; and so, four years thereafter it was 
 easier removed to Alton and became the foundation of Shurtleff College. 
 This act of his old friend, his associate in the organization of Rock 
 Spring church six years before, was a great discouragement to Mr. Peck. 
 But he had no reproach of conscience; he had done what he could. 
 He remrned to his unchartered school and his multifarious duties, be- 
 lieving that the institution had risen by the grace of God and the 
 charter would come when God wanted it.
 
 CHAPTER XXIX 
 
 THE FRIENDS TO HUMANITY BECOME 
 THREE BANDS 
 
 "Wait on the Lord and keep his way, and he shall exalt thee to 
 inherit the land." From the year of the great revival at Cantine Creek, 
 in 1821, the Baptized churches of Christ, Friends to Humanity, con- 
 tinued to have a steady growth, not chiefly by immigration but by 
 conversion. That was the year of their first printed Minutes ; ten years 
 after, in the language of one of their Circular Letters, they had begun 
 "on the waters of Cantine and Silver Creeks." "Thou prepares! a table 
 before us in the presence of our enemies," was their glad adaptation of 
 their own circumstances to the words of Psalm 23. 
 
 By 1825 they had outstripped the Illinois Association in number of 
 members, though with a less number of churches. They had that year 
 eight churches in Illinois, and one of them, Cantine Creek, with seventy- 
 six members, was the largest Baptist church in the state. By 1827 they 
 had thirteen churches in Illinois, and had spread north into Morgan and 
 Greene counties. They were distinguished too by their enlightened 
 views and readiness to welcome the missionary spirit from brethren in 
 any of the Associations. In their Circular Letter for 1827 they re- 
 marked on the numbers in the community who professed Unitarian and 
 Universalist views, or were Deists or even atheists. Yet while warning 
 their people against the influence of this environment, they rejoiced to 
 see in it "a spirit of liberty and of free inquiry." How abreast of the 
 age, "hoping all things," thinking the best of every man, were these 
 our Illinois puritans! In spirit however rather pilgrim than puritan. 
 
 In harmony with the name they bore, and with what because of that 
 name they knew the world expected of them, in every annual Letter 
 they denounced the outrage of human slavery. Objection was made in 
 that day as in this that the church ought to have nothing to do with 
 politics. They replied that "slavery is a moral as well as a political 
 evil," and was therefore to be taken up by the churches as churches. 
 They believed every church was in this world not alone to deliver a 
 divine message but to stand for human righteousness. They believed 
 that our articles of faith were not to be accepted only, but to be inter- 
 preted to the world in terms of human life; thus only are they "ful- 
 
 97
 
 98 History of the Baptists of Illinois 
 
 filled." The most terrible blots in church history have been made by 
 those who supposed that their duty to truth was finished when they 
 preserved it in a confession or hewed it into a creed. 
 
 Other topics besides slavery were treated in their annual Letters. 
 The topic of one was Communion. "There is divine fellowship, 
 christian fellowship and church fellowship, or communion." The con- 
 ditions of divine and christian fellowship are repentance and faith. 
 Two other conditions are added to make church fellowship, viz, bap- 
 tism, and union with a church. Baptism as a condition of church 
 fellowship is proved by the praaice in the apostolic churches. The 
 question comes. What is baptism? Baptists are not asked to abandon 
 these conditions, but to change one of them by substituting sprinkling 
 for baptism. It is as easy for others to accept baptism, and thus end 
 the contention. 
 
 The Friends to Humanity finding little sympathy outside were by 
 that fact drawn closer together. They loved to meet in their own 
 religious gatherings. "How welcome is our annual meeting!" was 
 their exclamation. But the hour came when they had spread over so 
 much territory that it was deemed best to separate. In 1828 they voted 
 to divide into three bodies, viz, a Missouri Association with five 
 churches; a North District, north of Madison county, with eight 
 churches ; and a South District with nine churches. Altogether, twenty- 
 two churches; or in Illinois seventeen churches and 492 members. 
 Their Minutes however were still to be printed in one pamphlet, thus 
 testifying to their unity as one people. 
 
 The year 1830 was for them another remarkable revival season. The 
 number baptized that year equalled eighteen per cent of their entire 
 previous membership, while in the other churches it was but three 
 percent. The Spirit of the Lord was their portion. In that year our 
 brother Joseph Chance preached the introductory sermon at the meeting 
 of the North District. He had come "back home." He continued to 
 be a member of the Richland Creek church, which belonged to the 
 Illinois Association. Lieut. Gov. Kinney was a member of the same 
 church, so we may understand the spiritual atmosphere in which he 
 lived. But that atmosphere though it restrained did not change him, 
 and he still at sixty-five cherished the same truths and loved the same 
 zeal as when, a young man of thirty one, he assisted David Badgley in 
 organizing in James Lemen's house the first Baptist church in Illinois.
 
 History of the Baptists of Illinois 90 
 
 In 1830 the South District met with the Crooked Creek church, 
 Marion county, in the midst of a strong proslavery and antimission 
 population. Thus they would strengthen their brethren at Crooked 
 Creek. The Kaskaskia antimission Association was organized the same 
 season on the same ground. It probably still exists, with small churches 
 in Bond, Fayette and Montgomery counties. 
 
 Let us look at another scene. The same year that John M. Peck 
 settled at Rock Spring, Isaac McCoy settled at Niles, Mich., among the 
 Pottawatomies. In 1829 he had felt obliged to do as Mr. Peck had 
 done nine years before, cut loose from the mission Board and follow 
 his own judgment rather than their judgment. The greatest obstacle 
 to his work among the Indians was the whisky trader, and he had come 
 to the conclusion that there was no future for the race unless they could 
 be placed by themselves and the roving trader kept out. He had per- 
 suaded the government of this fact, and had been to the west as a 
 government commissioner to help locate the Indian Territory. The 
 proposal for such a Territory came first from Mr. McCoy, the first 
 establishment there was under his supervision and he and his family 
 were the first missionaries. So it came to pass that in July, 1829, Isaac 
 McCoy and family wended their way across the state of Illinois on 
 the old state road from Vincennes to St. Louis. Sickness overtook 
 them, and they were obliged to leave their second son, down with 
 bilious fever, at a friendly home near Salem and push on without him. 
 Friday, July 31, they were due to reach Rock Spring with its substantial 
 frame dwelling house and Seminary buildings. We would give much 
 to know the details of this chance touching of the paths of the two 
 great foundation builders. Did the travelers pass on without recogni- 
 tion? Did they stop? Did they stay all night? Did they merely accost 
 each other at the gate? It is a theme for a painting; those two veterans 
 who were so mightily molding the west, and yet whose paths lay so 
 diverse. Both men devoted, earnest, resolute. Both acquainted with 
 poverty and hardship. Both called of God to an apostleship; one to 
 the race that was passing out and the other to the race that was coming 
 in. Both earning names that could not die. Peck in his prime, just 
 forty that year; sober, positive, deliberate. McCoy five years older; 
 bronzed with twenty-five years of pioneer life and a dozen years of 
 Indian service, sanguine in temperament, cheerful even in his disap- 
 pointments. Paint them there. The school and farm buildings on
 
 100 History of the Baptists of Illinois 
 
 one side of the picture and the covered emigrant wagon on the other, 
 and the two heroes shaking hands over the front yard fence! 
 
 The travelers passed on : Mr. McCoy for seventeen years of further 
 service, and then to lay down his Hfe, and Mr. Peck to continue after 
 that for twelve' years. One lies in the old cemetery in the city of Louis- 
 ville, the other in Belief ontaine cemetery, St. Louis ; but both are with 
 the Lord who called them to serve, and their works do follow them.
 
 CHAPTER XXX 
 
 THE EDWARDSVILLE ASSOCIATION 
 
 The Edwardsville Baptist church was organized by brethren Peck 
 and Darrow in 1828, the Rock Spring church was reorganized in 1829, 
 and the Upper Alton church was organized in 1830. With these three 
 churches for a basis operations for the unification of lUinois Baptists 
 on missionary hnes were begun by Mr. Peck. A meeting of all favor- 
 ably inclined to a general union was called at Edwardsville, October 16, 
 
 1830. The meeting was a large one ; some twenty-five ministers being 
 present, besides other brethren. The following subjects were considered 
 by being referred to committees and the reports discussed: 
 
 The Baptist Situation in Illinois. 
 
 Itinerant Preaching. 
 
 The Terms of Baptist Fellowship. 
 
 The Controversy of the Illinois Association with the Edwardsville 
 
 and Rock Spring churches. 
 A General Address to the Baptists of Illinois. 
 The meeting adjourned to meet again at the same place June 20, 
 
 1831. It was the real beginning of our General Association and State 
 Convention, and in large measure of our Home Mission Society. The 
 three churches calling the meeting organized themselves into the Ed- 
 wardsville Association; not especially for fellowship, as had been the 
 rule hitherto, but for missionary purposes. It was an entire change in 
 Associational purpose, and ushered in the Era of Organization. 
 
 Four months after Mr. Peck first set his foot on Illinois soil he 
 presented his plan for the "United Society for the Spread of the Gospel" 
 to the Illinois Association, and received their endorsement. Its object 
 was missionary and educational ; the itinerant preaching of the gospel, 
 and the training of preachers and teachers. To help raise funds for 
 the work of the society he organized local mite societies, the first one 
 being in connection with the Ogle's Creek church, March 21, 1819. 
 
 In 1823 he commenced organizing local Bible societies. The Greene 
 county society was organized December 24, at Carrollton, and the 
 Madison and Morgan county Bible societies appeared soon after. 
 
 In 1824 he began organizing county Sunday school societies. The 
 entire spring of that year was spent in such work in southern and central 
 
 101
 
 102 History of the Baptists of Illinois 
 
 Illinois. A little before this, at Vandalia, he organized a State Sunday 
 School Society, and secured for it the funds of the defunct State Agri- 
 cultural Society, amounting to about |200. He was appointed the 
 agent of the American Colonization Society, also, for transporting free 
 negroes to Liberia, on the west coast of Africa. This last appointment 
 however he probably did not seek. 
 
 Mr. Peck was thus the Apostle of Organization. He believed in 
 cooperation, in machinery. On the other hand James Lemen and his 
 people were fervent rather than methodical. They depended more on 
 divine operation than in human co-operation. They represented life; 
 Peck represented service. They were one in heart, and in general intent, 
 but differed in the place given to the devotional life. 
 
 His idea was embodied in the Edwardsville Association, and it has 
 become the dominant idea of the Baptists of the state and of the nation. 
 If anything is to be done we think of organizing a society to do it; 
 whereas if brother Lemen organized a society it would be to bring into 
 fellowship those who were doing the same work as himself. The two 
 ideas are parts of one Christianity. If missionary Baptists and humanity 
 Baptists could have come together, each appreciating the other, it would 
 be better than contending for the fittest. But human limitations are 
 narrow. It is easily said that the Edwardsville type of Christianity is 
 more useful than the Cantine Creek type. It is as easily replied that 
 life is more than meat ; the whole gospel is but God giving himself to 
 humanit)'. The two Ideas should go forth side by side, the gospel and 
 the propagation of the gospel. One appears in the Keswick meetings, 
 the Northfield meetings, and every effort for the development of the 
 normal christian life; the other appears in our missionary activity and 
 the multiplicity of societies for every purpose. This has won just now 
 in the popular race. Nevertheless the world wants "not yours but you." 
 The truest way to "give to him that asketh thee," is to "weep with 
 them that weep and rejoice with them that rejoice," for that is ever 
 the currency of humanity, and all are able to give freely to all. 
 
 The cooperative type of Christianity has descended to us by in- 
 heritance; let us hold it fast! But divine fellowship and church fellow- 
 ship are equally our portion. We must belong to brother Lemen's 
 Friends, and to brother Peck's Association. We must take them both 
 by the hand. So shall we approach the pattern provided for us in 
 Christ.
 
 History of the Baptists of Illinois 103 
 
 Except for turning the wheels in the committee reports, the new 
 Association was hke the others. They rejoiced in christian fellowship, 
 and in preaching from "the stand." They urged on one another the 
 importance of personal and family piety. In nearly all the church 
 homes family worship was observed. They held meetings for social 
 worship every week, and had preaching as often as they could. They 
 were ashamed of the "once a month" preaching, and endeavored to 
 break away from it. George Stacey, one of the first graduates of the 
 Rock Spring Seminary, was pastor at Upper Alton and EdwardsviUe, 
 preaching for each on alternate weeks. At Rock Spring there was 
 usually preaching every week. In other churches reading or exhortation 
 or scripture exposition occupied the preacher's place. In this they 
 followed the good example set in the beginning at New Design. To 
 depend wholly on a preacher is as mistaken a practice as to depend 
 wholly on a choir. It is a shadow of ritualism; and we are not 
 ritualists. "O Jehovah of hosts, blessed is the man who trusteth in 
 thee." Psalm 84.
 
 CHAPTER XXXI 
 THE GENERAL MEETING AT WINCHESTER 
 
 After the organization of the Edwardsville Association in 1830, a 
 call was issued for a general meeting of Illinois Baptists at the same 
 place, July 22, 1831. On the fourth day of that meeting, July 25, a 
 permanent "Committee of Correspondence" was appointed to aid more 
 efficiently in destitute settlements. That Committee was the beginning 
 of our State Mission Board, and there has not been a more efficient board 
 in all the years since. As organized it consisted of James Lemen, chair- 
 man; Geo. Stacey, secretary; Paris Mason, B. F. Edwards, James 
 Pulliam, Hubbell Loomis, J. M. Peck. The place of secretary was after- 
 wards taken by Dr. George Haskell. George Stacey was born in Boston, 
 and was one of the first students at Rock Spring Seminary. He died 
 in 1848. 
 
 That part of the state that most appealed to the Committee was 
 within the triangle bounded by Alton, Springfield and Burlington. It 
 was not the frontier, for there were by that time scattered settlements 
 all through the state, but it was the part most rapidly filling up, and 
 more promising than the eastern side of the state because farther away 
 from Parker's antimissions and Two Seeds. Unfortunately the evil 
 seeds he and his people were sowing were more than two seeds! The 
 funds of the Committee were such as they could collect on the field out 
 of the poverty of the settlers, aided by such as they could beg from the 
 Massachusetts Baptist Missionary Society. 
 
 They began in a humble way with the following resolution: 
 
 Resolved, that so soon as means and suitable men can be had this 
 Committee will employ one preacher to travel through the state, and 
 one to aid brother John Logan in the Military Traa. 
 
 John Logan was a faithful and successful farmer and preacher who 
 emigrated from Virginia to Indiana in 1823, and to McDonough county, 
 111., in 1828. He was a self supporting missionary in the midst of anti- 
 mission preachers who should have been his helpers instead of his 
 opposers. If he accepted outside aid it was only that he might devote 
 more time to his itinerant work. He was the pioneer preacher of the 
 Military Tract, and the founder of the Salem Association. Elder Logan 
 and Gardner Bartlett aided in organizing the first Baptist church in the 
 
 104
 
 History of the Baptists of Illinois 105 
 
 state of Iowa, October 19, 1834. It was Long Creek, now Danville, 
 near Burlington. He died in 1851. 
 
 The traveling missionary of the Committee was found in the person 
 of J. M. Peck; the publication of the semi-monthly "Pioneer and 
 Western Baptist" being included as part of his work. They did not 
 become financially responsible for the paper, but allowed him to go on 
 publishing it and paying the deficit out of his own pocket, as he had 
 been doing. 
 
 That fall, 1831, two young Vermonters and their wives, graduates in 
 the same class at Hamilton, N. Y., appeared on the scene. Alvin 
 Bailey was twenty-nine years old, and Gardner Bartlett was thirty-two. 
 After counseling with the Committee Mr. Gardner settled as pastor at 
 Lebanon, preaching also at Rock Spring and Belleville, and Mr. Bailey 
 opened a school at Upper Alton which when united with Rock Spring 
 Seminary became Shurtleff College. He also preached for the Upper 
 Alton and the Edwardsville churches. 
 
 During the summer of 1831 Jonathan Going, commissioned by the 
 Massachusetts Baptist Missionary Society to "explore the conditions of 
 the Baptists in the west," spent three months with Elder Peck in 
 itinerating work. They parted at Shelbyville, Ky., in September, where 
 they "agreed on the plan of the Baptist Home Mission Society." It 
 was organized in New York city the following spring, April 27, 1832. 
 Four days later the Committee met at Edwardsville and voted to solicit 
 aid from the new society to the amount of $100 for Bro. Gardner at 
 Winchester and vicinity; $50 for Bro. Bailey at Alton and vicinity; 
 and to take Bro. Logan over from the Massachusetts Society. Bro. 
 Moses Lemen was also continued as an additional itinerant preacher. 
 
 July 23 following the Committee met in Mr. Peck's farmhouse at 
 Rock Spring, and issued a call for a General Meeting at Winchester, 
 October 12. It convened according to call, and was attended by fifteen 
 preachers and six brethren. It was handicapped by the Black Hawk war, 
 by the cholera scourge, and by the lack of a general sympathy even on 
 the part of his missionary brethren with Bro. Peck's constantly de- 
 veloping talent for organization. Brethren Peck, Moses Lemen, Bailey 
 and Loomis were there from the south, and Brother Logan from the 
 north; for the rest the attendance was local. Joel Sweet was there, 
 representing the Philadelphia Sunday School Union; but his father. 
 Eld. Jonathan Sweet, was not present though his home was but a few 
 miles away near Jacksonville. Gardner Bartlett was present as pastor
 
 106 History of the Baptists of Illinois 
 
 of the church. Jacob Bower, P. N. Haycraft, L. M. Moore, were 
 present from Morgan county adjoining, and Jesse Sitton from over the 
 Illinois river in Pike county. The other preachers were William 
 Spencer, William Kinner, John Biddlecome, Lewis Allen. The names 
 of the brethren were A. T. Hite, Wm. Scholl, Jos. Swan, Thos. Edmon- 
 son, John Duval, Geo. Kelly. Of the thirty preachers of the Friends to 
 Humanity not one was present except Moses Lemen. The meeting 
 organized with brother Peck, moderator, and brother Lemen, clerk. 
 The others were divided into ten committees, which reported as follows : 
 
 1. Antimission Churches. We advise all in those churches who 
 favor gospel effort, and oppose associational lordship, to be formed into 
 separate churches. 
 
 2. Education. We report the securing of a farm and the com- 
 mencement of a building at Upper Alton for a manual labor college, to 
 which Rock Spring Seminary will be removed; and we recommend 
 that this meeting appoint J. M. Peck, Justus Rider and James Lemen 
 trustees of the institution in addition to the seven already appointed. 
 
 3. Systematic Bible Study. We urge this on all, and that children 
 should be encouraged in the same. 
 
 4. Itinerant Preaching. We favor the continuance of this practice. 
 
 5. Ministers' Meetings. We favor these, and recommend that they 
 be held for three or four days each quarter, beginning on the "fifth 
 Saturday." 
 
 6. Temperance. We recommend total abstinence, and temperance 
 societies. 
 
 7. Campbellism. We counsel to steadfastly maintain Baptist prin- 
 ciples, yet to avoid unkind remarks. 
 
 8. Address to Illinois Baptists. (Not ready; subsequently prepared 
 and circulated.) 
 
 9. Concerning Organizing a Convention. We recommend that a 
 meeting for that purpose be held at Alton, October 11, 1833 ; all Baptist 
 churches and societies in the state to be invited to send delegates. 
 (Adopted.) 
 
 10. Report of the Committee on Correspondence. John Logan had 
 organized two churches, three Sunday schools, one tract society, many 
 temperance pledges, and had baptized AG. His salary was $150 a year. 
 Moses Lemen had performed similar labors, and had baptized 16. 
 He had organized the "Baptist Charitable Society" of St. Clair county 
 and vicinity to help support the itinerating preachers. Brethren Bailey
 
 History of the Baptists of Illinois 107 
 
 and Bartlett had done good work at Alton and Winchester. Elder 
 Peck had engaged largely in revival work, and baptized sixty converts. 
 He labored some weeks in St. Louis. Traversed thirteen counties in 
 Illinois, from Monroe to McDonough. A respectable minority in the 
 Spoon River Association protest against the antimission policy of the 
 body. The evil influence comes from the eastern side of the state. 
 
 Sunday at this meeting was given to evangelistic work, and three 
 were baptized. This is excellent. If instead of providing great sermons 
 for the saints our able preachers came prepared to make clear what it 
 is that God offers to sinful men, there would be another reason why 
 our churches would desire the convention.
 
 CHAPTER XXXIl 
 THE STATE CONVENTION AT WHITEHALL 
 
 At the Alton meeting the draft of a constitution was prepared, but 
 action on it was deferred for a year that it might be submitted to the 
 churches. It was wise policy to be thus deliberate in the matter of 
 organization, to give time for the discussion, of objections and the 
 removal of prejudices, and for a thorough setting forth of its ad- 
 vantages. The convention met at Whitehall, Greene county, October 
 9-12, 1834. The antimission part of the church however raised such 
 an opposition that the use of the meeting house was refused, and the 
 sessions of the convention were held in a barn belonging to brother 
 Aaron Hicks. 
 
 "Let them keep their old shanty," one of the delegates remarked, 
 "it won't last them long." 
 
 And so it turned out, for after a time the church was removed and 
 their pastor left the country. This was, officially, our first Illinois Bap- 
 tist State Convention. Only 31 were enrolled a5 present, out of a 
 Baptist membership of 5000 in the state. But out of that total mem- 
 bership only two-fifths were missionary in sentiment. The Friends to 
 Humanity were this year more largely represented, furnishing more 
 than a third of the delegates. Joel Sweet was not present, but his 
 aged father was there, representing Diamond Grove church. His 
 neighbor, William Spencer, represented Jacksonville. Both of these 
 good men died three years afterwards. Jonathan Sweet came from 
 New York state to Morgan count)', Illinois, in 1820, and was a pillar 
 of the truth there for the fifteen years of his subsequent life. Hubbell 
 Loomis came up to this convention from Upper Alton bringing with him 
 Eld. George B. Davis, a fresh arrival from New York, and at that 
 time representing the New York Bible Society. He afterward became 
 financial agent of Shurtleff College, and then pastor at Bunker Hill, 
 Macoupin county, and died there in 1852. Jacob Bower was present 
 with his friend Eld. Haycraft, and two others from his own church. He 
 had been the means of winning the Manchester church from its anti- 
 missionism, and now it sent three delegates to the convention. John 
 Logan, John Clark (not Father Clark, who had died nine months be- 
 fore), Gardner Bartlett and Sims Kinman came down from the newly 
 
 108
 
 History of the Baptists of Illinois 109 
 
 founded Salem Association. Five of the delegates were from Bluffdale, 
 a village a dozen miles south of the convention town, and where two 
 years before there was scarcely a believer. A Bible school was started, 
 a great revival followed, and a church of fifty members was organized, 
 nearly all being new converts. The postmaster of the place, John 
 Russell, became the church clerk. Now they sent five delegates to the 
 state convention. 
 
 Eight of the delegates were from the churches of the North Distria 
 Association, Friends to Humanity, headed by Moses Lemen, William 
 Kinner and Elijah Dodson. The latter was then in his prime. He was 
 born in Clark county, Ky., in 1800, but the family removed to Indiana 
 in 1809. His parents were Baptists, but he early became a skeptic. 
 He married in 1820, and the next year removed to Crawford county, 
 111. There alone in the forest he was converted, and was baptized by 
 Daniel Parker. However, he wholly rejeaed Parker's wrong teachings, 
 being helped to do so by his removal to the western side of the state 
 and putting himself in the midst of a different environment. He 
 identified himself with the Friends to Humanity. He was a born 
 evangelist, and loved an itinerating life. Two years before the White- 
 hall meeting he baptized a hundred persons in Greene county, sparsely 
 settled though it was. He died at Woodburn, Macoupin county, in 
 1859. 
 
 John M. Peck was cliosen moderator of the convention, and P. N. 
 Haycraft, of Morgan county, clerk. Committees were appointed to 
 consider and report on the following subjects : State of Religion, Educa- 
 tion, Sunday schools, Family worship. Foreign missions. Home missions, 
 Relation of Pastors to Churches, Temperance, Religious periodicals, 
 Bible societies, the Cincinnati Convention of Western Baptists, the 
 pending constimtion. From one point of view, so far as the public is 
 concerned, it might seem profitless for thirty people to listen to one 
 another for four days concerning matters on which they are already 
 agreed. The audience they would convince is not there. But utterances 
 get added weight by being uttered before an audience; besides giving 
 information, inspiration and fellowship. 
 
 This was said of northern Illinois, in the report on the State of 
 Religion : 
 
 North of Sangamon county information received reports the field 
 white for the harvest, with scarcely a laborer of our order. Toward lake 
 Michigan three or four churches have recently been formed.
 
 110 History of the Baptists of Illinois 
 
 The "three or four churches" were Hadley, Chicago First, Bristol, 
 Dupage. 
 
 The report on family worship closed with this conclusion: "We 
 conclude that family worship and household instruction are imperious 
 duties binding on all christians who have families." Moses Lemen, 
 reporting on home missions, was of the opinion that: 
 
 Ample means to sustain traveling missionaries exists among us, if 
 the churches and brethren could but be rightly informed on the subject. 
 . . . This can be effected by repeated interviews among the preachers 
 and leading brethren of each church, in which a free and full explana- 
 tion should be given of such words as "missionary," "seminary," 
 "theology," "union," etc. 
 
 Eight of the churches in the new Salem Association had Sunday 
 schools. All honor to John Logan! The "Pioneer and Western Bap- 
 tist" and the "Cross and Journal" of Cincinnati, and the "Baptist Re- 
 pository," of New York, were recommended. Also a proposed theo- 
 logical monthly to be called the "Baptist Advocate." The proposal of 
 the Baptist Tract Society, now the Publication Society, to place a bound 
 volume of Baptist tracts in every family in the west that would receive 
 it, was commended. 
 
 The Convention organized permanently as "The Baptist Conven- 
 tion OF Illinois," auxiliary to the American Baptists Home Mission 
 Society, with the following officers: President, J. M. Peck; secretary, 
 Elijah Dodson; corresponding secretary and field agent, Alvin Bailey; 
 treasurer. Dr. George Haskell. Any Baptist church or society shall be 
 entitled to three representatives at the annual meetings. Annual meet- 
 ing on the second Thursday in October. Object of the Convention: 
 To promote fellowship, itinerant preaching, education, and to collect 
 and circulate statistical and other information regarding the Baptist 
 cause. Auxiliaries of the Convention may be organized anywhere^ with 
 the privilege of using their funds on their home fields. The corre- 
 sponding secretary was to be an itinerant preacher and collector of funds, 
 not only for the state 'vork but for all the missionary enterprises of the 
 denomination.
 
 CHAPTER XXXIII 
 CAMPBELLISM 
 
 Next to Daniel Parker, the most adverse personalty along denomi- 
 national lines with which our Baptist fathers had to contend was 
 Alexander Campbell. He was born in Ireland about the time that 
 Parker was born in Georgia. His father, Thomas Campbell, was a 
 United Presbyterian preacher and teacher, but dissatisfied with his faith, 
 so that when in 1807 he emigrated to Pennsylvania and obtained some 
 followers he formed them into a "Christian Association" instead of a 
 church. His son meanwhile was attending the University of Glasgow, 
 where he imbibed Sandemanian views from Greville Ewing, one of the 
 leaders of that sect. These views he brought with him to America in 
 1809, and incorporated them in his "Reformation." The Sandemanians 
 were a Scotch sect, first called Glassites after their founder, John Glass, 
 and then Sandemanians after Robert Sandeman, Glass' son-in-law. The 
 tenet most developed by Sandeman was that saving faith is "nothing 
 more than the bare belief of the bare truth; that is, a mere intellecmal 
 assent to historical facts. The work of the Holy Spirit was excluded. 
 This is the fatal error, for only the Spirit in his new office shall "convict 
 the world of sin." Furthermore, under him Bible believing means 
 trusting; mere intellectual belief here is of no value whatever. 
 
 In 1811 the Campbell's Association voted to become a church; in 
 1812 by the baptism of the membership it became a Baptist church; 
 and in 1813 it was received into a Baptist Association, thus becoming 
 a recognized part of the denomination. It was this that was responsible 
 for the subsequent mischief. It was understood that the church was not 
 truly Baptist, but that was overlooked because they had come so recently 
 from the Presbyterians. They were regarded as a growing people, and 
 it was supposed they would continue to grow until they became Baptists. 
 Even so they were received only by a majority vote ; their reception was 
 but "the bare belief in the bare fact." 
 
 In 1823 Alexander Campbell and a part of his church were dis- 
 missed by the Association and received into an Association in Ohio. 
 Here he published a little monthly, the "Christian Baptist," which in 
 1830 became the "Millennial Harbinger." It was antimission; denounc- 
 ing missionary, temperance and Bible societies and Sunday schools as 
 evil. Mr. Campbell was at that time merely an eccentric hardshell 
 
 111
 
 112 History of the Baptists of Illinois 
 
 Baptist preacher. In accordance with his Sandemanian views he bap- 
 tized persons who professed a historical faith in Christ, requiring from 
 them no evidence of regeneration or repentance. He taught that salva- 
 tion was in baptism: 
 
 "God has opened a fountain for sin; he has given it an extension 
 as far and as wide as water flows. Wherever water, faith, and the 
 name of Father, Son and Holy Spirit are, there will be found the efficacy 
 of the blood of Jesus." 
 
 He joined hands with the Romanists in making repentance an out- 
 ward act. "Do penance and be baptized," says one. "Reform and be 
 immersed," echoes the other. It harmonizes with the intellectual theory 
 of saving faith. This teaching is welcome to the unsaved man, who 
 will do anything if he is not required to submit to God. His anti- 
 mission teachings commended Campbell in some quarters. The name 
 "Reformation" misled others, who supposed it to mean a reformation 
 of the spiritual life. 
 
 For a few years, from 1827 onward, this teaching spread among 
 Baptists like a forest fire, on a line west and south of west from Penn- 
 sylvania. In the northern, southern and eastern states it never made 
 much headway. In 1827 the Pennsylvania Baptists Association that 
 fellowshipped Mr. Campbell's church, announced a disfellowship. The 
 example was followed by other surrounding Baptist Associations. From 
 that time the movement was a separate sect. They were known as Re- 
 formers, then as Christians, then as Disciples, etc., all unobjectionable; 
 only they cannot be distinctive names for there are other disciples and 
 other christians. 
 
 Many Baptist churches were divided, and some went entirely over. 
 But this generally happened through the manipulation of the pastor. 
 In 1830 the Sycamore Street Baptist church, Cincinnati, under the 
 personal influence of Mr. Campbell accepted his teachings and changed 
 their name to the "First Christian Baptist Church" of Cincinnati. After 
 a time the "Baptist" was dropped and all that was left was the plain 
 christian; and yet one might question whether it was christian or 
 not. In 1832 the pastor of the Shelbyville Baptist church became 
 "Campbellite," and succeeded in having "Baptist" stricken from the 
 name of the church, and "christian" substituted. It was many years 
 before there was another Baptist church in Shelbyville. Decatur, two 
 years afterwards, had a similar experience. The church was organized 
 as the "Christian Baptist church," and when the suitable time had come
 
 History of the Baptists of Illinois 113 
 
 the "Baptist" was stricken off. The Friendship Baptist church, Perry 
 county, three miles from Tamaroa, as late as 1869 went the same road. 
 Missouri Baptists suffered most, Indiana next, IHinois came third. 
 Butler University, Ind., was the gift of one of the Baptist families that 
 lapsed to Campbell in those days. Silver Creek church, the oldest Bap- 
 tist church in Indiana, passing this resolution in 1830: 
 
 "This church deems it disorder to invite any preacher to preach, or 
 administer in the church among us, who is of the pretended reformation, 
 or who vindicates or circulates Alexander Campbell's pamphlets or his 
 new translation of the New Testament." 
 
 The translation, that is, in which reformation is substituted for re- 
 pentance, and thereby change of behavior is accepted instead of change 
 of mind. Even the antimission churches, pleased as they were at first, 
 discovered their mistake and withdrew their favor. In 1830 the Cir- 
 cular Letter of the old Illinois Association, antimission at that time, 
 was written by Thomas Ray, pastor of the Second Cantine Creek church. 
 His choice of Campbellism as his topic shows that the Campbellites 
 were pressing them hard. He made three points against the system, 
 referring especially to the denial of the Holy Spirit: (1) If the Spirit 
 is in the word, and there only, why was Paul not converted by the 
 word of God rather than by a miraculous appearance of Jesus? (2) 
 What is the use of praying, if God has no means outside of his word 
 of communicating to us the answer? (3) Was the Reformation under 
 Luther and the subsequent revivals, brought about by the word of God 
 or by the Spirit? 
 
 Much has been done since Campbell's day to restate his teachings 
 and chip off the corners, but not so as to make any essential change.
 
 CHAPTER XXXIV 
 NFW.' ASSOCIATIONS 
 
 From 1S29 onward, for cwemy-ive yeaxs, an sriiaage of two BajstisE 
 Assocarions were organized in. Flinois each year. Forty g£ dBsm weie 
 aew. die odiers heiag unions of divisiocLs, E:irj_-.,r.- r. : ~::z s..:^ a 
 chart ge of name The year 1S30 was especially i r: : - - r jenr Three 
 new Asodarions were formed rh .ir yeax, and in : : - : :> : : > _. - :': r- 
 wert demised rhar dier rry.jghr orsinize diterencl" _". . : .- _ ^ r : 
 tfae dtree was Edwardsvill : A-"::-"- ~iiz -z- :: ■:; ^ : : . zi 
 dmrches. The dicrdies cccij : :. . - ; • , : " : -' r- -. : - : - ^ ;_-; 
 cfiatrtESsed for thxr re— rc>e fr-: - : _.-. , ^ ■ . „ . : __:^: :i_ .:.^ : . _^ its 
 caxried die .-■::-- : : : :' is^ ::jn_ _ : : z:. In all die ^ . _ : :/. iS diere 
 was i n-_" : : ~ : : : i^iterenc : ~ -:-:~ar; and £f diere wx5 i rif :: : ; : i 
 better sc:-- -:-- „ ';■ :- :- recar Diamcaid Gr:": is^i - - ^-~ "-' 
 at Manchester. usu-.tIIv a daierer_- :;.^.: was seen. Uof;".- ::;.- st 
 xs ■ - ; -. leaders were very birr: They were for the time as in- 
 :::■-"■ rissionaries" as ever the In<jzisfdocL was of herecicsw 
 
 Ihi5 was on the ease side of the Illinois river. Spocn Eiver Asso^ 
 ~ i~ :- — _" ggrhered by the indefatigable John Logan on the west sick: 
 .: '_: : " " :"■ "here the andmissiGn sendment was less powerfcl and 
 was -1 _:.- __i::.rr. Yet this minority by its very violence r;f.rrf€d tiie 
 day. Elder Logan was pastor of the Crane"s Creek efanrch. near Rm^ 
 vine, and it is recorded as a fact that a. minocriy of the churchy in 1833^ 
 ; . : -It: ^ rif and wife and thirty others in one ktti The dei^. 
 Ls^'.z _: - v. the active .•:z_:i;-ty, taking the records of the clujreh 
 with 
 
 The foijir AssociariofK twgfftaiirje^ in 1S31 were dear Greeks Apple 
 CreHc, Okj."w ind VermfEfioa. Tlie sex efamrches foeEiMsg tiie Qear 
 Creek Assoc- .irion were m Oimoni^ Jarksogij, ASesaaSet astd Pdh^ 
 cminries. and were m<>rnT'^?a=rF f r a rr i Ca^pe: ChawieMi. AssodaEBoa for sbaE 
 poipose. Clear creek fiows thzsaiigh Uoiaii ( a a cH i iii|; sstd eiiiii|>Eses imo die 
 MrtwMtHppi river ar Clear Creek T-aBwInni^ ocrw MtOmte. A|)|ile Ceedc 
 A'ggKrwrTon was tosnaed of niae dnEEEdoES, part of dnon Ssmwsd hsaa 
 Saag^Bmaa and taknsg hasm. Seatg^smss. a mgwailFoMe iEsfiaaB0a c^ die 
 aw'MMrwwMi qmac: hoc d» dbef' faaie loog; ago left bdsmd. ThtOkxm 
 aad 'VeEmJlicn .-. \xs tm^imrjv^ nidi seven rfmtr r'-^- e:i:~ 
 
 U4
 
 HKTOKr cj T z z. '----. OS TTipenB 115 
 
 cfamwipH fr:- j: t ~T7-:Lz ■- ~ t t— — ^-«3 is 3C. • rrrr — m -^^ ^-T - 
 
 deava^z _- _ t - : - - : : Pidsrs Two SesfT 
 
 A ;:;- 
 
 -i.»_Lj& 
 
 Ir - . 
 - - - - - i N,-i 
 
 ;_; - - -: -Zrr; : Toe ot 
 Creek; c: :_ :: ::_r
 
 116 History of the Baptists of Illinois 
 
 Bethel church, Fulton county, for this missionary sentiments. Bethel 
 church is now extinct, but Duck Creek was for a time the largest Baptist 
 church in the state. 
 
 In 1834, also, six churches were dismissed from the South District 
 Association, Friends to Humanity, and organized the Saline Association. 
 
 John Antle, a faithful preacher among the Separate Baptists of Ken- 
 tucky, in 1829 emigrated to Sangamon county, Illinois, and the same 
 year he organized the Bethel church near Springfield. He was an 
 evangelist of unusual ability and worthiness, and this church would 
 seem to have been the fruit of his labor. In 1830 he organized Union 
 church, near Springfield, and in 1833 a second church in Sangamon 
 county. These all united with the South Kentucky Association of Sepa- 
 rate Baptists by correspondence, and were the first Separate Baptist 
 churches in Illinois. By 1835 another church had been formed in 
 Morgan county, and still another in Macon county, and that year the 
 five associated themselves as the "Illinois Association of Separate Bap- 
 tists." Eight years afterwards five other Separate Baptist churches in 
 Menard and Mason counties organized as the Clary's Grove Association, 
 and in 1854 the two bodies united. They took the name of the "Central 
 Illinois Association of Separate Baptists." This title of "Separate" has 
 a thrilling history, for it takes us back to the days of Whitefield and 
 the marvelous work of the Holy Spirit in North Carolina. Yet if John 
 Antle was living today he would undoubtedly praise his churches for 
 dropping the term "Separate," as other churches have dropped the 
 term "United," and all be brethren. These words have done excellent 
 service, but we hardly need them now to remind us that we should be 
 "separate" from the world, and "United" with God's people. John 
 Antle was a Baptist preacher of the best type, holding everything he 
 possessed subservient to his calling as a servant of Jesus Christ.
 
 CHAPTER XXXV 
 THE NORTHERN END OF THE STATE 
 
 The leading Baptist in Chicago in 1833 was Dr. John T. Temple, 
 a son-in-law of Rev. William Staughton, of Philadelphia. He was a 
 government mail contractor, and January 4, 1833, drove the first mail 
 wagon from Chicago to Ottawa. There was only a weekly mail, and 
 the postoffice was in one end of a log store building. In the spring of 
 1833 many new settlers flocked to the marshy trading post by the lake, 
 and Dr. Temple wrote to Jonathan B. Going, of the newly organized 
 Baptist Home Mission Society, for a Baptist preacher, offering to be 
 himself responsible for his support. The choice fell on Allen B. Free- 
 man, one of the graduating class at Hamilton, and a classmate of 
 William Dean. These two were ordained together, and went one to 
 Siam and the other to Chicago. 
 
 Bro. Freeman and wife reached Chicago in August, and Oaober 5 
 he aided in organizing the Hadley church. Will county; then called 
 O'Plain. Chicago First church was organized October 19, with fifteen 
 members. In 1834 three new churches were formed; Dupage, after- 
 wards Warrenville, in August ; Plainfield in October ; and Long Grove, 
 now Pavilion, in December. In April, 1834, Elder Freeman adminis- 
 tered the ordinance of baptism for the first time on the western shore 
 of lake Michigan. In December he baptized David Matlock; after- 
 wards a well known Baptist preacher; the first baptism in Fox river. 
 This was the last service rendered by brother Freeman. While return- 
 ing to Chicago, about forty miles, his horse gave out, he was overtaken 
 by a storm on the open prairie, caught cold, and died December 15, of 
 pneumonia. The site of his grave is lost ; Milwaukee avenue probably 
 runs over it, near the river. 
 
 There were now churches enough to form an Association, and Sep- 
 tember 15, 1835, delegates from four churches met with the Dupage 
 church, Dupage county, and organized the "Northern Baptist Associa- 
 tion of Illinois, Indiana and Wisconsin Territory." The ministers 
 present were I. T. Hinton, of Chicago; A. B. Hubbard, of Dupage; 
 J. E. Ambrose, of Plainfield ; J. G. Porter, of Hadley ; William South- 
 wood, of Michigan. Long Grove was not represented as the pastor. 
 Eld. J. F. Tolman, had gone east to seek medical treatment. He was 
 
 117
 
 118 History of the Baptists of Illinois 
 
 a great sufferer for the larger part of his life. Yet he was an eminently 
 useful man and preacher. He was born in Needham, Mass., in 1784, 
 and died in Sandwich, 111., in 1872. 
 
 I. T. Hinton was born in Oxford, Eng., in 1799, and died in New 
 Orleans of yellow fever in 1847. His pastorate of six years at Chicago, 
 followed by three years each in St. Louis and New Orleans, was un- 
 usually successful. He was a man of ability and energy and prayer. He 
 brought with him his English tendency to open communion, and had 
 many a friendly argument with his brethren, but as they were uniformly 
 against him he good naturedly accepted the situation and went right on 
 with his work. 
 
 Joshua E. Ambrose was bora in Sutton, N. H., in 1810, and came to 
 northern Illinois in 1834. Like Bailey, and Bartlett, and Freeman, he 
 was married, ordained, and immediately set for the west, coming part 
 of the way in a lumber wagon. A few weeks after his arrival his young 
 wife died. He organized a large number of churches in Illinois and 
 Wisconsin. When the American Baptist Free Mission Society was 
 organized, in 1843, on the principle of receiving no contributions from 
 slaveholders, he was one of the promoters of the movement. He died 
 at Lagrange, 111., in 1895. 
 
 September 17, 1836, four churches in Edgar county and vicinity, 
 not in sympathy with the Parker spirit, met with the Bloomfield church 
 and organized the Bloomfield Association. Bloomfield was a village 
 that with the coming in of railroads has been lost off the map, but the 
 Association continued to be known by the old name. The other churches 
 were Middle Fork, Sugar Creek and Bruelett's Creek. The last was 
 just over the line in Indiana. There is at that point no river to mark 
 the state boundary, as the Wabash flows away twenty miles below. 
 Sugar Creek church found they had got into the wrong company, and 
 came no more; probably over persuaded by their home environment. 
 To a committee of inquiry they reported for their church that "she was 
 disappointed ; expecting to get into what some term the General Union 
 of Baptists in the West." The pastor of the Bloomfield church, now 
 Chrisman, was J. W. Riley, a faithful preacher of the gospel from 
 Ohio, and before that from Kentucky. He settled at Bloomfield with 
 his family in 1833. He died in 1838, and was succeeded as pastor of 
 the church by his son, G. W. Riley. The latter, in 1837, feeling the 
 need of a better preparation for the ministry set out on horseback for 
 Shurtleff College, hoping that the way might be opened for him to get
 
 History of the Baptists of Illinois 119 
 
 there the education he desired. He found however that the expense, 
 small as it was, was greater than his means, and he remained only a few 
 weeks. The next year with his wife he drove across Indiana and into 
 Ohio to enter Granville college, of which Jonathan Going had just 
 become president. But his educational plans were still destined to come 
 to naught. The pressure on him to return to Bloomfield was so 
 strong that he yielded, and continued as their pastor for ten years 
 longer. It was not the salary that attracted him, for during this time 
 he received from the churches to which he ministered altogether no more 
 than $75 a year. He was then pastor of the church at Paris ten years, 
 and at Urbana eleven years, followed second pastorates at both these 
 points. He died at Urbana in 1881. 
 
 One of the churches of the Sangamon Association was Pleasant 
 Grove, now at Tremont, Tazewell county. It was organized in 1833 
 in a farmhouse three miles west of Tremont. In 1835 the Association 
 met with this church, and a resolution was passed requesting the churches 
 to exclude all members holding missionary views. The Tremont church 
 was about equally divided; nevertheless at the next monthly meeting 
 the antimission half proceeded to exclude the missionary half, consisting 
 of seventeen members. Among those excluded was deacon Van Meter, 
 father of Rev. W. C. Van Meter, who with his family was fifteen miles 
 away attending the funeral of his son. This gave the antimission party 
 a majority. The church clerk also was among the excluded, but unlilce 
 the Rushville church clerk he surrendered the records for the sake of 
 peace, and the excluders continued business at the old stand. The ex- 
 cluded ones reorganized under the old name and awaited developments. 
 
 About the same time when these events were taking place, a few 
 weeks after the organization of the Northern Association, Elder Hinton 
 gathered a little church at Vermillionville, now Tonica, LaSalle county. 
 The following summer of 1836 the Princeton church. Bureau county, 
 was organized. Also Round Prairie, a little church of five members in 
 Marshall county. Crowding close on these the Peoria First church was 
 organized by Eld. A. M. Gardner, August 14, 1836, with ten members. 
 One of them, Henry Headley, was soon ordained by the church and 
 became the first pastor at Princeton. Learning of these new churches 
 the Tremont church agitated for another Association. The call was 
 issued, the messengers met at Peoria, and November 2, 1836, organized 
 the Illinois River, now the Peoria, Baptist Association. There was a 
 total membership of seventy in the five churches. Since that day there
 
 120 History of the Baptists of Illinois 
 
 have been on the rolls of the Association ninety churches. One third of 
 them have fallen on sleep, one third have been dismissed, and one 
 third remain. 
 
 The pastor at Tonica was Thomas Powell, a young Welshman just 
 arrived from the east. He came to this country in 1818, when 17 years 
 of age, began preaching in 1822, and in 1836 came with several mem- 
 bers of his church from Saratogo county, N. Y., to Illinois. He died 
 in Ottawa, 111., in 1881. 
 
 Another minister present at the associational organization was 
 Gershom Silliman, from near Chillicothe. He removed from Con- 
 necticut to Ohio in 1815, and in 1829 with a part of his church emi- 
 grated to Illinois, coming by boat to Peoria. He was one of the earliest 
 pioneers in that part of the state, and was a faithful preacher as he had 
 opportunity. He died at his home in 1856. 
 
 W. C. Van Meter was also present, with his father, at the organiza- 
 tion. In 1837 he entered Shurtleff College, and was one of the de- 
 fenders of Elijah P. Lovejoy and helped to carry him home after he 
 was killed. He followed Dr. Going to Granville College, and there 
 graduated. In 1854 he began his famous work at the Five Points' 
 Mission in New York, and in eighteen years he made seventy trips to 
 the west and placed in homes twenty five hundred children. In 1872 
 he entered on a mission in Rome, Italy; first under the American 
 Baptist Publication Society, and then independent. He died there in 
 1888.
 
 CHAPTER XXXVI 
 THE ALTON SEMINARY 
 
 In the fall of 1831 Hubbell Loomis opened his school for the second 
 year at Kaskaskia, and Alvin Bailey opened a school at Upper Alton. 
 Rock Spring Seminary did not open, as its removal had been finally 
 decided upon. Probably it should have been removed to Upper Alton 
 immediately, and a building erected in readiness for the fall term and 
 for the anticipated inpouring of students down the Mississippi, Missouri 
 and Illinois rivers. But the limited means of the promoters was the 
 obstacle. What they lacked in power they were obliged to make up in 
 longer time. The citizens of Upper Alton had promised to put up a 
 thousand dollar building, and Dr. Going had encouraged them to 
 expect $20,000 endowment from the east, but the lumber had not been 
 hauled for the building, and the endowment was not in sight. 
 
 Hubbell Loomis was the man wanted for the principal of the new 
 school. He had been consulted with but had not fully consented. 
 He was fifty-six years of age, a born student and educator, and was 
 making a success of the academy at the old state capital. He was born 
 in Colchester, Conn., in 1775, and became a Congregational minister, 
 serving some years as pastor at Willington. During this pastorate his 
 understanding of the ordinance of baptism became so much clearer that 
 he was baptized and was ordained as pastor of the Baptist church at 
 Webster, Mass. He came to Illinois in 1830, and to Upper Alton in 
 1832. This was his home for the remainder of a long life. He died 
 in 1872, aged 97. 
 
 February 28, 1832, was a damp, raw day, but Mr. Peck mounted his 
 faithful pony and set out for Kaskaskia to complete the negotiations 
 with Mr. Loomis. Part of the journey was made in a storm of sleet 
 and rain. His trip, however, was successful. Mr. Loomis closed his 
 school at the end of the winter term, and in April removed to Upper 
 Alton. But he found the situation so unpromising that he opened his 
 school in Edwardsville. That place and Upper Alton were rivals for 
 the school, and Edwardsville under the leadership of Dr. B. F. Edwards, 
 scored the first victory. It compelled Upper Alton to talk business, 
 whereupon Dr. Edwards magnanimously yielded the point and con- 
 sented to help at Upper Alton. Edwardsville had the energy and Upper 
 
 121
 
 122 History of the Baptists of Illinois 
 
 Alton had the best location; neither could well succeed without the 
 other. June 4, 1832, the business was begun. Hubbell Loomis, Dr. 
 Edwards, Stephen Griggs and Enoch Long met at the home of William 
 Manning in lower Alton, pledged a loan of $100 each for the school, 
 and arranged to buy 122 acres of land for a site. All these were Baptists 
 except Mr. Long, who was a Presbyterian, and he was the only Upper 
 Alton man of the five. Cyrus Edwards and George Smith subsequently 
 signed the agreement. The 122 acres of land cost $400, and 240 acres 
 adjoining was entered at government price, making a farm of 362 
 acres. The object in securing the land was to make it a manual labor 
 school, that young men might thus be encouraged to obtain an edu- 
 cation. But that part of the plan was finally dropped. The trustees 
 decided that: 
 
 ""The scholars be permitted to cut their firewood oflF of the seminary 
 land if they will take none but wood that is lying down on the ground ; 
 and that they be permitted to put up cabins on the land for their use, 
 and to cut the timber on the land for the cabins under the direction of 
 the building committee." 
 
 Thus the labors of Elisha's theological students twenty-seven hun- 
 dred years before, in the river timber of Palestine, 2 Kings 6:1-4, was 
 repeated in the labors of Prof. Loomis' students in the bluff timber of 
 Alton. It is likely, too, in this case as in the other, some of the students 
 had to borrow their axes. We would give a large sum for correct 
 photographs of that early campus, dotted with the log cabins of stu- 
 dents' boarding clubs and choppers at work on the fallen treetops. It is 
 certain that such environment was more favorable to the production of 
 manhood than is that which surrounds the student in the richly endowed 
 university. Prof. Loomis himself was not on the ground to open the 
 school. He had been sent east in June by the trustees to solicit funds, 
 and he did not return until December. His place until he returned was 
 taken by John Russell, the successor of Joshua Bradley at Rock Spring. 
 Mr. Russell was a Vermont man, a graduate of Middlebury, a teacher of 
 experience. He was a man of much geniality; therefore he won the 
 friendship of his students even if he did not transform them into 
 scholars. He spoke fluently seven languages; was an author, of a 
 temperance work and a little work against Universalism ; edited a 
 newspaper in Louisville, Ky., and '"The Backwoodsman" at Grafton, 
 111. He died in 1863.
 
 History of the Baptists of Illinois 123 
 
 Prof. Loomis was the opposite of Prof. Russell. He was grave in 
 his manner and a strict disciplinarian. They were too unlike to work 
 harmoniously together, so when Prof. Loomis returned with $500 as 
 the disappointingly net proceeds of the eastern trip, Prof. Russell with- 
 drew and opened a private school near by. A number of students went 
 with him, and for a time his school was well patronized. 
 
 In 1832 the Western Educational Association was organized in 
 Boston, and Rev. Bela Jacobs, pastor of Cambridge Baptist church, be- 
 came its corresponding secretary, and immediately set out to explore 
 the field. He spent a little time in Alton, and on his return published 
 a report of his trip in pamphlet form. Two years afterward he was 
 killed in a runaway on Sunday morning, at the hour for worship, his 
 head striking the corner of his meeting house in Cambridge. 
 
 The busiest man of that time was brother Peck. He spent the month 
 of June, 1832, in a trip through McDonough, Fulton, Hancock and 
 Warren counties. Observed that the settlements were small and scat- 
 tered, infidelity and Universalism general, churches in the crude pioneer 
 stage. Then he was at home seeing callers, answering letters, settling 
 accounts, preparing newspaper articles, preaching. Then to the state 
 capital to attend the annual meetings of the State Bible Society, Tem- 
 perance Society, Sunday School Union, Educational Association, etc. ; 
 of all of which he was the chief promoter and was depended upon to 
 make the wheels go 'round. Then to St. Louis to help the brethren 
 straighten out some tangle, or wrestle with some financial problem, or 
 hold a revival meeting. Then to Cincinnati to attend the Convention 
 of the Western Baptists, and help organize a Baptist Education Society. 
 He conducted at Edwardsville the funeral of Gov. Ninian Edv/ards. 
 Six weeks afterwards he conducted the funeral of the most useful of 
 all our early preachers. Elder John Clark. He promised to prepare a 
 biography, but twenty years passed before the book appeared; so long 
 it took him to find the time. In 1834 he published a new edition of his 
 Gazetteer, and took a horseback trip through Missouri, writing articles 
 on Mormonism, Romanism, and whatever common evil he found afflict- 
 ing the people. 
 
 In the meantime Alton Seminary struggled on, hindered by poverty 
 but prospered by grace.
 
 CHAPTER XXXVII 
 SHURTLEFF COLLEGE 
 
 Alton Seminary, like Rock Spring Seminary, was never incorporated, 
 and for a similar reason. The charter granted by the legislature in 1833 
 was hampered by so many restrictions that the trustees decided they 
 could get along better without than with it. In 1835 another effort 
 was made, this time for a college charter. It was granted, but though 
 more liberal than the rejected Seminary charter it prohibited theological 
 instruction — the very purpose for which the institution was founded. 
 We may readily see that some of the legislators had been inhaling the 
 atmosphere on the eastern side of the state. The Seminary trustees 
 however decided to accept the charter, and in order to retain the theo- 
 logical department they had recourse to a little legal strategy. They 
 organized under the charter as trustees of the college, and deeded to 
 the college the property of the seminary. Then they organized as the 
 board of trustees of the Alton Theological Seminary, without a charter, 
 and elected Prof. Loomis president of both institutions. Thus "Alton 
 Seminary" ceased to be. Some 150 students had been enrolled first and 
 last, during the three years of its life, several of them becoming noted 
 men. One was John M. Palmer who became a major-general, governor 
 of Kentucky, governor of Illinois, United States Senator, and ran as a 
 candidate for President of the United States. He was an energetic 
 young man, but so limited in means that the seminary trustees loaned 
 him $20 to erect a cooper shop on the seminary grounds. He kept up 
 his studies, made the cooper shop a success and repaid the loan. 
 
 The advantages in becoming a college, even with no larger teaching 
 force than could have been had in the seminary, were that it carried 
 the legal right to confer honorary degrees, advertised to the world the 
 grade of instruction the institution was giving, would attract a larger 
 number of students, would lift the institution out of the realm of ordi- 
 nary "schools," and would presumably make it easier to gain the 
 necessary endowment. It was therefore not a matter of pride at all 
 but was undertaken on business motives. With the attaining of college 
 honors two field agents were appointed : Joel Sweet to search for money 
 at home, and John M. Peck abroad. Mr. Peck started for the east in 
 April and returned in November, bringing with him in cash and 
 
 124
 
 History of the Baptists of Illinois 125 
 
 pledges $20,000. Half of this amount was one donation from Dr. 
 Benjamin ShurtlefF of Boston, the consideration being that the name 
 of the institution be changed to SHURTLEFF COLLEGE. It was a 
 magnificent gift for those days, as great as twenty times that amount 
 today. One half of it was for a building ; the other half was to endow 
 a professorship of rhetoric and elocution. With the beginning of the 
 new year, 1836, the change of name was formally made by vote of the 
 board of trustees, and Alton College followed Alton Seminary into the 
 silence of history. Benjamin Shurtleff was a Boston physician, born in 
 that city in 1775, a graduate of Brown University and of Harvard 
 Medical School. He died in 1847. His son, Dr. M. B. Shurtleff, was 
 mayor of Boston in 1868. 
 
 But Mr. Peck brought from the east not money only. Lewis Colby, 
 a young man who had helped him in raising the money, he brought with 
 him to be principal of the theological department. Mr. Colby was an 
 admirable teacher and organizer, but without sufficient salary or even 
 funds for current expenses it was impossible for him to continue; so 
 at the beginning of the fall term of 1837 he resigned and reairned 
 with his family to the east. 
 
 Another teacher discovered by Mr. Peck while on his eastern trip 
 was Washington Leverett. He wrote in one of his letters : 
 
 "A student at Newton by the name of Leverett, a brother of Rev. 
 Mr. Leverett of Roxbury, is recommended to me for teacher of mathe- 
 matics. He has been a tutor in Brown University, and stands high as 
 a scholar and teacher. He is very modest and retiring." 
 
 Washington Leverett, twin brother of Warren Leverett, was born 
 in Brookline, Mass., in 1803. He was the seventh from Thomas 
 Leverett, who came over with John Cotton in 1633; the sixth from 
 John Leverett, who was for six years governor of the colony; fourth 
 from John Leverett, for seventeen years president of Harvard College. 
 Warren and Washington were baptized by Rev. Bela Jacobs in 1825, 
 and united with the Baptist church in Cambridgeport. After graduat- 
 ing at Harvard and Newton, Washington was ordained in August, 
 1836, married in September and arrived in Upper Alton in October. 
 He became at once acting president of the College, on account of the 
 resignation of Prof. Loomis the previous June. This became his home 
 for fifty-three years. He died in 1889. 
 
 On Mr. Peck's return from the east he found there had been but 
 one college trustee meeting during his absence, and his first work was
 
 126 History of the Baptists of Illinois 
 
 to resume building operations and straighten out innumerable tangles. 
 While doing this he remained at Alton, and would have removed his 
 home there if he could have disposed of his Rock Spring property. 
 There had been talk for years about forming a joint stock company to 
 publish Mr. Peck's "Pioneer" at Upper Alton as a weekly; but want 
 of money hindered everything. He made however the removal himself, 
 at his own cost, and at Upper Alton the "Western Pioneer and Baptist 
 Standard Bearer" continued to be published as a monthly until its re- 
 moval to Louisville, Ky., in 1839. 
 
 Besides the college affairs he had the usual conventions and societies 
 and Missouri tours to look after. He completed also, with the aid of 
 his old friend and helper, Prof. Messenger, a new and more accurate 
 map of Illinois, and published a revised edition of his Guide to Emi- 
 grants. He was solicited to prepare a history of Illinois, and a legislative 
 committee was appointed to assist him in gathering the facts. He was 
 solicited also by the newly organized American and Foreign Bible 
 Society to accept the general agency for that Society for the northwest. 
 He could only reply to such solicitations that he was friendly to the 
 cause and would do v/hat he could. Harder to bear was the notification 
 received from the Home Mission Society that on account of the financial 
 stringency it would be impossible for the Society to meet its appro- 
 priations, thus throwing upon him the burden of raising as much of 
 the appropriations as he could on the field, and being blamed by those 
 to whom the unpaid balance was due for broken promises which he 
 could not help. 
 
 In 1839 he spent September in a trip with his wife through the 
 northern part of the state. He preached at Chicago for pastor I. T. 
 Hinton, attended the Northern Association at Elgin, was taken sick and 
 confined to his room for ten days, so that he missed the State Con- 
 vention at Bloomington, though having in his trunk the record's and 
 papers essential to the Convention business. Recovering he slowly 
 wended his way by Newark, Ottawa, Tonica, Washington, Tremont, 
 Delavan and Springfield. 
 
 For four years after the assumption of college dignity Shurtleff Col- 
 lege was in fact an academy, but in 1839 a college class was formed 
 of those who wished to pursue a classical course and who had the 
 necessary attainments to begin with. The other classes were then erected 
 into the academic department with Warren Leverett, who had been 
 teaching at Greenville, as principal. He too was destined to do his
 
 History of the Baptists of Illinois 127 
 
 life's work at Upper Alton. After two years as tutor he was appointed 
 college professor of Latin and Greek. He died in 1872. 
 
 The Leverett brothers, as the 30's passed out, were the college and 
 academy faculty, essentially. A small force on small salaries, but the 
 value lay in the friendship and the moral and christian influence of the 
 men. And therein lies the value of the small college, a value of which 
 it need never be deprived. It is manhood and womanhood that develops 
 manhood and womanhood. Lectures and textbooks are in comparison 
 but the dust of the street. It is one of the axioms of teaching that the 
 teacher is greater than the lesson. In a small institution the teacher is 
 the student's environment; in a large institution the student's environ- 
 ment is his fellow students. This is a law that will never change.
 
 CHAPTER XXXVIII 
 
 THE BIBLE CONTROVERSY 
 
 A matter which caused much excitement among Baptists the world 
 over, back in the '30's and onwards, was the matter of Bible translation. 
 It led to our separation from the American Bible Society. In a document 
 issued by pope Gregory, May 8, 1844, sealed with his leaden seal, 
 he said: 
 
 "We confirm and renew the decree . . . against the publication, 
 distribution, reading and possession of books of the holy scripture trans- 
 lated into the vulgar tongue." 
 
 This was directed against the Bible Societies of Europe and America, 
 and they might have exclaimed in the language of Adonizedek: ""As 
 I have done so God has requited me." For only a few years before the 
 Societies had forbidden the translation of certain Bible words into any 
 of the languages of the world where such translation had not already 
 been made. In substance the Societies and the pope were in agreement." 
 
 When William Carey and his colleagues at Serampore made their 
 Hindu translation of the Bible, they translated the scripture word 
 ""baptizo" by a Hindu word meaning to immerse. Their only alterna- 
 tive was to leave it untranslated. By and by the pedobaptist mission- 
 aries began to discover that their people objected to sprinkling as a substi- 
 tute for baptism on the ground that it was not in scripture. But if it was 
 not in scripture it ought to be! So about 1827 a protest was sent to the 
 British Bible Society against aiding in the circulation of the Serampore 
 versions. Through some of the Baptist brethren pressure was brought 
 to bear on Mr. Carey to induce him to transfer the offending word and 
 let it alone, or to translate it by one of the m_any words which it did not 
 mean. But he steadily refused to abandon his principle of translating 
 every word of scripture into the native tongue. He held that the com- 
 mand to baptize was the command to do a certain act, that the act was 
 defined in the word used in the command, and that his duty as trans- 
 lator was to make the command as plain in the translation as it was 
 in the original. So in 1833 the British Bible Society declared that they 
 would no longer aid versions in which ""baptize" was translated. They 
 did not realize that in so far as they succeeded in abolishing the symbol 
 
 128
 
 History of the Baptists of Illinois 129 
 
 they would abolish that which the symbol stands for, viz : Death to sin 
 and resurrection to a new life. 
 
 In 1835 application was made to the American Bible Society in 
 New York for aid in printing Carey's Bengali version, and after nine 
 months' discussion the application was refused. It was the most em- 
 barrassing question the brethren ever had to settle. On the one hand 
 was their knowledge of the meaning of the word ; on the other hand 
 was their denominational practice. They chose to stand by the latter. 
 The work of the Society was to circulate the scriptures "in the received 
 versions where they exist and in the most faithful where they may be 
 required." And "faithful," so they decided, meant faithful to the 
 "Church." The word being left untranslated "can be explained by each 
 missionary according to the peculiar views of his denomination." But 
 why not according to the peculiar views of our Lord Jesus Christ? 
 
 At a meeting of the British Bible Society a missionary explained that 
 in the Tahitian version they had not translated the word "baptize." 
 "What meaning has it in the Tahitian language.''" asked a gentleman in 
 the audience. "Just what meaning we please to assign to it, sir!" was 
 the answer. The final decision of the American Bible Society was an- 
 nounced at their annual meeting, May 12, 1836. They refused to aid 
 the printing of Judson's Burman Bible. The following day the Baptist 
 delegates withdrew and organized provisionally a new Society. We have 
 been doing our own Bible work ever since. April 27, 1837, three him- 
 dred delegates from Baptist churches met at Philadelphia, and organized 
 the American & Foreign Bible Society. All this made a great stir 
 at the time. Many who were not Baptists disapproved of the action of 
 the Bible Societies. The "Independent" said: 
 
 "The Society plants itself squarely on the position of the "Church" 
 of Rome, that the common people shall not be allowed every word of 
 scripture, to read it with their own eyes, and draw from it what con- 
 clusions they think reasonable, but that a portion of the sacred oracles 
 shall be doled out to them by their spiritual guides. . . . Gentlemen, 
 it is not a right thing to do. The only question you have to ask is 
 whether the translation is faithful to the Greek. If it is not, condemn 
 it; if it is, publish it." 
 
 How can we account for this phenomenon of christian brethren 
 strenuously contending for a translation v/hich they dare not translate? 
 In an edition of the gospel of John in the dialect of the Delaware 
 Indians "baptizo" was boldly translated "sprinkle," but the Bible So- 
 ciety hastened to disown it. At a meeting of the board of managers
 
 130 History of the Baptists of Illinois 
 
 of the Society one had the temerity to move that the board declare 
 immersion an "unfaithful" version. It would have been an immense 
 relief if it could have been done, but of course it was impossible. We 
 may consider two things: First, the average man of us finds it difficult 
 to acknowledge mistakes. Second, denominational interests are akin to 
 vested interests. The very fact that one is contending to save such 
 interest warps the judgment and prevents a judicial frame of mind. 
 However, the board of managers did not justify their action on either 
 of these considerations, but on the theory that the word is not trans- 
 latable; that "bapto" means to dip, but "baptizo" has forgotten its 
 origin. It cannot be so translated that from the translation alone its 
 meaning shall be intelligible. This is in substance the papal theory, 
 that scripmre cannot be so translated as to be understood without a 
 teacher. It is not true. It is a theory made in the interest of an 
 ecclesiastical system. The Bible and every command and promise in it 
 may be understood by every one. If it was otherwise it would be for 
 us no charter of human liberty, or eternal blessing.
 
 CHAPTER XXXIX 
 
 THE STATE CONVENTION AT WORK 
 
 The second meeting of the Ilhnois Baptist State Convention was 
 held at Carrollton, October 8, 1835 ; and the third at the Bethel church, 
 St. Clair county, October 13, 1836. This last was a token of the full 
 cooperation of the Friends to Humanity, for Bethel was the old Cantine 
 Creek church. The fourth meeting was held at Peoria, October 12, 
 
 1837. The executive committee that year was: J. M. Peck, Moses 
 Lemen, Geo. Haskell, Hubbell Loomis, Lewis Colby, Geo. Smith, 
 Dwight Ives, Elias Hubbard. They were pushers, breathed hopefully 
 the optimistic atmosphere of the good times of 1836, and worked 
 the machine at high pressure. When the collapse of commercial credit 
 came in '37 they had in the field twenty "missionaries," viz, preachers 
 aided in small amounts; one third of the appropriations payable by 
 the Convention and two thirds by the Home Mission Society. Those 
 aided were I. T. Hinton, Chicago ; J. E. Ambrose, Plainfield ; Thomas 
 Powell, Tonica; I. D. Newell and E. Veach, Bloomington and McLean 
 
 ^county; Alexander Riddler, Peoria and Chillicothe; A. M. Gardner, 
 Illinois River Association ; Jonathan Merriam, Springfield ; William 
 Spencer, Jacksonville, Ezra Fisher, Quincy, Norman Parks, Warsaw and 
 Carthage; T. H. Ford, Payson; W. F. Boyakin, Salem; Calvin Green- 
 leaf, Perry and Griggsville ; John Clark, Mercer county ; W. J. Cooley, 
 Clinton, Marion, and Bond counties; Nathan Arnett and J. B. Olcott, 
 southern Illinois; J. M. Peck, General Agent; Joel Sweet and James 
 and Moses Lemen, for general agency work at different times. 
 
 Alexander Riddler was from Aberdeen, Scotland. Came to Canada 
 in 1832 and to Illinois in 1837. He was permitted to labor here only 
 one year. He died of intermittent fever at Chillicothe, October 7, 
 
 1838, and his wife died a few weeks after, leaving five little children 
 destitute and among strangers. 
 
 I. D. Newell was from Vermont, a graduate of Hamilton in the 
 same class with Bailey and Bartlett. He came to Illinois in 1836, and 
 settled first at Rushville but preached at many points. He was the 
 father of the Bloomington Association ; was three years pastor at Peoria 
 and built its first meeting house. He was pastor at Batavia and Aurora, 
 and served for a time as financial agent for Shurtleff College and for 
 
 131
 
 132 History of the Baptists of Illinois 
 
 the American Bible Union. Ke died at Carrollton, at the home of his 
 son-in-law, Justus Bulkley, in 1857. His son, George I. Newell, died 
 in 1852, while studying for the ministry in Rochester University, the 
 first student death in that institution. 
 
 Jonathan Merriam was from Massachusetts, and came to Springfield, 
 111., in 1836. He was followed in 1837 by his older brother, Isaac 
 Merriam, who settled at Tremont. Jonathan became the second pastor 
 of the Springfield Baptist church, succeeding Aaron Vandeveer. It was 
 under him that the church passed out from under the shadow of anti- 
 missionism, and led in the organization of the Springfield Association. 
 In 1840 he was pastor for one year at Upper Alton, and then removed 
 to Logan county where he died in 1846. Isaac Merriam v^^as during his 
 life an itinerant preacher. He died in 1860. His son, Jonathan Mer- 
 riam Jr., was also a Baptist preacher, a graduate of Wake Forest Col- 
 lege and Newton Seminary. He was pastor of several churches in 
 central Illinois, and died at his home in Lanark in 1872. 
 
 Calvin Greenleaf was another New Englander. He came to Pike 
 county, 111., in 1835, and was a useful minister in Griggsville and 
 vicinity for nearly forty years. In 1872 he removed to Colorado, and 
 died there in 1875. 
 
 In their report to the Peoria convention of 1837, the executive com- 
 mittee had this to say of "once a m.optli" preaching: 
 
 "One of the sorest evils existing among us in years past, and also 
 now, is the habit of meeting regularly for public worship and preaching 
 the gospel in the churches but once a month. This practice, hitherto 
 so extensive throughout the western and southern states, can be justi- 
 fied only on the providential contingency of a great disproportion of the 
 number of ministers to that of churches. And even then a church is 
 wholly inexcusable if the members do not meet regularly on the first 
 day of the week for the worship of God. Is the plea made that there 
 is no one to pray, read the scripmres, or preach in public? That plea 
 if a true one decides at once the utter incompetency of the members 
 to be formed into a church. It shows great and unpardonable neglect 
 of the law of Christ in the Great Commission, — "teaching them to 
 observe all things whatsoever I have commanded j'ou." Our regular 
 monthly meetings on Saturdays we have no desire to change, but we do 
 hope that strenuous efforts v/ill be made to reclaim from desecration 
 those sabbaths that God has consecrated to him-self, and that weekly 
 meetings as in apostolic times be held in all our churches." 
 
 This position is well taken, and the counsel is worthy of being 
 heeded not only by "once a month" churches but by Baptist churches
 
 History of the Baptists of Illinois 133 
 
 everywhere that suppose they cannot worship God unless they have a 
 preacher. Observe that this is essentially the same spirit that makes 
 the ritualist suppose he cannot worship except in the presence of altar 
 and vestments. Note the subordination of the laity, and deference to 
 the clergy, that is characteristic of false church systems everywhere. 
 Remember James Lemen and his neighbors and the weekly meetings 
 for the worship of God, with not even an annual visit from a preacher, 
 or a clergyman; this is our oldest Baptist tradition in Illinois. Let us 
 follow; it would build us up in the faith, and save perhaps our little 
 church from perishing. 
 
 While the convention was being held at Peoria the Lovejoy excite- 
 ment was culminating at Alton. Three printing presses had been 
 destroyed and thrown into the river by mobs instigated from St. Louis, 
 and a fourth press was on its way from Cincinnati. Three weeks after 
 the convention closed the press arrived, and that night, November 7, 
 1837, Elijah P. Lovejoy was murdered. The story thrilled the world, 
 and brought up an evil name on Alton which it did not deserve, and 
 which was not removed until the civil war ended forever the abomina- 
 tion of slavery. Liquor however had as much to do with the crime as 
 slavery had. The assassins fortified themselves at the drinking saloons, 
 and did not fire the fatal shot until liquor had stolen their reason. The 
 trade in liquor is as criminal as the slave trade. 
 
 At the Carrollton convention a special meeting was appointed at 
 Alton, November 25, to organize an Education Society for the purpose 
 of aiding students for the ministry at Shurtleflf College. The meeting 
 was held, but was not sufficiently attended to succeed in its object. 
 The executive committee therefore at a conference held with Brown's 
 Prairie church, May 21, issued a call for a special meeting of the state 
 Convention to meet at Springfield August 19. At that meeting a com- 
 mittee was appointed on Ministerial Education, J. M. Peck, chairman, 
 which reported a form for a constitution, and recommended to the Con- 
 vention to have a "recess in the afternoon to give place to a meeting 
 to form such a society." The recess v/as voted and the meeting held 
 in the Methodist church at two p.m., Saturday, August 20, 1836. 
 Ebenezer Rodgers was elected chairman, and Calvin Greenleaf secre- 
 tary of the meeting, and "The Illinois Baptist Education Society" was 
 organized; and is still active. 
 
 The annual meeting of the Convention for 1838 was held in Jack- 
 sonville, and in 1839 in Bloomington. At this latter Roswell Kimball
 
 134 History of the Baptists of Illinois 
 
 was appointed General Agent, at a salary of $500. He was the son of 
 a New Hampshire Baptist minister, Benjamin Kimball. He became a 
 physician, but in 1830, when forty years of age, entered the ministry, 
 and was pastor of several churches in Niagara county, N. Y. In 1835 
 he came to Upper Alton, removing in 1856 to Delavan, where he died 
 in 1865. He was faithful in all that he did. 
 
 In 1839 the name of Peter Hagler appeared in the hst of "mission- 
 aries." He was a native of North Carolina, and came with his father's 
 family to Jackson county. 111., in 1819, when he was twelve years old. 
 In 1826 he married, and in 1829 the Nine Mile Baptist church was 
 organized in his cabin, two miles northwest of DuQuoin. Here the 
 same practice was followed as at New Design forty years before. They 
 met regularly for worship without a preacher or a promise of one, until 
 the Lord raised up one for them in the person of Mr. Hagler himself. 
 The church joined the Salem Association, was excluded from it for 
 having missionary convictions, and in 1834 joined the Saline. Mr. 
 Hagler remained with Nine Mile church all his life, though pastor 
 of a number of other churches. He was eminently successful as an 
 evangelist, and is supposed to have baptized three thousand persons. 
 He had no library for several years but his Bible and concordance, until 
 he secured the gift of a ten dollar library through J. M. Peck. He was 
 always poor, preaching without salary and supporting his family by 
 farming, yet he raised to manhood and womanhood seven orphan 
 children. For thirty years he journeyed through heat and cold, and 
 missed less than a dozen appointments. If poverty and toil and influence 
 are apostolic marks he was the apostle of southwestern Illinois. He died 
 in 1886. God has no greater earthly gift than the gift of such a man. 
 Peter Hagler will never die!
 
 CHAPTER XL 
 ILLINOIS BAPTIST PREACHERS, 1830-1835 
 
 Besides those already mentioned, or who were in some way con- 
 nected with the State Convention, there were in the '30's many active 
 Baptist ministers whose names and work should not be forgotten. 
 Chester Carpenter was one of the earliest preachers in southern Illinois. 
 He helped organize the Muddy River Association in 1820, and the 
 Franklin Association in 1841. Soon after that, to our sorrow, he yielded 
 to his antimission environment, and met no more with the true primitive 
 Baptists. 
 
 William Rountree, of the Nine Mile Association, came to Illinois 
 from Kentucky in 1817, and preached regularly as long as he was able 
 to travel. He died in 1856. 
 
 Theophilus Sweet came from New York to Illinois in 1820, and was 
 ordained by "Middle Fork of Muddy River" church in 1824. Most 
 of his active life was spent in Sangamon county, the last ten years 
 in Scott county. He died at Winchester in 1856. 
 
 William Rondeau came from England to Pope county, 111., in 1820. 
 He began preaching soon after he came, and continued until his death 
 in 1842. He was an able and useful but very eccentric man. His home 
 was on a little island in the Ohio river, near Golconda. 
 
 Jesse Ellidge was from Jacob Bowers' neighborhood in Kentucky, 
 and came to Illinois in 1822. He was one of the constituent members 
 of Winchester church. In 1832 he removed to Pike county, where his 
 subsequent life was spent and where he died in 1875. He was a faith- 
 ful and laborious itinerant preacher. 
 
 Scare Crane emigrated to Illinois from Ohio in 1823. He was 
 ordained in 1824 by a council of which J. M. Peck was moderator. 
 His work was mostly in Greene county. He was a good man. He died 
 in 1847. 
 
 James Solomon was from Kenmcky, and removed with his parents 
 to Morgan county. 111., in 1824. He was baptized in 1829 — the first 
 baptism in Apple Creek — and began to preach the following year. His 
 work was chiefly in Macoupin county. He was surrounded by anti- 
 mission prejudices, but firmly stood for the command of the Lord to 
 give the gospel message to the world. He died in 1881. 
 
 135
 
 136 History of the Baptists of Illinois 
 
 Peter Rodgers was bom in New London, Conn., in 1754, and spent 
 die early part of his life as a sea captain and in naval service. He 
 was ordained in 1789, and in 1828 emigrated to Monroe county, III. 
 He was an unusually successful preacher, especially in evangelistic work. 
 He was a son-in-law of Zadok Darrow. He died in "Waterloo, in 1849. 
 
 Ebenezer Rodgers was one of three brothers, all of whom became 
 Baptist preachers. He was bom in Monmouthshire, England, of Welsh 
 parentage, in 1788. In 1818 he emigrated to Kentucky, in 1819 to 
 Missouri, and in 1834 to Illinois. He was returning at this time from 
 a visit to his native land and stopped a few weeks at Alton, with the 
 result that he was called to the pastorate of the two Alton Baptist 
 churches, and accepted. After one year he became pastor at Upper 
 Alton alone. During his pastorate of four years the church trebled in 
 membership, and erected a stone meeting house. He made his home 
 there to the end of his hfe, in 1854, preaching for churches in the 
 vicinity. 
 
 John Browning came to Illinois from Tennessee about 1804. He 
 was baptized in 1831, the Srst baptism in Big Muddy river; and was 
 soon after ordained. He was a good and useful man. Most of his 
 preaching, as was the custom in those days, in many locahties, was at 
 his own charge. He died in 1857. 
 
 William McPherson was bom in Tennessee in 1809, and began to 
 learn to write by making letters in the sand along the shore of the 
 Toinssee river. In 1829 he removed to Virginia, and in 1831 to 
 Illinois, DeWitt county. He was a Hcensed Methodist preacher, and 
 was ordained as pastor of the Clinton Baptist church, which office he 
 retained acceptably for eleven years. He died a poor man in I860, 
 leaving a family of nine children to the covenant promises of God. 
 
 Jacob V. Rhoades was bom in Kentucky in 1793, and im m ediately 
 following his ordination in 1831 he came to Illinois, Macoupin county. 
 He helped to organize Mount Pleasant church, in Shipman township, and 
 was its pastor for twenty-seven years. He was a godly, earnest, ener- 
 geiic man and minister. He died in 1872. 
 
 Peter Long was bom in Kentucky in 1804. His father and two of 
 his uncles were Baptist preachers in Virginia. While he was a boy his 
 parents removed to the wilds of Indiana and there, chiefly by self study, 
 he obtained what education he had. In the fall of the year he gathered 
 the forked tubers of the American ginseng, for which there was a good 
 maricet, and which grew wild in some parts of the Indiana woods. He
 
 History of the Baptists of Illinois 137 
 
 carefully saved the mcmey obtained in this waj to boy books, as readers 
 and histories. When nineteen years of age he accepted Qirist as his 
 Saviour, and his reading changed to standard religious works, socfa as 
 he could obtain. When his library became large he set zpart half of it 
 for himself, and the other half as a drcularing library for the use of 
 his neighbors. In 1831 he removed to Bond county, Illinois, id 
 ordained there in 1832. In 1833 he aided \si organizing \:/z l-zs.z 
 Nebo Baptist diurch, near Greenville, and was its pastor for forty- 
 three years. He did also much itinerant work, and xmder his preaching 
 "many were added to the Lord." He had a wide influence, as is 
 usually the case where a pastor remains IcMig with ocue chorch. He pul>- 
 lished for many years the "Western Evangelist," a mmithly; also at 
 different times the "Advocate," and the "Pioneer Preacher," two ouar- 
 terlies. He issued besides several collections of hymns. He died i: 
 a good old age in 1891. 
 
 Many other Baptist ministers in the state were serving didr Lord 
 as best they might dunng this period, be: 5:~e —ere known CKily over 
 a sm^n territory, and of others no records have been preserved. Tze 
 pioneer preacher, between his we^ day toil for bread and hii Lcrd s 
 day toil to carry the bread of life to cniiers, had little :lne for records. 
 Unless the facts of his life were gathered up for his funeral and pre- 
 served, his memory gradually perished from among me- Ver i: the 
 last it matters htde. The truly valuable records are uio-^; v. : :-r 
 Lord is keeping that he may know what to give each servant -^ . er. re 
 returns. He who is thus remembered will be no loser, th:_: re 
 drops out of human remembrance. "Therefore my beloved z-.ts.-.t:.. 
 be ye stedfast, uimioveable, always abouading in die work of die Lord. 
 forasmuch as ye know that your labor is ctK in vain in the Lord." 
 1 Cor. 15:58.
 
 CHAPTER XLI 
 ILLINOIS BAPTIST PREACHERS, 1835-1840 
 
 Wilfred Ferrell emigrated from Tennessee to Illinois, Williamson 
 county, in 1833, and in 1836 was ordained as a Baptist minister. For 
 a quarter of a century he was an itinerant preacher of wide influence. 
 In 1856 he emigrated to Texas and died there. 
 
 Hezekiah Ferrell followed his brother Wilfred to Illinois in 1835, 
 and was ordained there in 1838. He served a number of churches as 
 pastor, but his greatest work was as an evangelist. He is best remem- 
 bered for his success in revival meetings. He died in I860. 
 
 William Ferrell, father of Wilfred and Hezekiah Ferrell, was born 
 in North Carolina in 1788, removed to Tennessee in 1812, followed 
 his sons to Illinois, Williamson county. His first coming was because of 
 a split in the Bethel Association over antimissionism. The church to 
 which his sons belonged was divided, and they and fifteen others were 
 excluded because they refused their consent to disfellowship those who 
 favored missions. The Ferrells thereupon sent to Salem, Tennessee, As- 
 sociation for a "presbytery" to examine them and see if they were not 
 "in order" and adhering to the original practice of the churches. Three 
 pastors were sent, of whom William Ferrell was one. They recognized 
 the seventeen as a church, now known as Davis Prairie. The elder 
 Ferrell decided to make this state his home, and for twenty years he 
 was one of our most efficient ministers. He died in 1867. 
 
 John Paden came from Virginia to Madison county, Illinois, in 1814, 
 and at his death at his home near Troy, in 1873, he had been in Illinois 
 longer than any other Baptist preacher then living. He was ordained 
 in 1835. He was a quiet man, inclined to timidity, but true and faithful. 
 
 William Hill, to escape the blighting influence of slavery on his 
 family, removed with them from Virginia to the neighborhood of the 
 Friends to Humanity in Illinois, in 1835. He was a minister of four- 
 teen years' standing. He soon removed to Greene county, and after a 
 time to Macoupin county, where he died in 1874. He did not serve 
 much as a pastor, but rather as an itinerant supply. 
 
 Isaac Van Brunt was a native of New Jersey, and settled with his 
 family at Rock Springs, St. Clair county, in 1836. He was a man of 
 prayer and patience, and an instructive preacher. He died in 1848. 
 
 138
 
 History of the Baptists of Illinois 139 
 
 S. S. Whitman, teacher of Hebrew in Hamilton Seminary, was born 
 in Vermont in 1802, and settled at Belvidere, 111., in 1836. He was 
 pastor there twelve years, and during that time the church greatly in- 
 creased, and the Sunday school grew from nothing to three hundred. 
 He preached for the church at Rockford, also, which he helped to 
 organize. He was a useful and successful minister. In 1851 he re- 
 moved to Wisconsin, and died there in 1852. 
 
 David W. Elmore, from New York, was a graduate of Union 
 College, Schenectady, and of Newton Seminary, and was one of the 
 most finished scholars in the Baptist denomination. He came to Illinois 
 in 1836 full of new educational plans, which however all turned to dis- 
 appointment. It was a sore trial to him as the years passed without his 
 being able to realize his cherished purpose. He was killed by lightning 
 while at work in the harvest field, July 20, 1854. It was Saturday 
 afternoon, and his work was done! 
 
 J. H. Daniels came from Virginia to Cass county, Illinois, in 1836. 
 He removed afterwards to Mason county, where he died in 1881. He 
 was a great student, and had committed a large part of the Bible to 
 memory. 
 
 R. B. Ashley, with his brother, deacon Cyrus Ashley, came to Will 
 county, Illinois, in 1836. He was born in Corinth, N. Y., in 1799, and 
 was ordained in 1827. He was strong in his opposition to slavery, the 
 liquor traffic, and secret societies. He was for many years a fellow 
 laborer with J. E. Ambrose. He died at his home in Plainfield, in 1880. 
 
 Aaron Trabue was from Kentucky, and removed to Illinois in 1837. 
 He was of Hugenot ancestry; the gift to this country of the religious 
 persecutions of papal France. He settled first in Alton, but in 1847 
 removed to Jersey county, where he died in 1877. His entire life was 
 characterized by industry, integrity and charity. 
 
 Joel Wheeler was born in New Hampshire in 1808, and emigrated 
 to McHenry county, Illinois, in 1837. He was both in faith and by 
 birth a descendant of Roger Williams. He combined teaching with 
 preaching and made a success of both. His labors extended in all 
 directions from his home. He was for more than a generation one of 
 the most widely known men in northern Illinois. He died in 1886. 
 
 Porter Clay was a brother of Henry Clay, and was a Baptist preacher. 
 In 1836, when an elderly man he removed to Illinois, making his home 
 in Jacksonville. He was pastor for a time at Carrollton, and after- 
 wards at Quincy. He died in 1850.
 
 140 History of the Baptists of Illinois 
 
 William Steele was born in Virginia, removed with hiis parents to 
 Kentuck)- in 179S, and in 180S he came to Illinois. He made his home 
 on Silver creek, St. Clair county. He was ordained in 1838, when fifty 
 years of age, and faithfully preached the gospel for fovirteen years. He 
 died at Carlyle, Illinois, in 1852. 
 
 S. M. Williams came from Tennessee to Franklin count}', Illinois, 
 in 1837. He was a faithful preacher and pastor until his death in 1876. 
 
 Joel Terry was a native of this state, born in St. Clair count}- in 
 1808. His parents were from Virginia. He was ordained by the Bethel 
 church Friends to Humanity in 1839, though he had been preaching 
 as he had opportunity for some years before. The council called at his 
 ordination was J. M. Peck, James and Joseph Lemen, Joseph Chance 
 and Nathan Arnett. After his ordination he took a r^^o years' course at 
 Shurtleli College. His subsequent ministry was in Greene county, where 
 it was greatly blessed. He died in 1860. 
 
 James Hovey was born in Pennsylvania, but the larger part of his 
 life was spent in Ohio. In 1839 he removed to Henderson county, 
 Illinois. He was pastor at Rozetta eleven years, and at Kirloivood six 
 years. He died in 1873. 
 
 William Stillwell came from New York to Winnebago count)', 
 Illinois, in 1839, and was pastor at Rockton until his death in 1850. 
 He preached also at Burritt, Roscoe, and other points. His ftmeral was 
 conduaed by Ichabod Clark and Jacob Knapp. 
 
 B. B. Carpenter, son of Burton Carpenter, v/as born in Vermont in 
 1810, took a partial course at Hamilton, and came to Illinois in 1839. 
 He was ordained as their pastor by the Dixon Baptist church, and was 
 there six years. In 1845 he entered on a pastorate at Griggsville which 
 continued twenty-five years, until failing health compelled him to desist. 
 The church procured an assistant, in the hope that after a time he might 
 be able to resume his work, but the hope was vain. In rest however, 
 and in other employment, he partially recovered, ajid lived until 1887. 
 He was a man of God ; and a man of talent, tact and scholarship.
 
 CHAPTER XLII 
 
 WOOD RI\^R ASS0CL\T10N 
 
 The first colored Baptist church in Illinois was organized by the 
 Friends to Humanity in St. Clair county, in the '20's, and was called 
 Mount Sinai, apt emblem of the condition of the race, for surely they 
 were at that rime under the law and not under the gospel. Afterwards, 
 perhaps acting on the suggestion of Hebrews 12:18-22, the name was 
 changed to Mount Zion. John Livingston was called to be their pastor, 
 and James Lemen and James Pulliam set him apan by the laying on 
 of hands. Church and pastor were received into the South Distria 
 Association Friends to Humanity, and so continued until they had an 
 Association of their o-w^n. John Livingston was a poor and hardworking 
 man, and of such prudence and sound sense that he was respected by all. 
 He had the honor to be the first and for a time the only ordained colored 
 Baptist preacher in Illinois. After a time Robert Crawford was his 
 associate. This church was on Ridge Prairie. 
 
 A second church was organized on the historic ground of Ogle's 
 Creek. In IS 37 two colored people, A. H. Richardson and wife, came 
 to Alton, and on Sunday morning set out to attend church as they had 
 been accustomed to do in Tennessee. It was a "hot time " on the negro 
 question. The Lovejoy excitement was rising to its bloody clim a x . The 
 presence of the strangers was resented by some of the people, and to 
 avoid trouble they come away and returned to their lodgings. On the 
 way brother Richardson remarked to a friend, "^e are not going to 
 that church any more." The result of the incident was the organiza- 
 tion of the colored Baptist church of L'pper Alton with six members. 
 John Livingston became the pastor, and he was assisted in the organiza- 
 tion by pastor Ebenezer Rodgers of the white church at L'pper Alton. 
 
 April 27, 1859, delegates from these three churches met with the 
 Ogle's Creek chiirch, at the house of Samuel Vincent, eleaed James 
 Lemen moderator and A. H. Richardson clerk, and proceeded to or- 
 ganize the "Colored Baptist Association of Illinois Friends to Hu- 
 manity." It was a small a3air, the total of the three churches was not 
 more than forty, but it was a beginning, and it went right on and did 
 not stop. 
 
 It was in its beginning the adopted child of the Friends to Hu- 
 manity. The small and trembling "Mount Sinai" was sheltered by the 
 
 141
 
 142 History of the Baptists of Illinois 
 
 Lemens and their associates, and by them the first Association was sent 
 forth on its journey tlirough the coming years. It was not the rival but 
 the ward of the State Convention. The annual meetings of the negro 
 Association were fixed early in the fall that a report might be made 
 to the white Baptist Convention following. 
 
 The first regular meeting of the colored Association was held with 
 the Ridge Prairie church, September 13, 1839. The total membership 
 had increased to fifty-two; and the Jacksonville church was received 
 with twelve members. This also was organized by John Livingston, and 
 he was their pastor. He was pastor of the whole Association! One 
 of the young members of the new church was Samuel Ball, who be- 
 came a very useful preacher and leader among his people all through the 
 Sangamon country. He published a Compend of Doctrine, and in 1848 
 was sent by the Association as their investigating agent to Liberia. He 
 was cut off in the prime of life by typhoid fever, at Springfield, in 1852. 
 
 At this first anniversary of the Association resolutions were passed 
 in favor of temperance, family worship, Sunday schools, and itinerant 
 preaching, and they pledged themselves to cooperate with the state Con- 
 vention along these lines. Our colored Baptists were never troubled 
 with antimissionism! There was gospel preaching on Sunday, and a 
 number of conversions. Thus the Association meetings were a help and 
 a blessing to the church with which they were held. Here is one of the 
 "old paths" to which, hand in hand with the Holy Spirit, we ought to 
 return. During the first ten years the Association grew to fourteen 
 churches and 240 members, scattered all the way from Galena to 
 Shawneetown. For that reason in 1849 it was divided, the southern 
 part taking the name of Mount Olive. 
 
 Through all these years one of the chief anxieties of the Association 
 was to provide education for their children and training for their 
 preachers. To this end they organized an Educational Association, 
 provided course of study, arranged for ministers' meetings, petitioned 
 the legislature, and where it was needed gathered their children into 
 separate schools. Two attempts were made to locate the Association 
 permanently. The first was in 1849, on grounds selected near Alton, 
 on Wood River, from which the body got its new name. Some build- 
 ings were erected, but only two consecutive meetings were held there. 
 Again in 1856 a committee was appointed to purchase ten acres of land 
 in Macoupin county, and the meetings of the Association were located 
 there for a term of years. It was "in the mind of the Association that it
 
 History of the Baptists of Illinois 143 
 
 should be a site for a school or college some day." But nothing finally 
 came of it. 
 
 In 1900 the northern Association was again divided into North 
 Wood River and South Wood River. 
 
 One who was a chief leader among the colored Baptists of Illinois 
 for thirty-five years was Richard DeBaptiste. He was elected corre- 
 sponding secretary of the Association in 1864, and was annually re- 
 elected until his death. He was pastor at Galesburg and Chicago. He 
 was a strong and steady help in drawing his people upward.
 
 CHAPTER XLIII 
 
 THE PALESTINE ASSOCIATION 
 
 The first Baptist church organized on the eastern side of the state 
 was the Lamotte church, Crawford county, in 1812. It was united with 
 the Wabash Association, over the river in Indiana, which was organized 
 three years before. The oldest church in that Association was Maria 
 Creek church, a few miles from the river in Indiana, organized in 1809- 
 Three of the constituent members, Samuel Allison and wife and John 
 Morris, a colored man, lived in Illinois. In the fall of 1809 Isaac 
 McCoy became their pastor, and so continued until he went as a mis- 
 sionary to the Indians. On the Illinois side of the river, in 1817, 
 Little Village church, Lawrence county, was organized and joined the 
 Wabash Association. The same year, 1817, Daniel Parker arrived on 
 the scene from Kentucky, and became pastor of the two Illinois churches. 
 Then the excitement began. Up to that time the churches were in full 
 sympathy with the foreign mission movement that had recently com- 
 menced with the change of views of Adoniram Judson and the traveling 
 agency of Luther Rice. The very year that Parker arrived the Wabash 
 Association put on record that: 
 
 "This Association has received with much pleasure the circular of the 
 board of foreign missions, and is highly pleased with the information 
 derived therefrom." 
 
 Two years afterward, under Parker's lead and in the absence of 
 McCoy, the attitude of the Association was changed. It was done re- 
 luctantly and under stress, for in 1820 the Association said: 
 
 "We hope no use will be made of the decision of last year relative 
 to the subject of missions, to the distress of Zion." 
 
 Yet by Parker's fierce driving that was the use made of it, and "by the 
 very preachers whose better judgment protested against such use! In 
 1820 he published a pamphlet, in which he made such wrong statements 
 of fact that Maria Creek church laid charges against him before the 
 Lamotte church for fraud and falsehood. That opened a controversy 
 which resulted in 1824 in dividing the Association. Seven of the 
 twelve churches withdrew and organized as the Union Association, 
 leaving only the two churches in Illinois and three in Indiana to the 
 antimission Wabash. 
 
 144
 
 History of the Baptists of Illinois 145 
 
 The great point made by Parker was that mission Boards are outside 
 agencies, not answerable to the churches. To church or associational 
 missions he professed at that time to have no objections. So perhaps 
 if the brethren who met in Dr. Baldwin's parlor in Boston on that 
 chilly February day in 1813, had organized a society not to support 
 missions but to stir up the churches to support missions, the missionary 
 history of the last century might have been different. When we are 
 at the sources of things we have tremendous responsibilities. 
 
 But there were other causes besides that of missionary policy. There 
 was Parker's jealousy of the influence of McCoy. And there was a 
 mistaken view of the doctrine of predestination. This came to be so 
 held as to shut out christian activity altogether. The Spoon River 
 Association in 1869 charged Baptists with preaching a "conditional 
 salvation predicated upon human means." But Baptists never taught 
 such a salvation. They teach that God works through his people. They 
 hear his voice saying, "Let us go forth into the field." He who believes 
 that the shield of faith has only one side invariably gets tangled up in 
 the threads of his own logic. A writer said in a religious newspaper 
 article: "Either the sinner is saved by grace or he is not saved by 
 grace but uses his own power to help God save him; the two will not 
 go together." But they do go together. They did in the miracles of 
 Jesus ; they do in the miracles of the Spirit. 
 
 Another misunderstanding of scripture is that "atonement is the 
 same as forgiveness." It then follows that as the elect are already 
 forgiven there is no need of preaching divine forgiveness at all. In this 
 view to preach forgiveness is to doubt the atonement. But the one 
 illustration of the slain lamb in Egypt should have been enoup-h to have 
 rectified that error. The death of the lamb signified atonement, but 
 there was- no deliverance until the blood was sprinkled on the door post. 
 
 In 1826 Lamotte church which had stood by Parker's antimissionism, 
 divided over his foolish Tv/o Seed doctrine ; then there were two 
 Lamotte churches. The second Lamotte having broken away swung 
 back to their old moorings, putting as great a distance betv/een them- 
 selves and Parker as they could. They made it a cause of exclusion 
 when one of their number joined the "Parkerites." It was plain that 
 they had escaped from a despotism. In 1837 Elder Stephen Kennedy 
 became the pastor of Second Lamotte church, and so continued for 
 fourteen years. For three j^cars, '4l-'43, he was aided by the Home 
 Mission Society as an itinerant preacher. He labored all through that
 
 146 History of the Baptists of Illinois 
 
 region, and as the result several churches were organized. They were 
 known as "Effort" Baptists, or Baptists who believed in doing something. 
 
 October 15, 1841, delegates from six churches met with the Second 
 Lamotte church and organized the Palestine Association. The name 
 was taken from the village on the eastern edge of Lamotte prairie, which 
 was then the county seat of Crawford county. The Association had 
 grown to twenty-two churches, embracing all the Baptist churches in 
 Crawford county and as many more outside. Stephen Kennedy was on 
 the eastern side of the state what James Lemen was on the western. 
 And the Palestine Association in the one case, as truly as the Friends 
 to Humanity in the other, was a protest against an evil environment. 
 A similar spirit to which organized Cantine Creek church in St. Clair 
 county organized Second Lamotte church in Crawford county. In 
 both cases the separation was thorough and final. 
 
 Neither of the Lamotte churches are now in existence. At the last 
 meeting of Second Lamotte in 1859 so many members had removed 
 that the church voted to disband. Elder D. Y. Allison was pastor 
 at the time. He had been with the church since 1838. Himself and 
 wife united by experience, having withdrawn from Little Village church 
 on account of its "Parkerism." The same year he was elected deacon, 
 and was soon after ordained to the ministry. In place of Lamotte, 
 Liberty church was soon organized, almost on the same spot, and it is 
 still alive and active.
 
 CHAPTER XLIV 
 NEW NORTHERN ASSOCIATIONS 
 
 When A, B. Freeman came to Chicago in 1833 there was not a 
 Baptist church in all northern Illinois. The most northern was an anti- 
 mission church in Knox county. But in the fall of 1833 two churches, 
 Hadley in Will county and Chicago First in Cook county, sprang into 
 being. The year following three churches were added: Plainfield, 
 Bristol and Dupage. In 1835, St. Charles and Tonica. In that year 
 the Northern Association was organized. In 1836 churches were or- 
 ganized at Batavia and Belvidere, and Dupage was removed to Warren- 
 ville. Belvidere was the first Baptist church in the northern tier of 
 counties. In 1837 Baptist foundations were laid at Rock Island and 
 Joliet, and in 1838 at Elgin, Dundee, Dixon and Rockford. The church 
 at Rockford was organized December 22 in the house of our old 
 acquaintance at Upper Alton, first treasurer of the State Convention, and 
 one of the first trustees of Shurtleff College, Dr. George Haskell. Eight 
 of the constituent members of the church were from Upper Alton. 
 One of them was Caleb Blood, who soon afterwards entered the 
 ministry. Two others were Ransom Knapp and wife, whose glowing 
 accounts of the Rock river country brought out his brother. Eld. Jacob 
 Knapp and family from New York in 1840. Eld. Knapp purchased 
 two sections of land four miles from Rockford, and his general home 
 was there until his death. He was one of the greatest evangelists of 
 modern times. He was born in Otsego county. New York, December 7, 
 1799, was baptized in 1819, and in 1821 walked to Hamilton as a 
 student. During his vacations he preached almost daily. He graduated 
 in 1824, and was a successful pastor for nine years. From 1833 he 
 gave himself wholly to the work of an evangelist. It is estimated that 
 he preached sixteen thousand sermons, baptized five thousand persons, 
 and that of the one hundred thousand converted under his labors two 
 hundred entered the ministry. 
 
 In the fall of 1838, soon after the organization of the church at 
 Belvidere, Abijah Hayden and wife, of Round Prairie, Boone county, 
 fifteen miles from Belvidere, made the trip by ox team on Sunday morn- 
 ing, and delivered their church letters. The pastor, S. S. Whitman, on 
 their invitation preached in the neighborhood, and the result was the 
 
 147
 
 148 History of the Baptists of Illinois 
 
 organization of the Round Prairie Baptist church in 1839, and the 
 ordination of James Veness of Rockton as their pastor. All grew out 
 of the willingness of Mr. and Mrs. Hayden to go fifteen miles to 
 meeting with an ox team. Pastor Whitman was from Vermont, and 
 was for eight years, 1827-1835, professor of Hebrew at Hamilton. His 
 health failed and he came west in 1836, and was pastor at Belvidere for 
 ten years. He died at Madison, Wis., in 1852 and was buried at 
 Belvidere. One of the members of the Belvidere church was William 
 Mead, who lived at the upper end of the Big Bottom on Rock river, 
 three miles from Roscoe. He secured L. W. Lawrence of Belvidere to 
 preach in his cabin, and it resulted in the organization of the Roscoe 
 Baptist church, in 1839. Three were baptized by Eld. William Stilwell; 
 the first baptisms in Rock river. 
 
 William Stillwell was from Madison county. New York. His wife 
 was a granddaughter of John Leland. He came to Illinois in 1839, and 
 labored chiefly in Winnebago county until his death in 1850. His 
 funeral sermon was preached by Jacob Knapp. He was of frail con- 
 stitution, but a good and useful man. In the summer of 1840 he 
 organized the Pecatonica church, and these five — Belvidere, Rockford, 
 Round Prairie and Pecatonica — ^with Sugar Creek church, Stephenson 
 county, organized the Rock River Association. During the seven years 
 following no annual session passed without receiving new churches; 
 the average during that time was one church every five months. 
 
 The Rock Island church was organized in 1837 ; Titus Gillett, pastor. 
 He died in 1844. In 1840 the Davenport church was organized, just 
 across the Mississippi river, and in 1842 the Davenport Association 
 was formed at Dubuque, because the Dubuque church had the only 
 Baptist meeting house in that part of the state. 
 
 The year following churches were formed at Cordova and Orion, 
 and these with Rock Island and Galena in 1844 formed themselves 
 into the Rock Island Association. The pastor at Rock Island was Ezra 
 Fisher, a Massachusetts man and a graduate of Newton. In 1845 as 
 a missionary of the Home Mission Society to Oregon he crossed the 
 plains and the mountains with an ox team, and the following year or- 
 ganized in Washington county, Oregon, the first Baptist church on the 
 Pacific coast. He died in 1874. 
 
 In 1841 a number of Predestinarian Baptist churches in the northern 
 part of the state organized the Northwestern Association. It has never 
 been large, and is now practically extinct. In the same year fifteen
 
 History of the Baptists of Illinois 149 
 
 churches from the Fox River and Illinois River Associations, met with 
 the Harding church in Freedom township, Lasalle county, and organized 
 the Ottawa Association. The older of these churches were Princeton, 
 organized in 1836; Lamoille in 1838; Lasalle in 1840; Ottawa in 
 1842; all these from the Illinois River Association. Lamoille, known 
 as Greenfield, was gathered by Henry Headley, who was also the first 
 pastor at Princeton. Of the Ottawa church the first pastor was Charles 
 Harding, who died in 1843. In 1848 their pastor was John Higby, 
 then newly arrived from Massachusetts. His whole ministry was spent 
 in northern Illinois. His son, J. H. Higby, was also a Baptist min- 
 ister, and he gave a daughter, Sarah Higby, to the foreign field. He 
 died in 1882. 
 
 One of the subsequent churches of the Association was the Nor- 
 wegian Baptist church of Mission township, Lasalle county; Hans 
 Velder, pastor. It was the first Scandinavian Baptist church in the 
 United States. It was afterwards merged in the Leland church, which 
 is now extinct. 
 
 The chain of providential causes connected with this little church 
 is connected also with the Swedish Baptists, and the present German 
 Baptists. In 1807 a Norwegian ship was captured by the British and 
 the crew carried to London as prisoners of war. There Lars Larson 
 became a Quaker, and when he returned in 1816 he organized a Friends' 
 Society in Norway. They were persecuted by the state church, and in 
 1821 Kleng Peerson and a companion were sent by the Society to the 
 United States to look out a new home. In 1825 a sloop load of Quaker 
 emigrants came over and settled in Orleans county. New York. In 
 1836-38 several companies of Lutherans followed; but most of these 
 were drawn farther west by Kleng Peerson, and were finally located on 
 a beautiful and fertile prairie in Lasalle county, Illinois. Kleng Peerson 
 declared that he was guided in his selection of the locality by a "vision" 
 which came to him while he lay on a hill to rest. Perhaps he was led 
 in that direction by the fame of the Indian Mission, in memory of 
 which the township was afterwards named. It was founded by Jesse 
 Walker, a Methodist missionary, among the Pottawatomie Indians in 
 1826; half way between the white settlements at Chicago and Peoria. 
 A section of land was given him by the Indians, on which he opened 
 a farm, built cabins, and established a school; but in 1829 the govern- 
 ment bought out the Indian claim and the mission ceased. The premises
 
 150 History of the Baptists of Illinois 
 
 were afterwards occupied by a French half breed who ran the horse 
 mill for the benefit of the early settlers. 
 
 The Norwegian immigrants founded the village of Norway, and 
 built a Lutheran church, both of which still exist. The Baptist church 
 followed in 1847, on the northwest side of the settlement. 
 
 In 1844 the Salem Association met with the Carthage church, in the 
 very heart of the anti-Mormon excitement which culminated in the 
 killing of the Smiths in 1845, and the departure of the Mormons in 
 1846. In 1848 the deserted temple at Nauvoo was burned by an in- 
 cendiary. But the strange fortunes of the little Mississippi river town 
 of commerce, which blossomed into Nauvoo, were not over, for in 
 1849 the French Icarian Community was established there. The leader, 
 Mons. Cabet, left France and made his home here with his people until 
 his death in 1856.
 
 CHAPTER XLV 
 NEW SOUTHERN AND CENTRAL ASSOCIATIONS 
 
 Franklin county is in the heart of the Baptist center of southern 
 Ilhnois. It has Baptist churches enough to put two in each of its 
 twelve townships, and have its county seat churches left over. The 
 oldest church in the vicinity is Ten Mile Creek, just over the county line 
 in Hamilton county, organized in 1820, chiefly of members dismissed 
 for that purpose from Bankston's Fork church. The oldest church in 
 Franklin county is Mount Pleasant, in Browning township, which daces 
 from 1829. The Browning family were constituent members. Elder 
 John Browning was the first one baptized in the waters of the Big 
 Muddy river. He came from Tennessee to Illinois in 1804, was 
 ordained in 1831, and preached faithfully until his death in 1857. He 
 was a man of some means, and was liberal in its use in aiding the 
 needy. Both of these churches belonged to the Bethel Association, but 
 refused to go with the antimission majority when the churches were 
 interrogated by the Association in 1839. The next oldest church in the 
 county is Pleasant Grove, Franklin township, organized in 1840 under 
 the preaching of the Ferrells. In the same year Concord church was 
 organized, now represented by Ewing. In 1841 appeared Benton and 
 Liberty churches. Davis Prairie church in Williamson county is another 
 monument of the split of 1839, originating with the missionary minority 
 of a divided church. 
 
 Those seven churches on October 16, 1841, organized as "Union 
 United Baptist Association," changed in 1843 to Franklin Association. 
 It was missionary from the start, and in fellowship with Saline Asso- 
 ciation Friends to Humanity. Hosea Vise and T. M. Vance were 
 prominent pastors of the new Association. Elder Vise was from South 
 Carolina. He came to Hamilton county in 1836, was ordained by Ten 
 Mile Creek church in 1841 and was its pastor for 33 years. He was 
 moderator of Franklin Association 37 times. He was a farmer, merchant, 
 carpenter, notary public, postmaster, pension agent, school commissioner 
 yet preached regularly, and during forty seven years he missed but two 
 appointments. He died in 1897. 
 
 T. M. Vance was from Kentucky, and came to Illinois in 1840. He 
 became pastor of the Benton church and served them 19 years, their 
 
 151
 
 152 History of the Baptists of Illinois 
 
 first pastor and his first pastorate. While in his prime he preached on 
 an average four times a week, and flourished on it. He died in 1884. 
 
 The VandaHa Association was organized at Union church, Carrigan 
 township, in Marion county, in 1841. This was a country church, and 
 after a useful life of nearly sixty years was dissolved in 1897. The 
 Vandalia church was much shorter lived. After a few years it ceased 
 to report, but continued to have a nominal existence for a long time. 
 The present Vandalia church was organized in 1894. In 1881 the 
 Centralia and Mount Vernon churches entered the Association, and the 
 name was changed to Centralia. Elder Jesse R. Ford was moderator of 
 the old Vandalia Association some twenty times in thirty years, and 
 was pastor of Beaver Creek church, Clinton county, 33 years. He came 
 from Kentucky to Illinois in 1832, and was a volunteer in the Black 
 Hawk War. He died in 1884. 
 
 In 1845 the old Vandalia Association resolved to secure a circulat- 
 ing associational library of devotional works, but the plan did not fully 
 materialize. It was a good idea, especially in a time when young 
 people were growing up and household libraries were exceedingly small. 
 But there were hindrances. One was the scarcity of money. A greater 
 was a lack of appreciation, on the part of many. Having little knowl- 
 edge themselves they saw no necessity for their children having more. 
 The Salem Association in 1840 divided, the south half organizing 
 as the Western Association. The churches so doing were Quincy, Pay- 
 son, Union, Mount Sterling, and Rushville. Immediately adjoining 
 them on the south was the Blue River Association with twelve churches. 
 In 1842 the Blue River Association, meeting at Griggsville, appointed 
 a committee to visit the Western in their meeting at Rushville, and 
 propose a union. The proposal was accepted, and then and there the 
 two bodies became one under the name of Union Association. How- 
 ever, at the first meeting of the new body, in Quincy, 1843, the name 
 was changed to Quincy Association; and so it has remained to the 
 apparent satisfaction of all. 
 
 The same year on the same ground an antimission Association of 
 twelve churches was organized, and called Mount Gilead. Most of the 
 churches were from the Spoon River Association, occupying the same 
 ground as the Salem. The pastors were men who supposed they were 
 magnifying the grace of God by contending that God did everything, 
 leaving nothing to human agency. Mount Gilead Association has less 
 than half the number of churches it began with. The others, as
 
 History of the Baptists of Illinois 153 
 
 churches, have perished. The gates of death have prevailed. There 
 should be something learned in this experience. In our Baptist history 
 there are probably more deceased churches than living churches, but 
 why.? And why is Mount Gilead Association going into the shadows? 
 
 Nine Mile Association was organized with seven churches at Nine 
 Mile meeting house two miles from DuQuoin, in 1845. The churches 
 were from Clear Creek and Saline Associations, and resulted in the 
 dissolution of the latter, for six of the remaining eight churches voted 
 to give up their organization and unite with the Franklin Association. 
 Thus though the time came when the phrase, "Friends to Humanity" 
 was no longer used, its spirit passed into the surrounding churches, and 
 has come down even to us. The two unassociated churches so remained, 
 under the leading of Eld. James Keele, until 1845 when they aided in 
 constituting the Salem (South) Association. The Nine Mile Associa- 
 tion as soon as it was organized engaged Peter Hagler as their asso- 
 ciational missionary, at ten dollars a month; and a month's work by 
 Peter Hagler was ten dollars well invested. He continued to be their 
 pastor and evangelist as long as he lived. 
 
 In 1845 also the Shelby Association of Separate Baptists was or- 
 ganized for Shelby county and vicinity. This and the Central Illinois 
 Association are both Separate Baptists, carrying one back in thought 
 to the days of the North Carolina pentecost. 
 
 For three years, 1843-5, John M. Peck was corresponding secretary 
 and practical manager of the Publication Society. The Society was in 
 great financial straits, and Mr. Peck was regarded as the only man who 
 could bring deliverance. Two years before he had been elected General 
 Agent of a Western Publication Society, with headquarters at Louisville, 
 and accepted the office to prevent a full rupture between the west and 
 the east. Many brethren desired an independent western society, but 
 his travels in the cause convinced him that such a society would not 
 succeed, and that the wise course was to have one society for all seaions. 
 To carry this out he was elected in February, 1843, to the management 
 of the eastern society. One of the conditions of his acceptance was 
 that all salaries, beginning with his own, should be cut twenty per cent. 
 This did not mean that the salaries were too high, but that those who 
 were about to ask sacrifices of others should set the example themselves. 
 The principle is a true one. It should be the positive policy of every 
 benevolent society, and in so far as it is not public sympathy will not 
 be given.
 
 154 History of the Baptists of Illinois 
 
 The principles that governed John M. Peck's business administration 
 of the Publication Society were: First, prayer and dependence on God. 
 He had a lodging prepared for him in the Depository building, not only 
 for economy but that he might have his uninterrupted hour for his 
 morning devotions. Second: Broadness of plan, energy in collecting, 
 economy in administration, clearness and minuteness of financial reports. 
 By these he conquered. He was able after three years to leave the Society 
 fairly on its feet. Its working capital had been increased $9000, and 
 the public confidence secured and business principles introduced were 
 worth much more. We may say that the real history of the American 
 Baptist Publication Society began with the administration of John M. 
 Peck. In the spring of 1845 he returned to his Illinois home and took 
 up again his former labor.
 
 CHAPTER XL VI 
 THE NORTHWESTERN CONVENTION 
 
 On the same day, October 7, 1840, that the State Convention met 
 at Upper Alton, the Northern Association met at Bristol, now York- 
 ville. The places of meeting were a long distance apart. The brethren 
 too in sympathy were somewhat apart. The southern section of the 
 state was largely settled from the south, while the northern section was 
 being settled chiefly from the east. The tide of immigration was now 
 pouring most largely into the northern part of the stare, so that it 
 needed special attention. Yet the State Board seemed to be doing what 
 it could to meet the condition, for of the fourteen itinerant preachers 
 and aided churches in 1841 four were in the two northern tiers of 
 counties. The supremacy of Chicago too was already a fact large 
 enough to cast a perceptible shadow. The Chicago pastor, it is true, 
 was one of the executive board of the state convention, but he was too 
 far away to attend the meetings. Brother Peck did something to bridge 
 the chasm by visiting the Northern Association and preaching for them 
 in 1839, but he could not repeat the visit often. And so it came about 
 that there was a desire in the northern section of the state for a separate 
 missionary organization. 
 
 One of the main promoters of this sentiment was Dr. L. D. Boone, 
 an earnest and energetic professional man and man of business, and the 
 wealthiest member of the Chicago church. He was from the south, from 
 Virginia, but his home and his interests were in Chicago. He was ap- 
 pointed chairman of a committee to consider the matter of forming a 
 northwestern convention. The committee reported favorably, saying: 
 
 'The great extent from north to south both of Indiana and Illinois, 
 renders it impracticable that an actual cooperation should exist between 
 the extreme points." 
 
 The report of the committee was adopted, and a call was issued for 
 a general meeting at Chicago, January 6, 1841. At that meeting the 
 Northwestern Convention for northern Illinois, northern Indiana and 
 Wisconsin was duly organized. The officers chosen were: president. 
 Rev. I. T. Hinton; corresponding secretary, Thomas Powell; recording 
 secretary, Levi D. Boone; treasurer, E. B. Hulburt. The meeting ad- 
 journed to meet again in Chicago, October 6. Before that meeting Mr. 
 
 155
 
 156 History of the Baptists of Illinois 
 
 Hinton had removed to St. Louis and Solomon Knapp was chosen in 
 his stead to head the new movement. Mr. Knapp was from New York, 
 and came west in 1840. He was a successful pastor for fifty years, and 
 unhke most pastors of that day acquired considerable property. He 
 was also a liberal giver. He died at his home in Joliet in 1890. 
 
 On the same day that the Northwestern Convention again met in 
 Chicago, the state convention met at Payson. The action of the northern 
 brethren was thus deprecated: 
 
 "We regret the measures taken by our brethren in the north in 
 dividing this body, while the whole denomination that cooperate in the 
 convention are comparatively few in number and weak in resources, 
 and hope that in the spirit of harmony and mutual cooperation they 
 will find it convenient to review their course, especially as the Northern 
 Association has always had the supervision of all benevolent operations 
 in that section of the state." 
 
 It was proposed, if union could not be restored, to settle on a 
 boundary line between the two bodies. But that would have been 
 difficult. The Northwestern claimed the Bloomington Association but 
 not the adjoining Salem Association, probably because eastern settlers 
 predominated in one and southern settlers in the other. But neither 
 of these Associations would have regarded a boundary drawn for them 
 by official hands. 
 
 In place of pastor Hinton the State Convention placed Dr. Haskell 
 of Rockford on their executive board, thus making him a member of 
 both boards. At the meeting of the convention in Springfield, in 1842, 
 no northern member of the board was appointed, but Adiel Sherwood, 
 the new president of Shurtleff College, was added. He was a native 
 of New York. In 1818 while a student at Andover he went to Georgia 
 for his health, and remained there tvi^enty-three years preaching and 
 teaching. In 1841 he came to Shurtleff and did a great work there, but 
 it was a time of great financial stress, and he resigned after four years 
 of service. He died in St. Louis in 1879- 
 
 In 1843 the Northwestern Convention met at Yorkville, in July. 
 R. B. Ashley had been engaged as field agent, but times were hard and 
 money scarce. For the same reason the State Convention, meeting at 
 Jacksonville in October, had no agent at all. They showed their desire 
 to remove the necessity for two conventions by changing the head- 
 quarters of their board from Alton to Springfield. Charles R. Francis, 
 one of the delegates to the Convention, died the day after adjournment.
 
 History of the Baptists of Illinois 157 
 
 He and his brother Francis came from Pittsfield, Mass., to Springfield, 
 111., in 1835. It was owing to their influence that the Springfield church, 
 and largely the Springfield Association, became missionary in character. 
 Priceless is the value of such men! With the exception of one year 
 C. B. Francis was clerk of the Springfield Association from its organi- 
 zation until his death. 
 
 In 1844 the southern convention met at Belleville, and the northern 
 at Belvidere. Evidently the question of a union of the two bodies had 
 been talked of and assurances given on both sides, for at the Belleville 
 meeting a committee of ten was appointed to confer with a similar 
 committee to be appointed at Belvidere. It was also ordered that the 
 joint conference of the two committees should be held at Canton, 
 November 21. At the Canton meeting five were present from the 
 southern society: Alvin Bailey, Adiel Sherwood, Ebenezer Rodgers, 
 Ezekiel Dodson, B. F. Brabrook. And seven from the northern com- 
 mittee: Thomas Powell, Henry G. Weston, S. S. Martin, Henry Headley, 
 Alba Gross, Burton Carpenter, B. B. Carpenter. Also Ezra Fisher and 
 Luther Stone, representing the Rock Island Association, and Rufus 
 Babcock of New York, secretary of the Bible Society. A joint com- 
 mittee of some weight was this! Rufus Babcock also, in some measure, 
 represented John M. Peck. 
 
 The result of this conference was the adoption of a constitution for 
 the "General Baptist Association of Illinois," to be submitted to the 
 coming meeting at Tremont. At the Tremont meeting, October 18, 
 1845, the work of the committees was ratified, and the old conventions 
 dissolved. The State Convention thus tendered its farewell: 
 
 ""We must be allowed to congratulate all sections of our Zion in 
 Illinois on the happy union that has taken place between the two Con- 
 ventions. In resigning our trust to other hands, permit us to commend 
 to your attention the southern section of our state. Men and means are 
 both needed, and we doubt not it will be your endeavor to afford timely 
 assistance." 
 
 The Northwestern Convention thus closed its short history: 
 
 "This Convention was called into being by brethren in northern 
 Illinois, on account of dissatisfaction with some of the feanires of the 
 constitution of the State Convention, and to accommodate brethren in 
 Wisconsin, Iowa and northern Indiana. Separate arrangements have 
 since been made in Wisconsin, Iowa and Indiana. Also there has been 
 organized the Baptist General Association of Illinois, in whose consti- 
 tution no objectionable feature is embraced. Therefore, resolved, that 
 we consider the existence of the Northwestern Convention no longer 
 necessary, and that it is now dissolved."
 
 CHAPTER XL VII 
 THE GENERAL ASSOCIATION 
 
 The chief particular in which the new General Association differed 
 from the former State Association was in its "money basis." The mem- 
 bership of the Convention was composed of delegates from Baptist 
 churches. The membership of the General Association was composed 
 of delegates from contributing Baptist churches and of individual con- 
 tributors. It was an association of contributors. In behalf of this it 
 may be said that it is the fairest method of representation in societies 
 whose object is to receive and disburse funds. Those who contribute 
 are the ones to decide what shall be done with their contributions, 
 and those who will not contribute should not expect to have a voice in 
 designating the contributions of others. Furthermore, those who give 
 to a cause will feel more interest in it than those who do not give, and 
 will be more likely to attend the called meetings. The friends of the 
 old Convention came to see this, and in 1843 submitted to the churches 
 a proposition to amend their constitution so as to provide a "pecuniary 
 condition for membership." They were led to this by the decreasing 
 attendance at the meetings of the Convention. But on account of the 
 probable dissolution of the Convention no action was taken. 
 
 The only questionable feature about the plan is that of life mem- 
 berships. It should not be possible for either churches or individuals 
 to obtain vested rights in a common society. It provides virtually for 
 private ownership of public property, and it cannot but be expected 
 that as such ownership is promoted public interest will decrease. The 
 General Association had no life memberships for thirty years; that 
 feature was added in 1875. 
 
 The new organization, like the societies which it superseded, aspired 
 only to the humble position of an auxiliary to the Home Mission So- 
 ciety. That was but fair, considering that the Home Mission Society 
 was expected to supply the larger part of the needed funds. But it soon 
 began to cause trouble, not as a question of funds but as a question of 
 authority. It was a contest not between the churches of the east and 
 the west, but between Boards, and its discussion took up first and last 
 a great deal of time. The new Association in its beginning was the 
 general agency for the collection of all missionary funds not otherwise 
 
 158
 
 History of the Baptists of Illinois 159 
 
 arranged for, and was an independent worker by the side of the Home 
 Mission Society. But to distinguish it from that Society its own depart- 
 ment was called "Domestic Missions." Neither society, it was sup- 
 posed, would be complete without the other. There was needed an 
 eastern society to gather eastern funds, and a western society that knew 
 the corners in western work. So with both in the field more money 
 was raised and it was better distributed. 
 
 At Peoria, in the basement of the Baptist church, the General Asso- 
 ciation found a young ladies' Seminary, carried on by Prof. E. Adkins, 
 and they commended it, hoping it would grow into a large institution. 
 The next year Prof. Adkins had gone to Shurtleff , and the Seminary was 
 in other hands, yet the brethren in their annual meeting at Winchester 
 in 1848 had enough faith in it and good wishes for it to consider the 
 advisability of adding a boy's academy. The committee did what they 
 could, for Pastor Weston, then of Peoria, was the chairman, but the 
 academy did not materialize, and after five years of life the seminary 
 closed its doors. 
 
 In 1847 the Association met at Jacksonville; in 1848 at Winchester; 
 in 1849 at Griggsville. At that meeting they concluded to drop Do- 
 mestic Missions for a time, and entrust all to the Home Mission Society. 
 They would put all their eggs in one basket, to the saving at least of the 
 special collection required every year to provide the second basket. The 
 Association board did not favor the change, and at the annual meeting 
 in 1850 at Springfield reported crustily: 
 
 "In consequence of the action of your body at its last annual session, 
 as understood by your board, no missionary labors have been performed 
 under the supervision of this board. Having no official connection with 
 missionary operations in this state, and no information other than is 
 known to all, of the labors performed by the Home Mission Society, the 
 board finds itself wholly unable to present to the General Association the 
 facts so desirable to be known. For such facts therefore as pertain to 
 missionary operations within our state we must of necessity respectfully 
 refer the Association to the publications of the Home Mission board in 
 New York. Having had no executive business to transact during the 
 past year, the board has held no meetings and performed no labor save 
 the preparation of this report." 
 
 The irate board did not explain in what consists the superior value 
 of official knowledge that is known to all. However, the Association 
 repented, and Domestic Missions was resumed.
 
 CHAPTER XL VIII 
 EARLY BAPTIST PERIODICALS 
 
 The first Baptist periodical published in Illinois was the "Pioneer," 
 the first number issued from Rock Spring, April 25, 1829. It was a 
 semi-monthly, edited by J. M. Peck, and published by T. P. Green, who 
 moved his family and printing outfit to Rock Spring for that purpose. 
 In 1836 it was removed to Upper Alton, the first number appeared 
 June 30, under the title of the "Western Pioneer and Baptist Standard 
 Bearer." There was much talk of forming a joint stock company and 
 relieving Mr. Peck of the financial burden, but the school absorbed all 
 available funds, and nothing was done. In January, 1839, it was 
 transferred to Louisville and united with the Baptist Banner under the 
 title of the "Banner and Pioneer." In the ten years of publication it 
 had cost Mr. Peck $3000 more tlian receipts. But it was of great value 
 in his work. 
 
 About the time he commenced the Pioneer Daniel Parker commenced 
 publishing his religious views in a little monthly magazine entitled the 
 "Advocate." It was edited in his cabin in Crawford county, and printed 
 in Vincennes. He styled himself, "An old backwoods hunter." It 
 continued until September, 1831, when it ceased for want of means. 
 He began it in poverty and ended it in debt, and his peculiar views 
 about paying for the gospel prevented him from pressing his debtors 
 for even what was justly owing him. Here were two men at the same 
 time in our history, both Baptist leaders, on opposite sides of the state 
 and on opposite sides of truth. They were our first Baptist publishers, 
 and both made great pecuniary sacrifices for their periodicals. But 
 while the Pioneer was of service, the Advocate is only valuable as a 
 historical relic. 
 
 On the departure of the Pioneer the "Baptist Helmet" was started at 
 Vandalia, and discontinued in 1845. The "Olive Leaf," a monthly 
 organ of the General Baptists, was published at the same place. But the 
 year 1842 witnessed the largest number of periodical beginnings. In that 
 year the "Missouri and Illinois Baptist" was launched in St. Louis, by 
 I. T. Hinton, and Alvin Bailey as Illinois editor. It continued until 
 the removal of the editor to New Orleans, in 1844. In 1842 the "Pre- 
 destinarian Baptist" was started by Eld. R. N. Newport, at Charleston, 
 
 160
 
 • History of the Baptists of Illinois 161 
 
 Coles county. His field was the three antimission Associations on the 
 eastern section of the state, — the Vermillion, the Wabash and the Okaw. 
 But this like all similar ventures was short lived. A sufficient number of 
 honorable subscribers is the essential thing wanting. 
 
 In July, 1842, appeared at Winchester the first number of Alvin 
 Bailey's monthly, the "Voice of Truth." It was a public discussion of 
 Campbellism, and arose from strictures by B. W. Stone on a series 
 of lectures on Campbellism delivered by Elder Bailey at Jacksonville. 
 It was published monthly for one year. The discussions are still of 
 value, but not so much so as formerly because the teachings of Campbell 
 are not taught today as he taught them. 
 
 September 20, 1842, appeared in Chicago the first number of the 
 "Northwestern Baptist," edited by C. B. Smith, pastor of the Chicago 
 Baptist church. It was a semi-monthly, nine by twelve inches in size, 
 and had the honor of being the first periodical published in Chicago. It 
 was the official organ of the Northwestern Baptist Convention. When 
 the Convention was organized the need of a periodical was deeply felt, 
 and it was decided that it should be established as soon as the necessary 
 funds could be raised. At the sessions of the Northern Association at 
 Warrenville in 1842, pledges for two hundred subscriptions were taken, 
 and under that encouragement three months afterward the paper ap- 
 peared. But it had a difficult place to fill. It was the servant of a 
 divided family. The moral test question of the time was whether a 
 slaveholder might be appointed a missionary, and his money received 
 into the mission treasury. Part of the brethren, led by Dr. Boone, 
 wanted the matter let alone. Another part, led by brother Ambrose, 
 would not let it alone. The policy adopted was editorial neutrality, 
 but that pleased no one. The personal sympathy of the editor was 
 with the antislavery side. In August, 1843, eleven months after the 
 paper started, the First Baptist church divided on the slavery question. 
 Sixty-two members with the pastor went out and organized the Taber- 
 nacle Baptist church, now the Second church. They were the Friends 
 to Humanity of the northern end of the state. The paper was then 
 less acceptable to some readers than before. Early in 1845 Pastor Smith 
 left Chicago, and the paper ceased. The Chicago and St. Louis Baptist 
 newspaper beginnings commenced, continued and ceased together. 
 
 On the demise of the Northwestern each of the differing parties was 
 anxious that its successor should be on their side. The result was two 
 periodicals, both creditable weeklies but neither of them from Chi-
 
 162 History of the Baptists of Illinois 
 
 cago. The first number of the "Western Christian," published at Elgin, 
 appeared September 2, 1845. The moving spirits in it were J. E. 
 Ambrose, pastor at Elgin, who became the field agent of the paper, and 
 A. J. Joslyn, the young pastor at Warrensville. He had been a farmer 
 boy, and came west with the family in 1838 when nineteen years of age, 
 settling at Crystal Lake. He was ordained at Warrenville in 1842; 
 was pastor at Elgin eleven years, 1844-55; agent for Shurtleff College 
 and the old University of Chicago, a few months each; organized the 
 Union Park Baptist church, Chicago, and was pastor of it 1857-60; 
 organized the Wheaton church, 1864; was compelled to cease preaching 
 on account of his health, and died at his heme in Elgin, in 1868. 
 
 These two associated with themselves Spencer Carr, of Racine, Wis. 
 They secured Warham Walker, of Nev/ York, as editor. The paper 
 was the outspoken organ of the Free Mission Society. It was ably 
 edited; was one of the ablest religious papers in the land, of any 
 denomination. It obtained a fair support during the five years of its 
 life in the west. In 1850 it was removed to Utica, N. Y., and united 
 with the Christian Contributor, under the new name, "Am.erican Bap- 
 tist." Nathan Brown, missionary to Japan after the civil war, was the 
 new editor. With the close of the war the v/ork of the Society was 
 done and its organ was removed to Nev/ York as the "Baptist Yv^eekly," 
 afterwards united with the Examiner. 
 
 On the other side, in 1844, the founders of the General ^Association 
 felt the need of an organ, and at the Canton meeting encouraged Alvin 
 Bailey to undertake its publication. Accordingly in February, 1845, 
 appeared the first number of the "Western Star," a weekly published at 
 Jacksonville. It contained the proceedings of the Canton meeting, and 
 was the only form in which they were published. Editor Bailey made a 
 good paper for two years, but verbal encouragements were more plenti- 
 ful than paid up subscriptions. He sold it to Luther Stone, who removed 
 it to Chicago, and August 10, 1847, brought out the first number of the 
 "Watchman of the Prairies." But like all previous ventures of the sort 
 it did not reach the paying point. The prairies it was to watch were 
 sparsely settled, and the settlers were shifting. The last number of the 
 Watchman appeared on its fifth anniversary, and Chicago was again 
 without a Baptist newspaper. It had been published from the office of 
 the "Prairie Herald," Presbyterian, and it left its associate to cry its 
 message alone. Luther Stone was from Massachusetts, a thoroughly 
 educated man and a Newton graduate, but an educator rather than a
 
 History of the Baptists of Illinois 163 
 
 preacher. He came to Rock Island in 1844, and to Chicago in 1847. 
 He died in 1890 at his home in Chicago. 
 
 At the meeting of the Fox River Association in Aurora, June 1, 
 1853, the brethren once more discussed the matter of a denominational 
 organ. Standing by the ruins of three former enterprises, mourning the 
 loss of a true Baptist a bright Star, and a faithful Watchman, they again 
 girded themselves to the task. If the Western Christian had been still 
 at Elgin who knows but that a majority might have been ready to unite 
 on that, Free Mission Society and all! But alas! Elgin was as bereft as 
 Chicago. A committee was appointed to negotiate with Dr. Stone. 
 They were successful. August 31, 1853, appeared the first number of 
 the "Christian Times," edited "by an association of clergymen." Dr. J. C. 
 Burroughs was chief editor, assisted by A. J. Joslyn and H. G. Weston. 
 The first number was taken out among the churches and subscriptions 
 solicited by Edward Goodman, who remained connected with it for half 
 a century. November 24 following, it was taken over by Leroy Church 
 and A. J. Smith. It is now the Standard. 
 
 The chief of all the weights which sink Baptist papers is dishonest 
 subscribers. A small circulation paid when due is better than a large 
 circulation not paid. If christian men always kept their promises this 
 history would not have been written.
 
 CHAPTER XLIX 
 
 THE CHICAGO ASSOCIATION 
 
 If we may judge of the heavenly future by the present, the behever 
 will delight in remembering his part in the battles of his age between 
 justice and wrong, and to be able to demonstrate thereby that he did not 
 withhold his aid and testimony. For without testimony against wrong 
 there is no battle. Like the demons of old, evil demands only to be let 
 alone. Every age has its own moral battle, but each is some form of 
 making merchandise of the weakness or the sorrows of mankind. Today 
 it is the liquor traffic; in the days of the Northern Illinois Association 
 it was the slave traffic. It was an irritating question. At every session 
 some radical brother was sure to be on hand to bear his testimony 
 against the inhumanity of slavery, and to offer his testimony to the com- 
 mittee on resolutions for record. If the conservative brethren had been 
 wise they would suffer so much as that for the sake of peace, since 
 the only result would have been the printing of a harmless resolution 
 in the Minutes. And slaveholders then cared as little for convention 
 resolutions as liquor dealers do now. But it is not easy to be silent; 
 especially when one is on the doubtful side of a moral question. The 
 following Association tilt in 1844 was recorded by Bro. Boone himself, 
 for he was clerk : 
 
 "Upon a proposition of Bro. J. McClellan to introduce a resolution 
 on the subject of slavery not reported by the prudential committee, a 
 constitutional question arose, viz., whether a member could present busi- 
 ness for the action of the Association which had not been presented to 
 the prudential committee, which elicited considerable discussion. After 
 which the moderator decided the resolution to be in order. Bro. Boone, 
 in order to settle the question forever, appealed to the house from the 
 decision of the chair. Whereupon the house sustained the decision 
 unanimously." 
 
 The resolution was then presented and discussed, and the follow- 
 ing substitute presented by Bro. Joslyn finally adopted : 
 
 "Whereas, the question, Ought slaveholders to be employed as mis- 
 sionaries? is now deeply agitating our Home Mission Society, to which 
 we through the Northwestern Convention are auxiliary, therefore. Re- 
 solved, that we entirely disapprove of the employment of slave holding 
 missionaries as repugnant to the spirit of the age, of missions, and of 
 the gospel." 
 
 164
 
 History of the Baptists of Illinois 165 
 
 Two years after this, in 1846, the wedge of sentiment divided the 
 Association. The dividing hne in Chicago was between the churches, 
 along Washington street and west. In the division of assets the northern 
 part was given the name, and the southern part the organization; but 
 both changed their name, and both practically retained the organization. 
 The southern part became the Fox River Association, with 14 churches 
 and 920 members, and the northern part became the Chicago Association 
 with 19 churches and 930 members. The churches of the latter now 
 existing are Second church of Chicago, Elgin, Dundee, Crystal Lake, 
 Waukegan, Yorkville, Harrington, Woodstock, St. Charles. R. W. 
 Padelford, of Elgin, was chosen clerk at the first session, and retained 
 the office until his death in 1891. The Western Christian was chosen 
 as the organ of the Association, and the Free Mission Society as their 
 agency for missionary work. At their first meeting, held at Dundee in 
 1847, they put themselves on record thus: 
 
 "No professedly christian church is worthy of that name which holds 
 slaves or allows it in her members. We cannot cooperate with mission- 
 ary societies which sustain a connection with slavery." 
 
 On application of the agents of the regular benevolent societies for 
 permission to present their causes before the Chicago Association and 
 take collections, it was voted that they be received as visiting brethren 
 but not acknowledged in their official capacity. But this rule after a 
 few years was modified, allowing all causes to be presented, and con- 
 tributors to have their choice. In 1848 the Association assumed the 
 support of a part of the German mission carried on by John G. Oncken, 
 in Hamburg. This German mission was carried on for several years, 
 and was valued not only for its own worth but for its educational influ- 
 ence on the churches. In 1851 the Elgin church said in their report 
 to the Association: 
 
 "The independent German mission occupies no small place in our 
 affections, founded as it is upon the apostolic plan, under the entire 
 control of the churches. The intelligence received from our missionary, 
 Bro. Frederic Oncken, have been cheering and refreshing to us." 
 
 Still slavery held the first place as an evil to be testified against 
 
 and to be separate from. In the exciting times following the repeal of 
 
 the Missouri Compromise in 1856, the Association meeting in Chicago 
 
 renewed their covenant thus : 
 
 "We pledge ourselves as christian brethren and sisters, in our indi- 
 vidual and associational capacity, to wash our hands from all guilt 
 arising from a participation in this sin."
 
 166 History of the Baptists of Illinois 
 
 But at last the civil war was over and slavery was no more. New 
 issues came up. There seemed no need that Chicago should be longer 
 divided. The Fox River Association took the first step when in 1879 
 the country churches organized as the Aurora Association and the city 
 churches as the Lakeside Association. But there were still five city 
 churches outside. And several country churches declined to change. 
 They were endeared to each other by the exciting days through which 
 they had passed and they liked not to part. Old memories were 
 precious. They were as war veterans asked to give up their reunions. 
 The Lakeside came to the rescue. In 1882 they dissolved, and were 
 welcomed under the one head of Chicago, country churches and all. 
 And still the Tabernacle church and the Elgin church clasp hands once 
 a year as in the old times of the '40s.
 
 CHAPTER L 
 THE PASTORAL UNION 
 
 For more than half a century the General Association or State Con- 
 vention and the Pastoral Union have been one and inseparable. Wher- 
 ever the former was appointed to be the latter has been sure to get 
 there a day ahead. Trial and time is the test of usefulness, and the 
 Pastoral Union has successfully passed tiiat test. There was once a 
 committee appointed to consider the propriety of dissolving it, that 
 more time might be had for "business," but the report was laid indefi- 
 nitely on the table. It was wise. We have too much business already. 
 There is business at every session and business in sections; sometimes 
 while the body is doing business in one place forty-eight brethren may 
 be doing business in another place. 
 
 The Pastoral Union is the devotional and educational department of 
 the State Convention. It began at Peoria, October 19, 1846. Ira 
 Dudley, pastor at St. Charles, was elected president, and J. F. Tolman, 
 clerk. The next year at Jacksonville the organization was completed, 
 and Burton Carpenter elected president. It was the last meeting he 
 lived to attend. Eighteen members v/ere enrolled, but afterward the 
 membership idea was dropped. 
 
 The annual report of the obituary committee, giving life sketches of 
 ministers who have died during the year, has from the first been the 
 task of the Pastoral Union. Most of the sketches were prepared by 
 Justus Bulkley, who was chairman of the obituary committee forty-six 
 years. Since his death they have been prepared by L. A. Abbott, also of 
 Shurtleff. 
 
 Justus Bulkley was from Leicester county. New York, and came to 
 Illinois with his parents in 1837, when eighteen years of age. The same 
 autumn he was baptized by Joel Sweet into the fellowship of the Barry 
 Baptist church. In 1842 he entered Shurtleff, graduating in 1847. He 
 studied theology under Washington Leverett, and in 1849 was ordained 
 by the Baptist church at Jerseyville. In 1853 he became professor of 
 mathematics in the College. But the battle among us over the revision 
 of the English Bible was raging, and as he was a strong Bible Union 
 man and most of the faculty and trustees were not, he resigned. After 
 a ten years' pastorate at Carrolkon he again entered the college as 
 
 167
 
 168 History of the Baptists of Illinois 
 
 professor of church history, which post he held for 34 years. He died 
 at his home in Upper Alton in 1S99. 
 
 A persevering attempt was at one time made to simplify the gather- 
 ing of obituary faas by securing them from the brethren during life, but 
 the attempt was finally abandoned. Most of the sketches presented were 
 so brief that they had to be referred back to the authors for completion. 
 Filling out our blank for the obituary committee is somewhat like filling 
 out a blank for the undertaker. 
 
 An important task for several years was the carrying on of annual 
 Ministers' Institutes. The plan was suggested by G. S. Bailey, then 
 state superintendent of missions. He was from Pennsylvania, born in 
 1822. He came to Illinois in 1S46, and was pastor at Springfield for 
 three years. He was afterwards pastor at Tremont, Pekin, Metamora 
 and Morris. He was state superintendent of missions, 1863-7, and 
 financial secretary of the Chicago Baptist Theological Seminary, 1867-75. 
 He was the author of the History of the Illinois River Baptist Associa- 
 tion, and of several denominational works. 
 
 The first Ministers' Institute was held for two weeks, July 1-13, 
 1864, in the old University of Chicago. There were two lectures a 
 day on Doarinal, practical, polemical and pastoral theology, christian 
 evidences and elocution. The fee for the course was $2.00, and the 
 attendance averaged 70. The next year the fee was increased to $5.00, 
 in the hope that there might be some compensation for the lecturers, 
 but finding it would greatly reduce the attendance it was lowered to the 
 old figure. The next year, 1866, by securing free entertainment in 
 Chicago — at a cost to the Chicago Social Union of $600 — the anendance 
 was increased to 180. In 1869 it mounted up to 200. Three lectures 
 a day were given, chiefly Bible exposition. In 1870 an Institute in the 
 German language was added. All this involved so much gratuitous 
 labor that one man could continue it, and the next Institute was held 
 in Bloomington in 1873. The next was at Peoria, in 1875, and the 
 last was at Freeport in 1880. Their place is now filled by the various 
 summer assemblies, which afford the needed variety, and combine in- 
 struction with recreation. The essential principle is to carry to the 
 people what they need rather than wait for them to come and ask 
 for it. It is the principle involved in the Bible School Home Class, and 
 in the College Extension lectures so popular a few years since. 
 
 A notable illustration was given in the Alton church under pastor 
 Jameson, 1864-9. Twenty-eight members had each a distria which
 
 History of the Baptists of Illinois 169 
 
 they visited monthly, with a selected tract as a means of introduaion. 
 In 7,640 visits in five years there were only 230 refusals to receive the 
 tract. The expense for tracts was borne by church colleaions. Some 
 of the visitors became so much attached to their districts that they would 
 not give them up, and some of the families when they removed requested 
 that the visits might be continued in their new homes. What were the 
 elements in this form of pastoral visitation which made it so welcome? 
 Those in attendance at the meetings of the Pastoral Union, and those 
 preparing programs therefor, should aim to introduce the praaical and 
 the expositor)'. Let What to Think be supplemented by What to Do. 
 At the Edwardsville Association in 1848 it was complained that, "Busi- 
 ness occupies too great a portion of the time." It was recommended 
 that every delegate bring the best he has, in the way of facts, that the 
 sessions may be strong and stirring. It was good counsel. Demosthenes 
 defined eloquence as action. In comparison with the latest faa, "the 
 latest thought" is but a plaything with which scholars amuse themselves.
 
 CHAPTER LI 
 
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 172 History "of the Baptists of Illinois 
 
 "This body would rejoice in the production of the most faithful 
 versions of the scriptures, and its general circulation." 
 
 In the meeting at Bloomington in 1853 the Bible Union was in- 
 cluded among the national societies, and a committee appointed to 
 bring in a report upon it. That little concession did more to produce 
 harmony than anything else that could be done. The two Bible com- 
 mittees came together and brought in a joint report to the effect that 
 they wished the two would work in harmony and stop fighting. And 
 this probably would have been done but for the pugnacity of a few 
 eastern brethren who were afraid of losing the "denominational name." 
 The strife ceased in the Illinois General Association, though it continued 
 outside by individuals and the newspapers. And so it was proved that 
 once allow each side to be treated fairly, mutual rights acknowledged, 
 and there is no more trouble. 
 
 In cases of disagreement over matters of policy each one should 
 reflect that his own opinion is really of less value than he thinks it is. 
 He should reflect too on the comparative unimportance of convention 
 resolutions. They are usually little read and soon forgotten. Their 
 value is as a bond of union for those in the field, and an authoritative 
 background for measures they are pushing. Consider also the im- 
 portance of peace. As well expect vegetation to flourish on the waves 
 of the sea as the activity of the Holy Spirit in the midst of strife. Yet 
 in this the wisest among us may have no advantage over others. One 
 may have ability and education and experience and titles and yet be 
 the sport of his own shortsighted contentiousness. "The servant of the 
 Lord must strive." The two things worth contending for in this world 
 are God and humanity; let who will have the rest. In 1883 at a Gen- 
 eral Convention held at Saratoga Springs our two Bible Societies com- 
 mitted their work to our Publication Society ; and there it still is.
 
 CHAPTER LII 
 
 THE GENERAL ASSOCIATION AND THE HOME 
 
 MISSION SOCIETY 
 
 One of the most perplexing matters in the history of the General 
 Association has been its relation to the Home Mission Society. One is 
 for the nation ; the other is intended to look more closely after our own 
 state, than is possible for a national society to do. At the outset the 
 purpose of the state convention was to be an auxiliary of the Home 
 Mission Society. It was the Illinois Agency of that society and all 
 worked for home missions. But this continued for only one year. Then 
 the national society decided to have no more state auxiliaries, but to do 
 business directly with those whom they aided. Our General Association 
 was about evenly divided over the question of continuing in business 
 under the circumstances, one part advising to go ahead and the other 
 part not wishing to appear as a rival to the Home Mission Society. By 
 a small majority it was decided to go on but under the name of Domestic 
 Missions. But the next year the majority was the other way, a resolution 
 commending Domestic Missions failed to pass, and the work ceased. 
 In 1850 the board reported that they had performed no labor "save 
 the preparation of this report." The Association thereupon instructed 
 the board to "appoint such agencies as in their judgment the cause of 
 Domestic Missions may require." Also to tender their services to the 
 Home Mission board as before, as their "advisory agency for Home 
 Missions in Illinois." The Home Mission board declined the generous 
 offer, and there for a time the matter rested. For six years altogether 
 no specific state mission work was done. In 1854 a committee on 
 Domestic Missions brought in two opposing reports, a resolution in- 
 tended to meet the views of any, and again the matter was deferred. 
 This difference of sentiment continued through that whole generation. 
 In 1864 the board thus referred to it: 
 
 "For the last fifteen years the subject has been more or less agitated, 
 but never with beneficial results. It has interrupted the work of the 
 General Association, served to make its very existence a matter of ques- 
 tion, and to divide the state in matters of policy and practice. It is to 
 be hoped that the utter failure of this last and all previous schemes for 
 the joint occupation of this state in the work of Domestic Missions will 
 never again be agitated." 
 
 173
 
 174 History of the Baptists of Illinois 
 
 But the agitation continued. The fear of the home mission party 
 was that by carrying on a systematized state mission work of our own 
 we might imperil the aid we were receiving from the east. As stated in 
 a committee report of 1854: 
 
 "Your committee appreciate the strong desire of our brethren in this 
 state to promote Domestic Missionary operations, but we hope this may 
 not divert appropriations which are reasonably expeaed to flow from 
 Illinois to sustain the Home Mission Society in its arduous work." At 
 the meeting the following year it was resolved that, 
 
 "The Board be instructed to cease any further efforts to consummate 
 the arrangem.ents entered into between the executive committee and the 
 Board of the Home Mission society, and devote their whole energies to 
 the prosecution of Domestic Mission work." 
 
 The constitution was thereupon amended, so that the General Asso- 
 ciation ceased any longer to profess to be an auxiliary of the Home 
 Mission Society, but was an independent agency for State Missions; 
 that term being then first used.' Rev. Ichabod Clark was the first Gen- 
 eral Agent under the new constitution, and to his title was added that 
 of Superintendent of Missions. 
 
 In pursuance of the new policy of 1855 the board sent J. C. Bur- 
 roughs and H. G. Weston as a deputation to secure amicable relations 
 with the Home Mission Society in New York, and a plan of joint 
 partnership was agreed on. But it did not run smoothly, and most of 
 the year agent Clark and agent Powell reported only to their respective 
 "boards." A brief period of prosperity now followed, caused, some 
 said, by the Crimean war, and Superintendent J. B. Olcott raised $8000 
 in one year, twice as much as the most optimistic expectations of the 
 Board. Thus encouraged, when the Home Mission Society proposed 
 that the General Association be merely an agency of oversight for 
 Illinois, they "declined with thanks," and decided to "decline all fur- 
 ther correspondence on the subject." 
 
 But again money v/as hard to get, and in 1863 there were further 
 negotiations on foot. There had been a change of administration in 
 that Society, and the new management was reported to be ready for a 
 closer cooperation with the state boards. After considerable lapse of 
 time the negotiations were successful. The Home Mission Society 
 agreed to make no appointments in Illinois without the approval of the 
 board of the General Association, and all missionaries were to make 
 duplicate reports to the two boards. And so after twenty years of dis-
 
 History of the Baptists of Illinois 1 75 
 
 agreement over the matter of coordinate authority the sky was clear! 
 It may be said that the retiring Home Mission secretary was an effective 
 administrator, but his dream of a row of state organizations subordinate 
 to a national, he failed to realize. In some denominations it can be 
 done, but among Baptists it is probably impossible. There are ad- 
 vantages, yet what is gained in central power is lost in individual de- 
 velopment. Then we lose, for a man is worth more than a machine. 
 
 In 1869 things were wrong again. The General Association laid 
 down an ultimatum requesting full mission superintendency in the state, 
 and offering on that condition to pay the Home Mission Society 25 per 
 cent of all funds colleaed. The offer was declined. The next year 
 the board modified and renewed it, "believing the prevailing sentiment 
 to be in favor of cooperation," and decided that "this Association will 
 cooperate with the Home Mission Society on the plan proposed by 
 them." Article five of the constitution was changed by omitting the 
 former full powers of the board, and inserting, "in conneaion with the 
 Home Mission Society." And all was well. 
 
 But in 1874 matters were changed again, and the two societies 
 entered the field as equals. One reason for the dissolution of partner- 
 ship probably lay in the fact that when it was made the Association owed 
 the Society, according to their agreement, $2500. It was arranged in 
 settlement that the Association should pay to the Society t\\'enty percent 
 of all receipts until the amount was paid. This was done. But if the 
 two bodies were not satisfied together they were more unhappy apart. 
 So in 1879 proposals for cooperation were again submitted to the Home 
 Mission Society, and were accepted. The Association agreed to attend 
 to the collection of Home Mission funds in the state and to pay to the 
 Home Mission Society t\\'enty per cent of all colleaed. The arrange- 
 ment continued a year, and was rescinded by the same body that pro- 
 posed it. But we were drawing near to the arrangement that seems to 
 have been satisfaaory and final. 
 
 In 1881 the General Association approved of the following recom- 
 mendation of a special committee: 
 
 "We recommend that this body signify to the Board of the Home 
 Mission Societ)' our desire that the plan of cooperation under which the 
 two societies have been working since Oaober, 1879, shall terminate 
 December 1, 1881. That the Home Mission Society he requested to
 
 176 History of the Baptists of Illinois 
 
 take charge of all mission work in our state in behalf of foreign popula- 
 tions, while the General Association shall devote its missionary efforts 
 to the English speaking people of the state." 
 
 The committee thus reporting was "appointed by the Board," and 
 their report was "adopted after discussion and amendments." It proved 
 to be a permanent solution of the difficulty. It makes a simple and 
 clear distinction between the work of the two societies.
 
 CHAPTER LIII 
 
 RELATION OF THE STATE TO LOCAL 
 ASSOCIATIONS 
 
 While the General Association was contending with the Home 
 Mission Society over cooperation, it was struggHng with the other side 
 of the problem in its task of adaptation with the local Associations. 
 That which they refused on the one hand the same brethren seemed 
 to demand on the other. With some denominations it would have been 
 no problem at all. It would have been settled by the resolutions passed 
 at Springfield in 1850. The General Association resolved: 
 
 "That the several Baptist Associations of this state be requested to 
 form themselves into missionary societies auxiliary to the General 
 Association. 
 
 'That the pastors of the respective churches be requested to act as 
 volunteer agents for the collecting of funds for the General Association." 
 
 If this could be successfully accomplished it would be ideal, from 
 the Organization point of view. But it was not accomplished. Perhaps 
 the committee that brought in the report did not expect it would be, 
 but remembered that a committee may help along the cause a little by 
 an ideal report when there is nothing better in sight. The Association 
 however set to work to reduce the ideal to praaice, and the resolutions 
 were republished the following year for the information of the churches. 
 In the report of the Board for 185.5 they declared: 
 
 "In order to have the most effective working of our State Missions it 
 is indispensable that the whole state be under one system. . . . We are 
 advocating no favorite plan for a concentration of control in the hands 
 of a few. The Board would favor only that measure of centralized 
 power which is essential to efficiency." 
 
 Every year the subject was discussed and pressed, but it refused to be 
 settled. Some of the local Associations were indifferent. Others pre- 
 ferred to look after their own mission work, applying to themselves the 
 language used by the state Board concerning the proposition to give the 
 Home Mission Society full missionary control over the state : 
 
 "We who know the field must provide for if; why should we com- 
 mit it to others?" Jacksonville, 1859. 
 
 Yet the Board were consistent, though apparently inconsistent, and 
 they were obliged to "proceed with caution." A special committee at 
 
 177
 
 178 History of the Baptists of Illinois 
 
 Bloomington, in 1858, on the Relation of the Local Associations to the 
 General Association, reported softly that, 
 
 "All the relation that any Association could be asked to sustain to 
 the General Association is that of well wishers to the cause." 
 
 But some of the Associations in the judgment of the Board were 
 hardly entitled to be counted well wishers in a practical sense. The 
 Board said: 
 
 "The question of employing an agent in this state is still further 
 embarrassed by the fact that so large a number of local Associations 
 have missionary Boards which absorb the funds of the churches and thus 
 divert them from our treasury." 
 
 This practice of local Associations looking after their own mission 
 work was sometimes done to save expense. This point the Board felt 
 keenly, and would have removed all ground for the objection if they 
 had been able. At Alton in 1862 they said: 
 
 "When the Board employs an agent the contributors complain that 
 so large a percentage of their contributions is required to pay for col- 
 leaing. When the Board does not send an agent but few churches con- 
 tribute promptly; the great majority neglecting the duty altogether. 
 The Board last year matured, and at considerable expense introduced to 
 the churches of the state a plan for weekly colleaions for religious pur- 
 poses (without agents) . So far as can be ascertained out of more than 
 sixty churches said to have adopted it but very few have persevered in 
 the work." 
 
 The whole issue was well stated in the report of the Board at Aurora 
 
 in 1869: 
 
 "Many of our brethren and churches greatly prefer to do their own 
 Domestic Mission work through their local Associations. In doing it 
 in this way they generally do more liberally, and at the same time the 
 benefactors and beneficiaries are brought into closer sympathy. Some 
 Associations however have much destimtion and little means, and" others 
 have much means and little destitution. If then the work be left wholly 
 to the local Associations the result will be that in some places there will 
 be expenditures on barren soil, and in other places promising soil will 
 lie waste." 
 
 But the difficulty continued just the same. In 1885 the twenty 
 percent plan was adopted, whereby twenty percent of all collections for 
 local mission work v/as sent to the state treasury. But even where the 
 plan was adopted in many cases Associational treasurers were careless 
 about remitting, or kept it all at home. So the plan was modified, and
 
 History of the Baptists of Illinois 179 
 
 it was requested that all funds be sent to the state treasurer, who would 
 return eighty percent to the local Associations. But the modified plan 
 was no more observed than the other. To make the matter more com- 
 plex the system of life memberships so successfully pushed by Rev. E. S. 
 Graham became involved in the struggle. The membership were state 
 funds, raised by a state official, yet churches often collected on them 
 and used the proceeds in Associational mission work or in city missions ; 
 so that the General Association not only lost them but was minus the 
 cost of procuring them. This led to the abrogation of the twenty 
 percent plan.
 
 APPENDIX 
 
 ADMINISTRATION OF REV. H. C. FIRST 
 
 As Superintendent of Missions 
 
 From June 1888 until October 1898, a period of ten years and four 
 months. When Mr. First took the work, a debt had been carried by 
 the General Association for several years and amounted to $8,000, 
 beside $207, due for printing minutes and enough due the missionaries 
 to make a total indebtedness of $11,000. Two serious things faced the 
 work of the General Association at that time. 
 
 1. The heavy debt that had been accumulating for several years. 
 
 2, The unfortunate arrangement with local associations, whereby, 
 the executive committee of a local association could appoint missionaries 
 and collect state funds from Life Memberships and other sources, and 
 not report it to the state treasurer. This in no way cut down the expense 
 and responsibility of the General Association, but did cut off its income 
 in a very large measure. This matter was put very plainly before the 
 state meeting in the Report of the Board in 1888. The total member- 
 ship of the denomination in the state at that time, American, Foreign, 
 and Negro was 83,375. 
 
 When the Superintendent made the Report of the Board at the end 
 of sixteen months of his administration, he stated that the entire in- 
 debtedness was so nearly raised that it ought to be finished at once. 
 A sufficient amount was raised at that meeting in Mt. Vernon to more 
 than clear the Board of indebtedness. Besides this, a successful year of 
 missionary work had been done. The missionaries reported 358 bap- 
 tisms, and 547 additions to the churches. The missionaries had all 
 been paid in full. The Association passed the following report of a 
 committee on the report of the Superintendent. "A committee ap- 
 pointed by the Board to present some brief supplementary words to 
 follow the report read by the Superintendent of Missions, presents the 
 following. The Board desires to express its high appreciation of the 
 patient efforts of the Superintendent of Missions. Rev. H. C. First, 
 who, with unflagging zeal and untiring hope has labored so success- 
 fully, particularly in regard to the obtaining of funds and pledges 
 
 181
 
 182 History of the Baptists of Illinois 
 
 toward the removal of the debt which has so long rested heavily upon 
 us and crippled our work, which removal he has, under God, so nearly 
 accomplished, as the Treasurer's Report will show. We bless God for 
 the wisdom and strength given our brother and highly commend him 
 to His gracious favor." 
 
 In 1891, the Superintendent made a very fine report. Among 
 other things, the Board says the following. "While in all our delivera- 
 tions there has been the most kindly and Christian spirit, and unanimity 
 in all our actions ; and on the part of the missionaries, the most faith- 
 ful and earnest work. Many of these have worked with self-denial 
 and heroic labors for the building up of the cause of our Redeemer." 
 
 Mr. First reported that year a total of $16,834.85, raised and the 
 missionaries reported for that year 302 added to the churches by letter 
 and experience and 612 by baptism, making a total of additions 914. 
 Rev. J. B. Brown was employed as a missionary in the Central portion 
 of the state and Rev. B. F. Rodman in the Southern one-third of the 
 state. The whole number of baptisms in Illinois for that year was 7642. 
 
 In 1892, Superintendent First made the fifth annual Report of the 
 Board under his administration. The following are three sections of his 
 report. "This is the fifth annual report presented by your present 
 Superintendent, and we believe that some progress has been made in 
 that time in our State Mission Work. As is well remembered, we had 
 a debt of $9,000, and this did not include the money due the mission- 
 aries and other arrearages. The missionaries had labored for six months 
 of the year and had received no part of their salaries, only what they 
 had collected on the fields and retained. This statement is not made 
 to draw comparisons, but to indicate some of the advancement which 
 we have made. This year we have added $2,500 to the permanent 
 funds, which now amounts to $10,000. While four or five years ago, 
 we were actually paying between $400 and $500 interest money. • Now 
 after paying the annuities and interest that goes for special purposes, we 
 have a net interest of more than $400 per year. And for this year 
 we report all our missionaries paid up and a balance of over $800 in 
 our treasury." 
 
 The following was adopted in this meeting in 1892. 
 
 "A resolution was presented by Dr. Frederick and unanimously 
 adopted as follows: 
 
 Whereas, Rev. H. C. First has been unanimously appointed by the 
 Board as Corresponding Secretary and Superintendent of Missions of
 
 History of the Baptists of Illinois 183 
 
 this General Association for the ensuing year, therefore be it Resolved, 
 That we pledge to him our individual and collective support in the im- 
 portant work to v/hich we have called him; that we pray God for 
 continued and increasing success upon his eflforts, and that we will, by 
 every proper means stimulate contributions to State Missions." 
 
 Ic was during the year 1892, that a State Mission Bulletin was 
 established, which continued for six years. It was a monthly, and 5,000 
 copies were issued monthly. It paid all expenses for publication and 
 distribution and left quite a sum for the mission treasury. Mr. H. M. 
 Carr, a prominent merchant of Alton, served as the very efficient treas- 
 urer for eighteen years, until the time of his death about 1915. Mr. 
 Carr was a devoted layman of the First Church of Alton, and never 
 spared himself in devotion to the work of his home church, the work of 
 the State Convention, and as a trustee in Shurtleflf College. 
 
 The report in Jerseyville in 1893, showed a good year's work, but a 
 hard one financially. The Board closed the year with $820 deficit, 
 which was raised at that meeting of the General Association. It was 
 that year the First Church was established and the first meeting house 
 built in the growing city of East St. Louis. 
 
 The fifty-first anniversary of the Association was held in Quincy. 
 It had been a difficult year to raise money, and the Board reported $1300 
 indebtedness. But, in other respects, it had been a good year, and the 
 Association passed the following resolution. 
 
 "Resolved, That the report of our State Board and State Missionaries 
 are most gratifying and encouraging, and should awaken a deeper in- 
 terest in the work of enlarging the kingdom of Christ in the state. We 
 express the hope that during the coming year more generous offerings 
 may relieve the Board of the financial burden now resting upon it, 
 and open the way for enlargement on every hand. We would recognize 
 the gratitude, the self-denying labors of Dr. Buckley and record our 
 appreciation of our Historical Secretary, Dr. Bulkley, of the invaluable 
 service he is rendering to the Baptist denomination." 
 
 In 1896, when the state meeting was held in Urbana, the Board 
 reported the association had begun the year with a debt of $1300, and 
 that during the year it had been increased $700, making a total in- 
 debtedness of $2,000. The Superintendent in his report gives some 
 very interesting information concerning Illinois, and as a matter of 
 history, showing how our Baptist people thought of these things 
 thirty years ago, it is given in part below.
 
 184 History of the Baptists of Illinois 
 
 "We have taken some pains to look up a few statistics, bearing on 
 this question and give herewith the results. Illinois is situated in what 
 is known as the 'prairie region' of the United States, and is, in the 
 language of the compiler of the latest census, a part of the 'granary of 
 the country.' It is third in population of all the United States, and 
 had at the time the census was taken in 1890, 3,824,357 people within 
 its borders. Of every one hundred people in Illinois 77.99 are native 
 born and 22.01 are of foreign birth. In every 100,000 population in 
 the state, 1,513 are colored. There are 669,812 dwelling houses in the 
 state, and each one is the home of about five people on an average. 
 
 Considering the fact that Illinois was an unknown wilderness when 
 the region east of the Allegheny Mountains had been settled for two 
 hundred years, its immense progress shows that in calling it the granary 
 of the country, the superintendent of the census made no mistake. No 
 state in the union has better facilities for reaching markets, and none are 
 more richly endowed with fertile soil, favorable seasons or fuller 
 harvests. The great cities that lie within easy access east and west 
 are ever ready to take the surplus of the state, and the net-work of rail- 
 ways, exceeding more than 25,000 miles, are not only an evidence of 
 the immense demand for carrying capacity, but for great riches in the 
 way of agricultural products and mineral wealth. It is the manifest 
 destiny of Illinois to become one of the greatest of all the sisterhood of 
 states. Such, then is the field where God has put us. It is sure large 
 enough, needy enough, and important enough, to demand our highest 
 and best energies. 
 
 Our mission work in this state is no experiment. It is not a theory 
 of missions, but it has the most substantial and permanent results to 
 present as the fruitage of its endeavor. Out of the 1,000 churches in 
 this state, fully 400 have come to their present position under the 
 fostering care of this Board. Many of these churches are among the 
 largest and most prosperous in the state. 
 
 But there is yet much land to be possessed in our state. Three 
 counties, fifteen county seats, and 120 cities with a population of 1,000 
 people and over, to say nothing of smaller cities and villages as well as 
 rural districts, without Baptist churches, presents a field demanding our 
 best and most consecrated efforts. More than 1,200 missionaries have 
 been commissioned by this body. These have buried in Christian 
 baptism fully 18,000 persons. We cannot even present a summary of
 
 History of the Baptists of Illinois 185 
 
 the work that has been done by this body. The Judgment Day alone 
 will reveal the results that have been accomplished." 
 
 In that year 734 persons had been added to the churches by the 
 missionaries. 
 
 The Association met in Taylorv'ille in 1897. The $2,000 debt at 
 the beginning of the year had been raised by July first, but the appro- 
 priations so over-ran the income that the Report of the Board showed 
 another debt of $2,500. Superintendent First informed the Board, 
 when reeleaed, that he would close his work at the end of that year, 
 and would make a strong eflFort to clear the Association of all in- 
 debtedness. 
 
 Accordingly he closed his work with the meeting at Aurora in 1898. 
 For a little over ten years he had ser\'ed the Association as Superin- 
 tendent of Missions. When Superintendent First began his work the 
 Treasurer's report showed a debt of about $11,000; when he completed 
 his work, permanent funds on hand amounting to $10,550. ($10,000 
 was subsequently added to the permanent funds by arrangement made 
 by Brother First but not paid in until after he closed his work.) 
 
 The reports show the following summary during the decade of 
 Superintendent First's administration: 
 
 $120,000 was contributed and expended in support of missions in 
 Illinois. 
 
 467 missionaries were under appointment. 
 
 7,017 were added to the mission churches (4,330 by baptism) . 
 
 The Baptist membership in the state had grown in eleven years from 
 83,000 to more than 115,000. 
 
 It is now more than 25 years since Brother First dosed his work 
 as Superintendent of Missions, but he has been busy most of the time. 
 He now resides in Rock Island and is highly respeaed by the brethren 
 who know him.
 
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 IPVP 
 
 IVP