1814-1855

Adoniram Judson Copeland

Congregational Minister    ME/IL

We have discovered only two notations on this first namesake for Adoniram Judson, Jr., and they only tease us to know more about this pioneer to Illinois.

Adoniram Judson Copeland was born in Brewer, March, 1814. After graduation [from Bowdoin College] he entered the Theological Seminary in Bangor and graduated in 1843. He began his work in the ministry in this State [Maine] but removed after a time to Illinois, and was in the pastorate in Como of that State. We have failed to gain more information concerning him. He died in 1855.[1]

Adoniram Judson Copeland was born at Brewer, ME, in March of 1814. He graduated from Bowdoin College in 1840, and from Banger Theological Seminary in 1843. He was ordained as a Congregational minister and after preaching for a time in Maine, moved to Illinois and accepted a call as pastor of the Church at Como. Never formally incorporated, Como, was in northwestern Illinois, Whiteside County, near the town of Sterling on the Rock River. Copeland died in 1855.[2]

We do not know much about Rev. Copeland beyond the above summaries. When did he come to Illinois?  Why did he choose Illinois? What was the cause of his physical demise? Did he have family who remained in Illinois or in Maine?

It is important to remember that before Adoniram Judson was a hero to the Baptists, he was a pioneering hero for the Congregationalists.  Ann and Adoniram grew up in the Congregational Church and Adoniram was appointed as a missionary by the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions founded in 1810 by the Congregationalists. This first group of commissioned missionaries included Adoniram Judson, Jr., Luther Rice, Samuel Newell, Gordon Hall and Samuel Nott, all from Congregational backgrounds.

Thus in 1814, only two years after the Judsons had departed the US for missionary service, and nine months after the Judsons arrived in Burma, parents were naming their babies for these bold adventurers. Father and Mother Copeland probably did not know that Ann had lost a stillborn son nor that the Judsons had been evicted twice from India before little Adoniram Judson Copeland was born. These parents probably did not know the Judsons had resigned from the Congregational mission board and were unemployed in a foreign land when their son, Adoniram Judson Copeland, was born.

We can only guess the motivations of the parents who named their child for this missionary they never met. We can assume they read The Panoplist and Missionary Magazine published for the Congregationalists by Samuel T. Armstrong in Boston with “All the Profits, after supporting the Work,.. devoted to the Support of Foreign Missions.”[3] We can only imagine that A. J. Copeland felt the same call to go to the wilds of northwestern Illinois to establish Congregational churches to serve the spiritual needs of Natives and immigrants who were moving west as did Adoniram Judson, Jr.  Adoniram Judson Copeland may have a story as captivating as that of his namesake.

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[1] Nehemiah Cleaveland and Alpheus Spring Packard, History of Bowdoin College with Biographical Sketches of its Graduates from 1800 to 1870, Inclusive (Boston: James Ripley Osgood & Company, 1882), p. 541. Nabu Public Domain Reprints.

[2] Adoniram Judson Copeland, https://www.biblicalcyclopedia.com/C/copeland-adoniram-judson.html

[3] The Panoplist and Missionary Magazine (Boston: Samuel T. Armstrong), August (Part I), 1813, No 3, Vol IX, Front Cover.

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