1820-1868
Adoniram Judson Bingham
Baptist Pastor/Missionary MI/MA
Adoniram Judson Bingham was born 5 April 1820, to Abel Bingham and Hannah Brown, American Baptist missionaries to the Ojibwa (Chippewa) Indians in Sault Ste. Marie, MI. Abel Bingham was nationally known for his work with the Indians because of his regularly published letters from the field about his ministry. The Binghams had previously worked in Tonawanda, NY, as missionary teachers and moved to Michigan at the behest of Isaac McCoy.[1] Young Adoniram Judson Bingham was appointed an assistant teacher with his parents when he was 15 years old thus beginning his career in Christian ministry.[2]
Bingham attended the Baptist Educational Foundation of New York (now Colgate University) graduating in 1848 and accepted an appointment to serve at his father’s mission station October 1848 through June 1849 in Grand Rapids, MI. During that same year Bingham married Emily P. Knapp in Rockford, IL, the daughter of Elder Jacob Knapp, a leading evangelist of the time. A. J. Bingham’s first pastorate was in Grand Rapids, MI, (July 1849-June 1851) where he was appointed to serve by the American Baptist Home Mission Society for a salary of $330.78 per year.[3] Buoyed by the reputation of his missionary father and his evangelist father-in-law, Bingham was called in June 1851 to become pastor of the First Baptist Church in Jacksonville, Illinois, where he served for 18 months. The Knapp/Bingham revival occurred in 1852.
Knapp arrived in Jacksonville the first week of January 1852 and held services for six weeks early that year… A true revival moved with its own momentum, where it would. Over one hundred new members were said to be added to the church as a result. At the fall meeting of the SBA [Springfield Baptist Association], of 116 baptisms report in the entire SBA, seventy-five took place at the Jacksonville Church.[4]
Public opposition arose toward this prairie fire revival when the local newspaper published letters written under the name “Observer” and Knapp’s crude behaviors became the center of attention rather than the influx of new converts.
Bingham left Illinois and returned to Michigan where he pastored 1853-59. He accepted the call of Second Baptist in Holyoke, Massachusetts, in 1860 before volunteering for a very meaningful chaplaincy in the 10th Massachusetts Volunteers during the Civil War. After being dismissed from the army, he pastored in Montville, Connecticut (1863-65) and then at Cohoes, NY, (1865-67) where he also served as principal at Egberts Institute (High School). Adoniram Judson Bingham’s final pastorate was at the Baptist Church in Westfield, MA where he died on 6 August 1868, at age 48.[5]
In appreciation of their history, the American Baptist Women’s Fellowship in Jacksonville, Illinois, organized the Ann Judson Circle in 1986 “composed of new mothers inspired by their study of the famous missionaries to Burma, Ann and Adoniram Judson.” By 1991, however, the Ann Judson Circle had disbanded.
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[1] Wyeth, Isaac McCoy Early Indian Missions, p. 140. Also in this group of teachers was Eleanor Macomber who eventually went to Burma to spend her life among the Karens.
[2] Ferguson, Edward E., Religion on the Prairie: A History of First Baptist Church of Jacksonville, Illinois, Its Pastors and Its People, In Context 1841-1991. (Jacksonville, Illinois: Production Press published jointly by Morgan County Historical Society and First Baptist Church of Jacksonville, Illinois, 1995), p. 51.
[3] Ibid., p. 52
[4] Ibid., p. 52.
[5] Ibid., p. 53-55, 299.