1832-1889

Adoniram Judson Barrett

Baptist Pastor/Professor    OH/NY

Adoniram Judson Barrett was born in 1832 in Ashtabula, Ohio, to Annis Mariah Brown and her husband, Amos J. Barrett, a Baptist pastor. Originally, young Judson was a teacher and school principal at the Literary Institute in Nunda, NY, while maintaining his calling as a Baptist minister. He married Emily Barrows who also was a teacher and dedicated Baptist. Barrett was serving as pastor of the First Baptist Church of Kingsville, Ohio, where his first daughter, Helen, was born on July 31, 1861. He graduated from Rochester Theological Seminary in 1876 and became pastor of Lake Avenue Baptist Church in Rochester, New York, that same year. He served the Lake Avenue congregation and occasionally taught at the University of Rochester until his death in 1889.

Though carrying the name of Adoniram Judson, A. J. Barrett is most famous for his first daughter, Helen Barrett Montgomery, who became a scholar and activist in the Northern Baptist Convention. He instilled in her a love for education as well as a deep devotion to service through the church. Helen became the first woman to translate the Greek New Testament into contemporary English thus producing in 1924, The Centenary Translation of the New Testament. She was the first president of the Women’s American Baptist Foreign Mission Society and the first woman president of the Northern Baptist Convention.

(This is the first of two named Adoniram Judson Barrett. Also see 1851-1910, Adoniram Judson Barrett, NY/NY.)

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