1835?-1910
Adoniram Judson Colby
Baptist Pastor/Missionary IA/IL/KS
(Compiler’s Note: We can find no record of the birth of Rev. Adoniram Judson Colby only picking up his ministry in 1860 in Iowa. Thus, I arbitrarily will guess he was born 25 years before this ministry and place him in the legacy listing at 1835.)
The first printed record of Rev. Adoniram Judson Colby reports him pastoring two Baptist congregations in Mitchell County, Iowa, 1860-62. By the end of the Civil War (1865), Rev. Colby is pastoring the Gardner Baptist Church in Audubon County, Iowa.
Rev. A. J. Colby became a leading figure in founding Morgan Park Baptist Church in Chicago, Illinois, which would become the home of the Baptist Union Theological Seminary, frequently called Morgan Park Seminary. This seminary would morph into the “new” University of Chicago under the leadership of William Raney Harper.
Public religious work was begun in Morgan Park by Rev. J. Colbey (sic), a Chicago Baptist Minister, in 1872. There was no building adequate to the needs of such work, so services were held in private homes, the railroad depot and the school house. The first building specifically a house of worship was elected in 1873-74 by the Chicago Baptist Union, on the site of the present church. The land for the building was donated by the Blue Island Land and Building Company, as a means of booming their new proposed suberb (sic).
In this building were held the service of the Morgan Park Religious Association, organized in 1875 to maintain public worship. Union services were conducted on alternate Sundays by Baptist and Methodist ministers.[1]
A man of action, Chicago Baptist missionary Adoniram Judson Colby, accepted the challenge when he learned the Blue Island Land and Building Company
…offered to donate a lot and $4,000, agreeing to raise $4,000 more among adjoining land-owners, to any denomination which should proceed immediately to the erection of a $12,000 church. Rev. A. J. Colby, perceiving at a glance the importance of the field, began immediately to raise the remaining $4,000, but soon afterward concluded to transfer his interest to the Chicago Baptist Union, which accepted the offer, and entered upon the work, continuing Rev. Mr. Colby as missionary.[2]
By March of 1874, the $12,000 Morgan Park Church had been constructed but the Panic of 1874 had hit the U.S. economy.
The Rev. A. J. Colby, Baptist missionary at that place, had been promised a salary of $1,200 per annum, the churches of the city having pledged themselves to raise the amount. Only two churches, however, had redeemed their pledges, and in consequence the missionary had been seriously inconvenienced… The Rev. A. J. Colby, of Morgan Park, then spoke briefly of the affairs of the church at that place, which appeared to be in a somewhat tangled condition, and urged the union to adopt some measures for his relief.[3]
The measures of relief evidently did not work and by 1877, Adoniram Judson Colby is pastor of the Baptist Church in Clayton, Adams County, IL. He then headed west in 1879 to serve the Baptist Churches in Beloit and Salina, KS. A retirement notice was published in the Phillipsburg, KS, newspaper in November, 1890, noting that, “Rev. A. J. Colby who is well known to our old settlers, has returned from Illinois to Phillipsburg where he will remain in the future.”[4] He retired close to a son in Phillipsburg listed in “Local Businesses” in 1883 as a broom manufacturer (see entry 1861-1904).[5]
Rev. A. J. Colby, of Clay Center, passed from this life at a ripe age, Dec. 23, 1910. He had for some years been practically confined to his home. He was a good man, and had rendered efficient service at an earlier period of his life. The Clay Center Church, of which he was a member, showed him special attentions during his declining years. Pastor J. W. Bayles conducted the funeral on Christmas Day in the midst of friends and relatives.[6]
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[1] Helen G. Laycock, “How it all Began: Historical Sketch of the Morgan Park Baptist Church,” Morgan Park Baptist Church archives, 1927.
[2] The Standard (Chicago, Illinois), August 28, 1873, p. 5.
[3] “The Baptists,” Daily Inter Ocean (Chicago, IL), Volume 2, Issue 311, Wednesday, March 18, 1874, p. 8.
[4] Phillipsburg Herald (Phillipsburg, KS) Volume 13, November 6, 1890, p. 6.
[5] “Local Businesses,” Phillipsburg Herald (Phillipsburg, KS), Volume 5, March 29, 1883, p. 2.
[6] Kansas Baptist Annual of the Fifty-first Annual Meeting of the Kansas Baptist Convention, 1911, p. 62.