A Frontier Missionary Reports His Progess to the American Home Missionary Society, 1830
Autograph letter, signed, from Reverend Alanson Darwin of Tecumseh, Michigan Territory, to Reverend Absalom Peters, Corresponding Secretary of American Home Missionary Society (AHMS), 1830. Approximately 300 words, with integral address panel. Many corrections and sections crossed out (but fully legible), presumably to indicate the parts that Peters selected for publication in the Society's report. The AHMS was founded in 1826 by members of the Presbyterian, Congregational, Associate Reformed, and Dutch Reformed churches in order "to assist congregations that are unable to support the gospel ministry, and to send the gospel to the destitute within the United States." Much of their early work was done on what was then the western frontier -- in small communities in Ohio, Michigan, Indiana, and Illinois that had little in the way of established religious institutions or organization. In this letter, Rev. Darwin reports that while no religious revival has yet occurred in his territory, progress is encouraging. His sermons on temperance have been well received, and "the use of ardent spirits and their introduction in social circles has been almost wholly abandoned. At a late military election no ardent spirits were drunk. A man lately purchased some liquor at a store, poured a tumbler full & an invited the people in the store to drink but no one would accept his invitation...." The small settlement of Sabine, 14 miles north of Tecumseh, has "7 or 8 professors of the Presbyterian Church," but no actual congregation of meeting place, and he plans to visit them again and "stir them up to suitable exertions for the enjoyment of religious privileges." Darwin concludes with a not-so-subtle hint, noting that "the most discouraging circumstances that I meet with arise from my embarrassed pecuniary circumstances, but I think the Lord will provide for me as long as he shall see fit to employ me in his vineyard."
Item #20687
Sold