Historical Statement and Papers (Volume 1) (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1895. Excerpt: ... HISTORY OF CONGREGATIONALISM IN ILLINOIS. BY REV. JOSEPH E. ROY, D.D. As there were reformers before the Reformation, so there were Congregationalists in Illinois before organized Congregationalism; and no history of the system in this State can be complete without considering them. Congregationalism was the first Protestant church order to break over into the original territory of the Northwest, lying between the Ohio and the Mississippi. Indeed, in 1788 it led over into that territory the first colony. Congregationalism, at the birth of this century, also passed over into this Promised Land with the Connecticut Land Company, and a multitude of her people also took possession of their "Western Reserve." Indeed, her own Missionary Society of Connecticut, organized just then, 1798, had prominently in mind the following out into the wilderness of her own children. The first Protestant work in the Illinois Territory was that of the Missionary Society of Connecticut, and that of the Massachusetts Home Missionary Society. One of the most thrilling chapters in the religious history of our country, as recorded in the "Panoplist," was that of the far-reaching plans and beneficent accomplishments of those ancient societies. In 1812 they sent our Revs. Samuel J. Mills, of missionary hay-stack memory, and John F. Schermerhorn, to explore down through the Valley of the Ohio and the Mississippi. These explorers reported that in the Illinois Territory there was then not a Congregational or a Presbyterian minister; that there were five or six Methodist preachers, with about six hundred church members, and five Baptist churches and one hundred and twenty members. They stopped at Shawneetown and preached and organized a Bible Society. In 1814 Mills and Rev. Daniel Smith w...