Within a few feet of this spot, John Rogers, John Bradford, John Philpot, and other servants of God, suffered death by fire for the faith of Christ, in the years 1555, 1556, 1557. Featured Image Credit: Marian Martyrs Historical Marker. 27 Jan. 2022, www.hmdb.org/m.asp?m=116782. Read more...
This bronze commemorates the first performance of George Frideric Handel’s Oratorio Messiah, given in the Old Musick Hall in Fishamble Street at noon on Tuesday April 13th 1742 Featured Image Credit: First Performance of Handel’s Messiah Historical Marker. 20 Sept. 2024, www.hmdb.org/m.asp?m=22450. Read more...
From Wikipedia: At the time he was writing “We Three Kings” in 1857, John Henry Hopkins Jr. was serving as the rector of Christ Episcopal Church in Williamsport, Pennsylvania.[4][9] Although he originally worked as a journalist for a New York newspaper and studied to become a lawyer,[5][10] he chose to join the clergy upon graduating from the University of Vermont.[11] Hopkins studied at the General Theological Seminary in New York City and after graduating and being ordained a deacon in Read more...
Jonathan Edwards was assistant pastor of the Northampton church from 1726 to 1729, and senior pastor from 1729 to 1750. Edwards started in the “Second Meetinghouse” and built the “Third Meetinghouse” during the Great Awakening in 1737. The current structure, aka “The Fifth Meetinghouse,” was built in 1878. Featured Image Credit: Virtual Tours – Historic Northampton Museum and Education Center. Read more...
At 26, Herbert G. Tovey wrote the song “Give Me a Passion for Souls” – out of 1,500 songs published under his Sacred Music Foundation, this was the most popular. 1 Give me a passion for souls, dear Lord, A passion to save the lost; O that Thy love were by all adored, And welcomed at any cost. Refrain: Read more...
Inscription: Saint Paul is also known as the Apostle of the Nations because of his missionary journeys throughout the eastern Mediterranean (46-58 AD) for the dissemination of Christianity. In this context he visited several Greek cities, including Samothrace, Philippi, Thessalonica, Berea, Athens, and, most importantly, Corinth. Corinth, a Roman imperial colony and capital of the province of Achaea (Peloponnese Read more...
Inscription: A Centennial Memorial of Hiram Bingham. Born in Bennington, Vt., Oct. 30, 1789. Died in New Haven, Ct., Nov. 11, 1869, Aged 80 Years. This slab is placed here in grateful remembrance of a pioneer Missionary by descendants of Hawaiians (aided by his Children) among whom he preached Christ for more than twenty years. He preached the first sermon every delivered Read more...
Inscription: William (Billy) Franklin Graham preached his first sermon on Easter Sunday night, March 28, 1947 at the Bostwick Baptist Church near Palatka, Florida. Graham was born in Charlotte, North Carolina on November 17, 1918. He was saved in a Mordecal Ham crusade when he was 16 years of age. He preached his first sermon at Bostwick Baptist Church while Read more...
John Wesley (1703-1791) was an Oxford graduate, an Anglican priest, and led the “Holy Club” where they prayed for three hours a day to try to be a better Christian. He even became a missionary to the Native Americans in Georgia. On October 14, 1735, John and his brother Charles Wesley departed England for Savannah aboard the Simmonds. On February Read more...
John Eliot (1604-1690) was born in Widford, England, and graduated from Cambridge. He worked for Thomas Hooker (founder of Connecticut) at his school in Essex. When Hooker escaped England for the Netherlands, Eliot came to Boston in 1631, where he helped compile the Bay Psalm Book. For over forty years he would preach in Roxbury. Many of the Christians who came Read more...
From Wikipedia: John Eliot (c. 1604—21 May 1690) was a Puritan missionary to the American Indians who some called “the apostle to the Indians”[1][2][3] and the founder of Roxbury Latin School in the Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1645. Produced the first Bible published in America. Featured Image Credit: Roxbury Latin School, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons Read more...
Thomas Hooker was born in Leicestershire, England, and graduated from Cambridge with a Master’s in 1611, the year the translators produced the Authorized (King James) Bible. Hooker pastored in Surrey starting in 1620, and then in Chelmsford in 1626. But in 1629, because of his Puritan sympathies he was forced to flee to Rotterdam, and then in 1633, following the Read more...
Thomas Hooker (see his statue nearby) would continue to minister until his death in 1647. He was buried in the “Ancient Burying Ground” near the original site of the church. In 1739, First Church would move to its current spot, adjacent the Ancient Burying Ground, where it is now known as Center Church. The marker by his grave reads: Thomas Read more...
Inscription: A group of Separatists from the Church of England, later named Pilgrims, left England for Holland in 1608 in settled in Leiden in 1609. After staying there for 11 years, the group sailed back to England on the ship Speedwell, where they joined by more immigrants along with a larger ship, the Mayflower. Although both ships set out together, Read more...
William Jennings Bryan test-drove the greatest speech in American history, “The Cross of Gold” in Perry, Illinois, on the lawn of Perry Presbyterian Church. Bryan would go on to deliver this speech at the 1896 Democratic National Convention in Chicago. The speech would propel the “Boy orator of the Plains” to be the 1896 Democratic nominee for President of the Read more...
Inscription: On this site on July 4th, 1883, distinguished American William Jennings Bryan (1860-1925) began his practice of law and journey to national prominence. The forthright, spirited Bryan would become a Congressman from Nebraska, three-time Democratic nominee for President, and Secretary of State under President Woodrow Wilson. Featured Image Credit: Paul Sableman, CC BY 2.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0>, via Wikimedia Commons Read more...
Newton Bateman (1822-1897) was born in poverty in New Jersey, moved to Illinois, started a school in St. Louis, then became Illinois Superintendent of Public Instruction, and authored the Historical Encyclopedia of Illinois. While Bateman was a student at Illinois College here in Jacksonville, Lincoln was a state legislator representing nearby in New Salem, in the also nearby Springfield. They Read more...
Inscription: In 1782, at the coffee house on Market Street, Robert Aitken, bookseller, publisher and printer issued the FIRST BIBLE PRINTED IN ENGLISH. Printed in America, which by Congressional Resolution was recommended “To the inhabitants of the United States.” One of the Chaplains of the congress of the United States who examined this Bible was Bishop William White, the first Read more...
Inscription America’s first Bible society, founded in 1808 by Robt. Ralston, Bishop Wm. White, and Dr. Benj. Rush. In 1812 PBS was first in the U.S. to print Bibles using stereotyped plates which made them affordable and advanced literacy. Bible House has been its center of distribution since 1854. Photo By Thomas Anderson, January 25, 2019, HMDB.org Read more...
Lyman Beecher was Henry Ward Beecher’s father, a traditional Calvinist that would be common in Puritan New England. Yet as the 1800s went on, Henry Ward Beecher would lay the foundation for the “social gospel” movement. “Harry Emerson Fosdick would comment that whenever we preach freely to sympathetic audiences the social gospel…, we are building on foundations that Mr. Beecher Read more...
