Missions

1845 · ref. BK0133 — Rock Island Illinois 1845. Autograph letter signed 2 pp. 7 ½ x 12 ¾ inches on a folded folio sheet with integral address panel addressed to Rev. B. M. Hill Corresponding Secretary of the American Baptist Home Mission Society Troy New York. Red Chicago August 5 postmark and manuscript postal rate. Folded for mailing with remnants of original seal; very good. A detailed report by Baptist missionary Daniel Dye on his work among the rapidly growing communities of western Illinois and Iowa sent to Benjamin M. Hill of the American Baptist Home Mission Society. Dye gives a granular account of thirteen weeks of missionary labor at Rock Island and Mount Pleasant in Henry County: forty sermons and addresses twenty-two conferences and prayer and church meetings 541 miles traveled 228 pastoral visits and visits to two schools. He also records the churches' contributions toward his salary and missionary work and describes Sabbath schools at Rock Island and Mount Pleasant with ten teachers forty pupils and libraries totaling 275 volumes. Dye had come to Rock Island in the wake of Baptist missionary Ezra Fisher who left the region in the spring of 1845 for Oregon. A later history of the First Baptist Church records Dye's pastorate as beginning July 19 1845 two weeks before this letter. The same history notes that the young congregation organized with seven members in 1837 purchased a brick schoolhouse in 1844 for use as its meeting place.1 Dye supplies a contemporary description of the building: "The Rock Island Church have bought and repaired a large School House to hold meetings in 28 x 40." The report closes with a broader assessment of Baptist missionary work throughout the upper Mississippi Valley. "The field is great" Dye writes "the obstacles to overcome are many; infidelity in all its forms are here." Davenport was without a settled minister Dubuque had been "destitute" since the departure of its pastor and "there are many Churches destitute in the Des Moines Association." He summarizes the appeal of these western congregations to their eastern brethren in a memorable phrase: "The long and loud cry is come over and help us." Dye stresses that the small congregations were already supporting the work as well as they could noting that two members at Mount Pleasant had each paid four dollars toward three months of occasional preaching although "they are not worth much over 1000 dollars each." Dye was preparing to return temporarily to New York to see a son from whom he had been separated for more than a year but the Rock Island congregation had already given him a unanimous call to return and settle among them. He hoped while east to attend Baptist associations and "wake them up more to the interest of the Great Valley." 1 The Past and Present of Rock Island County Ill. H. F. Kett & Co. 1877 168. . unknown books