[2] Responsibility for historically black colleges, founded by and for freedmen and women after the Civil War, remained with ABHMS until the Great Depression, when this work was transferred to the Education Society.
Soon after the founding of ABHMS, the Free Will Baptist Home Mission Society was formed in Dover, N.H., on July 31, 1834, with David Marks as the first corresponding secretary.
In the beginning, before telegraphs and railroads, reaching these new frontiers on the vast North American continent required the cooperative efforts of many Baptists and great hardship on the part of missionaries.
As mission fields grew stronger and became self-supporting, these newly formed associations, societies, and conventions began planting churches, founding schools, and sending and supporting their own missionaries.
A good example is the Kiowa Baptists at Saddleback Mountain in Oklahoma, who wanted "other Indians to hear about the Jesus Road"[This quote needs a citation] and filled red Jesus barrels with money to send a missionary to the Hopi Indians in Arizona and established the Sunlight Mission on Second Mesa.
This shift can be seen in the examples of African-American churches in Phonix sponsoring Navajo ministry and those in Los Angeles adding Latino staff and offering Spanish language classes.
Peck organized the first Baptist churches west of the Mississippi, ordained the first African-American clergy in St. Louis, and helped found Alton Seminary, which later became Shurtleff College.
Opposition to the missionaries sprang from the fact that they had settled in St. Louis, where they established a church and a school, instead of "plunging into the wilderness and converting the Indians."
With calls to send missionaries to Russia, India, and the Sandwich Islands, and the financial demands of the new Columbia College in Washington, D.C., there were no resources to support home mission except with Native Americans.
Peck ordained Pastor Meachum in 1825, when he founded the First African Baptist Church, the first Protestant congregation established for African-Americans west of the Mississippi River.
Peck became an agent of the American Colonization Society—which founded Liberia and returned freed blacks to Africa—a might advocate of temperance, a student of the intricate problems of immigration, and a stout opponent of the effort to make Illinois a slave state.
In the 20th century, ABHMS assisted the Japanese in internment camps during World War II, was a frontline advocate during the civil rights movement with Jitsuo Morikawa organizing marches in 1963, worked for the empowerment of church and society, strove for ecological responsibility in its eco-justice emphasis, supported the Sullivan Principles during apartheid in South Africa, and continues to play an activist role in ethical investing.
Recently, ABHMS partnered with the Proctor Institute in hearings following Hurricane Katrina, facilitated racial reconciliation, and advocated for children in poverty.
After the Civil War, ABHMS directed considerable financial and human resources to the establishment of schools for freed men.
During the Great Depression, ABHMS turned over administration of the historically black colleges to the American Baptist Board of Education.
While a student at Waterville College in Maine, Merrill was influenced by the conversion of Professor George Dana Boardman and his offer of himself to serve as a missionary in India.
To earn money for his trip from Maine to Michigan, he sold Ann Judson's "Memoirs" and the American Baptist Magazine.
Early missionaries forded rivers, rode horseback, and slept on beds of pine needles to spread the gospel.
When the Louisiana Purchase, Lewis and Clark Expedition and cessation of Indian hostilities during and following the War of 1812 opened the way for settlement in the Mississippi Valley, American Baptists were among the pioneers.
Similarly, when opportunities opened in the Northwest Territory (modern states of Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, and Wisconsin, as well as the northeastern part of Minnesota), in the Southwest following the Mexican–American War, in California during the 1849 Gold Rush, in the Republic of Texas, post-Russian Alaska, and in Cuba and Puerto Rico after the Spanish–American War, home missionaries moved to these new frontiers.
It is notable that, for the first 63 years, the offices of the American Baptist Home Mission Society were always near printing houses in Lower Manhattan.
The American Baptist Home Mission Society worked jointly with the American Baptist Publication Society to dispatch colporteur wagons, railroad chapel cars, and gospel cruisers in the waters of Oregon and Washington to carry the printed and spoken word to the West, Puerto Rico, and Mexico.
The Home Mission Society sent missionaries to America's frontier, including some work with "Indians and Negroes," but it was not until after 1865 that the trust for Indian work in the United States, which had almost been extinguished during the Civil War, was transferred by the Missionary Union (later the ABFMS and International Ministries) to the Home Mission Society.
By 1877, 13 home missionaries were at work among the Creek, Seminole, Delaware, Shwano, Kickapoo, Sac, and Fox in Indian Territory (modern Oklahoma).
To avoid the removal of their children from the reservation, Crow leaders invited the American Baptist Home Mission Society to establish a school at Lodge Grass, Montana.
While she was at one time left temporarily in charge of the institution, cholera broke out, and 11 children died within one week, but she remained at her post until the fury of the plague was abated.
The themes of innovation, evangelism, education, ecumenism, networking, and social engagement are transparent in the life of Moore who labored "in Christ's stead."
Coleman was the first vice-president of the new organization and president of the New England Branch of the Woman's American Baptist Home Mission Society, the branch being a local organization whose purpose was the holding of inspirational meetings and otherwise fostering the work of the Woman's American Baptist Home Mission Society.
Schroeder), a Swedish sea captain, was converted at Mariner's Temple in New York and returned to Sweden to birth the Baptist church there.
The Foreign Mission Board refused to approve his appointment, recognizing the case as a challenge and not wanting to overturn their policy of neutrality in the slavery issue.