These papers consist of photostat copies of letters received by the corresponding secretaries of the American Home Missionary Society. The letters received by the corresponding secretaries consist almost exclusively of reports and correspondence from the society's missionaries and agents, and of applications from local churches for financial aid in supporting their ministers.
The American Home Missionary Society in the mid-nineteenth century was a cooperative enterprise sponsored by the Congregational and Presbyterian denominations to establish churches in the western regions. This was not to be a permanent arrangement, as cursory perusal of the letters will verify, for each church when the occasion arose could decide which of the two theologies it would follow. The letters are mainly semi-formal reports to the corresponding secretaries of the American Home Missionary Society. Most of them, however, go beyond the factual reports to give impressions of the society, weather, and topography in the assigned areas.
During the earlier period of the history of the American Home Missionary Society, the items expected from the missionaries were mentioned in their general instructions, and report blanks were not sent to them. Consequently the letters of some missionaries are lengthy and contain detailed information. These early missionaries were usually directly from the East, and were inclined to write more elaborately about their first impressions than those men already familiar with the Middle West.
Understandably enough the primary concern of the missionaries was with the theological situation. The competition between the various sects--brought out in letter after letter complaining about the Methodists, the Baptists, the Catholics, and each other--seemed to take up a great deal of the time of the Congregational and Presbyterian missionaries. Some of the letters touch on a little trouble within the Congregational church, and mention is made of “Perfectionists” and “Errorists” who were apparently followers of the Finney or Oberlin Theology.
Antislavery is mentioned cautiously a few times. One writer, Hiram Marsh (March 20, 1847), notices an “increase of sentiment” but not of the “Rabid Denunciatory kind.”
Each missionary was never commissioned for more than one year at a time, and so the church to which he was called needed to apply for financial aid at least annually, usually giving detailed information on the situation of the church. These applications are filed under the names of the missionaries for whom aid was requested.
There are also the reports from the agents of the society, filed with the letters from the missionaries. The first two agents for Wisconsin were Stephen Peet, 1841-1848, and Dexter Clary, 1850-1872.
Approximately 200,000 of these letters and reports have been preserved by the Chicago Theological Seminary. They are kept in steel filing cabinets, occupying 85 drawers, nearly all of which are compactly filled. The letters are divided according to the state from which they were written, then by year, and within each year, by author. There are no cross references.
Those for Wisconsin occupy six and two-thirds file drawers, containing letters for 1835-1873, 1876-1877, and 1892-1893. Of these, about two-thirds of a drawer deal with the years 1835-1847, and one drawer for each of the following group of years: 1848-1852, 1857-1859, 1853-1856, 1860-1863, 1864-1867, and one drawer for the remainder. The Historical Society has photostats of about 200 selected letters of this correspondence written from settlements in Wisconsin and from Galena and Dubuque, for the years prior to 1846. Appendix I of this finding aid lists the writers in these 200 letters.
A second source of the letters in this collection was Chicago stamp dealer E. N. Sampson. He allowed the Historical Society to photostat 95 additional letters in his possession. These letters were written during the same period, some by the same writers, as those from the Chicago Theological Seminary. Appendix II of this finding aid lists the letter writers in this portion.
Also present at the Seminary are letterpress copies of letters written by the corresponding secretaries of the society. These are bound chronologically, usually with indexes of the names of the persons to whom the letters were written. The Chicago Theological Seminary has copies of nearly 350,000 letters for the years 1826-1907. For the most part, this correspondence is more or less of a routine nature, and, as a whole, of much less importance than the letters written by the church committees, missionaries, and agents to the society.
Bibliographic Note: The above information is abstracted from the bibliography, pages 401-406, of the thesis prepared by Charles J. Kennedy, “The Congregationalists and the Presbyterians on the Wisconsin Frontier,” (University of Wisconsin, 1940).
