Baptist History, Heritage and Distinctives – Pastor George Whitefield Samson Part One of Six
Thomas E Kresal
January 4, 2020
Baptist History, Heritage and Distinctives
Pastor George Whitefield Samson Part One of Six
Samson, George Whitefield, D.D., was born Sept. 29, 1819, at Harvard, Mass. His father, Abisha Samson, was the sixth in descent from Abraham Samson, who came to Plymouth among the earliest Pilgrims; and his mother, Mehetable Kenrick, was the sixth in descent from one of the earliest Puritan settlers at Boston, Mass.
From the age of eight young Samson was his father’s chief reader,—his eyesight having failed entirely, —and by this means, before he was thirteen years old, he became familiar with Scott’s ” Commentary,” Gill’s ” Divinity,” Buck’s li Theological Dictionary,” and such early Andover press-issues as Jahn’s ” Old Testament Introduction,” ” Biblical Archaeology,” etc. At the age of twelve, during a series of “four days’ meetings” held in 1831, he was hopefully converted, and was baptized by his father in November of that year.
The reading of the memoir of the first Mrs. Judson led him to resolve to study for the ministry, having in view the foreign mission work. In the spring of 1832 he began to prepare for college under the Rev. Chas. Train, of Framingham ; and in June, 1833, at the opening of the Worcester Manual Labor School, under the charge of Silas Bailey, he became one of its first pupils, and a favorite of the Hon. Isaac Davis, one of its chief patrons. He entered Brown University in September, 1835, and graduated in 1839.
Thomas E. Kresal from: The Baptist Encyclopedia by William Cathcart, pg. 361.
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