Plainfield is a village in Will and Kendall counties, Illinois, United States. The population was 44,762 at the 2020 census.
John Mason Peck (1789–1858) was an American Baptist missionary to the western frontier of the United States, especially in Missouri and Illinois. A prominent anti-slavery advocate of his day, Peck also founded many educational institutions and wrote prolifically.
The Evangelical Lutheran Synodical Conference of North America, often known simply as the Synodical Conference, was an association of Lutheran synods that professed a complete adherence to the Lutheran Confessions and doctrinal unity with each other. Founded in 1872, its membership fluctuated as various synods joined and left it. Due to doctrinal disagreements with the Lutheran Church–Missouri Synod (LCMS), the Evangelical Lutheran Synod (ELS) and the Wisconsin Evangelical Lutheran Synod (WELS) left the conference in 1963. It was dissolved in 1967 and the other remaining member, the Synod of Evangelical Lutheran Churches, merged into the LCMS in 1971.
Circuit rider clergy, in the earliest years of the United States, were clergy assigned to travel around specific geographic territories to minister to settlers and organize congregations. Circuit riders were clergy in the Methodist Episcopal Church and related denominations, although similar itinerant preachers could be found in other faiths as well, particularly among minority faith groups.
William McKendree was an Evangelist and the fourth Bishop of the Methodist Episcopal Church, and the first Methodist bishop born in the United States. He was elected in 1808.
John Morgan Walden was an American bishop of the Methodist Episcopal Church. He also gained notability as a newspaper editor and journalist, as a State Superintendent of Education in Kansas, as an officer in the Union Army, and as an Official in his Christian denomination.
The Episcopal Diocese of Chicago is the official organization of the Episcopal Church in Chicago and Northern Illinois, US. The diocese is headed by Bishop Paula Clark, who is the first woman and first African-American to lead the diocese. The diocese was previously served by Jeffrey Lee, who served as bishop until December 31, 2020. The mother church of the diocese is St. James Cathedral, which is the oldest Episcopal congregation in the city of Chicago.
Jesse Lee was an American Methodist Episcopal clergyman and pioneer, born in Prince George's County, Virginia. A preacher after 1783, in 1789 he visited New England and established Methodism from the Connecticut River to the farthest settlement in Maine. He formed the first Methodist class in New England, at Stratford, Connecticut, September 26, 1787. He preached his first sermon (outdoors) on June 7 or 17, 1789 in Norwalk, Connecticut. He held the first Methodist class in Boston, Massachusetts on July 13, 1792. For his pioneer work in New England he was often called the Apostle of Methodism. He was a friend of Francis Asbury, and served as his assistant from 1797 to 1800. He lacked only one vote of being elected Bishop by the General Conference of 1800, but was appointed to be a presiding elder of the south district of Virginia in 1801. He wrote A Short Account of the Life and Death of the Rev. John Lee (1805) and a History of Methodism in America (1807), which has value for the early period. On May 22, 1809, Lee was appointed Chaplain of the United States House of Representatives He was reappointed on November 2, 1812, and served for two sessions. Upon leaving the chaplaincy of the House he was appointed Chaplain of the United States Senate on September 27, 1814, where he served until December 1815.
The Protestant Episcopal Church Mission was a Christian missionary initiative of the Episcopal Church that was involved in sending and providing financial support to lay and ordained mission workers in growing population centers in the west of the United States as well as overseas in China, Liberia and Japan during the second half of the 19th Century.
The Methodist Mission was the Methodist Episcopal Church's 19th-century conversion efforts in the Pacific Northwest. Local Indigenous cultures were introduced to western culture and Christianity. Superintendent Jason Lee was the principal leader for almost a decade. It was a political and religious effort. Two years after the mission began, the church's Board of Foreign Missions described its intent to reclaim "these wandering savages, who are in a very degraded state, to the blessings of Christianity and civilized life." Alongside the missions founded in the region were several secular operations opened. These were maintained to allow for material independence from the Hudson's Bay Company (HBC), then the preeminent economic entity in the region among European descendants.
Joseph Young was an early convert to the Latter Day Saint movement and was a missionary and longtime general authority of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. He was an elder brother of Brigham Young.
Thomas Spottswood Hinde was an American newspaper editor, opponent of slavery, author, historian, real estate investor, Methodist minister and a founder of the city of Mount Carmel, Illinois. Members of the Hinde family were prominent in Virginia, Kentucky, Ohio, and Illinois. His sons Charles T. Hinde became a shipping magnate and Edmund C. Hinde an adventurer. He was the father-in-law of judge Charles H. Constable.
Jordan Winston Early was an American Methodist preacher, he is considered to have been one of the pioneers of African American Methodism spread in the West and South of the United States. In 1868, he married Sarah Jane Woodson Early, and the couple were prominent in spreading Methodism and black nationalism, and his wife taught wherever he preached.
Charles Franklin Robertson was the second Bishop of Missouri in The Episcopal Church. He was one of six children born to James Robertson and Mary Ann Canfield Robertson.
Richard DeBaptiste was a Baptist minister in Chicago, Illinois. Before the abolition of slavery, he was an abolitionist and worked with his close relative, George DeBaptiste in the Underground Railroad, mainly in Detroit, Michigan. His ministry took him to Ohio, and in 1863, to Olivet Baptist Church in Chicago. He was a leader in the local and national Baptist community. He also was a journalist, serving as editor or correspondent to various newspapers and journals.
John Plastis Richmond was an American Methodist Episcopalian priest and politician who served in New York, Illinois, Mississippi, the Pacific Northwest, and South Dakota during the 19th century.
Sadie McCoy Crank, born Sarah Catherine McCoy, was one of the earliest ordained (1892) female preachers in the Stone-Campbell Movement and an organizer for the Illinois Woman's Christian Temperance Union. This is notable because around this time a vigorous debate about the role of women as preachers was taking place in religious periodicals like the Gospel Advocate, Christian Standard, and Christian-Evangelist.
David Nelson was an American Presbyterian minister, physician, and antislavery activist who founded Marion College and served as its first president. Marion College, a Protestant manual labor college, was the first institution of higher learning chartered in the state of Missouri. Born in Tennessee, Dr. Nelson had once been a slaveholder but became an "incandescent" abolitionist after hearing a speech by Theodore D. Weld. Unpopular with proslavery groups in northeastern Missouri, Nelson stepped down as president of Marion College in 1835. In 1836, Nelson fled Missouri for Quincy, Illinois, after slaveowner Dr. John Bosely was stabbed at one of his sermons. Nelson then remained in Quincy, where he founded the Mission Institute to educate young missionaries. Openly abolitionist, two Mission Institute sites became well known stations on the Underground Railroad, helping African Americans escape to Canada to be free from slavery.
