If you are a pastor or Sunday school teacher, please print off these little bits of our history and share them with others.

• Chief Justice Samuel Sewall
  One of the early tragedies of the early history of America was the Salem Witchcraft trials of Salem Massachusetts in 1692. Highly educated and intelligent, Chief Justice Samuel Sewall was caught up in the hysteria and was one of the jurors that sent nineteen young women to their deaths with the charge of being witches.
  
  
• The New England Primer
  How to teach their children about Christ and convey proper moral values was a consuming challenge for the Puritans of early New England. Parents genuinely feared that their teenage children who died without the divine grace of the Lord, and would be lost forever without Christ.
  
  
• Jonathan Edwards
  Jonathan Edwards would be one of most influential spiritual revivalists of the 1730s and 1740s in what would be known as The Great Awakening. The colonies had fallen into spiritual lethargy with many of the citizens who were not born again. Edwards would be known in American church history as an outstanding philosopher, a cutting-edge theologian, and one who continually challenged and cajoled spiritually young seminarians and intellectuals.
  
  
• David Brainerd
  Born in Connecticut in 1718, David Brainerd had early-on problems that were personal setbacks. Both his father and mother died when he was young and he was raised by an older sister and her family. Besides, he also picked up many maladies including the measles and tuberculosis that ultimately killed him. Nonetheless, as a young man he developed an extraordinarily intense prayer life.
  
  
• George Whitefield
  George Whitefield was born in Gloucester, England in 1714. He attended Oxford University. Two of his best friends were John and Charles Wesley. Though he began preaching early there is good evidence he was not as yet born again. In 1735, while praying and fasting, he fainted from hunger. He thought that maybe he was becoming seriously ill and threw himself on his bed, crying "I thirst, I thirst." At that moment, as he later testified, he was born again and became convinced that "God had called on him to spread the gospel message of 'dynamic Christianity.'"
  
  
• Samuel Davies
  Samuel Davies was born in New Castle County, Delaware in 1723. His parents named him "Samuel" to remind him always that he was "the son of prayer," harking back to the Old Testament prophet. Davies served in the French and Indian Wars and was ordained as a "New Light" Presbyterian, committed to serving as an evangelical preacher in spreading the Word of God.
  
  
• Thomas Paine
  In the 1760s Thomas Paine became a catalyst for the Revolutionary war. He was known as being hot-tempered and at times erratic, and an agnostic at best. Theodore Roosevelt called him "that filthy little atheist." But even atheists in the fox hole can call upon God, and that is just what Paine often did. His prayers may not have been sincere but they were brilliant and they inspired the nation in defense of freedom.
  
  
• Jacob Duche
  In September of 1774, the British had made it clear that they would use force if necessary to put down dissent against English rule over the colonies. There was a rumor in Philadelphia that they had planned for an incursion in and around Boston. Delegates from the colonies were meeting and knew that their homes and families were in harm’s way. At the meeting Anglican minister Jacob Duche knew that David’s Prayer in Psalm 35 was part of the church reading for the day.
  
  
• John Witherspoon
  Over half the ministers in the colonies gave their support to the Revolutionary war. They became chaplains, members of state legislatures, public servants in all fields, and even joined the army to fight. With their help they had the Continental Congress endorse a new Bible, created a national day of prayer and fasting that would be celebrated twice a year throughout the war. They saw the war as a "sinless just cause." They saw the spiritual climate and the renewed spiritual revival in the colonies as a "saving acquaintance with God through prayer." One of the most famous American clergyman of the Revolution was John Witherspoon.
  
  
• Benjamin Franklin
  Many historians believe Franklin was at best a deist but the jury is still out as to that issue. Franklin was generally quiet about spiritual things, but not always. Many of the colonial leaders kept their faith, or lack of, in silence...
  
  
• Early Christian Colleges
  By the conclusion of the Revolutionary war there were already two dozen institutions of higher learning in America, dedicated to Christian principles and various disciplines to benefit the new nation. They supplied the colonies with politicians, lawyers, doctors, clergymen, and merchants ...
  
  
• Robert Morris
  Toward the end of the Revolutionary war, the Continental Congress was running out of money. Fifty thousand dollars were needed to tide the troops over. The entire war effort hung in the balance, especially with several months of cold weather ahead. Robert Morris had come to America as a teenager from Liverpool, England...
  
  
• George Washington
  Washington was one of the founding fathers that many thought could have been a deist. But this may not have been so. It is true, however, that religiously he was as enigmatic to his contemporaries as he would be to later historians. While he regularly attended Episcopal services at churches near his estate at Mount Vernon, he was also fairly regular when away and attended churches in Philadelphia and New York. Yet he simply did not speak openly on church doctrinal or spiritual issues. It was because of his silence that historians, fairly or unfairly, labeled him a deist.
  
  
• Chief Justice John Marshall
  By the 1830s America was growing. It had been through several wars and had survived. With freedom came an implicit understanding for most people of the need to turn to God through prayer. This fact made an impression on Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, John Marshall. It was said of him that he balanced his public duties with a deep, private belief in God. But Marshall was more than just a praying justice. It was said that he had indisputably the most important influence in the formation of the Supreme Court.
  
  
• James Madison
  Like many men in the generation of leaders in his day, Madison did not often speak publicly of his Christian commitment. Yet when he was younger he had prepared for the ministry at the College of New Jersey, later to be named Princeton. In order to prepare, he studied the Old Testament, classical languages, including Hebrew, and spent an extra year in college for more study. It is said he immersed himself during that time in the rigors of a regimen of prayer.
  
  
• Francis Scott Key
  The great test for the new nation following the War of Independence was what was known as the War of 1812. Old wounds had not healed and this was a renewed conflict with England. The British were forcefully boarding American ships at sea. They were searching for AWOL British sailors. In the struggle the city of Washington was burned by the English in direct retaliation for the torching of British facilities in Canada.
  
  
• Sarah Josepha Hale
  Mrs. Hale was widowed at thirty-four with five small children. Nonetheless she pursued a career in writing and publishing. Gifted and talented, and a hard worker, she quickly became America’s first female editor. She acquired in 1828 the Ladies’ Magazine and Godey’s Lady’s Book. These became formidable publications for the first half of the nineteenth century.
  
  
• The Warner Sisters
  It is said that some of the spiritual speeches given by Abraham Lincoln inspired these two sisters, Anna and Susan, to write some of our most familiar songs that actually were prayers put to music. What inspired them the most was a speech by Lincoln in which he said:
  
  
• Timothy Dwight
  Timothy Dwight was a well educated pastor and a longtime friend of George Washington. He wrote what is thought to be the oldest hymn by an American still in common use today. Some of the lines read:
  
  
• New England Primer Improved
  The popular New England Primer was revised and turned into a new and improved version. While published in New York it went in circulation throughout the school systems of the country. The Introduction read:
  
  
• Sanford Bennett
  One of the most enduring songs written after the Civil War was by Sanford Bennett entitled, "In the Sweet By and By." Bennett was the owner of a drugstore in Elkhorn, Wisconsin who had just returned from the war. A friend, Joseph Webster, a gifted musician trained formally in composition, came to Bennett’s store each day to talk and play chess. Often Webster would come in depressed and down.
  
  
• Dwight Lyman Moody
  Moody was a veteran of the Civil War. He realized the spiritual damage that the war had done to American society. After the war he began to reach out to the orphans and street kids in Chicago. He set up Sunday school classes for their Bible training and for evangelism. He established lay training Bible Institutes ...
  
  
• William Holmes McGuffey
  He would end up being a force to contend with. He was ordained as a Presbyterian minister, educator, and president of Ohio University and even several other colleges. But to get there he taught himself. Born in 1800 and raised in a poor household in Pennsylvania, he was blessed with a Godly mother, Anna. Often she would stop her work outdoors and fall on her knees with William by her side and pray. She would be totally immersed in prayer, seeking God’s help in raising her son.
  
  
• Thomas J. "Stonewall" Jackson
  No Confederacy general spoke more about prayer than Stonewall Jackson. He became known as "Stonewall" after the First Battle of Bull Run when he stood up in front of enemy fire like "a stone wall." During the War he was recognized as a great tactician and military commander, but also, as an outstanding and consistent Christian. He believed, taught, and lived by, the absolute sovereignty of God that worked and caused all things for His great good!
  
  
• President Abraham Lincoln
  Lincoln was born in 1809 in Kentucky just a few miles from where the Second Great Awakening revivals had started in 1801. Lincoln's Godly mother had steeped him in both the Old and New Testaments. From this he learned early to trust in the absolute "will of God." Too, this early experience in the Scriptures often drove him to prayer. He wrote, "I have been driven many times to my knees by the overwhelming conviction that I had nowhere else to go."
  
  
• Emily Dickinson
  Dickinson was born into an orthodox Congregational family in Amherst, Massachusetts. She would be a product of the changes that swept over the nation following the Civil War. As a young girl Dickinson was familiar with the great hymns of New England but still, she became more and more a restless agnostic.
  
  
• Julia Ward Howe
  Julia was the daughter of a wealthy New York banker. She was exposed to many hymns that had come across the sea from England such as "Stand Up, Stand Up For Jesus," "Rock of Ages," and "Onward Christian Soldiers."
  
  
• Sherman's March to the Sea
  It was 1864 and near the end of the Civil War and Sherman was making his sixty mile march to the sea. To end the war quickly Sherman was using a scorched earth policy destroying everything in his path. While the destruction was terrible this tactic would end the conflict soon.
  
  
• Daniel C. Roberts
  Roberts (1841-1907) was an Episcopal priest who would make the greatest impact in American hymnology. Brandon, Vermont was holding this nation's centennial celebration. For the occasion Roberts wrote a prayer and a poem known as "God of Our Fathers."
  
  
• Fanny Crosby
  Struck by a rare inflammation of the eyes, Fanny became blind by a doctor who botched the operation to cure her. The blindness was permanent. But Fanny would not let this loss of sight limit her and she soon became a literary author to be reckoned with.
  
  
• Helen Jackson
  Helen Jackson was a neighbor of the agnostic Emily Dickinson. Helen, along with other women in the post-Civil War era. was a champion of ensuring that children were properly taught to turn to God in prayer. By the end of the nineteen century that cry became louder and louder.
  
  
• George Duffield
  In 1857, just before the Civil War began in 1861, the nation fell into a deep economic depression. Though conditions improved by 1859 thousands of businesses had been destroyed.
  
  
• Andrew Jackson
  In the summer of 1832, at the end of Jackson's first term as president, cholera was raging across Europe, killing tens of thousands. It seemed to be heading for the U.S. as well.
  
  
• John D. Rockefeller
  For many the name Rockefeller means the ultimate as a business scoundrel and crook. And it is true that he created an oil monopoly with his fast growing Standard Oil Company that was cornering the market in the new petroleum industry.
  
  
• The Prayers of the Slaves
  The prayer meetings of the slaves was a time of social gathering but also a time of putting 'everybody's heart being tune.' Prayer meetings could be loud, and joyous times or, if there was fear of the master, gatherings in which prayers were barely heard and only said above a whisper to avoid detection.
  
  
• George Washington Carver
  Carver should be recognized as the most important Black leader in America. Unfortunately many do not see his contributions in that light. Carver was born a slave child toward the end of the Civil War.
  
  
• Samuel F. Smith
  Smith entered Andover Theological Seminary in Massachusetts in 1832. Later he was hired by Lowell Mason, the music editor and composer, to translate a collection of German songs brought back from Europe.
  
  
• Hawaiian Queen Liliuokalani
  The revisionist documentaries on television always show the evil colonialism of American and European Christianity. How dare we invade other countries, send in missionaries, and take away the gods and the paganism of indigenous people! Mean, mean Christians!
  
  
• Theodore Roosevelt
  The melody was one of the most favorite in America. It would be used to support the lyrics of one of the best remembered hymns. Andrew Jackson loved it and so did General Robert E. Lee of the Confederate army.
  
  
• President William McKinley
  Admiral George Dewey soundly defeated the Spanish fleet at the Battle of Manila Bay in the Philippines on May 1, 1898. The war was officially over by that Christmas. Upon the decisive victory, President McKinley addressed a meeting of fellow Methodists, taking the opportunity to share his motivations for leading the country into war.
  
  
• Charles Sheldon
  The Third Great Awakening was very different from the previous two. With the backdrop of the Industrial Revolution, massive immigration by Europeans, and cities bulging at the seams, the emphasis shifted from personal to social sins.
  
  
• The U.S. Navel Academy
  Many of the hymns and prayers adopted by the academies became a vital part of the tradition of the larger armed services as well. A case in point was “Eternal Father,” chosen by the United States Navel Academy at Annapolis as its official hymn and in turn adopted by the U.S. Navy.
  
  
• West Point Academy
  At the turn of the last century many colleges and universities developed their own hymns and prayers. The students were often required to memorize them. At the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, founded on the banks of the Hudson River in 1802 by Jefferson, prayer had always played a part in the lives of the cadets.
  
  
• President Benjamin Harrison
  President Cleveland's immediate successor and political adversary, whom he would later defeat in 1892, was the godly Benjamin Harrison. Like Cleveland, Harrison belonged to the Presbyterian Church from his earliest days. He was active in his local church and practically grew up in prayer meetings.
  
  
• President Grover Cleveland
  While shifts were taking place in America away from spirituality, Grover Cleveland, the only President to serve two nonconsecutive terms in office, was a case in point of working hard to advance prayer in the nation.
  
  
• Woodrow Wilson
  Wilson was raised in a Godly Presbyterian home, as was many of our nations Presidents of years past. He had been President of Princeton University before become the leader of the United States.
  
  
• Joyce Kilmer
  Kilmer was one of America’s most promising young poets. Born in New Brunswick, New Jersey, he showed a passion for writing while attending Rutgers College and Columbia University.
  
  
• Thomas Andrew Dorsey
  Born of a black Baptist preacher in rural Georgia, Dorsey was inspired by the music of the blues, music that was full of soul, anguish, and emotion. Always attracted to easy money he lived a hard life with the roughest of crowds.
  
  
• Theodore Roosevelt
  No one promoted the virtues of the spiritual life and of physical vigor more than President Theodore Roosevelt. As a boy Theodore had been sickly with terrible bouts of asthma. To overcome it he went on a regimen of strenuous exercise.
  
  
• Nearer, My God To Thee!
  When the Titantic struck an iceberg in the North Atlantic on the night of Sunday April 14, 1912, there was a lot of panic and contradictions as hundreds drowned in the icy waters.
  
  
• The Old Rugged Cross
  The Salvation Army began to reach out to the down-and-out with the gospel on the streets of our fast growing industrial cities following the Civil War. One member of the Army who left a mark beyond the inner city was George Bennard.
  
  
• General George Patton
  The final German offensive of World War II took place in the region of southern Belgium in the Ardennes forest on December 1944. This was known as the Battle of the Bulge where the Germans tried to push through a wedge to stop the allies from entering Germany.
  
  
• Charles E. Wilson
  Charles E. Wilson, president of General Motors, was in Union Station in Washington, D.C. on the very day of the World War II invasion of Europe began, June 6, 1944, D-day. It had just been announced on the radio that the invasion was beginning.
  
  
• General Dwight D. Eisenhower
  Eisenhower had a bad experience in his youth with his Quaker father. He found that his dad was a constant liar and somewhat lazy in trying to provide for his large family. He moved his wife and children from pillar to post and was not diligent in work.
  
  
• Major Reuben Hollis Fleet
  Fleet made the fledgling aircraft industry in the United States. He became the head of the Army pilot training before World War I. He was placed into the position of flying chief of the first airmail service in May 1918.
  
  
• The Four Chaplains
  On February 3, 1943, the troop ship Dorchester was sailing from St. John, Newfoundland to Iceland with nine hundred soldiers. The waters were cold and it was midnight when a German submarine torpedoed the ship.
  
  
• Eddy Rickenbacker
  Rickenbacker joined the Army to fight in Europe during World War I. He began his career in 1917 as the chauffeur of the U.S. Commander of the European forces, General John J. Pershing. But he transferred to the newly formed Army Air Corp, the Ninety-fourth Aero Pursuit Squadron.
  
  
• Harry Hopkins
  In the late 1930s Harry Hopkins was the confidant adviser of President Franklin D. Roosevelt. When World War II began in September 1939, the President knew it could spill over to America. It was just a matter of time. The Battle of Britain began in the summer of 1940 and that nation was struggling to survive.
  
  
• Warren G. Harding
  Harding was the first of the post-World War I presidents. And he was considered the country’s worst commander in chief, allowing the nation to slip into corruption that flourished in his administration. He showed little intellect or forceful leadership. And yet God would later on get a hold of him spiritually.
  
  
• Calvin Coolidge
  Harding’s Vice President, Coolidge, became the new commander in chief following Harding’s death. Hearing of Harding’s passing, Coolidge and his wife knelt down by the bed and prayed.
  
  
• Douglas MacArthur
  General MacArthur is one of America's greatest military leaders. He came from a long line of soldier/generals that stretched all the way back to the Civil War. Though up in years, he had been stationed in Manila just before the outbreak of World War II in order to get that nation ready for trouble with Japan.
  
  
• Harry S. Truman
  During World War II Senator Truman from Missouri was put on the ticket of President Franklin D. Roosevelt for a fourth term as his Vice President. An unknown, Truman was added to the ticket in order to carry the South for the Democrats. But Roosevelt did not care for his Christian, Baptist, and Sunday school teaching new VP.