Brainerd, Thomas

Brainerd, Thomas

• Born: 17 June 1804, Leyden, Lewis County, New York
• Died: 21 August 1866, Scranton, Pennsylvania

From Encyclopaedia of Presbyterian

Thomas Brainerd sprung from an old English family that had emigrated to Haddam, Connecticut, in 1649. The celebrated missionary brothers David and John Brainerd, and the poet John Q. C. Brainerd, were of the same stock. The subject of this sketch was born June 17th, 1804, in Leyden, Lewis county, N. Y. He early showed a fondness for reading, but had not the opportunity of studying at any college. At the age of seventeen he taught school, and afterwards studied law in Rome, N. Y. He was converted under Mr. Finney's preaching in 1825, and soon after, under the pressure of a sore affliction, he gave up the law for the gospel ministry. To obtain the means of study he taught school for a year in the northern part of Philadelphia. After a three years' course in Andover Seminary, he was ordained by the Third Presbytery of New York, and immediately turned his face westward with a commission from the Home Missionary Society. His first charge was in the suburbs of Cincinnati, the