Dunham, Edmund

Dunham, Edmund

 

About 1700 or 1701 a number of the members of the Piscataqua Baptist Church, in Piscataqua township, Middlesex county, withdrew from that church and formed a separate congregation, observing the seventh day of the week as the Sabbath. They chose a minister and deacon, October 11, 1705, and in the fourth month, 1707, organized a Seventh Day Baptist Church, with eighteen members. Edmond Dunham, one of the originators of the church, having been ordained at Westerly, R. I., in 1705, was the first pastor; he had been a lay preacher in the Piscataqua Church since 1689. He continued pastor of the new church until his death, March 7, 1734, in his 73d year. He was succeeded in 1745 by his son, the Rev. Jonathan Dunham, who had preached to the congregation as a licentiate for many years. He occupied the pulpit until March 11, 1777, when he died of the smallpox. The next pastor was the Rev. Nathan Rogers, ordained March 12, 1787, at Westerly, R. I., and who the same year assumed charge of the Piscataway church. The early records of the church have not been preserved. Some years ago Mr. Oliver B. Leonard, now of Perth Amboy, found in Western Pennsylvania the marriage records which had been kept by the Rev. Jonathan Dunham, during his pastorate, 1745 to 1776. He made a careful copy of the records, that supplied some of the data for Dunham family research.