The Autobiography of Isaac Reed, Frontier Missionary Edited by Donald E. Thompson and Lorna Lutes Svlvestefl “This is Friday 22d January-1829, when I have set down in my study in the Town of Bloomington, Monroe Co-& state of Indiana to write out a sketch of my life for the benefit of my children when I shall be removed by death. Of this removal I ought to think daily. I am now 41 years old & am just recover- ing from a long distressing & dangerous fever A bilious inter- mittent.” Isaac Reed thus began his “Auto Biography.” One of the “giants” in the missionary field in early-nineteenth-century Indiana,’ Reed filled his manuscript with much religious intro- spection and self-analysis, considerable factual detail, and myr- iad comments concerning what he believed to be the ever- deteriorating state of his health. His account is typical of many diaries and letters written by missionaries on the midwestern frontier in the 1800s. The first section of the autobiography covers Reeds life from his birth to 1817. Born in Granville, Washington County, New York, on August 27, 1787, of “pious,” Congregationalist parents, Reed grew up in a “religious settlement” where church attendance was “regular & constant.” From the beginning, he confesses, “my heart was after books. I cannot tell when I did not love more to be at school than to be employed on the farm. And usually when away from school, I loved reading more than play.” Reed graduated from Middlebury College in Vermont in 1812 and was admitted to membership in his home church later the same year. There followed several short teaching stints and at least one attempt at studying law-all abandoned because of * Donald E. Thompson is archivist, Wabash College, Crawfordsville, Indi- ana. He has recently compiled Indiana Authors and Their Books, 1967-1980 (Crawfordsville, Ind., 1981). Lorna Lutes Sylvester is associate editor, Indiana Magazine of History. L.C. Rudolph, Hoosier Zion: The Presbyterians in Early Indiana (New Haven, Conn., 1963), 51. 194 Indiana Magazine of History poor health-but always the young man “looked wistfully to- wards the ministry.” Plagued throughout his life by severe pulmonary problems, Reed feared that the frequent public speaking contingent upon a religious career would be too rigor- ous for him, but by late 1813 he had nevertheless determined upon the ministry as his profession. He resumed his studies and was licensed to preach by the Fairfield Congregational Association in Connecticut in May, 1816. During the next year he supplied several congregations in New York as both tempo- rary and resident pastor and was commissioned to work in the western part of the state for one of the New York missionary societies. The consequent deterioration of his health made it necessary for him to “endeavor to improve it. This I did,” he wrote, “by travelling in the Summer of 1817.” Reed described the next period in his life, that from 1817 to 1826, in his book, The Christian Traveller, published in New York in 1828. Included are accounts of his trip from New England to Kentucky via Virginia, his life in and travels around the Midwest, and his journey back to New York. Reed spent a large part of these nine years in the Hoosier state, seemingly always on the move. Beginning in October, 1818, he served for one year as minister of a church in New Albany, where he established one of the first Sunday schools in the state. He resigned this position in 1819 to work under commis- sion for the Connecticut Missionary Society. For the next sev- eral years Reed traveled throughout southern Indiana and Kentucky distributing Bibles, preaching, and founding churches. On December 25, 1819, he married Elinor Young of Danville, Kentucky. In 1822 he purchased an eighty-acre farm in Owen County near that of Baynard Rush Hall, his brother-in-law and future professor at the state seminary in Bloomington. Reed planned to reside in his “Cottage of Peace,’’ serve as pastor of a local church for one half his time, and spend the remainder traveling about the state as a representa- tive of an eastern missionary society. Travel he did-2,480 miles in 1824 alone-preaching, conducting ordinations and installations, and establishing still more churches. During this period Reed founded at least eight congregations in Indiana, including ones at Bloomington, Crawfordsville, Indianapolis, Greencastle, and Terre Haute. In 1825 he asked to be released as pastor of Bethany Church, near Gosport, in part because he Autobiography of Isaac Reed 195 ISAACREED THECHRISTIAN TRAVELER Reproduced from L C Rudolph, Hcwsrer Zion The Presbyterians tn Early Indiana (New Haven, Conn , 1963). opposite 111 196 Indiana Magazine of History had not received even one dollar from his congregation for almost two years; in 1826 he decided to return east to live.2 Reed‘s manuscript autobiographical account resumes with his settlement as a minister in Moriah, Essex County, New York, in the autumn of 1826. For almost two years Reed con- tinued his pastorate with this congregation and continued his almost incessant travels-sometimes on behalf of one or the other of the missionary societies, sometimes to New York City to attend religious meetings, and sometimes to restore his health.3 On one such journey to the Midwest he decided to return to Indiana to live, and in the fall of 1828 he, his wife, and children traveled back to the Hoosier state. The Reeds settled in Bloomington for several years, then lived in various places in Kentucky, Ohio, and Indiana-including South Hanover, Putnamville, and Terre Haute. In 1854 Reed once again returned to New York where he lived in Auburn and Waterloo for a time, then yet again west to Olney, Illinois. While his family remained in Olney, Reed spent some time in Missouri. Returning to Illinois, “he suffered a severe hemor- rhage of the lungs, and imprudently attempting to fulfil an engagement to preach, was attacked with typhoid pneumonia, and after a brief struggle died Thursday night, January 14, 1858.” His wife died May 9, 1869, at the home of her daughter near Putnamville, Indiana.4 Reed was typical of the early Presbyterian minister/mis- sionary in the Hoosier state: he was well educated and a Yan- kee. A Congregationalist in background, he was ordained by the Transylvania Presbytery in October, 1818, and all his work and all the churches that he founded in Indiana were for the Presbyterian~.~Although not known as a stickler for the rules, he adhered firmly to such Presbyterian tenets as careful prepa- ration for communion; and in the New School-Old School divi- Isaac Reed, The Christian Traveller, in Five Parts, Including Nine Years, and Eighteen Thousand Miles (New York, 1828), 98, 138-40, 145, 157-59, 212-13, passim; Rudolph, Hoosier Zion, 46, 76-77, 61. 3 After experiencing a “hemorage commenced from the lungs” in the spring of 1827, Reed commented: “An absence from such frequent public labors & a journey had now become necessary. In a few days [following June 23, 18271 our fifth child & first son was born & soon after this I set out for Indiana. I travelled on horseback & with the journey my health improved.” Hanford A. Edson, Contributions to the Early Histoy of the Presbyterian Church in Indiana . (Cincinnati, 1898), 115. The Presbyterians and Congregationalists had a long history of coopera- tion. In 1801 the Plan of Union allowed ministers of both denominations to serve congregations interchangeably and authorized joint missionary operations in the West. Rudolph, Hoosier Zion, 37, 45-46. Autobiography of Isaac Reed 197 sion in the Presbyterian ranks, he was a New School advocate.(j Reed proved more adept than many of his colleagues at over- coming the stigma that frontiersmen attached to what they considered “uppity,” polished, cultured preachers. Though often critical of many aspects of frontier society, he was a true friend of the West and was apparently accepted as such. The portion of Reed’s previously unpublished autobiog- raphy that is reproduced below begins with the family’s return to Indiana in the autumn of 1828 and concludes abruptly-as does the manuscript-in 1844.7 Not as graphically descriptive as The Christian Traveller, the autobiography, even when it becomes a mere catalog of the minister’s itinerary, is nonethe- less revealing. The amount of travel that Reed describes as part of his profession is in itself astounding. To be imagined are the execrable road conditions, primitive housing, and inclement weather. Commissions for various eastern missionary societies oc- casioned many of Reed’s journeys. These groups were part of an organized missionary movement that began in the late 1700s and early 1800s both in England and along the eastern coast of the United States. Formed purportedly to bring the Christian spirit to the “unevangelized” and to convert the “heathen,” the societies initiated and provisioned countless missionary efforts on the frontier during the early nineteenth century; their influ- ence on religious development in the Midwest is incalculable. Reed, who served as agent for several such eastern groups, probably welcomed his missionary labor as much for its finan- cial benefits as for its religious implications. The missionary societies paid and provided for their ministerial representa- tives; the small, local churches often did not. In many cases congregations were simply unable to pay; cash was almost non- existent on the frontier, and even produce was sometimes hard to come by. Then, too, many Westerners believed that clergy- men should not expect remuneration for serving God. Reed and Elbid.,98-99. For a discussion of the New School-Old School split in the Presbyterian church see ibid., 118-36.