Joseph Badger (1757-1846) was the first Christian missionary sent to the Western Reserve by the Connecticut Missionary Society. He founded the first Congregational church in the Western Reserve in Austinburg, Ohio. He is believed to be the first minister to deliver a sermon in Cleveland, Ohio. He attended Yale University and was ordained in 1786. After serving as a minister in Massachusetts, he arrived in the Western Reserve in 1800 to minister to both Congregationalists and Presbyterians. He traveled the Western Reserve wilderness extensively, and served as an army chaplain during the War of 1812. He died in Perrysburg, Ohio and is buried in Fort Meigs Cemetery.
The Joseph Badger Papers, 1823-1848, consist of copies of the sermons (1825-1841) delivered by the Rev. Badger, mostly in Gustavus, Trumbull County, Ohio, and several pages from his diary concerning the building of a schoolhouse (1823) and a trip through Shawnee Indian country to Wapakoneta, Ohio, with observations on Indian customs. Includes four sermons delivered by Rev. Isaac Van Tassel (1831-1848).
This collection will be useful to researchers studying the early history of the Western Reserve in Ohio and the missionary work of Joseph Badger in Gustavus, Trumbull County. Those interested in the history of the Shawnee Indians of Wapakoneta, Ohio, during the nineteenth century will find this collection useful.
The collection is arranged by document type and then chronologically.
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[Container ___, Folder ___ ] MS 200 Joseph Badger Papers, Western Reserve Historical Society, Cleveland, Ohio
The following terms have been used to index the description of this collection in the library's online public access catalog.