A Noble Company, Volume 5, Benjamin Foster

The subjects featured in volume 5 will include, first of all:

Benjamin Foster (1750-1798) of Danvers, Massachusetts, came to embrace Baptist principles after being given an assignment to present an argument defending the practice of infant baptism while a student at Yale College. This same kind of honest investigation and integrity to the truth came to characterize his writing and pastoral ministry. “As a preacher he was indefa-tigable,” wrote David Benedict. Foster was successively pastor at Leicester, Massachusetts from 1776-1782, First Baptist, Newport, Rhode Island, 1785-1788 and at First Baptist, New York, 1788-1798, where he and his wife Martha died assisting the victims of a yellow fever epidemic. William McLoughlin believed that Foster “was one of the few American Baptists of this period who might be called a scholar.”

Other brief biographical notices will be posted weekly until all the figures are reviewed.