Amos Cooper Dayton
Amos Cooper Dayton was a physician, Baptist minister, author, editor and educator, perhaps best remembered for his religious novels of the late 1850s and his role in the Landmark Baptist movement.
Earl life and education
Dayton was born at Plainfield, New Jersey, April 1, 1813, the son of Robert Dayton and his wife. He attended local common schools, then went to college. Dayton graduated from medical college in 1834.
Marriage and family
Dayton married Lucinda H. Harrison and they had children together.
Career
By 1839 Dayton and his wife had moved to Mississippi, where he set up a practice as a dentist. He stayed there until 1852. Dayton was reared Presbyterian, but united with the Baptists in 1852. From 1854 through 1858, Dayton was the corresponding secretary of the Southern Baptist Convention Bible Board.
He served as associate editor of The Tennessee Baptist for about 18 months in 1858-1859. He published the Baptist Banner in Atlanta, Georgia (1863-1864). At the time, he was pastor of Houston Lake Baptist Church and First Baptist Church, and the president of Houston Female Institute, all in Perry, Georgia.
Dayton made significant contributions to the Landmark movement of the mid-nineteenth century in the area of religious fiction. His novel Theodosia Ernest was published in 1857 in two volumes. The first volume presented issues related to baptism, and the second discussed church polity. Theodosia Ernest originally appeared as a series in The Tennessee Baptist.
In 1858, Dayton published Pedobaptist and Campbellite Immersions, a review of numerous Baptist writers on issues related to baptism and acceptance of people from other churches.
J. R. Graves was the most prolific writer and outstanding leader of the Landmark movement. But, the 20th-century theologian J. E. Tull concluded that Dayton's book was "the most cogent attack upon 'alien immersions' which the Landmark movement produced." [1]
Dayton, J. R. Graves, and James Madison Pendleton were known as "The Great Triumvirate" of the Landmark movement.
Death
Dayton died of tuberculosis at Perry, Georgia on June 11, 1865. He was buried in the Evergreen Cemetery.
Works
- Theodosia Ernest, 1857, text online, Providence Baptist Ministries
- Pedobaptist and Campbellite Immersions: Being a Review of the Arguments of Doctors Waller, Fuller, Johnson, Wayland, Broadus, and Others", Nashville, TN: South-Western Publishing House, Graves, Marks & Co., 1858
References
- ^ J.E. Tull, A Study of Southern Baptist Landmarkism in the Light of Historical Baptist Ecclesiology, New York: Columbia University, 1966, p. 135
Further reading
- James E. Tull and Morris Ashcraft, High-church Baptists in the South: The Origin, Nature, and Influence of Landmarkism, Macon, GA: Mercer University Press, 2000 - revised, condensed and updated version of Tull's 1960 classic study of the movement
External links
- "A. C. Dayton", Tennessee Baptists, Knox County, TN Website