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David Brainerd: From Orphan to Evangelist

David Brainerd was born in 1718, at Hatham, Connecticut. His father died when David was nine and his mother died five years later. These early encounters with death may have contributed to his tendency towards depression, or “melancholy” as it was called in those days, and his great seriousness about the welfare of his own soul. Brainerd’s teenage years were divided between the activities of farming, reading the Bible, and praying. Early in life, he felt the call to the ministry and looked forward almost impatiently to the day when he could preach the Gospel. After earning a minister’s license, he turned down the offers of two pastorates in order to preach the Gospel to the American Indians. Jonathan Edwards wrote of him, “And, having put his hand to the plow, he looked not back, and gave himself, heart, soul, and mind, and strength, to his chosen mission with unfaltering purpose, with apostolic zeal, with a heroic faith that feared no danger and surmounted every obstacle, and with an earnestness of mind that wrought wonders on savage lives and whole communities.” His story is told in the David Brainerd biography, a book that remains popular more than two centuries after his death.