WILLIAM MUNFORD BAKER BIOGRAPHY Who has graphically pictured the peculiar aspects of life in the Southwestern States before and during the late rebellion, is the youngest son of Rev. Daniel Baker, D.D. The father was born at Midway, Liberty county, Georgia in 1791, and died at Austin, Texas in 1857. He labored successfully as an evangelist and Presbyterian pastor in Washington, D.C., Savannah, Georgia, Frankfort, Kentucky, Tuscaloosa, Alabama, and Holly Springs, Mississippi. His chief works were a Plain and Scriptural View of Baptism, and two series of Revival Sermons. William Munford Baker was born at Washington, D.C., in 1825. He graduated with honor at Princeton College, at the age of twenty-one. After studying theology one year at Princeton Seminary, and two years under his father, he served as pastor at Galveston and at Austin, in Texas, for fifteen years, from 1850 to 1865. During this period he published the Life and Labors of Rev. Daniel Baker, D.D., 1858. As a Union man, and on conscientious grounds, Mr. Baker carried his church at Austin with him, through the rebellion, in unbroken connection with the General Assembly at the North, to a Presbytery of which it now gives its name. His experiences in those troublous times, only so far modified, as to impart dramatic power, are embodied in Inside, a Chronicle of Secession. This powerful tale, which consists of a series of sharply outlined scenes and as keenly individualized characters, forming a vivid panorama, photographic in its fidelity to nature, first appeared in Harper's Weekly. It was published in book form in 1866, under the nom de plume of G.F. Harrington. The hardest hits in the volume are at the men most bitter of all for secession – Northern men then resident in the South. As the author and all of his relatives were of Southern birth and residence, it results naturally, as his works testify, that he was never written a line inconsistent with the most ardent love to his section, as well as to his country. Rev. Mr. Baker in 1865 accepted the charge of the Second Presbyterian Church at Zanesville, Ohio, and he now (1873) ministers to a congregation at Newburyport, Massachusetts. Although he has contributed for years to the various religious journals and magazines of the country, he has always made his literary labors incidental and subordinate to his pastoral duties to which he gives the chief energies of his hand and heart. His later writings include: Oak Mot, 1868, a Sabbath School volume prepared for the Presbyterian Board of Publication; The Virginians in Texas, which appeared serially in Harper's Magazine; and The New Timothy, 1870. The latter sketches the odd phases of ministerial and social life in the rude frontier settlements of the Southwest, the rollicking humors, boisterousness, and vicious characters of the borders, and the experiences by which the young pastor was taught the tact of becoming “all things to all men.” His latest work, Mose Evans, first appeared, in 1873, in the Atlantic Monthly.
Source: |
|
|