Daniel Merrill

Background

Daniel Merrill was the son of Thomas and Sarah (Friend) Merrill of Rowley, Massachusetts, and a descendant of Nathaniel Merrill, who emigrated to America in 1635.

Education

At fifteen Merrill enlisted in the 3rd Massachusetts Infantry and served until the end of the Revolution. He decided to become a Congregational minister and entered Dartmouth College, from which he graduated in 1789.

Career

After studying theology, probably with Dr. Spring of Newburyport, Merrill was licensed to preach in 1791. He went to Sedgwick, Maine, where his first sermon started a revival in which nearly one hundred were converted. He preached at Sedgwick for five months, then after an absence of eighteen months, when he was preaching elsewhere, he returned to Sedgwick and was ordained pastor of a new Congregational church on September 17, 1793. He led revivals in 1798 and 1801, and by 1805 his church had one hundred and eighty-nine members and was the largest in Maine. In 1803 part of his congregation began to have doubts about the efficacy of infant baptism. Merrill studied to confuse them but was himself converted to their opinion. In February 1805 a majority of the church agreed to become Baptists, and in May Merrill and eighty-seven of his congregation were baptized by three ministers from southern New England in the tide-waters of Benjamin's River. The next day he was re-ordained as a Baptist. In the same year, he published seven sermons under the title The Mode and Subjects of Baptism Examined (1805) in which he argued that the Baptists had been the uninterrupted church of Christ from the days of the apostles, whereas all other Protestant churches sprang from the Church of Rome. The Baptist ministers in Maine were, for the most part, uneducated farmers, and in 1810 the Bowdoinham Association elected a committee, of which Merrill was one, to consider the foundation of a college. In 1814 Merrill moved to Nottingham West (now Hudson), New Hampshire. Seven years later he returned to Sedgwick, of which church he remained pastor until his death. In 1805 he published Eight Letters on Open Communion, in 1807 Letters Occasioned by the Rev. Samuel Worcester's Two Discourses, and in 1815 a Thanksgiving sermon entitled Balaam Disappointed.

Achievements

• Merrill, chiefly in order that he might help the cause of education, had been elected to the General Assembly of Massachusetts, and in 1813 he took the lead in securing a charter and a grant of land for the "Maine Literary and Theological Association, " and was named one of the twenty-one trustees. The institution was established at Waterville and its name afterward changed to Waterville College (now Colby College).

Religion

Merrill was an old-fashioned puritan, simple, straightforward, and outspoken, who worshiped the Bible and drew a very distinct line between the saved and the damned.

Personality

In appearance, Merrill was short and stout.

Connections

Daniel was twice married: on August 14, 1793, to Joanna Colby of Sandown, New Hampshire, who died in three months; and on October 14, 1794, to Susanna Gale, of Salisbury, New Hampshire, by whom he had thirteen children.

Father:

Thomas Merrill

Mother:

Sarah (Friend) Merrill

Wife:

Joanna Colby

Wife:

Susanna Gale

References

• Colby College 1820-1925
• Sketches of the Alumni of Dartmouth College: From the First Graduation in 1771 to the Present Time
• A History of the Baptists in Maine: Together With Brief Notices of Societies and Institutions, and a Dictionary of the Labors of Each Minister (Classic Reprint)