David Alexander Day

Background

David Alexander Day was born on February 17, 1851 out of wedlock in Adams County, Pennsylvania, United States, on a farm near Dillsburg. His childhood was one of poverty and hardship.

Education

Day's early schooling was meager. In the fall of 1869 he entered Missionary Institute (now Susquehanna University) at Selinsgrove, Pennsylvania, to prepare for the Lutheran ministry.

Career

At the age of twelve he became a hostler in the government stables at Harrisburg, and he relates that in his sense of utter loneliness he often cried himself to sleep on his bed of straw.

When not yet fourteen Day enlisted in Company D, 78th Pennsylvania Volunteers, and served for eight months. Returning to the farm in Pennsylvania, he professed conversion the next year at a revival meeting held in the school-house near his home.

He became an ardent and active Christian and his thought soon turned to the gospel ministry. He had shown much aptitude in study, and after teaching one winter term in the country school.

After a year and a half in the classical department and three years in the theological department of the Institute, he was ordained as a minister (May 1874) and sent as a missionary to the Muhlenberg Mission in Liberia, Africa.

In this field he spent the remaining twenty-three and a half years of his life with the exception of two short furloughs, one in 1883 and the other in 1893.

The inroads of the African fever upon his robust frame finally compelled him to leave the Mission for America, but he died on board the Cunard liner Lucania, the day before landing in New York.

All his varied talents were devoted without reserve to the cause that was single and supreme in his affections, the Christian Mission in Liberia. Flattering offers from Church and State failed to tempt him away from that work.

Achievements

• Day's many-sided nature led him to expand his work of the Mission so that it included not only the preaching of the gospel but also the founding of schools and the organizing of industrial operations such as farming, carpentering, and blacksmithing. This enlargement of program, together with Day’s tenacity of purpose and his ability to interest the people at home, assured the permanence of the missionary undertaking that the Lutheran Church had begun in Liberia in 1860.

Personality

Those who knew Day were impressed with his manliness, his strong will, his great courage, his sound judgment, his child-like faith, and his utter unselfishness.

Connections

Day was married twice. In May 1874, before sailing for Africa, he married Emily V. Wine- garden of Selinsgrove. Their three children all died in Africa, two in infancy, the third at the age of nine. Mrs. Day died in America in 1895. On December 6, 1896, Day married Anna E. Whitfield of Dundas, Ontario, who also was a missionary on the west coast of Africa.

Second wife:

Anna E. Whitfield

First wife:

Emily V. Winegarden