Alexander Campbell
I have been requested to write a brief notice of the lives of the four clergymen who have been pastor of this church, but who are not living at the present time. The first is Alexander Campbell, who was born May 15, 1801, in Plainfield, Otsego county, N. Y. He was of Scotch descent, and his parents were Presbyterians; and when he was about six years old they moved from the farm on which he was born to Henderson, Jefferson county, N. Y., where he was converted. But it was not until his fifteenth year that he made a public profession of faith, and united with the Presbyterian Church at North Adams, N. Y.
Mr. Campbell was a Baptist in belief, and it was only after repeated efforts of the pastor and others to obtain his consent to be sprinkled, and united with the Presbyterian Church. In his seventeenth year he began to feel the necessity of a better education, and he studied hard; but being in advance of the district schools he had to use whatever means he could command in this work.
At the age of twenty, with several others, he was converted under Elder Russell Wells to the Sabbath views, and at twenty-four he was baptized and united with the Seventh-day Baptist Church at Adams, N. Y. At twenty-five he was ordained and received a call from the church at Truxton, Cortland county, N. Y. After this he labored as a missionary in Western New York, Western Pennsylvania, and Western Virginia.
After he completed his missionary tour in 1833 he received a call to preach at DeRuyter, N. Y., and a request to solicit funds for a church and a school. He obtained both, and it was through his untiring efforts that the DeRuyter Institute was established. In 1841 he began his pastorate in this church, which at that time consisted of only fifty members. When the head of a family, now belonging to this church, was asked to join it, he refused, saying, "The church cannot survive over two or three years at the longest, and the members will then be glad to go back to the mother church."
Mr. Campbell was pastor here six years, and then returned to DeRuyter, and preached for the Truxton Church, where he began his ministry, at the same time preaching for the Lincklaen Church, a short distance from there. He had other pastorates afterwards, but he considered his strength to consist in evangelical work, and there was scarcely any length of time during his ministerial life when he was not engaged in some revival effort.
He was an earnest, devoted Christian, very spiritually minded, simple and loving as a child, yet commanding and dignified in appearance. At the age of eighty he is described as preaching "with a holy earnestness in his actions and words that drew the attention of everyone. He spoke with great simplicity that pleased and then convinced. He showed such tenderness and sympathy that he touched every listener."
He died at the advanced age of eighty-seven, in Wolcott, N. Y., in the early part of the winter of 1888.
By Miss Martha B. Saunders
