The American Home Missionary Society was a Protestantmissionary society in the United States founded in 1826. It was founded as a merger of the United Domestic Missionary Society with state missionary societies from New England. The society was formed by members of the Presbyterian, Congregational, Associate Reformed, and Dutch Reformed churches with the objective "to assist congregations that are unable to support the gospel ministry, and to send the gospel to the destitute within the United States." In 1893, the Society became exclusively associated with the National Council of Congregational Churches and was renamed the Congregational Home Missionary Society.
Structure
The structure consisted of a President, Treasurer, Recording Secretary, an Auditor, and three corresponding Secretaries.
Associated people
Eleazar Lord - Businessman in New York City who was an early organizer and first corresponding secretary of the AHMS. He wrote the first annual report of this society.
Jonathan Clarkson Gibbs—African-American abolitionist and AHMS missionary from Philadelphia who moved to North and South Carolina during the Reconstruction era.
Anson Green Phelps—businessman and philanthropist who contributed large sums to the AHMS
William Patton—New York city pastor and a member of the AHMS executive committee for forty years during the mid 1800s
George H. Atkinson—AHMS missionary and educator; he and his family settled in settled at Oregon City, Oregon in 1849 as the first Oregon missionary sent by the American Home Missionary Society
Reuben Gaylord—AHMS missionary in Iowa and Nebraska ; was the recognized leader of the missionary pioneers in the Nebraska Territory, and has been called the "father of Congregationalism in Nebraska."
Ira Hobart Evans—Texas businessman and onetime President of the American Home Missionary Society.
Agnes Louise Lesslie Peck—wife of Vermont General Theodore S. Peck; she was active in AHMS
Rev. Milton Badger, a minister in Andover, Massachusetts who was associate secretary of the AHMS in the 1850s.
John Waldo Douglas—American Presbyterian minister from New York who spent a brief time in the 1850s as an AHMS missionary to California prior to the Civil War.
First Presbyterian Church - this was the first religious society in Chicago. The first public school in Chicago was organized in the meeting house of the First Presbyterian Church, and Eliza Chappel was the first teacher in this school. The church was established by AHMS missionary Jeremiah Porter on June 26, 1833 in Chicago.
