Memoir of Rev. Joseph Badger / Fourth Edition

The memoir chronicles the life and ministry of a nineteenth-century New England clergyman, beginning with family origins and childhood, through education, spiritual conversion, and ordination, to decades of itinerant preaching, pastoral settlement in western New York, editorial work, published journals, and later retirement. It reproduces personal journals and correspondence, accounts of tours to New England and the South, notable sermons and episodes including a gallows address, and reflections on theology, social influence, and character. Throughout it emphasizes his oratorical gifts, liberal and unsectarian religious outlook, systematic public labors, and the personal virtues that shaped his public effectiveness.