James B. Simmons

James B. Simmons (c. 1827 – December 17, 1905), was a minister and abolitionist during the Antebellum period. He served as a Baptist minister in Providence, Rhode Island; Indianapolis, Indiana; Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; and New York City.

After the American Civil War, he was an American missionary who was Corresponding Secretary of the American Baptist Home Mission Society from 1867 to 1874. He was an early benefactor and trustee of Hardin–Simmons University in Texas, which is partially named for him.

Early life and education He was born in North East, Dutchess County, New York in 1827. His father William Simmons was a thrifty farmer of Dutch extraction. His mother Clarissa Roe, of Scotch descent, was thrown from a carriage and killed when James was not quite five months old.

View across a quadrangle of three buildings at Brown University. The buildings are each constructed in a different style, including a large brick building with many windows on each story, a stone hall with a peaked roof (Sayles Hall), and a stone and brick building with a corner tower and a second story porch. He had four older siblings: He decided to become a Baptist after hearing an evangelist speak in Sheffield. Rev. John LaGrange baptized him at the old Northeast Baptist Church. He worked as a farmer and a teacher while receiving his education and also attended prayer meetings. He entered Brown University in 1847 and graduated in 1851. He studied alongside his wife at a seminary in Rochester, New York for one year. They also studied together at Newton Theological Seminary and he finished his education there in 1854.

Marriage and a child Simmons met Mary Eliza Stevens when he attended Brown University. Her parents, Deborah and Robert Stevens, were wealthy Quakers from Rhode Island. Mary graduated from a Quaker college with distinction. She studied Greek and Hebrew at the seminary. Their son Robert was born on December 9, 1854, in Providence, Rhode Island. He became a physician, having graduated from the Homeopathic Medical College in New York.

Career Minister After receiving his degree from Brown, and while studying at the seminary, he was a pastor of the Third Baptist Church in Providence, Rhode Island from 1851 to 1854. He wrote The Cause and Cure of the Rebellion: How far the people of the loyal states are responsible for the war. He was there from 1874 to 1882.

After working as a minister from 1874 to around 1882, the board of the American Baptist Publication Society elected Simmons as field secretary for the State of New York. He fundraised for Bible and mission work, as well as two more schools. One of the schools became the University of Columbia in Washington D.C. Another was a short-lived school in Indiana. He died in his home on East 59th Street in New York on December 17, 1905. A service was held at the Fifth Avenue Baptist Church. Simmons, Mary, and Robert are all buried in a gravesite on the Simmons College campus in the Founders' Cemetery. Simmons once said that he hoped that even their "very ashes may witness for Christian Education."