Samuel Stillman

Samuel Stillman (1737–1807) was an American Baptist minister. From 1765 until his death in 1807, Stillman served as pastor of Boston's First Baptist Church of Boston, Massachusetts; for these 42 years, Stillman was considered "the leading Baptist minister in New England, if not the United States." Stillman was an original trustee of Rhode Island College (now Brown University) and played a leading role in the establishment of the Massachusetts Baptist Missionary Society in 1802. Stillman preached his first sermon on February 17, 1758, and was ordained on February 26, 1759.

After ordination, Stillman accepted a pastoral position on James Island. On a visit to his native Philadelphia, Stillman married Hannah Morgan—the daughter of a Welsh merchant family and sister of noted physician John Morgan. During his visit to Philadelphia, Stillman was awarded an honorary Master of Arts from the then recently founded College of Philadelphia. In 1761, he received another honorary Master of Arts from Harvard University.

In 1764, Stillman joined the Reverend James Manning, the Reverend Ezra Stiles, the Reverend Isaac Backus, the Reverend John Gano, the Reverend Morgan Edwards, William Ellery, and former Royal Governors Stephen Hopkins and Samuel Ward among thirty-five others as an original fellow or trustee for the chartering of the College in the English Colony of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations (the original name for Brown University). Stillman received an honorary Doctor of Divinity from Brown in 1788. Robert Newman also served as Sexton of the First Baptist Church of Boston (church record.)

John Hancock, although a Unitarian, was one of his admirers and often rented a pew there so that he could hear him. President John Adams and General Henry Knox also came to hear him preach.

Stillman died on March 11 or 12 1807, after suffering a fatal paralysis.

In 1802, Samuel Stillman was instrumental in founding the first Baptist Missionary Society in America (now known as The American Baptist Churches of Massachusetts).