"I See Glory!"

This Day in Baptist History Past



March 25, 1768 – William Batchelder was born into the wealthy family of Ebenezer and Susanna Batchelder in Boston, Mass. His father was a deacon in the Congregational church, but in 1781 when William was 13, both parents died within a week of each other. The estate was left to be administered by a dear friend but soon after he died and William chose to live with a relative in New Hampshire; but being appalled with their lifestyle he left to live with his wealthy grandfather who owned an ironworks. William offended some other workers when he talked to a dying man about death and eternity and left so as not to cause trouble to become a cabin boy at 15, on a salt ship to Puerto Rico. The ship was attacked by a Bermuda privateer and William showed great bravery as the crew fought them off. Then the ship was driven by a storm into the Gulf of Mexico before finally arriving at Cape Francois. William and some others looking for salt overturned a small boat, had to swim a mile and he ended up separated from the others. He found a sailor, in a hut, who he had helped years before who had been shipwrecked in Boston who helped him find his ship. The captain then got sick and just before he died turned it over to the 16 year old boy. The owners rewarded him. He studied the Bible, became an ordained Baptist preacher, married Huldah Sanborn and pastored the Baptist church in Berwick, Maine and then a much larger one in Haverhill, Mass. on Dec. 4, 1805. He did not support the Judson’s when they left as Congregationalists, but was one of their strongest when they became Baptists. He died on April 8, 1818 saying, I see Glory!

Condensed by Greg J. Dixon from: This Day in Baptist History II: Cummins and Thompson, BJU Press: pp. 164-65. [William B. Sprague, Annals of the American Pulpit (New York: Robert Carter and Brothers, 1865), 6:320.]