American Home Missionary Society

The American Home Missionary Society was formed in 1826 by the Congregational and other Protestant churches to financially assist congregations until they could be self-sufficient.

In 1826 the Congregational, Presbyterian, Reformed and Associated Reformed churches formed the American Home Missionary Society to coordinate their national missionary efforts. Prior to this time each denomination had seperately undertaken missionary work with the result that proselytizing efforts in some sections of the nation were being duplicated while other areas of the country were being ignored. Over time, as different denominations grew in strength, they withdrew to organize separate societies, leaving only the Congregationalists to operate the Society.

The American Home Missionary Society was formed in New York in 1826 with the stated purpose of "assist[ing] congregations that are unable to support the Gospel Ministry, and to send the Gospel to the destitute, within the United States." Membership was open to anyone willing to contribute financially to the Society; thirty dollars entitled the donor to a lifetime membership and $100 made them a Director for life.

Presbyterian-Congregational missionary organization primarily concerned with frontier communities.

The American Home Missionary Society (AHMS) was formed in 1826 at a meeting of representatives of the Congregational, Dutch Reformed, Presbyterian and Associate Reformed churches for the purpose of financially assisting churches on the American frontier which were unable to support a minister. Missionaries employed by the society were hired on a yearly basis in response to a request for aid by a local church or on the recommendation of an AHMS agent.

The American Home Missionary Society was established in 1826 by members of Congregational, Presbyterian, Associate Reformed, and Dutch Reformed churches. However, successive withdrawals left the society entirely Congregational after 1861. The name was changed in 1893 to Congregational Home Missionary Society. The American Home Missionary Society, although interdenominational in character, was recognized for about 10 years by the Presbyterian General Assembly as a semiofficial agency of the Church. After a schism in 1837 New School churches continued their home missionary work for a number of years through the American Home Missionary Society. The first American Home Missionary Society missionary commissioned in Kansas began his labors in 1854. The society did not appoint an agent until 1860, when Lewis Bodwell assumed the task.

The American Home Missionary Society was formed in May 1826 by members of the Presbyterian, Congregational, Dutch Reformed, and Associate Reformed churches with the intention of helping congregations financially so that they could support an established minister and coordinating interdenominational missionary activities across the United States and its territories. The home office of the Society was in New York City. The “New School” Presbyterians withdrew from the Society in 1861 because they felt it favored Congregationalists. In 1893 the Society was no longer interdenominational and changed its name to the Congregational Home Missionary Society.

Source: “A Guide to the Microfilm Edition of the Papers of the American Home Missionary Society, 1816 (1926-1894) 1936,” David G. Horvath, Editor, 1975