Ransom Dunn: Evangelist and Educator
“The young minister’s preaching is like a tornado!” So said Dr. George Ball, an early convert who founded Keuka College, a Free Will Baptist college in upstate New York. Ransom Dunn was born in 1818 in a log cabin near Bakersfield, Vermont, the third of four sons. All became preachers.
Rev. Charles Bowles, a renowned black FWB preacher, visited young Ransom’s home. Bowles told the 5-year-old child, “My boy, be ready for the call of the Lord. He may want you…” Ransom accepted Christ at the age of 12 and was baptized.
As a teenager, he was deeply moved by reading The Morning Star, a Free Will Baptist weekly newspaper. In it were pleas to evangelize the great American West. Dunn answered the call to preach at age 18 and left for the western wilderness of Ohio, journeying by stagecoach, train and ferry boat.
During the next 12 years Dunn preached in 10 states with thousands saved. Dunn helped establish Geauga Seminary where a future president (James A. Garfield) would be educated and Rio Grande College in Ohio. He served as recording secretary of the Free Will Baptist Home Missions Society and president of the Antislavery Society.
In 1852, he began his nearly 50-year ministry at Hillsdale College, a Free Will Baptist college near Detroit, Michigan. He taught hundreds of ministerial students. In 1873, Dunn received the Doctor of Divinity degree from Bates College, a Free Will Baptist college in Lewiston, Maine.
Dunn conducted a preaching tour through the South in 1888, in Georgia, Florida, and Alabama. He returned home concluding that he was “too old to do missionary work in the South.” The next year, however, he co-authored Butler-Dunn Theology.
Dr. Dunn’s last public address was at Hillsdale’s commencement in 1900. He received a standing ovation. He died the following November at age 82.
Read A Consecrated Life: A Sketch of the Life and Labors of Rev. Ransom Dunn
About the Writer: Steve Hasty (deceased) was a long-time member of the Free Will Baptist Historical Commission
