Samuel Stillman was born in Philadelphia in 1737. At the age of eleven his family moved to South Carolina. There under the preaching of Oliver Hart, Samuel was converted to Christ. He became a student under Hart, and at the age of twenty-one, he began preaching the gospel. Because of ill-health Brother Stillman moved north, first to New Jersey and then on to Boston, where he eventually became pastor of the First Baptist Church. He remained in that church for forty-two years.
In 1766, ten years before the Declaration of Independence, Still man denounced the Stamp Act, and from the moment he was an ardent supporter of the Revolution. Although his health was delicate, keeping him from enlisting, he was fearless in the pulpit. When the British occupied Boston in 1775, his church was scattered, but it quickly regathered the following year. His patriotism drew the attention of John Adams, John Hancock and General Knox. These and others often came to hear him preach, but Stillman refused to compromise his Baptist doctrine just to please powerful men. On one occasion his denunciation of sin was so scathing that a visiting gentleman remarked, “The doctor makes us all out a set of rascals, but he does it so gracefully and eloquently that I am not disposed to find fault.”
Samuel Stillman served the Lord in Boston until his death on this day in 1807.