Thomas Jefferson Fisher died on this day in 1866 at the early age of 56. Fisher was born in Kentucky and born again there in his sixteenth year, after which he joined a Presbyterian church. He quickly learned his mistake, and a year later he was immersed and joined the Baptist church David’s Fork, Fayette County, Kentucky. To that point Brother Fisher had received very little formal education, so he moved to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania in order to study under a Baptist pastor there. In 1834, the then twenty-two-year-old was ordained, and the following February he accepted a call to pastor the Mill Creek Baptist Church Bardstown, Kentucky. When this ministry didn’t work out, the young man became a traveling evangelist – something for which he was eminently suited. Throughout the rest of his life, vast crowds came to hear him preach Christ, and it is estimated that more than 12,000 people professed conversions under his ministry (the Lord knows). His ministry was cut short, because on this day in 1866 Thomas Jefferson Fisher was shot in the head by an unknown assailant and died three days later.
