1895-1916
This digital collection is a series of correspondence between Richard Henry Boyd, head of the newly formed National Baptist Publishing Board and two Corresponding Secretaries of the Sunday School Board of the Southern Baptist Convention, Theodore Percy Bell and James Marion Frost. Boyd (1843-1922) was raised as a slave in Mississippi and Texas. Upon emancipation he was converted and soon ordained to the Baptist ministry. He led in the development of Baptist associations in Texas and rose to importance in the General Baptist Convention of Texas. In 1896, he was elected the manager of the National Baptist Home Mission Board. A year later he formed the National Baptist Publishing Board. His correspondence is mostly related to the work of the Publishing Board and the status of black Baptists in America. The letters are any word searchable.
T. P. Bell (1852-1916) became Corresponding Secretary of the Sunday School Board of the Southern Baptist Convention on May 1, 1893, succeeding James Marion Frost (1848-1916) who had left to serve as pastor to a church in Richmond, Virginia. He would serve the Board for three years before becoming owner and editor of the Christian Index in Georgia. Frost succeeded Bell as Corresponding Secretary, beginning his second term as leader of the Sunday School Board in 1896. Frost would determine the course of the Board and its enterprises for years to come through his leadership and direction. He continued to serve in this position until his death in 1916.
Both Bell and Frost engaged in frequent correspondence with Boyd, providing dialogue on a number of publishing, operational, and Baptist issues. The Board was eager to assist the Publishing Board and thereby limiting the influence of the American Baptist Publishing Board among black Baptists in the South. These letters are from the James Marion Frost Papers in the Southern Baptist Library and Archives. The individual letters include correspondence to and from R. H. Boyd with Bell and Frost. Also included are outgoing correspondence from letterpress volumes in the Frost Papers. The material includes 172 pages of correspondence and documents. The majority of the letters are from Boyd to Frost. Most of the material relates to Sunday School material and the publishing enterprise of the newly formed National Baptist Publishing Board. The agreement between Baptists in the north and south, known as the Fortress Monroe agreement, is mentioned in the correspondence. Boyd writes about the conditions and issues facing black Baptists related to the American Baptist Home Mission Society and the American Baptist Publication Society. Concerns and organizational matters of the National Baptist Convention are also topics of concern to Boyd in his letters to Frost.
