Burnham, Jesse

Burnham, Jesse a Free-will Baptist minister, was born at Lee, N. H., in 1777. He was converted in early life, and in 1806 moved into the forests of Maine, and, seeing the spiritual destitution which everywhere prevailed, he felt' impressed that it was his duty to preach the Gospel to the people. For many years he labored as an evangelist, like John the Baptist, "crying in the wilderness." In 1841 he removed to the West, and continued to perform the kind of work for which he seems to have been raised up by Providence, on the prairies of Illinois and Wisconsin. The first year of his labors there, with the assistance of a brother in the ministry, he organized the first quarterly meeting of his denomination in Wisconsin. After a long life of devotion to his work, he died in Janesville, Dec. 5,1863. See Free-will Baptist Register, 1864, p. 91. (J. C. S.)