Occom, Samson | Belle M. Brain (essay date 1910)
Belle M. Brain (essay date 1910)
SOURCE: “Samson Occom, the Famous Indian Preacher of New England,” in Missionary Review of the World, Vol. 33, 1910, pp. 913-19.
[In the following essay, Brain offers a survey of Occom's career.]
Samson Occom, the foremost Christian Indian of New England, was one of the best-known and most eloquent preachers of his day. Until the close of the last century his story was but little known; but now, thanks to the exhaustive researches of Dr. W. De Loss Love, we have a full account of his life and the times in which he lived and worked.1
Occom was born in 1723 in a wigwam in the Indian village of Mohegan, not far from New London, Conn. His father, Joshua Ockham, Aucom or Mawcum, as the name is variously spelled, seems to have been a man of some distinction in his tribe; while his mother, who soon figures in the records as “Widow Sarah Occom,” implying her husband's early demise, was...
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